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Showing papers in "Historical Materialism in 2016"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper explored the roots of this under-theorisation, and suggested that a more fully integrative ontology informs certain formulations of social-reproduction feminism, and pointed out that even its most politically radical articulations stop short of fully theorising the integrative logic they espouse.
Abstract: Seeking to capture the multi-layered, contradictory, nature of subjectivities and social positions through a framework which insists upon the complex, dynamic nature of the social, intersectionality feminism has inspired Marxist-Feminists to push the social-reproduction feminism paradigm beyond a narrow preoccupation with gender/class relations. Yet even its most politically radical articulations stop short of fully theorising the integrative logic they espouse. This article explores the roots of this under-theorisation, and suggests that a more fully integrative ontology informs certain formulations of social-reproduction feminism. In understanding the social as constituted by practical human activity whose object (the social and natural world) is organised capitalistically, social-reproduction feminism highlights the dialectical relationship between the capitalist whole and its differentiated parts. The challenge for Marxist-Feminism is to embrace this dialectical approach while building on the insights of intersectionality feminism to more convincingly capture the unity of a complex, diverse social whole.

73 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper argued that racism should be understood as a social relation of oppression rather than as solely or primarily an ideology, and suggested that a historical-materialist concept of race is necessary in order to capture features of societies shaped by historically specific racisms.
Abstract: This article aims to advance the historical-materialist understanding of racism by addressing some central theoretical questions. It argues that racism should be understood as a social relation of oppression rather than as solely or primarily an ideology, and suggests that a historical-materialist concept of race is necessary in order to capture features of societies shaped by historically specific racisms. A carefully conceived concept of privilege is also required if we are to grasp the contradictory ways in which members of dominant racial groups are affected by social relations of racial oppression. The persistence of racism today should be explained as a consequence of two dimensions of the capitalist mode of production – imperialism and the contribution of racism to profitability – and of a social property emergent from racism: the efforts of members of dominant groups to preserve their advantages relative to the racially oppressed.

30 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
Alan Sears1
TL;DR: The years since the rise of gay liberation in 1969 have seen remarkable changes in the realm of sexuality as discussed by the authors, and Lesbians and gay men have won important rights and attained a cultural visibility that would have been impossible to imagine even thirty years ago.
Abstract: The years since the rise of gay liberation in 1969 have seen remarkable changes in the realm of sexuality. Lesbians and gay men have won important rights and attained a cultural visibility that would have been impossible to imagine even thirty years ago. Yet these rights are limited, and apply only to specific sections of those who face exclusion, discrimination or violence on the basis of their queerness in the realm of gender and/or sexuality.

18 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors argue that the reformulation of the value-labour relation misrepresents the mediated capacities of capital as the immediate capacities of labour and questions the explanatory efficacy of the category "labour" in this context.
Abstract: Critical analysis of the biotechnological reproduction of biological life increasingly emphasises the role of value-producing labour in biotechnologically reproductive processes, while also arguing that Marx’s use of the terms ‘labour’ and ‘value’ is inadequate to the critical scrutiny of these processes. Focusing especially on the reformulation of the value-labour relation in recent work in this area by Melinda Cooper and Catherine Waldby, this paper both critiques this reformulation and questions the explanatory efficacy of the category ‘labour’ in this context. Emphasising the contemporary global expansion of capital relative to value-producing labour – specifically, the expansion of fictitious capital and debt on the one hand, and of global surplus populations on the other – it argues that this reformulation misrepresents the mediated capacities of capital as the immediate capacities of labour. This reformulation, moreover, is indicative of broader tendencies in the contemporary theorisation of labour, tendencies exemplified by autonomist Marxism.

15 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, an anti-colonial materialist approach to the multiple labours of Indigenous women in Canada, arguing that their social-reproductive labour is a primary site of struggle, is presented.
Abstract: In Northern Canada, Indigenous mixed economies persist alongside and in resistance to capital accumulation. The day-to-day sites and processes of colonial struggle, and, in particular, their gendered nature, are too often ignored. This piece takes an anti-colonial materialist approach to the multiple labours of Indigenous women in Canada, arguing that their social-reproductive labour is a primary site of struggle: a site of violent capitalist accumulation and persistent decolonising resistance. In making this argument, this piece draws on social-reproduction feminism, and anti-racist, Indigenous and anti-colonial feminism, asking what it means to take an anti-colonial approach to social-reproduction feminism. It presents an expanded conception of production that encompasses not just the dialectic of capitalist production and reproduction, but also non-capitalist, subsistence production. An anti-colonial approach to social-reproduction feminism challenges one to think through questions of non-capitalist labour and the way different forms of labour persist relationally, reproducing and resisting capitalist modes of production.

