Literary Theory
Key Terms
Capital - money used to buy something only in order to sell it again to realise a profit.
Interpellation- the process by which we encounter a culture's or ideology's values and internalise them
Hegemony- leadership or dominance, especially by one state or social group over others.
Key People
Terry Eagleton
Friedrich Engels
Jürgen Habermas
Antonio Gramsci
Vladimir Lenin
Karl Marx
Leon Trotsky
Key Works
Das Kapital by
Das Kapital, Karl Marx's seminal work, is the book that above all others formed the twentieth century. From Kapital sprung the economic and political systems that at one time dominated half the earth and for nearly a century kept the world on the brink of war. Even today, more than one billion Chinese citizens live under a regime that proclaims fealty to Marxist ideology. Yet this important tome has been passed over by many readers frustrated by Marx's difficult style and his preoccupation with nineteenth-century events of little relevance to today's reader. Here Serge Levitsky presents a revised version of Kapital, abridged to emphasize the political and philosophical core of Marx's work while trimming away much that is now unimportant. Pointing out Marx's many erroneous predictions about the development of capitalism, Levitsky's introduction nevertheless argues for Kapital's relevance as a prime example of a philosophy of economic determinism that "subordinates the problems of human freedom and human dignity to the issues of who should own the means of production and how wealth should be distributed." Here then is a fresh and highly readable version of a work whose ideas provided inspiration for communist regimes' ideological war against capitalism, a struggle that helped to shape the world today.
ISBN: 089526711XPublication Date: 1996-07-01
The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity by
This critique of French philosophy and the history of German philosophy is a tour de force that has the immediacy and accessibility of the lecture form and the excitement of an encounter across national cultural boundaries as Habermas takes up the challenge posed by the radical critique of reason in contemporary French postmodernism. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity is a tour de force that has the immediacy and accessibility of the lecture form and the excitement of an encounter across, national cultural boundaries. Habermas takes up the challenge posed by the radical critique of reason in contemporary French poststructuralism. Tracing the odyssey of the philosophical discourse of modernity, Habermas's strategy is to return to those historical "crossroads" at which Hegel and the Young Hegelians, Nietzsche and Heidegger made the fateful decisions that led to this outcome. His aim is to identify and clearly mark out a road indicated but not taken: the determinate negation of subject-centered reason through the concept of communicative rationality. As The Theory of Communicative Action served to place this concept within the history of social theory, these lectures locate it within the history of philosophy. Habermas examines the odyssey of the philosophical discourse of modernity from Hegel through the present and tests his own ideas about the appropriate form of a postmodern discourse through dialogs with a broad range of past and present critics and theorists. The lectures on Georges Bataille, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Cornelius Castoriadis are of particular note since they are the first fruits of the recent cross-fertilization between French and German thought. Habermas's dialogue with Foucault--begun in person as the first of these lectures were delivered in Paris in 1983 culminates here in two appreciative yet intensely argumentative lectures. His discussion of the literary-theoretical reception of Derrida in America--launched at Cornell in 1984--issues here in a long excursus on the genre distinction between philosophy and literature. The lectures were reworked for the final time in seminars at Boston College and first published in Germany in the fall of 1985.
ISBN: 0262581027Publication Date: 1990-03-14
Literature and Revolution by
"Roll over Derrida:Literature and Revolution is back in print. Nothing in the postmodern canon comes close to the intellectual grandeur of Trotsky's vision of art and literature in an age of revolution, or his extraordinary meditations on the popular ownership of culture."--Mike Davis "Re-reading Trotsky on literature 40 years later is a delight."--Tariq Ali Leon Trotsky penned this engaging book to elucidate the complex way in which art informs-- and can alter--our understanding of the world. Features new reader-friendly explanatory notes. Leon Trotsky was a leader of the Russian Revolution in 1917 and is the author ofMy Life. William Keach is a professor of English at Brown University. He is editor of Coleridge'sComplete Poems.
ISBN: 1931859167Publication Date: 2005-05-01
The Antonio Gramsci Reader by
The most complete volume of writings by one of the most fascinating thinkers in the history of Marxism Antonio Gramsci was one of the most important theorists of class, culture, and the state since Karl Marx. Imprisoned by the Fascists for much of his adult life, Gramsci spent his time in prison avidly writing on a broad range of subjects--from folklore to philosophy, popular culture to political strategy--and developing seminal ideas that have since become essential to our understanding of political theory. This book brings together the most comprehensive collection of Gramsci's writings available in English. Along with an introduction by leading Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, the volume includes a biographical introduction, informative introductions to each section, and a glossary of key terms to help readers better grasp the legacy of this important figure. As a thorough introduction to Gramsci's key concepts, this book is essential reading for every serious student of Marxism, political theory, or modern Italian history.
ISBN: 0814727018Publication Date: 2000-04-01
Marxism
Overview
Marxist theory is founded upon the works of Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels published in the mid-19th century. Primarily concerned with economic production, it explores the relationship between workers, their products and capital. Marxist critics may explore the implications and complexities of the capitalist system, the relationship between different classes, and how different groups’ experiences are fundamentally driven by socio-economic differences. Often concerned with different power relationships Marxist critiques examine whose values are being privileged and what social organisation is being reinforced in the texts analysed. Moreover, Marxist theory may also explore notions of interpellation and hegemony, where capitalist power structures are seen as the ‘natural’ social order...
What Marxist Critiques do
They make a division between the 'overt' (surface) and 'covert' (hidden) content of a literary work and then relate the covert subject matter of the literary' work to basic Marxist themes, such as class struggle or the progression of society through various historical stages, such as the transition from feudalism to industrial capitalism.
Another method used by Marxist critics is to relate the context of a work to the social-class status of the author. In such cases, an assumption is made that the author is unaware of precisely what he or she is saying or revealing in the text.
A third Marxist method is to explain the nature of a whole literary genre in terms of the social period which 'produced' it.
A fourth Marxist practice is to relate the literary work to the social assumptions of the time in which it is 'consumed', a strategy which is used particularly in the later variant of Marxist criticism known as cultural materialism.
A fifth Marxist practice is the 'politicisation of literary form', that is, the claim that literary forms are themselves determined by political circumstance. For instance, in the view of some critics, literary realism carries with it an implicit validation of conservative social structures; for others, the formal and metri¬cal intricacies of the sonnet and the iambic pentameter are a counterpart of social stability, decorum, and order.
What Questions do Marxist Critiques ask
Whom does it benefit if the work or effort is accepted/successful/believed, etc.?
What is the social class of the author?
Which class does the work claim to represent?
What values does it reinforce?
What values does it subvert?
What conflict can be seen between the values the work champions and those it portrays? How does this change others’ reactions to them?
What social classes do the characters represent?
How do characters from different classes interact or conflict?
General Web Links
- Encyclopedia of Marxism The Encyclopaedia of Marxism details events, people, places, terms, organisations, and periodicals that are related to the study of Marxism. The encyclopaedia can be searched by key word or it can be browsed. Subjects History
- Poetry Foundation - Marxism The Poetry Foundation provides an overview of approaches to literary theory and criticism, including: cultural studies; deconstruction; elliptical poetry; feminist theory; formalism; gender studies; Marxism; New Criticism; New Historicism; objectivism; postcolonial theory; postmodernism; post structuralism; psychoanalytic theory; reader response theory; structuralism; and textual criticism.
- Communism The New World Encyclopaedia describes communism as a theory for revolutionary change and political and socio-economic organisation based on common control of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. Topics include Marxism, Trotskyism, Stalinism, Maoism, and communism today.