ENGL 308 A: Marxism and Literary Theory

Professor Alys Weinbaum

Class time: Tu/Th 10:30-12:20

Office hours:  Tu/Th 3:30-4:30 and by appointment

Office location:  408B Padelford

Email: alysw@uw.edu

MARXISM AND MARXIST CULTURAL THEORY

This course begins with a world changing text by Karl Marx and his collaborator, Friedrich Engels, and then proceeds to examine the debates that have emerged among theorists and philosophers who have taken up Marxist ideas and run with them.  These thinkers expand on Marx’s insights about class conflict and history, and seek to understand how capitalism, racism, and sexism intersect and work together to create dominant systems of power, or what Marxists often call hegemony. At the center of the course is the question of how 19th century ideas about political economy (aka economics), history, and philosophy developed by Marx and Engels have been taken up by 20^th and 21^st century scholars, and how a distinct tradition of interpreting literature, culture, and society from a Marxist perspective has developed over time.

By contrast to other models of literary and cultural criticism which often seek to find transcendent messages and universal meanings in cultural production, Marxists situate all texts within their historical contexts of production and reception. In so doing, Marxists seek to understand how power dynamics (including those informed by class, race, gender, sexuality) create meaning, and how the conflicts that result from the imposition of power impact the meaning, message, genre, style, and form of all cultural production.

Our study of Marxist theory will necessarily involve close, intensive reading of dense and often highly philosophical or abstract texts. Through our collective engagement with these, we will seek to understand how a materialist method indebted to Marx and Engels shapes contemporary approaches to cultural production, and how diverse critical practices (sometimes given labels such as “critical theory,” “feminist theory,” “critical race theory,” “de/colonial studies” or “cultural studies”) sit within an expansive Marxist intellectual tradition. During the quarter, we will also treat two films. We do so to consider how our understanding of each is shaped by the Marxist frameworks that the course treats, and how each cultural text can be used, in turn, to reveal the possibilities and pitfalls of Marxist theories and methodologies.

Course organization

This course is loosely organized into three units that treat several of the issues and concepts repeatedly returned to by Marx and Engels and their interpreters: I) history and class; II) racial capitalism and social reproduction; and III) fetishism, ideology and culture.  In Unit I, we focus on the idea of “class,” paying special attention to how social and economic classes power historical transformation (historical materialism).  In Unit II, we explore how concepts of race, gender, and sexuality intersect with that of class and are instrumentalized to exploit human labor power and make capitalism go.  In Unit III, we examine how Marxist theories of “fetishism” and “ideology” may be used to study “art” or cultural production more broadly.

Class format

I generally begin each class meeting by contextualizing readings and providing opening questions to orient our discussion.  I mark out the important aspects of the readings and explore how they connect to other readings and ideas we have treated.  I will not explain the readings to you, and I do not use PowerPoint or provide handouts. 

It is your responsibility to take careful notes each time we meet.  Unless you have discussed an accommodation with me, these must be handwritten in a dedicated notebook.  Each student will be called on at least once to post their notes for the entire class. 

Lectures are followed by class discussion in both large and small groups, depending on my pedagogical goal for the day.  Ideally, the meaning of the readings will emerge through our collective discussion of them.  You are therefore required to come prepared to listen carefully and to contribute regularly with questions and ideas.  The success of the course depends on each student sharing insights and generously engaging with the ideas of their colleagues.

Learning goals

• Learn to read dense theoretical and philosophical texts.
• Learn to write about readings with clarity and nuance.
• Learn to write about cultural texts by setting theory to work.
• Learn to talk about readings in informed and nuanced ways.
• Understand how Marxist theory develops out of intensive dialogue among thinkers.
• Evaluate the usefulness of Marxist theory as a distinct critical practice.
• Evaluate the limitations of Marxist approaches to the analysis of power and culture.

Course requirements in brief

• Active, prepared, and informed participation every time class meets.
• A complete set of written responses that treat the full range of course materials
• Careful and detailed class notes posted to Canvas for peer use.

Course materials

All readings are available on Canvas in the “files” section or via links in the syllabus.  You are expected to print out all readings and bring them to class to facilitate close reading and class discussion.

