Contemporary Marxist Theory A Reader

This volume brings together works written by international theorists since the fall of the Berlin Wall, showing how today's crisis-ridden global capitalism is making Marxist theory more relevant and necessary than ever. This collection of key texts by prominent and lesser-known thinkers from Latin America, Asia, Africa, America, and Europe showcases an area of scholarly analysis whose impact on academic and popular discourses as well as political action will only grow in the coming years. It reflects today's sense of planetary eco-emergency and a heightened interest in political economy that follows discontentment with the growing inequalities in the West and the unequal nature of development in the "global South."

The work is organized thematically, with sections covering the present historical conjuncture, the contemporary shapes of the social, philosophical concepts, theories of culture, and the status of the political today. This new formulation of the unity and nature of contemporary Marxist theory will be an invaluable resource to any humanities and social science student learning about social and political thought and theory.

Andrew Pendakis is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Alberta, Canada and an instructor at Alberta's Campus Saint-Jean.

Nicholas Brown is Associate Professor of English and head of African American Studies at the University of Illinois-Chicago, US. He is the author of Utopian Generations: The Political Horizon of Twentieth-Century Literature (2005) and co-editor with Imre Szeman of Pierre Bourdieu: Fieldwork in Culture (2000).

Imre Szeman is Canada Research Chair of Cultural Studies at the University of Alberta, Canada. He is the author of Zones of Instability: Literature, Postcolonialism and the Nation (2004), After Globalization (2011) and Cultural Theory: An Anthology (2010).

Preface / Cesare Casarino
Introduction / Brown, Pendakis and Szeman

A. Notes on the Conjuncture
1. Félix Guattari and Eric Alliez, "Capitalistic Systems, Structures and Processes" (1984)
2. André Gorz, excerpt from Paths to Paradise: The Liberation From Work (1985)
3. Alain Lipietz, "The Impasses of Liberal Productivism" (1989)
4. Paulin Hountondji, "Recapturing" (1992)
5. Maurizio Lazzarato, "Immaterial Labour" (1996)
6. James O'Connor, "Uneven and Combined Development and Ecological Crisis" (1998)
7. Robert Kurz, "The Crisis of Exchange-Value: Science as Productivity, Productive
Labour, and Capitalist Reproduction" (2002)
8. Wendy Brown, "Neoliberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy" (2005)
9. Robert Brenner, "Deepening Turbulence?" (2006)
10. Arif Dirlik, "The China Model" (2008)

B. Shapes of the Social
11. Étienne Balibar, "Is There a Neo-Racism?" (1992)
12. Mariarosa Dalla Costa, "Capitalism and Reproduction" (1996)
13. J.K. Gibson-Graham, Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff, "Class in a Post-Structuralist Frame" (2000)
14. Slavoj Žižek, "Postmodernism or Class? Yes Please" (2000)
15. Sumit Sarkar, "The Decline of the Subaltern in Subaltern Studies" (2002)
16. Jason Read, "Primitive Accumulation: The Aleatory Foundation of Capitalism" (2002)
17. Silvia Federici, "Women, Land-Struggles, and the Valorization of Labor" (2005)

C. Vicissitudes of Truth
18. Pierre Macherey, "Philosophy as Operation" (1987)
19. Koijin Karatani, "What is Transcritique?" (2001)
20. Alain Badiou, "Philosophy and Desire" (2003)
21. Boris Groys, excerpt from The Communist Postscript (2009)
22. Fredric Jameson, "Hegel and Reification" (2009)

D. Theories of Culture
23. Chidi Amuta, "Traditionalism and the Quest for an African Literary Aesthetic" (1989)
24. Frederic Jameson, "The Antinomies of Postmodernity" (1989)
25. Roberto Schwarz, "Misplaced Ideas" (1990)
26. Paulo Virno, "Ambivalence of Disenchantment" (1996)
27. Eric Cazdyn, "Relation: Film, Capital, Transformation" (2002)
28. Michael Denning, "The End of Mass Culture" (2004)

E. Machinations of the Political
29. Ernesto Laclau, "Politics and the Limits of Modernity" (1989)
30. Moishe Postone, from Time, Labor, and Social Domination (1993)
31. Nancy Fraser, "From Redistribution to Recognition: Dilemmas of Justice in a ‘Post-Socialist Age' " (1995)
32. Antonio Negri, "Constituent Power" (1999)
33. Jacques Rancière, "Ten Theses on Politics" (2010)

Selected Bibliography of Marxist Theory and Criticism
Index