Understanding Marx, Understanding Modernism

Description

A concentrated study of the relationships between modernism and transformative left utopianism, this volume provides an introduction to Marx and Marxism for modernists, and an introduction to modernism for Marxists. Its guiding hypothesis is that Marx’s writing absorbed the lessons of artistic and cultural modernity as much as his legacy concretely shaped modernism across multiple media. A close engagement with Marx's central philosophical texts, the focus of the first part of the volume, involves reading Marx in relation to his artistic and primarily his literary antecedents, from Epicurus and Dante through Shakespeare and Dickens. The second section, on aesthetics, is concerned with recognizably modernist aesthetics and demonstrates how Marx and Marxism were taken up by key modernists across multiple media in forms such as the novel, the poem, cinema, theatre, music and architecture. Concluding with a glossary of mini-essays on key concepts from 'commodity' through 'ideology' to 'utopia,' this volume will be invaluable to students who wish to engage with Marx's philosophy in their own work. Title Page Copyright Page Series Preface Contents Introduction: Modernist Marx, Marxist Modernism Notes Part 1: Conceptualizing Marx Chapter 1: Greek Ideology and Modern Politics in Marx’s First Works The Dissertation: Epicurus’ Carnival and Abstract-individual Self-Consciousness Greek Enlightenment and Greek Ideology: In the Garden of Meteors Living in Iron Times The End of the Carnival: Marxist Cynica Conclusion: Universal Chains and Proletarian Genericity Notes Chapter 2: Before the Manifesto: Märchen and the Impulse to Exorcism Notes Chapter 3: The Communist Manifesto and the Exhumation of Literature Marx and Dante Marx and Shakespeare Marx the Epicurean Notes Chapter 4: On France: Revolutions and Communes Notes Chapter 5: Jupiter against the Lightning-Rod: Literary Form in the Grundrisse Prehistory of Modernism’s Communism A Brief Drama of Potential Combatants Not-labor Time and the Collective Literary Program Notes Chapter 6: The Voices of Capital: Poetics of Critique beyond Sentiment and Cynicism The Commodity Form: Between Sentiment and Cynicism On History, the Darstellungsweise, and Double-voiced Discourse Conclusion Notes Chapter 7: The Dialectics of Utopia: Critique of the Gotha Program Notes Chapter 8: Posthumous Publications: Capitalism’s Circuits and Reading for Totality Volume Two: The Circuits of Capital and Production of Crisis Volume Three: The Unseen, the Natural, and the Necessity of Interpretation Ground Rent and Reading Resources Notes Part 2: Marx in Modernism Chapter 9: Marx in the Modernist Novel Notes Chapter 10: Marx and Modernist Poetry Niedecker’s Depression Lyrics Hughes’ ‘Song of the Revolution’ Rukeyser’s Elegy for Labor Notes Chapter 11: Marx and Cinema Notes Chapter 12: Theatrical Proletarians A Kind of Work-related Accident Worthless, Superfluous, Even Bothersome There Ought To be More Like Her Removed at a Single Blow Notes Chapter 13: Marx, Music, Modernism Notes Chapter 14: Constructing Socialism: Marxism, Modernism, and Architecture Notes Chapter 15: Marx and Popular Modernism Splinters The Infernal Dream of Animation Modernist-Marxist Fairy Tales Notes Part 3: Glossary of Key Terms Chapter 16: The Commodity Notes Chapter 17: Labor Notes Chapter 18: Value Notes Chapter 19: Money Notes Chapter 20: The General Formula of Capital Chapter 21: Class Notes Chapter 22: Technology Notes Chapter 23: Family Notes Chapter 24: Ideology Notes Chapter 25: Alienation Notes Chapter 26: Materialism Notes Chapter 27: Colonization Notes Chapter 28: Nature Notes Chapter 29: Revolution Notes Chapter 30: Communism Notes Chapter 31: Utopia Notes Contributors Index