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edwad · 1 month

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What's the best secondary literature on the Grundrisse?

i'm not necessarily a grundrisse-doer by any means so i don't go out of my way to leaf through all the secondary literature on it, but rosdolsky's the making of marx's capital is the classic text which set discussions about the grundrisse in motion. it has been somewhat outmoded by later scholarship (even the title of the work itself is based on a misunderstanding of marx's changing plans for the critique of political economy), but all serious grundrisse-ing since is in some way indebted to this work.

otherwise, i think the relevant part of oakley's marx's critique of political economy is probably the best study of marx's source material and what he was doing with it. he has his flaws, but i consider oakley a must-read for anyone really trying to grapple with marx's economic work. his earlier book, the making of marx's critical theory (an obvious nod to rosdolsky), is much less ambitious than his 2-volume work, but has plenty of overlap and works well as a brief but scholarly overview of marxs development as an economic thinker in a way which dovetails nicely with the framing offered by mandel in his similar work on the formation of the economic thought of karl marx, but without nearly as much stupidity. mandel's work is worth reading if you can get to it, because he has a certain sensitivity to the development of marx's theory of wages in a way which puts the problem neatly to the reader, but oakley's work is undoubtedly superior.

there are also a zillion or so edited volumes out there which are more or less useful (in marxs laboratory ed. bellofiore et al, karl marx's grundrisse ed. musto, etc) and they're worth perusing on topics of interest, but -- like most scholarly volumes of that sort -- they are probably best digested after achieving a certain degree of familiarity. i don't know where you stand in relation to the grundrisse or marx generally, but these volumes tend to involve a lot of specialists wading into long-running debates that not even rosdolsky can fully prepare you for, so they don't necessarily work well as a handy guide to the text, if that's the kind of thing you're looking for (although obviously some pieces are better suited for this than others). that being said, musto's original work in particular (found in his edited volume but also freely available on his website) is quite useful for situating marxs grundrisse in the context of his life/intellectual development.

the last thing i might throw out there as a suggestion is sixel's understanding marx. this is a thin companion to marx's introduction of 1857, which is typically included in published editions of the grundrisse even though it doesn't really belong to that project and, in some ways, can complicate the reading by making it seem as if the grundrisse is supposed to somehow fit into the shape or develop the case for the conclusions of this introduction. this isn't really the function of the introduction, and the grundrisse wasn't written as a book-draft which ought to be introduced to an audience of readers. that being said, it's an important piece and is usually read by people picking up the grundrisse, so sixel's little book is handy for anyone interested in thinking through its implications. his approach is rooted in a philosophical reading of marx as navigating the terrain of german idealism with a notion of critique in mind which implicitly nods toward kant and hegel, so no one can complain that ive neglected these elements.

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kallie-den · 5 months

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Do you have any advice for reading Das Kapital?

First and foremost: don't hesitate to take advantage of the resources that are out there! A lot of people have made companion guides and similar things for Capital - to begin with, I'd recommend David Harvey's 'Reading Capital', which is both a book and a lecture series you can find for free on Youtube. He's pretty good at breaking things down, making things more intuitive, and acting as a guide through the text

The other thing is: don't be discouraged! It's a long and dense text, and that can be intimidating, especially if you don't feel like you're making a lot of headway. But persistence is very rewarding with Capital, especially since the first part is by far the most difficult and abstract. Instead of trying to fully understand each and every sentence, if you're struggling I'd advise trying to get the gist of Max's argument and then continuing on. The later sections of the text will put those things into practice and help to illuminate why Marx frames things as he does

Good luck!

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communistkenobi · 2 years

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Hey Nick, I was wondering if you had any reading recommendations for ppl looking to get more into political/leftist theory? Ik you've posted a lot about The Authoritarian Personality and I agree with your insights and posts abt it and I'm considering picking that up! But I also wanted to know if you have any other recs besides that? Anyways, thanks so much, and give Muffin a pet for me! :^)