15 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The Red Skin, White Masks (RSW) as discussed by the authors is a seminal work in the study of the political economic effects of settler-colonialism on Indigenous peoples in North America, where Coulthard charts a way forward for Indigenous activism outside the state, eschewing the politics of recognition.
Abstract: Glen Coulthard’s masterly work, Red Skin, White Masks , raises the theoretical work of Indigenous scholarship in North America to a new level, bringing Marxism into the mix in looking at the political-economic effects of settler-colonialism on Indigenous peoples in North America. He charts a way forward for Indigenous activism outside the state, eschewing the politics of recognition. In addition to assessing Coulthard’s perspective on Marxism, this paper poses questions about privileging Indigenous social movements without addressing the national question and without including the role of the robust international Indigenous movement that has entered its fortieth year.

13 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors revisited an historic exchange between two black ex-communists, Harold Cruse and Harry Haywood, a debate that prefigured many of the central contradictions of the black-power era.
Abstract: This article revisits an historic exchange between two black ex-communists, Harold Cruse and Harry Haywood, a debate that prefigured many of the central contradictions of the black-power era. Their exchange followed Cruse’s influential 1962 essay for Studies on the Left, ‘Revolutionary Nationalism and the Afro-American’, which declared that the American Negro was a ‘subject of domestic colonialism’. Written against the prevailing liberal integrationist commitments of the civil-rights movement, his essay called for black economic and political independence, and inspired many of the younger activists who would give birth to the black-power movement. In a series of essays for the Bay Area black radical journal Soulbook, Haywood criticised Cruse’s mishandling of class politics among blacks, and his retreat from anti-capitalism. This forgotten episode is important on its own terms, for what it says about the character and limitations of left-political thinking during the sixties, and equally for understanding and contesting those commonsensical notions of African-American public life in our times which too often remain rooted in the vanished social context and political realities of the twentieth-century racial ghetto.

12 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Bensaid as mentioned in this paper was a Marxist philosopher and author of an extensive body of works about political strategy, which combine a diversity of singular influences, such as Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and Che Guevara on the one hand, and Benjamin, Peguy and Blanqui on the other.
Abstract: Daniel Bensaid was a Marxist philosopher and author of an extensive body of works about political strategy. His writings combine a diversity of singular influences, such as Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and Che Guevara on the one hand, and Benjamin, Peguy and Blanqui on the other. In his work, religious heresies, Marranos, moles and emblematic figures of the resistance to oppression such as Joan of Arc meet with the classic figures of Marxism. The non-linear concept of time and messianic reason support a strategic reading of history and an understanding of political commitment, following Goldmann’s interpretation of Pascal’s Wager as a wager of uncertain outcome.

11 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Coulthard's Red Skin, White Masks as discussed by the authors is an extension of Marx's critique of capitalism, particularly through his use of the concept of primitive accumulation, and it is linked to the recent Idle No More movement in Canada.
Abstract: This article introduces the symposium on Glen Coulthard’s Red Skin, White Masks. It begins by situating the book’s publication in the wake of the extensive mobilisations of the Idle No More movement in Canada in 2012–13. Coulthard’s strategic hypotheses on the horizons of Indigenous liberation in the book are intimately linked to his participation in these recent struggles. The article then locates Red Skin, White Masks within a wider renaissance of Indigenous Studies in the North American context in recent years, highlighting Coulthard’s unique and sympathetic extension of Marx’s critique of capitalism, particularly through his use of the concept of ‘primitive accumulation’. Next, the article outlines the long arc of the argument in Red Skin, White Masks and the organisation of the book’s constituent parts, providing a backdrop to the critical engagements that follow from Peter Kulchyski, Geoff Mann, George Ciccariello-Maher, and Roxanne Dunbar-Oritz. The article closes with reflections on Coulthard’s engagement with Fanon, who, besides Marx, is the most important polestar in Red Skin, White Masks.

7 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Coulthard's Red Skin, White Masks as discussed by the authors shifts our lens from the capital relation to the colonial relation, disarticulating the process of primitive accumulation to emphasise its component parts: dispossession and proletarianisation.
Abstract: Glen Coulthard’s Red Skin, White Masks makes two decisive interventions. First, it shifts our lens from the capital relation to the colonial relation, disarticulating the process of primitive accumulation to emphasise its component parts: dispossession and proletarianisation. To do so is to both liberate the concept from its European origins by centring those contexts in which dispossession is not followed by proletarianisation, and to pose the political unity of different forms of dispossession: of land (as in settler-colonialism) as well as labour (as in chattel slavery). Second, Coulthard draws convincingly upon Frantz Fanon, whose work is essential for grasping both colonialism and white supremacy, but crucially their complex interrelation.

5 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a critical examination of the status of these liberal concepts in Coulthard's work, and suggest that he has in fact given us a powerful theory of counter-sovereignty, which forces us to consider the meanings of possession and dispossession that animate the book, which in turn allow us to grasp the radical significance of Coulhards emphasis on the reciprocity at the heart of Indigenous relations with the land.
Abstract: Although neither sovereignty nor possession are explicit themes of Glen Coulthard’s Red Skin, White Masks , both concepts are essential to his critique of ‘recognition’ and the ongoing dynamics of Canadian colonialism. In this response, I offer a critical examination of the status of these liberal concepts in Coulthard’s work, and suggest that he has in fact given us a powerful theory of ‘countersovereignty’. Countersovereignty forces us to consider the meanings of possession and dispossession that animate the book, which in turn allow us to grasp the radical significance of Coulthard’s emphasis on the reciprocity at the heart of Indigenous relations with the land.


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a specific interpretation of the Taiping revolution in China in the mid-nineteenth century is presented, focusing on the role of the Bible, its radical reinterpretation by the revolutionaries, and the role it played in their revolutionary acts and reconstruction of economic and social relations.
Abstract: This study offers a specific interpretation of the Taiping Revolution in China in the mid-nineteenth century. It was not only the largest revolutionary movement in the world at the time, but also one that was inspired by Christianity. Indeed, it marks the moment when the revolutionary religious tradition arrived in China. My account of the revolution stresses the role of the Bible, its radical reinterpretation by the Taiping revolutionaries, and the role it played in their revolutionary acts and reconstruction of economic and social relations. After providing this account, I raise a number of implications for Marxist approaches to religion. These involve the revolutionary religious tradition, first identified by Engels and established by Karl Kautsky, the question of political ambivalence of a religion like Christianity, and the distinction between ontological and temporal transcendence.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Gramsci belonged in a tradition which stemmed from Antonio Labriola, not from Croce and idealist philosophy as mentioned in this paper, which saw Marxism as a philosophy of praxis, a new and original philosophy distinct from both idealism and materialism.
Abstract: Gramsci belonged in a tradition which stemmed from Antonio Labriola, not from Croce and idealist philosophy. This tradition saw Marxism as a philosophy of praxis, a new and original philosophy distinct from both idealism and materialism. Gramsci took his lead from Labriola but also further expanded upon the latter’s approach by seeking the fundamental concepts of the new philosophy in the Theses on Feuerbach. In particular, Gramsci recovered both the concept of praxis and the concept of human nature from the Theses. With the concept of human nature, he expanded even upon Marx’s formulation, by including the individual within it in a way that lays the foundation for modern social sciences based on the notion of the individual, which was, in Gramsci’s case, a socially-rich notion.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Minsky's theory of financial instability helps clarify how Marxist theory can explain the highly financialised capitalism of today, and the crisis which started in 2008 as mentioned in this paper, and the combination of instability and stagnation which results from an excess supply of loanable capital.
Abstract: Minsky’s theory of financial instability helps clarify how Marxist theory can explain the highly financialised capitalism of today, and the crisis which started in 2008. The advanced economies currently have high realised profits in the productive sector and lagging rates of investment. Shareholder pressures encourage corporate strategies which focus on stock-market ratings and MA low interest rates; recurrent boom and bust in asset markets; the fuelling of huge increases in household and government debt; and the combination of instability and stagnation which results from an excess supply of loanable capital.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors reconstructs and evaluates Luxemburg's class analysis of global society, showing that Luxemburg pioneered a truly global concept of solidarity from below, including the most oppressed - women and colonised peoples.
Abstract: How did Rosa Luxemburg, in her The Accumulation of Capital and other writings, analyse the development of the working class and other subordinate classes under capitalism, and how did she view the relationship between these classes and those living in ‘natural economic societies’? Following primary sources closely, the present essay reconstructs and evaluates Luxemburg’s class analysis of global society. It is shown that Luxemburg pioneered a truly global concept of solidarity from below, including the most oppressed – women and colonised peoples.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the exploration of the essence constitutes a precondition for understanding the world of appearances, and that the concrete appearances are important to Marx not only because they are the starting point and the medium for understanding real movement, but also, they are, rather, the very objects that Marx ultimately wants to identify and understand in their interconnection.
Abstract: The task of all science is the exploration and understanding of the concretely given totality of phenomena, of their interconnections and their mutations. The difficulty of this task is that phenomena are not immediately identical with the essence of things. The exploration of the essence constitutes a precondition for understanding the world of appearances. Marx, in opposition to vulgar economics, seeks to identify the ‘hidden essence’ and the ‘inner connection’ of economic reality;1 this is not to say that he is not interested in concrete appearances. On the contrary! Only appearances present themselves to consciousness, which means that – purely methodologically – their hidden, essential ‘core’ can only be accessed through the analysis of appearances.2 But the concrete appearances are important to Marx not only because they are the starting point and the medium for understanding the ‘real movement’. They are, rather, the very objects that Marx ultimately wants to identify and understand in their interconnection. By no means does he simply want to restrict himself to the exploration of the ‘essence’ while ignoring the phenomena. In fact, the essence, once identified, has the function of enabling us to comprehend concrete appearances. This is why Marx strives to find ‘the law which governs these phenomena’, i.e. ‘the law of their variation’.3 Only phenomena in themselves and without the context of the ‘hidden essence of things’ are, according to Marx, incomprehensible and ‘prima