Supplementary reading/listening

This course is designed to provide additional materials for those who want to go deeper.  If you do the supplementary reading/listening and wish to incorporate ideas from these in your responses, you may do so. 

Participation

Regular participation in our ongoing discussion is required.  As noted above, the success of this course depends on the quality of in-class discussion.  To process dense and complex materials it is necessary to read carefully and to discuss readings with others.  If you anticipate that it will be difficult for you, it is your responsibility to come speak with me before the end of week 2 so we can work out a game plan for your success in the course.  This may involve additional writing assignments.

This course is fast paced.  It is assumed that you will keep up with all reading and writing assignments. If you miss a class meeting, it is your responsibility to read the notes posted on Canvas before returning to class—that’s why they are there!

It will be detrimental to miss more than two class meetings.  If you fall behind in the readings and miss discussions of them, it will be difficult to submit written work that meets expectations of completeness.  If you know you will need to miss a class, it is your responsibility to contact me in advance to set a plan to make up work.

Reader responses

All responses must carefully and thoughtfully engage the prompt included in the schedule of readings and assignments.  Please note that changes to the prompts will be discussed in class and/or posted as announcements. It is your responsibility to keep abreast with any such changes.

All response should treat specific passages, scenes, and/or concepts and engage relevant class lectures and discussion. The more detailed your engagement with course materials, and the more thoughtful your engagement with lectures and discussions the better.

Responses must be at least 3 double-spaced pages and should never exceed 4-double spaced pages. This loose constraint is in place to help you become a better writer as it requires you to hone self-editing skills, effectively organize your ideas, and sharpen your arguments at the level of the sentence.  For more ideas about reader responses refer to the guidelines appended below.

Summary of course expectations

• Complete all reading, viewings, and listenings assigned prior to class, and prepare careful notes on them for use in class. This may be in the form of annotation of hard copies and/or notes on the readings in a dedicated notebook.
• Regularly offer thoughtful comments and raise questions during class discussions and while engaged in small group work.
• Carefully prepare all written work.Responses must be well organized and carefully edited and proofread.  Sloppy or incomplete responses will result in partial credit.
• Late responses will not be accepted except by advance agreement. If you miss a response deadline, do the next response instead.  There are 8 response options on the syllabus.
• If want feedback on a response, need help with responses, wish to get a sense of how you are doing in the course, or want to discuss anything else that is related to the course, email me to set up a time during office hours.
• Generative AI may not be used in any way when preparing readings or writing response papers. See plagiarism policy below.

Grades

Your grade is based on a combination of participation and submission of reader responses. Responses that meet above expectations will count fully toward your grade.  Responses that fail to meet expectations will receive partial or no credit.

Your starting grade in this course is 3.4 or B+.  This grade will be given to all students who regularly participate in discussions and turn in the 5 written responses that are required of everyone (these are marked on the syllabus).  You may not rewrite responses.  Should you miss one required response you may substitute it with the next one, only once. You must indicate at the top of the substitute response the # of the response it is replacing.

Each missing required response will result in points deducted from your grade.  Assuming regular participation, the first missing response will drop your course grade to 3.0, the second to 2.5, the third to 1.9.   Note that in the absence of regular participation these grades can drop further.  The minimal grade required in this course for credit in the English major is 2.0.  More than three missing responses will result in automatic failure of the course. A full grade scale is appended below

To receive a grad higher than 3.4 you must complete 6 responses. Those who regularly participate, and complete 6 responses will receive a grade in the A range (3.5-4.0).

SCHEDULE OF READINGS AND ASSIGNMENTS

The following schedule is subject to change.  Changes will be discussed in class and/or sent out as announcements.  It is your responsibility to check Canvas daily.

UNIT I:  History, class, and historical materialism

Week 1

Tuesday, March 31

Introduction to the course and logistics

Finalize enrollment

Thursday, April 2

Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto (read to end of section II, or pp1-26 in Oxford World Classics Edition)

Sign up for note taking

Response #1 due Friday, 12-noon.