I would recommend reading historical non fiction written from leftist perspectives. I often find that to be A) a more approachable start if you’re not super familiar/comfortable with the more dense and abstract theoretical texts, and B) very instructive in what the actual value of leftist political thought is, how it’s been built and shaped throughout history, and the core contradictions that exist within class relationships. Reading about the Haitian Revolution is a great start, either Black Jacobins or Avengers of the New World (I’ve only read the latter but I’ve heard Black Jacobins is the better of the two so I recommend that one, Avengers was a bit dry). Cesaire’s Discourse on Colonialism essay is also fantastic, I find him to be very insightful (and funny) without speaking in the more dry academic tones you’d find in a lot of other theory. + I think it’s foundational in describing what colonialism “is”, not just as a historical process but as a historical force itself

I would also recommend David Harvey’s work, he’s a very influential marxist geographer and has written a lot about how neoliberalism is expressed in the built environment/urban contexts (+ I think neoliberalism is one of those concepts that’s extremely valuable to understand because it’s the dominant expression of capitalism, and knowing exactly what it is and what it does will be very useful in helping you understand a lot of what’s happening today economically). He also wrote what I believe is a fairly famous book called A Companion to Marx’s Capital, though I haven’t read that one. Everything I’ve read of Marx’s work has been fairly impenetrable, so (echoing advice I hear often) I would recommend secondary sources that either commentate or criticise his stuff. Which is extremely easy to find because everyone is responding to Marx lol

OH also Transgender Marxism is a self explanatory collection of essays on the topic of transness and marxism. I’ve read a couple of the essays in there that I’ve been impressed with, particularly Seizing the Means: Towards a Trans Epistemology and ‘Why Are We Like This?’: The Primacy of Transsexuality.

I can provide you the list of books I’ve bought and intend to read after I’m finished The Authoritarian Personality but haven’t gotten around to yet. A lot of the stuff ive read are journal articles / books that are written specifically to be taught in universities so they aren’t necessarily good to recommend because they can be hard to find/expensive/annoying to read. Although if you do want some recommendations in that vein I’d be happy to share a list + any PDFs I have on hand

Anyway this is what I want to read after I’m finished auth personality:

A People’s History of the United States (I almost always see this on “so you want to start reading leftist theory” lists)

The Jakarta Method (a book about the United State’s anti communist foreign policy during the Cold War. I hear the subject matter is pretty horrifying but very illuminating)

Are Prisons Obsolete? By Angela Davis

I also listen to podcasts about theory by other grad students but idk if that’s what you’re looking for. If you are I recommend Liv Agar and What’s Left of Philosophy. Obviously this has a lower bar on quality and fact checking but I find them enjoyable. Also if you’re into podcasts Blowback is really good (covers the Iraq War and Cuban Revolution).

Sorry this is a bit scatterbrained but I hope that helps lmao. If that’s not helpful I can take a look at some of the shit I have downloaded on my computer. Mutuals can also chime in if they have book/essay recommendations

#asks #book club

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eelhound · 1 year

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"Daniel Denvir

You write that 'markets and labor power change the internal character of what is traded on them and the surrounding form of life in which they are located.' What is alienation? What is it that we’re alienated from or made alien to?

Nancy Fraser

There’s a long tradition of writing about alienated labor that goes back to Marx’s very early writings. The concept refers to exploited wage labor within capitalism, where the worker is alienated from his or her work but also from fellow human beings and from what Marx famously called our 'species being,' our humanity, our freedom to collectively decide what kind of lives we want to live and to build the institutions to do that.

People today are alienated from all of those things. There’s nothing more alienated, in terms of labor, than having to follow a script in interacting with customers, either on the phone or at a fast-food joint, while you’re also doing some backbreaking or repetitive labor in horrible conditions. So, we’re no strangers to alienated labor. I think the popularity of freelancing, even though that’s quite mystified in certain ways, does speak to a hunger for creativity, for being able to determine how you use your time, being an individual, not just being under the watchful surveillance of somebody else.

But I would say the deepest meaning of alienation and being unalienated has to do with freedom and democracy. Capitalism steals from us not just our labor and energy but our ability to decide collectively the most important questions about how we want to live. How hard do we want to work? How many hours? How much leisure do we want to have? What do we want to leave for future generations? How do we want to relate to nonhuman nature? What should we do with the social surplus that we collectively produce?

These are fundamental questions, and they are decided now essentially by a small handful of people who appropriate the surplus we produce and basically use market mechanisms to invest for the sake of maximal expansion.

Daniel Denvir

In other words, we live in a society where Elon Musk gets to decide that he’s firing a car into space for fun and that’s how our social wealth is being used.

