Marxism, History and Memory
This course will examine the philosophy of history developed by Marx and Engels and will consider its transformation across several foundational texts. It will explore how key Marxist ideas about history have been engaged by a range of thinkers including those who are considered to be part of what Cedric Robinson calls the “Black Radical Tradition,” those who focus on the gendered and sexualized dynamics of capitalism, and those who have sought to engage Marxist ideas in and for contemporary cultural analysis. Notably, Marxism is characterized by intense, ongoing debate about its own history (the history of revolution, counter-revolution, utopian aspiration and dystopian outcome) as well as by what Enzo Traverso calls “left-wing melancholia.” The course will conclude with the question of how memory of the past plays a role in contemporary Marxist thinking about the present and future, and how Marxist theorists engage cultural representations of the utopian and dystopian potentialities that lie latent in the past. Students will come away from the course with a solid understanding of a range of key Marxist texts, an emergent set of ideas about the question of history and its narration, and concrete experience with setting the readings we have done to work as we collectively seek to better understand the past in relation to our present conjuncture and a shared future.
Readings by the following will be considered: Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, W.E.B Du Bois, C. L. R. James, Lisa Lowe, Silvia Federici, Walter Benjamin, Enzo Traverso, Ernst Bloch, José Estaban Muñoz, Frederic Jameson, and Lauren Berlant.