Prompt 1:  This response must focus on a salient, interesting, or surprising passage from CM.  It must include a concise summary of the section (I or II) of the text from which the passage is excerpted, should place it in context, and must raise a question about the argument that emerges from your close analysis of the passage.

Week 2

Tuesday, April 7

Finish CM (Sections III and IV) and read the prefaces, especially those written for the English (1888), German (1890), and Polish (1892) editions—you will find these after the main text in the Oxford edition.

Marx, “Preface to A Critique of Political Economy” and “Theses on Feuerbach”

Thursday, April 9

Enzo Traverso, “The Locomotives of History,”from Revolution:  An Intellectual History

Response #2 due Friday, 12-noon.  Everyone must do Response #2

Prompt 2: Find a passage or part of Traverso’s chapter and explain how he mobilizes a materialist method of historical analysis, or, alternatively, how the passage illustrates something about Marx’s ideas about history as explored in one of the texts we have read.

UNIT II:  Racial capitalism and its reproduction

Week 3

Tuesday, April 14

Nancy Fraser, “Omnivore:  Why We Need to Expand Our Conception of Capitalism”

Thursday, April 16

Immanuel Wallerstein (two essays): “The Ideological Tensions of Capitalism:  Universalism versus Racism and Sexism” and “Conflicts in capitalism”

Week 4

Tuesday, April 21

David Roediger, Chapters 6 and 7 from Wages of Whiteness:  Race and the Making of the American Working Class

Thursday, April 23

Nancy Fraser, “Glutton for Punishment:  Why Capitalism is Structurally Racist”

Robin D. G. Kelley, “What Did Robinson Mean by Racial Capitalism?” from Boston Review

Matthew Desmond, “Capitalism” in Nicole Hannah-Jones eds., The 1619 Project

Supplementary reading:  You can and should explore the 1619 project (first published in the New York Times Magazine) here:  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html

Response #3 due Friday, 12-noon.  Everyone must do Response #3

Prompt 3:  This response must treat two of the readings on racial capitalism and place them into conversation (you may write about two required readings, or one required reading and one supplementary reading).  What is the most important or interesting thing you learned about racial capitalism that is explored in both readings?  Be specific.  How has this idea allowed you to think about an event in your life, or a current event in the news in new ways?  Explain fully.

Week 5

Tuesday, April 28

Boots Riley dir., Sorry to Bother You.  The film is available on numerous platforms.  You are responsible for viewing it prior to class.  Please take viewing notes for use in writing your response and for reference during class discussion.

Supplementary listening

Robin D. G. Kelley, “The Rebellion Against Racial Capitalism."  

Also available on the Intercept as a podcast: https://theintercept.com/2020/06/24/the-rebellion-against-racial-capitalism/

Thursday, April 30:  Silvia Federici, "Wages Against Housework," "Why Sexuality is Work" and "Reproductive Labor in a Global Economy" from Revolution at Point Zero (pp. 15-27, 91-114)

Supplementary reading

Kalindi Vora, “Labor”

Response #4 due Friday, 12-noon.  Everyone must do response #4

Prompt 4:  This response must analyze a scene in Riley’s film. Use your analysis to meditate on a key insight that you have drawn from one of readings on the relationship between racism and capitalism, or gender, reproduction and capitalism.  First elaborate in detail the theoretical insight you have selected as your focus, then bring this insight to your analysis of the scene from the film that you wish to unpack.

Week 6

Tuesday, May 5

Nancy Fraser, “Care Guzzler:  Why Social Reproduction is a Major Site of Capitalist Crisis,” from Cannibal Capitalism

Jennifer Morgan and Alys Weinbaum, “Reproductive Racial Capitalism”

Thursday, May 7

Kimberly Kay Hoang, "Economies of Emotion, Familiarity, Fantasy, and Desire:  Emotional Labor in Ho Chi Minh City's Sex Industry"

Elizabeth Bernstein, “Bounded Authenticity and the Commerce of Sex”

Response #5 due Friday, 12-noon.  