Nancy Fraser

Absolutely. Whereas there might be many other things that we would prefer to do with that wealth. We might even prefer to produce less wealth and to live more simply, companionably, socially, and easily in a more relaxed way. We could have a much freer and more democratic life. But that’s not compatible with capitalism."

- Daniel Denvir interviewing Nancy Fraser, from "How Capitalism Worms Its Way Into Every Aspect of Our Lives." Jacobin, 8 December 2022.

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susansontag · 11 months

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I just knew my brother was going to take me linking a critique of david harvey’s companion to marx somewhat personally lol. if I linked this in the capital reading group on goodreads everyone would be saying thank you that’s more stuff to synthesise and think about

#lolllll #he was alright after a while I was just standoffish and didn’t rise to it #and then he realised he’d come in hot maybe and was like oh yes very true yes yes #moth.txt

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orangerosebush · 2 years

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David Harvey, “The Fetishism of the Commodity and Its Secret” from A Companion to Marx’s Capital (2010)

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hellofuckthepolice · 4 months

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(4) department II uses £500 to buy means of production from department I; (5) department I (sic) buys means of consumption from department I with the same £500 ; (6) department II buys means of production from department I with this £500; (7) department I buys means of consumption from department I I with the £500

-- Marx, Karl, 1978, Capital, Volume II, p. 492, London, Penguin.

I wanted to point out that capitalists were just playing tag, but the English translator was probably as bored (and confused) as I was. The 2 different French translation don't reproduce the mistake that was done on item 5. Reading book two of capital is an adventure, and really helps situating Marx in the history of economic thoughts. But even David Harvey qualifies the book as "rather boring" in his companion for the book. The end section is supposed to wrap the arguments together, but its just a complete mess. Harvey just say that the section completely fails at its goal, on top of showing contradictions with volume I:

If the schemas point to anything in the way of a politics, therefore, it is to the necessity to stabilize worker incomes in order to harmonize the relationship between the total output of means of production and the total demand for consumer goods. This contradicts the findings of Volume I, where Marx envisages the increasing impoverishment of the working class as an inevitable outcome of free-market capitalism. Marx only hints at this contradiction, however, because the equivalent chapter to the “General Law” chapter is missing from Volume II. It is interesting to surmise how we might have read Volume I if the “General Law” chapter had not been written—and we therefore had only the chapters on simple and expanded reproduction. Conversely, we need to imagine what the equivalent chapter in Volume II to the “General Law” chapter might have looked like.

-- Harvey, David, 2013, A companion to Marx' Capital volume II, p. 242, Verso, London. (the page number refers to the pdf that's easily available online ;).

It is quite obvious that production is way better explained by the work-value theory, but I didn't think Marx shat his pants so bad in Vol II-III. And this is just skinny dipping in the works that Marx weren't deemed good enough to be published: the Grundrisse, the Theories of Surplus Value, the unpublished chapter of Capital and all the other drafts. For the new years, try to stay farther away from the source of knowledge, it kinda stinks when you get close.

#Marx

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riverdamien · 7 months

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Are You Envious?

Fourth Sunday in the Season of Creation

September 24, 2023

Are You Envious Because I am Generous!

Matthew 20:1-16

Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard.

When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same.

And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’

When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’

But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

Today is the fourth Sunday in the Season of Creation. We are called to attend to the spirituality of Creation and read our spiritual writings attuned to the earth and her created inhabitants, readying ourselves to participate with God in co-creating the future.

In my own "woundedness" these past weeks, or shall we say "feeling sorry for myself", I have found myself being envy of others. They have good friends, nicer places to live and so on. Live safe lives.

And then in my prayer I visit "that inner kind of sanctuary" and find the healing of the joy of the work to which I am called.

"Are you envious because I am generous?" These words fly like arrows from the page to my heart. Of the seven deadly sins--pride, envy, anger, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony and lust--envy is my secret and admittedly , most shameful companion. Priests, and writers are prone to it, constantly weighing ourselves against others and nursing dissatisfaction in our souls.

Envy is not jealously. Jealousy is a kind of protective impulse. One is jealous if a lover who seems inappropriately attentive to another.

Envy is resentment, a passionate spite that can become cancerous hostility. Joseph Epstein, called envy, "a self poisoning of the mind, envy is usually less about what one lacks than about what other people have." Envy grows from rivalry, when one is unable to see our own gifts, without comparing them to the gifts of others. That is me at my worst, I look at other clergy and see the the praise and recognition they receive, their salaries, their safety, and I an envious.

And there is Jesus wandering through the Judea with his disciples, without anything materially, turning to a rich landowner who does something good with his money and is met by his workers with grumbling, ingratitude, and envy. The same happens to me when I pay everyone the same wage for work at Pride and in giving out food, socks, and myself on the street. It is amusing to think of Jesus praising a land owner who pays all his workers the same while sounding vaguely like Karl Marx: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" in one of the New Testaments greatest take down on capitalism.

Envy inhibits gratitude, however the reverse is also true: gratitude is an antidote to envy. And that is the central point of this little story of Jesus.

Joseph Epstein tells us: "Jesus among his apostles attempted to root out envy by rooting out the arch cause: rivalry."

Earth now cries out to us: Put away your resentments of one another, knowing that you all dwell in the same vineyard, and tend to the healing, renewing work at hand.

Love God! Love one another. Love the earth!

Deo Gratis! Thanks be to God!

-------------------------------------------

Exercise in Developing Compassion!

1. Sit down with your feet uncrossed.

2. Breath in and out for three minutes praying a phrase similar to "Jesus Christ, have mercy upon me."

3. Keeping your eyes closed visualize a person you feel very close to, and then extend the feeling of kindness and compassion towards that person.

4. And then see another person of a different race and creed coming before you, in much pain, with tears, see him or her as your brother or sister and then extend the feeling of kindness and compassion towards that person.

5. Do the same with someone you have difficulties with.

6. Draw your breath in and out for three minutes seeing all people around you with compassion and kindness, open your eyes and pray the following prayer:

Let Love Ache

Father, give me the courage to keep on loving.

when others keep on hurting.

help me to live an achy love, a gritty,

persistent and emptying love;

a love that’s not afraid to flow toward the other

who has little left to offer in return.

And may I tread faithfully with heaven

through the unfinished work that surrounds me.

Commoners_Communion

Strahan Coleman

Fr. C. River Damien Sims, sfw, D.Min., D.S.T.

P.O. Box 643656

San Francisco, CA 94164

www.temenos.org

415-305-2124

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stuartelden · 2 years

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David Harvey, A Companion to Marx's Grundrisse - Verso, February 2023

David Harvey, A Companion to Marx’s Grundrisse – Verso, February 2023

David Harvey, A Companion to Marx’s Grundrisse – Verso, February 2023 When leading scholar of Marx, Roman Rosdolsky, first encountered the virtually unknown text of Marx’s Grundrisse – his preparatory work for his masterpiece Das Capital – in the 1950s in New York Public Library, he recognized it as “a work of fundamental importance,” but declared “its unusual form” and “obscure manner of…

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howieabel · 5 years

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If everybody in the world suddenly decided not to use their credit cards for three days, the whole global economy would be in serious trouble. (Recall how we were all urged to get out our credit cards after 9/11 and get back to shopping.) Which is why so much effort is put toward getting money out of our pockets and keeping it circulating.

David Harvey, A Companion to Marx's Capital

#David Harvey #A Companion to Marx's Capital #Credit

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edwad · 1 month

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Can I dive into Heinrich if I haven't gotten that far into capital c1

sure. although arguably one of the best ways to dive into him would be via his v1 companion, which would simultaneously get you further along in capital. otherwise though you could probably read his intro and get away with it, there's just a decent chance that some of it might be confusing if you haven't been exposed to certain things (via marx directly or otherwise in the 2ndary lit). doesn't make it impossible by any means tho

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c3po · 2 years

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If you’re having trouble with some of the literature, I’d suggest getting a companion text as well (e.g. “A Companion to Marx's Capital”). It can be pretty difficult to parse some of the older texts, so having a concise explanation at hand is very helpful. Still a fair amount of reading though. swag

oh babe i can’t afford books also i haven’t read a book in years maybe when i can get government meth LOL

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eelhound · 2 years

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"One of the curious things about our educational system, I would note, is that the better trained you are in a discipline, the less used to dialectical method you're likely to be. In fact, young children are very dialectical; they see everything in motion, in contradictions and transformations. We have to put an immense effort into training kids out of being good dialecticians. [In Capital Vol. 1,] Marx wants to recover the intuitive power of the dialectical method and put it to work in understanding how everything is in process, everything is in motion. He doesn't simply talk about labor; he talks about the labor process. Capital is not a thing, but rather a process that exists only in motion. When circulation stops, value disappears and the whole system comes tumbling down. Consider what happened in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, in New York City: everything came to a standstill. Planes stopped flying, bridges and roads closed. After about three days, everybody realized that capitalism would collapse if things didn't get moving again. So suddenly, Mayor Giuliani and President Bush are pleading with the public to get out the credit cards and go shopping, go back to Broadway, patronize the restaurants. Bush even appeared in a TV ad for the airline industry encouraging Americans to start flying again.

Capitalism is nothing if it is not on the move. Marx is incredibly appreciative of that, and he sets out to evoke the transformative dynamism of capital. That's why it is so very strange that he's often depicted as a static thinker who reduces capitalism to a structural configuration. No, what Marx seeks out in Capital is a conceptual apparatus, a deep structure, that explains the way in which motion is actually instantiated within a capitalist mode of production. Consequently, many of his concepts are formulated around relations rather than stand-alone principles; they are about transformative activity."

- David Harvey, from A Companion to Marx's Capital, 2018.

#david harvey #karl marx #economics #marxism #democratic socialism #motion #sunyata #interdependence #interconnectedness #children #education #learning #dialectics #neoliberalism #capitalism

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perennialessays · 3 years

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Crisis and Critique

What is critical theory, and whence the notion of critique as a practical stance towards the world? Using these questions as a point of departure, this course takes critical theory as its field of inquiry. Part of the course will be devoted to investigating what critique is, starting with the etymological and conceptual affinity it shares with crisis: since the Enlightenment, so one line of argument goes, all grounds for knowledge are subject to criticism, which is understood to generate a sense of escalating historical crisis culminating in a radical renewal of the intellectual and social order. We will explore the efficacy of modern critical thought, and the concept of critique’s efficacy, by examining a series of attempts to narrate and amplify states of crisis – and correspondingly transform key concepts such as self, will, time, and world – in order to provoke a transformation of society. The other part of the course will be oriented towards understanding current critical movements as part of the Enlightenment legacy of critique, and therefore as studies in the practical implications of critical readings. Key positions in critical discourse will be discussed with reference to the socio-political conditions of their formation and in the context of their provenance in the history of philosophy, literature, and cultural theory. Required readings will include works by Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Husserl, Benjamin and others, with suggested readings and references drawn from a variety of source materials ranging from literary and philosophical texts to visual images, film, and architecture. You are invited to work on your individual interests with respect to the readings.

Week 1

Critique, krinein, crisis (Koselleck, Adorno)

Required Reading

Reinhart Koselleck, “Crisis,” Journal of the History of Ideas 67.2 (2006), 357-400.

—, Chapters 7 and 8, Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1988 [German original, 1959].

Adorno and Horkheimer, "The Concept of Enlightenment," in Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (New York: Continuum, 1989), pp. 3-42.

Recommended Reading

Michel Foucault, “What is Enlightenment?” in The Foucault Reader. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984: 32-50.

—, The Politics of Truth. New York: Semiotext(e), 1997.

Friedrich Hölderlin, “Nature and Art or Saturn and Jupiter,” in Hyperion and Selected Poems. Ed. by Eric Santner. Translated by Michael Hamburger. New York: Continuum, 1990: 150-151.

Week 2

Judgment and Imagination (Kant)

Required Reading

Immanuel Kant, “Preface [A and B],” in Critique of Pure Reason. Translated and edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998: 99-124.

—, “Preface” and “Introduction,” in Critique of Practical Reason, in Practical Philosophy, trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge UP, 1996), pp. 139-149.

—, §§1-5, 59-60 of Critique of the Power of Judgment, trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews (Cambridge UP, 2000), pp. 89-96, 225-230.

—, “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose,” in Kant: Political Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991 (2nd ed.): 41-53, 273.

—, “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? [1784],” in Practical Philosophy. Translated by Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999: 11-22.

Recommended Reading

Immanuel Kant, "Analytic of the Sublime," in Critique of Judgment. Translated by James Creed Meredith; revised, edited, and introduced by Nicholas Walker. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007: 75-164.

Theodor Adorno, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (2001 [1959])

Henry Allison, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism (2004)

Hannah Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy (1992)

Geoffrey Bennington, “Kant’s Open Secret”, Theory, Culture and Society 28.7-8(2011): 26-40.

J.M. Bernstein, The Fate of Art: Aesthetic Alienation from Kant to Derrida and Adorno (1992)

Graham Bird, The Revolutionary Kant (2006)

Andrew Bowie, Aesthetics and Subjectivity: from Kant to Nietzsche (1990, 2003)

Howard Caygill, The Kant Dictionary (2000)

Ernst Cassirer, Kant's Life and Thought (1981)

Gilles Deleuze, Kant's Critical Philosophy (1984)

Will Dudley and Kristina Engelhard (eds.) Immanuel Kant: Key Concepts (2010)

Paul Guyer, Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment: Critical Essays (2003)

Martin Heidegger, Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1997)

Laura Hengehold, The BODY Problematic: Political Imagination in Kant and Foucault (2007)

Otfried Höffe, Immanuel Kant (1994)

Jean-François Lyotard, L’Enthousiasme: La critique kantienne de l’histoire. Paris: L’Éditions Galilée, 1986.

Rudolf Makkreel, Imagination and Interpretation in Kant: The Hermaneutic Import of the Critique of Judgment (1990)

Jean-Luc Nancy, A Finite Thinking (2003)

Andrea Rehberg and Rachel Jones (eds.), The Matter of Critique: Readings in Kant’s Philosophy (2000)

Philip Rothfield (ed.), Kant after Derrida (2003)

Rei Terada, Looking Away: Phenomenality and Dissatisfaction, Kant to Adorno (2009)

Yirmiahu Yovel, Kant and the Philosophy of History (1989)

Week 3

Recognition and the Other (Hegel)

Required Reading

G.W.F. Hegel, “The Truth of Self-Certainty” and “Lordship and Bondage,” in The Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by Terry Pinkard. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2018: 102-116.

—, “The Art-Religion,” in The Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by Terry Pinkard. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2018: 403-430.

Recommended Reading

G.W.F. Hegel, Introduction [§§1, 2, 3, 5, 6 and 8], in Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art. Translated by T.M. Knox. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975: 1-14; 22-55; 69-90.

Stuart Barnett (ed.), Hegel after Derrida (2001)

Frederick Beiser (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hegel (1993)

Susan Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (2009)

Rebecca Comay, Mourning Sickness: Hegel and the French Revolution (2011)

Rebecca Comay and John McCumber (eds.), Endings: Questions of Memory in Hegel and Heidegger (1999)

Eva Geulen, The End of Art: Readings in a Rumor after Hegel. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006.

Werner Hamacher, “(The End of Art with the Mask),” in Stuart Barnett (ed.), Hegel after Derrida. London and New York: Routledge, 1998: 105-130.

Werner Hamacher, “The Reader’s Supper: A Piece of Hegel,” trans. Timothy Bahti, diacritics 11.2 (1981): 52-67.

H.S. Harris, Hegel: Phenomenology and System (1995)

Stephen Houlgate, An Introduction to Hegel: Freedom, Truth and History (2005)

Stephen Houlgate, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (2013)

Fredric Jameson, The Hegel Variations (2010)

Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel. Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980.

Terry Pinkard, Hegel: A Biography (2001)

Week 4

Revolution … (Marx)

Required Reading

Karl Marx, “I: Feuerbach,” The German Ideology, in Collected Works vol. 5. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1976: 27-93.

Karl Marx, "Theses on Feuerbach," available online (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm)

Week 5

... and Repetition (Marx)

Required Reading

Karl Marx, “Preface” to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy [1859], in Collected Works vol. 29. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1976: 261-165.

—, “Postface to the Second Edition” and “Chapter 1: The Commodity,” in Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Trans. by B. Fowkes. London: Penguin, 1990: 95-103 and 125-177.

Recommended Reading

Louis Althusser, For Marx (1969)

Hannah Arendt, “Karl Marx and the Tradition of Western Political Thought”, Social Research 69.2 (2002): 273-319.

Étienne Balibar, The Philosophy of Marx (1995, 2007)

Ernst Bloch, On Karl Marx (1971)

Andrew Chitty and Martin McIvor (eds.), Karl Marx and Contemporary Philosophy (2009)

Simon Choat, Marx Through Post-Structuralism: Lyotard, Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze (2010)

Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International. New York and London: Routledge, 1994.

Werner Hamacher, “Lingua Amissa: The Messianism of Commodity-Language and Derrida’s Specters of Marx” (1999)

Jean Hyppolite, Studies on Marx and Hegel (1969)

Sarah Kofman, Camera Obscura: Of Ideology (1998)

Peter Singer, Marx: A Very Short Introduction (1980)

Michael Sprinker (ed.), Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium on Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx (1999, 2008)

Moishe Postone, History and Heteronomy: Critical Essays (2009)

Moishe Postone, Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx’s Critical Theory (1993)

Jacques Rancière, “The Concept of ‘Critique’ and the ‘Critique of Political Economy’ (from the 1844 Manuscript to Capital)”, Economy and Society 5.3 (1976): 352-376.

Tom Rockmore, Marx After Marxism: The Philosophy of Karl Marx (2002)

Gareth Stedman-Jones, Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion (2016)

Week 6

Tutorial Week

Week 7

Will to Becoming Otherwise (Nietzsche)

Required Reading

Friedrich Nietzsche, "Preface" and "First Treatise," in On the Genealogy of Morality. Trans. by Maudemarie Clark and Alan J. Swensen. Indianopolis/Cambridge: Hackett, 1998: 1-33.

Week 8

Ascetic Ideal and Eternal Return (Nietzsche)

Required Reading

Friedrich Nietzsche, "Second Treatise" and "Third Treatise," in On the Genealogy of Morality. Trans. by Maudemarie Clark and Alan J. Swensen. Indianopolis/Cambridge: Hackett, 1998: 35-118.

Recommended Reading

Friedrich Nietzsche, §§341-342 of The Gay Science

Friedrich Nietzsche, “On Vision and Riddle” and “The Convalescent,” in Thus Spake Zarathustra III

Friedrich Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense,” in: The Birth of Tragedy and other writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Friedrich Nietzsche, “On the Uses and Abuses of History for Life,” in: Untimely Meditations. Trans. by R.J. Hollingdale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.

Jacques Derrida, Spurs: Nietzsche’s Styles. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1979.

Michel Foucault, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History," in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews. Ed. by D. F. Bouchard. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977: 139-164.

R. Kevin Hill, Nietzsche’s Critiques: The Kantian Foundations of his Thought (2003)

Luce Irigaray, Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche. Trans. by Gillian C. Gill. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.

Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans. by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.

Gianni Vattimo, The End of Modernity: Nihilism and Hermeneutics in Postmodern Culture. Trans. by Jon R. Snyder. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988.

Alenka Zupančič, The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche’s Philosophy of the Two (2003)

Week 9

Repetition Compulsion (Freud)

Required Reading

Sigmund Freud, “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” [excerpts], in Peter Gay (ed.), The Freud Reader. London: Vintage, 1995: 594-625.

Recommended Reading

Theodor Adorno, “Revisionist Psychoanalysis,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 40.3 (2014): 326-338.

Louis Althusser, Writings on Psychoanalysis: Freud and Lacan (1996)

Lauren Berlant, Desire/Love (2012)

Leo Bersani, The Freudian Body: Psychoanalysis and Art (1986)

Rebecca Comay, “Resistance and Repetition: Freud and Hegel,” Research in Phenomenology 45 (2015): 237-266.

Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (1995)

Jacques Derrida, The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond (1987)

Mladen Dolar, “Freud and the Political,” Unbound 4.15 (2008): 15-29.

Sarah Kofman, Freud and Fiction (1991)

Jacques Lacan, “The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious; or Reason after Freud”, in Écrits: A Selection. Trans. by A. Sheridan. New York: Norton, 1977: 146-175.

Catherine Malabou, “Plasticity and Elasticity in Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle.” Diacritics 37.4 (2007): 78-85.

Jean-Luc Nancy, "System of (Kantian) Pleasure (With a Freudian Postscript)," in Kant after Derrida. Ed. by Phil Rothfield. Manchester: Clinamen Press, 2003: 127-141.

Angus Nicholls and Martin Liebscher (eds.), Thinking the Unconscious: Nineteenth-Century German Thought (2010)

Charles Sheperdson, Vital Signs: Nature, Culture, Psychoanalysis (2000)

Samuel Weber, The Legend of Freud. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000.