Journal ArticleDOI
Nicole Leach1
TL;DR: The work of as mentioned in this paper assesses the work of Robert Brenner alongside the insights developed within social-reproduction feminism to reassess discussions on the origins of capitalism and argues that a revised political Marxism has the potential to set up a non-teleological and historically specific account of capitalism.
Abstract: This paper assesses the work of Robert Brenner alongside the insights developed within social-reproduction feminism to reassess discussions on the origins of capitalism. The focus on the internal relation between social production and social reproduction allows social-reproduction feminism to theorise the construction of gendered capitalist social relations that previous accounts of the transition to capitalism have thus far been unable to provide. It argues that a revised political Marxism has the potential to set up a non-teleological and historically specific account of the origins of capitalism. This paper seeks to redress the theoretical shortcomings of political Marxism that allow it to fail to account for the differentiated yet internally related process involved in the constitution and reconstitution of gendered capitalist social relations. This critique contributes to a social-reproduction feminism project of exploring processes of social production and social reproduction in their historical development and contemporary particularities.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In Less than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism, Slavoj Žižek presents the results of his long meditation on the meaning and ultimate implications of Hegelian philosophy as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism, Slavoj Žižek presents the results of his long meditation on the meaning and ultimate implications of Hegelian philosophy. In this review-article, I will first examine the stages of Žižek’s transformation of Hegelianism, and then analyse the main themes brought up in Less than Nothing. The development of a ‘polemological’ interpretation of the Hegelian concepts of ‘reconciliation’ and ‘absolute’ leads Žižek to emphasise the role of negativity and antagonism in the process of constitution of reality and subject as part of reality itself. This implies a reinterpretation of dialectical materialism: reality is not something that simply precedes the subject, but which contains just multiplicities of multiplicities, and thus the Void itself. Žižek’s assertion that the ultimate reality is the Void itself then renders unavoidable the critique of Hegelian Marxism based on the centrality of the category of alienation. The last part of the review-article surveys, instead, how Žižek’s re-reading of Hegel affects his relation with Marx and also examines the role played by ‘contradiction’ in his theoretical proposal.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that Hever's analysis of the Occupation and account of Palestinian resistance would have benefited from a more careful engagement with materialist work on Israel and Palestine.
Abstract: Shir Hever’s book examines the underlying economic dynamics of Israel’s occupation. Hever’s analysis brings out several overlooked mechanisms that function to make the Occupation profitable to Israeli state and corporate interests, but he also argues that for Israeli society, the costs of Occupation far outweigh the benefits. Hever is highly critical of Marxist accounts that, he claims, misunderstand the political economy of the Occupation, but this review argues that Hever’s critique is mistaken. It attempts to show how Hever’s analysis of the Occupation and account of Palestinian resistance would have benefited from a more careful engagement with materialist work on Israel and Palestine.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, Bensaid's theoretical and political trajectory is divided into two distinct periods separated by the historical turn of 1989: the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the USSR.
Abstract: Daniel Bensaid (1946–2010) was a leading figure of May ’68, a Marxist thinker and an influential French public intellectual. His theoretical and political trajectory is divided into two distinct periods separated by the historical turn of 1989: the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the USSR. This also coincided with an existential turn due to his contracting AIDS, which brought him close to death. After this turn, he played the role of a ‘border-crosser’ between generations, intellectual currents and geopolitical areas within the radical left. In the 1990s, he began a critical rereading of Marx and tried to transcend Trotskyism, confronting its legacy with other currents of critical thought, notably the Frankfurt School. Since this pivotal moment, his writings reveal a permanent and intense dialogue with the work of Walter Benjamin, which he reinterpreted in a contemporary, political perspective, rethinking the political dilemmas of the twenty-first century through a Messianic vision of history. This article emphasises the affinities between two historical constellations – 1939 and 1989 – which, in spite of their obvious differences, were equally shaped by a feeling of defeat, and allowed a fruitful ‘encounter’ between French and German philosophers.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors assesses the capability of Mezzadra and Neilson's book to tackle some urgent issues concerning both capital's regulation of migratory movements and the subjective autonomy these latter incessantly express.
Abstract: The review assesses first and foremost the capability of Mezzadra and Neilson’s book to radically tackle some urgent issues concerning both capital’s regulation of migratory movements and the subjective autonomy these latter incessantly express. The main original contribution of the text is a conception of the border as an epistemic device through which to address and act upon a variety of social processes, from migration policies to labour transformations, from capital’s restructuring to governmental regulations. Subsequently, two crucial topics are critically discussed: 1) the methodological link between epistemology and conflictual subjectivity (its roots in the operaista tradition, the creative way it is employed in Border as Method, and some problematic elements it raises); 2) the compelling – but problematic from a practical perspective – way in which the issue of political organisation is situated against the current phase of capitalist development by means of concepts such as translation and the common.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors studied the reaction to a rise in bus and tram fares which led to the largest urban riots in the history of the city, at that time already the largest industrial metropolis in Latin America.
Abstract: At the beginning of 1947 the first elections in fourteen years were held for state governors. Adhemar de Barros, elected in Sao Paulo with large support from the communists, was an old ally of Vargas who ran his own political party, the Progressive Social Party ( PSP ), and began to compete with Vargas himself for the working-class vote. His campaign for the Government of the State of Sao Paulo had been based on lowering the high cost of living. He promised strict price controls on basic necessities and an intensive campaign against price rises. Therefore, when the Mayor of Sao Paulo announced a rise in transport fares a few months after the election of Adhemar, the hostile reaction spread through the city like wildfire. Rapid growth and the disregard of public authorities contributed to a chaotic and profoundly unequal urban landscape, where the most visible problem was the public transport system. The aim of this article is to understand the popular reaction to the rise in bus and tram fares which led to the largest urban riots in the history of the city, at that time already the largest industrial metropolis in Latin America.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Grossman as discussed by the authors argued that underconsumptionist and disproportionality theorists of economic crises for inappropriately basing their accounts on the level of analysis of the value schemas in the second volume of Capital, which cannot be made of Grossman's and Marx's explanation of systemic crises in terms of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall.
Abstract: Whereas most previous and later discussions of Marx’s transformation of values into prices of production have focused on his mathematical procedure, Henryk Grossman addressed the logic of its place in the structure of Capital On this basis he criticised underconsumptionist and disproportionality theorists of economic crises for inappropriately basing their accounts on the level of analysis of the value schemas in the second volume of Capital Such a criticism cannot be made of Grossman’s and Marx’s explanation of systemic crises in terms of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall Grossman’s article still provides insights into Marx’s analysis of capitalism and his theory of economic crises, unsurpassed in the subsequent literature