Prompt 5:  This response must compare arguments advanced in two of the readings on the relationship between sexism, reproduction, gender and capitalism (Vora, Federici, Fraser, Hoang, Morgan and Weinbaum, Bernstein).  As in the previous response, you must focus on specific passages from each reading and provide a full analysis of this passage before moving on. You may decide to explore either overlaps or departures between the two readings.

UNIT III:  Fetishism, Ideology and Cultural Production

Week 7

Tuesday, May 12

Marx, “The Fetishism of the Commodity” (pp. 163-177 of Chapter 1, Vol 1 of Capital)

NB:  For the adventurous, I suggest reading as much of Chapter 1 of Capital as you can.  If there is enough interest, we can convene a small group discussion of the chapter during office hours in week 8.

Thursday, May 14

Louis Althusser “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses:  Notes Towards an Investigation” read to pp. 127-177 

Week 8

Tuesday, May 19

Complete Althusser ISA essay to the end.

Althusser, “A Letter on Art in Reply to Andre Daspre”

Thursday, May 21

Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”         

Supplementary viewing:   Banksy dir.  Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010)

Response #6 due Friday 12-noon.  Everyone must do Response #5

Prompt 6:  Based on your reading of Marx, Althusser, and Benjamin write a response that explains how you now understand the relationship of art (or cultural production more generally) to commodity fetishism, ideology, or the mode of production.  You should focus on only one reading and be sure to home in on one key passage. You may find it helpful to bring a particular piece of art or cultural production into your analysis. (the film above is only one option).

Week 9

Tuesday, May 26

Bong Joon-Ho dir.  Parasite 

The film is available on Netflix and many other platforms.  It is your responsibility to view the entire film prior to class and to take viewing notes for use during class discussion.

Thursday, May 28

Mark Fisher, “Capitalist realism, is there no alternative?”

Supplementary reading

Criss Moon & Julie Moon, "'Parasite' and the Plurality of Empire"

Ju-Hyun Park, "Reading Colonialism in 'Parasite'"

Response #7 due Friday at 12-noon.  Everyone must do Response #6

Prompt 7:  TBA

Prompt:  Choose a scene from the film and explore how it provides insight into the workings of capitalism.  You may want to consider any one of the following questions as you write your response:  How does the film metaphorize relations of power (be these classed, gendered or racialized?  How does the film critique a particularly American version of transnational capitalism?  How does it examine the relationship between colonialism and capitalism or racism and capitalism?  How does it treat the question of solidarity among workers?

Week 10

Tuesday, June 2

Frederic Jameson, “The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism”

Thursday, June 4

Complete Jameson

Response # 8 due Friday 12-noon. 

Prompt:  How do Jameson’s ideas about late capitalism resonate in the present moment? Are there aspects of this essay you feel are useful to an analysis of your world?  Are there aspects that feel dated, or out of synch with the material realities in which we live today?  Explain either or both.

Other useful information

Class etiquette

This class often deals with politicized material. You do not have to agree with everything we read.  This noted, our collective goal is to treat other people’s ideas with respect and engage them with critical rigor. To do this, you must come to each class meeting with an open mind, a sense of humor, and willingness to discuss a wide range of ideas in respectful dialogue with others. By doing so, we can ensure that this class is a forum in which we all can learn. Use of language or behavior that is sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic or that in some other way curtails the free exchange of ideas, will be confronted on the spot.  

Email 

Please allow 24 hours for response to email during the working week. Understand that I may be unable to respond to email after 5 p.m., and do not respond to email over the weekend. Also note that during week 3, email may be slower due to travel.

Plagiarism defined

Plagiarism involves submitting written work or orally presenting work that includes words or ideas not your own as your own without proper citation or acknowledgment.  The UW guidelines that define plagiarism apply to all print materials and to all information that is gleaned from the media, websites, and/or generated by AI.  The key to avoiding plagiarism is to show clearly where your own thinking ends and someone/something else’s begins.

Should you have consulted outside sources or used print, online, or generative AI to spark ideas, formulations, or written text, you must specify where ideas and information you have consulted or used were obtained.  Citation must be in the form of footnotes and a bibliography (when presenting orally, acknowledgement of sources is still best practice). 