Alenka Zupančič, Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan. London: Verso, 2012 [reprint].

Week 10

Crisis of European Humankind (Husserl)

Required Reading

Edmund Husserl, §§1-7 and §§10-21, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Trans. by David Carr. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970: 2-18; 60-84.

Recommended Reading

Edmund Husserl, “Philosophy and the Crisis of European Humanity [Vienna Lecture],” in The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Trans. by David Carr. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970: 269-299.

Jacques Derrida, The Other Heading: Reflections on Today’s Europe. Trans. by Pascale Anne Brault and Michael B. Naas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992: 4-83.

Paul de Man, “Criticism and Crisis,” in Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971: 3-19.

James Dodd, Crisis and Reflection: An Essay on Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences (2004)

Burt C. Hopkins, The Philosophy of Husserl (2011)

David Hyder and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Science and the Life-World: Essays on Husserl’s Crisis of European Sciences (2010)

Leonard Lawlor, Derrida and Husserl: The Basic Problem of Phenomenology (2002)

Dermot Moran, The Husserl Dictionary (2012)

Paul Valéry, "Notes on the Greatness and Decline of Europe” and “The European,” in History and Politics. Trans. Denise Folliot and Jackson Matthews. New York: Bollingen, 1962: 228; 311-12.

David Woodruff Smith, Husserl (2007)

Barry Smith and David Woodruff Smith (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Husserl (1995)

Week 11

Crisis-Proof Experience (Benjamin)

Required Reading

Walter Benjamin, “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire,” in Selected Writings vol. 4. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2003: 313-355.

Recommended Reading

Walter Benjamin, "Experience and Poverty"

—, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproducibility”

—, “Theses on the Concept of History”

—, “Epistemo-Critical Prologue,” in The Origin of German Tragic Drama. Trans. by John Osborne. London and New York: Verso, 2003: 27-56.

—, “Convolute J,” The Arcades Project

—, The Writer of Modern Life: Essays on Charles Baudelaire (2006)

Benjamin and Theodor Adorno, “Exchange with Theodor W. Adorno on ‘The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire,” in Benjamin, Selected Writings vol. 4 (1999).

Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil; The Painter of Modern Life

Ian Balfour, “Reversal, Quotation (Benjamin’s History)”, Modern Language Notes 106.3 (1991): 622-647.

Eduardo Cadava, Words of Light: Theses on the Photography of History (1997)

Tom Gunning, “The Exterior as Intérieur: Benjamin’s Optical Detective,” boundary 2 30.1 (2003).

Werner Hamacher, “Now: Benjamin on Historical Time” (2001; 2005)

General Background

Julian Wolfreys (ed.), Modern European Criticism and Theory: A Critical Guide (2006) Simon Critchley, Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (2001) Terry Pinkard, German Philosophy 1760-1860: The Legacy of Idealism (2002)

Andrew Bowie, Introduction to German Philosophy: From Kant to Habermas (2003)

Kai Hammermeister, The German Aesthetic Tradition (2002) Gary Gutting, French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century (2001)

Eric Matthews, Twentieth-Century French Philosophy (1996)

Jonathan Simons (ed.), From Kant to Lévi-Strauss: The Background to Contemporary Critical Theory (2002)

Learning Outcomes

- You will have a grasp of the broad trends in the development of critical theory.

- You will have a good understanding of how different modern philosophical traditions from German Idealism to Phenomenology inform the different strains of critical theory.

- You will be able to expound and analyse the ways in which a range of different writers and tendencies in the history of modern thought conceive of the specificity of critique.

- You will have a sound grasp of the primary and secondary literatures in critical theory, both on general issues and specific thinkers or schools.

- You will be able to use the ideas and texts explored in the module to inform your readings in critical theoretical texts.

Assessment Criteria

- Students should show a clear command of how their chosen thinker(s) and texts relate to the broader trajectories of critical theory.

- Students should show a detailed critical knowledge of at least two of the module’s key thinkers or theoretical tendencies.

- Students should show a knowledge and capacity to use a good range of secondary literature on both general issues in the field and on the specific thinkers and texts they address.

- Students should be able to read the relevant texts from both critical and genealogical perspectives.

- Students should demonstrate their capacity to develop a distinctive and coherent interpretative and analytical perspective on their chosen subject.

#goldsmiths #crisis and critique

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