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Coulthard's Red Skin, White Masks as mentioned in this paper is a critical contribution to this project by offering a creative, materialist-leaning reading of Frantz Fanon as a lever to criticise those prominent liberal arguments of Indigenous conflict that are based on notions of recognition.
Abstract: Indigenous peoples are, in the current historical conjuncture, leading the opposition to the capitalist state in Canada. The specific features of Indigenous cultures, history and struggles demand of historical materialism a regional theory that deploys existing concepts and categories in reinvigorated and sometimes different ways. Glen Coulthard’s Red Skin, White Masks makes a critically important contribution to this project by offering a creative, materialist-leaning reading of Frantz Fanon as a lever to criticise those prominent liberal arguments of Indigenous conflict that are based on notions of recognition. While Coulthard’s argument and project would be significantly advanced by raising Marx’s concept of ‘mode of production’ from the secondary status it enjoys in the work to a more foundational role, in part because this moves the problem of totalisation to the core of strategies of resistance, he nevertheless in his affirmative project rightly centres returning to aboriginal cultural forms as a critical feature of decolonisation.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In memoriam of the late Ellen Meiksins Wood, the authors remember the main achievements of her forty years of work and introduce one of her contributions, ‘Britain versus France: How Many Sonderwegs?’, until now unavailable in an anglophone publication and reprinted in the present issue.
Abstract: In memoriam of the late Ellen Meiksins Wood, this piece firstly remembers the main achievements of her forty years of work. Secondly, it introduces one of her contributions, ‘Britain versus France: How Many Sonderwegs?’, until now unavailable in an anglophone publication and reprinted in the present issue. This contribution is a useful reformulation of her arguments concerning radical historicity, the concept of ‘bourgeois revolution’, and the specificity of French and British state formation and their political revolutions – in contrast to arguments for a German Sonderweg as an explanation for the rise of fascism. Wood also provides a fruitful illustration of how to apply a social-property relations approach to the development of the rule of law in each of these states, and thus furthers opportunities for debates on the potential of Political Marxism for understanding contemporary class struggles over rights.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Bensaid as mentioned in this paper proposes a dialectical notion of temporality that implies a primacy of politics over history and a break with the traditional Marxist notions of a historical subject as an internally homogeneous and fully-sovereign collective force.
Abstract: The theoretical problem Bensaid tries to confront from the 1990s onwards is the problem of the categories that are necessary to account for the traumatically new experience of history opened up by the defeat of the revolutionary experiments of the twentieth century. Hence the necessity of new answers to these fundamental and inexhaustible questions: How are we to understand history in its relation to human practice and to politics? Can we talk of ‘necessity’ in history, of ‘laws of history’, of ‘determination’, or ‘determinism’, or of modes of causality operating within it? How are we to conceive the notions of ‘historical possibility’, of ‘conflict’ and ‘struggle’? Bensaid’s contribution will focus on a dialectical notion of temporality that implies a primacy of politics over history and a break with the traditional Marxist notions of a historical subject as an internally homogeneous and fully-sovereign collective force.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Moretti's two most recent books continue his on-going project to develop radical new methods of literary history and to propose new formulations and frameworks for understanding the relationship between form and history and form and ideology as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Published in tandem in 2013, Franco Moretti’s two most recent books continue his on-going project to develop radical new methods of literary history and to propose new formulations and frameworks for understanding the relationship between form and history and form and ideology. Bringing together the series of essays through which he developed his concept of distant reading, his collection of the same name argues for a ‘falsifiable criticism’ grounded in the data now available through digital technologies and for the concept of a ‘world literature’ that it is the task of comparatists to theorise. His book on the bourgeois – characterised by Moretti as a project of an entirely different nature – finds in the minutiae of language the construction of a bourgeois culture in which the figure of the bourgeois himself ultimately disappears. Contra Moretti, the review contends that these books are deeply interrelated and that the limits of Moretti’s method are to be found specifically in the issues of scale raised by reading these two works in dialectical relationship to each other. In particular, while Moretti importantly forces us to confront in world literature what Fredric Jameson refers to as the ‘scandal of multiplicity’, his method is unable, in the end, to account for a reading of the world in literature in which both the empirical fact of a dead history and the allegorical possibility of another history already in the making can be found.

Journal ArticleDOI
David McNally1
TL;DR: Bensaid's unique reflections in this area open up a'strategic sense of time' as the space of revolutionary politics as discussed by the authors, and the result is a dialectical understanding of time as irregular and prone to ruptural transformations.
Abstract: Daniel Bensaid’s meditations on utopia and revolution assume a materialist form in his grasp of the non-linear temporalities of value relations in capitalist society. The result is a dialectical understanding of time as irregular and prone to ruptural transformations. Bensaid’s unique reflections in this area open up a ‘strategic sense of time’ as the space of revolutionary politics.