Plagiarism policy for this course

Though it is not uniformly agreed upon, in this course, should you use AI to generate ideas that you incorporate into your writing, to generate text (even if you end up fully editing it), or to embellish your writing, I regard you to be involved in a new and complex form of plagiarism.  In this course, use of generative AI in the preparation of all written work is unacceptable.  Assignments that indicate use generative AI (like any other form of plagiarism) will automatically receive a zero grade and cannot be made up.  

Information on plagiarism

https://www.washington.edu/cssc/for-students/academic-misconduct/

https://students.nursing.uw.edu/policies/student-policies/plagiarism/

https://www.northwestern.edu/provost/policies-procedures/academic-integrity/how-to-avoid-plagiarism.html

https://tedfrick.sitehost.iu.edu/plagiarism/

Disability accommodation

If you require accommodation come talk with me after class or during office hours during week 1 so that I can work with you and UW Disability Resource for Students (DRS) to provide accommodation. More information about disability accommodation may be found at:  http://www.washington.edu/students/drs/

Religious accommodation

Washington state law requires UW to have a policy for accommodation of student absences or significant hardship due to reasons of faith or conscience, or for organized religious activities. For the UW’s policy, including more information about how to request an accommodation visit:  https://registrar.washington.edu/staffandfaculty/religious-accommodations-policy/ 

If you seek an accommodation, you must request it well in advance of your absence from class.  If you know that you will be absent, please check in with me in a timely fashion. You will find the request form here:  https://registrar.washington.edu/students/religious- accommodations-request/

Professor Weinbaum’s guidelines for reader responses

Preparation of materials

Read carefully and make marginal annotations as you go. Underline important passages AND jot down ideas and/or questions as they arise.

Reexamine marginal notes after completing the reading and write ideas about the readings in your notebook for use in class and in writing your responses.

Summarize 3 of the main ideas you have found in the reading in your notebook BEFORE sitting down to write a response paper.

There are a range of possible approaches to writing response papers.  Try out the different approaches below.  Over the course of the quarter, you will necessarily employ some of these.

Questions about ideas

This kind of response focuses on a new and/or perplexing idea that arose while reading or while discussing readings in class.  First describe this idea, then explain what was new, interesting, important, consequential and/or perplexing about it in relation to a specific passage from the reading.  Parse the passage carefully as you bring your question about it forward.  Explain why you question is important.

Questions about argument

If you think you have understood a text’s overall argument (and its various parts), provide a summary in a paragraph or two.  Then, raise a question about the overall argument or a particular part of it. What do you want to take away from this argument for future use or for further contemplation and why?  Alternatively, are there aspects of the argument that are counter-intuitive or that appear contradictory?  Carefully identify and describe these trouble spots and explain how and why they are instructive or illuminating.

Questions about politics and/or philosophy

What is at stake for the author in writing this text as s/he has?  What’s their principal purpose?  Who is the implied audience? What the intended impact of the argument on this audience?  What is your response to this main political or philosophical argument?  How does it speak to our discussions in class?  How does it speak to you personally?

Questions about form and style

Can you discern a relationship between the form in which an argument is made and its meaning?  How does the form of a text (theoretical, social scientific, polemical, fictional, fantastical, etc...) capture, embody, or enhance its meaning? What stylistic choices (dialect, language, syntax, mis-en-scene  etc…) have been made?  How have these choices shaped our discussion of this text?  How have they impacted your ideas about this text?

Comparative questions

If you feel you have a firm grasp on two texts and an idea about how they resonate with or depart from each other, place them into “dialogue.”  A comparative response focuses on overlaps and departures, on how one text builds upon, supplements, comments upon, or reveals gaps in the other.  If two texts resonate in an interesting way, explain this fully. If two texts are at odds, explore the tension between them.  Explain why overlaps and departures you have identified are significant or meaningful to you.

Setting theory to work

If a reading seems directly relevant to something that is going on in y/our world, explain the connection fully.  Then pull out a specific passage from the text that resonates for you, analyze it fully, and then describe how and why it is relevant.  How exactly has this passage allowed you to think about y/our world in a new or different ways than you have previously? 

The grade scale for this course: