Issue Alert
RETHINKING MARXISM
Vol. 16 No. 3
(July 2004)
IN THIS ISSUE
EditorsÔø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡ Introduction
In
this issue we inaugurate an exciting new section of the journal,
under the editorial guidance of Jack Amariglio. Our goal in
“art/iculations”is to encourage the formulation and dissemination of
distinctively Marxian discourses concerning contemporary art and
culture.
art/iculations: Editor's Note
by Jack Amariglio
This section is dedicated to the politics and economics (and political economy) of art, culture, and aesthetics. We invite papers that focus on specific events, sites, and experiences (such as art exhibitions, Web sites, or performances).
art/iculations: From Wall to Fence (and Pillar to Post): The Politicized Aesthetics of Divided Territories
by Jack Amariglio
This article reviews two concurrent art exhibitions in Berlin in 2003 that traced the legacy of historically divided territories through the political aesthetics. The first exhibition, “Territories: Islands, Camps, and Other States of Utopia,” featured Israeli architects Eyal Weizman and Rafi Segal's contribution, “A Civilian Occupation,” which graphically detailed the way in which the building of Israeli settlements on the West Bank (and Gaza) has been organized, spatially cut off, imprison, survey, etc., existing Palestinian settlemets. The second exhibition, “Kunst in der DDR.” was billed as the first attempt to exhibit the wide variety of contemporary art prouced in East Germany (DDR) from 1945 to 1989. The show highlighted the difficult, controversial task of characterizing and promoting the aesthetic and political significance of work done in the DDR.
Retracing Capital: Toward a Theory of Trace in Marxian Political Economy
by Michael Marder
From ethical theory to semiotics, trace emerges as one of the key concept-metaphors in poststructuralism. In this paper I revisit Marx's monumental Capital--one of the most successful attempts of exposing the inner logic/ontology of capital--through the prism of poststructuralist theory of the trace, especially as it is articulated in the writings of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida. At the level of the ontology of capital, I shall argue that whereas the labor process results in what I call “commodity-trace production,” the social intercourse of commodities in circulation strives toward “trace erasure.” Further, I outline the distinction between trace of the same, standing for the uninterrupted self-expansion of value, and trace of the other, symbolizing the use-value obstacles that subvert this movement. Finally, I shall examine Marx's epistemological project in light of the retracing of traces muddled by capital and classical political economy.
Comparative Hybridities: Latin American Intellectuals and Postcolonialists
by Hosam Aboul-Ela
Tracing the discursive history of the term “hybridity” in the work of Nestor García Canclini manifests the roots of his thought in Latin American intellectual history. In particular, the regional tradition growing out of José Carlos Mariátegui's writings inflects García Canclini's work with a concern for historical location and questions of political economy. These emphases contrast with those of Anglo-American postcolonial theory for in this latter discourse, hybridity is understood textually, as a linguistic or psychoanalytic category, just as colonialism is often centered in the consciousness of the Western colonizing subject. The goal of examining these contrasting conceptions of hybridity is not merely to expose the culturalist fetish of much mainstream postcolonialism, but also to suggest a larger contrast between intellectual voices in the Global South and mainstream postcolonialist critics who are often taken to speak for the southern intellectual.
THE NEW SHORTER OXDORF ENGLISH DICTIONARY
by Ayreen Anastas
Anastas separates a group of twenty-seven words --ranging from Arab to Zionism-- from their “proper” meanings in order to create a new guide to a world “lacking in absolute guarantees.”
Material/Queer Theory: Performativity, Subjectivity, and Affinity-Based Struggles in the Culture of Late Capitalism
by Rob Cover
This paper examines the return to an anticapitalist approach within lesbian/gay and queer antihomophobic activist struggles. Arguing that notions of queer identity are governed by a triumvirate of approaches which take into account economic structuration variously, I make a case for a stronger link between marxian and queer theory approaches by discussing the ways in which queer performative identities are constituted within a matrix of coherence that is implicated in late capitalist culture.
Rights, Needs, and the Moral Grounds of Democratic Society
by Jeff Noonan
The traditional liberal justification of democracy appeals to the rights ground of social morality. According to this ground, citizens are entitled to appropriate and dispose of their property according to absolute property rights. These rights impose no obligation on appropriations of property that compromise the life interest of fellow citizens. Against contemporary democratic theory, I argue that democracy has not developed through the simple evolution of this rights ground to include positive rights to welfare, but rather, through struggles rooted in an alternative ground of social morality, the needs ground. The needs ground argues that the existence of a fundamental need is sufficient for claims on the resources necessary to satisfy it, and from it follows a conception of democracy as social and not simply political self-determination.
REMARX
Between Althuserrian Science and Foucauldian Materialism: The Later Work of Pierre Macherey
by Philip Goldstein
In early work, Macherey defends the Althusserian belief that scientific Marxism opposes Stalinist and humanist theory and that literature, situated between science and ideology, shows but does not tell the truth. In later work, Macherey repudiates the Althusserian opposition of science and ideology as well as the disciplinary divisions of literature and philosophy. Inspired by Michel Foucault's archeological studies, he shows that theory is always situated in a practical context in which it reveals the antagonisms of and takes a position on the contrary views forming the context. He grants the validity of a work's misreadings, what he calls “true errors,” and evaluates a work's historical influence and philosophy's institutional contexts.
REVIEWS
The High Price of Capitalism, by Tim Kasser
Reviewed by Richard Wolff
The Power of Negativity: Selected Writings on the Dialectic in Hegel and Marx, by Raya Dunayevskaya
Reviewed by Andrew Kliman
Notes on Contributors
A project of the Association for Economic and Social Analysis (AESA), RETHINKING
MARXISM (RM)
has become recognized as one of the premier interdisciplinary journals
on the Left. Now in its sixteenth year of publication, RM
aims to stimulate interest in and debate over the explanatory power and
social consequences of Marxian economic, cultural, and social analysis.
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