The Marx machine : politics, polemics, ideology / Charles Barbour.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Barbour, Charles, 1969-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Marx, Karl, 1818-1883--Criticism and interpretation.

Marx, Karl.

Marx, Karl, 1818-1883--Political and social views.

Marx, Karl, 1818-1883.

Political and social views.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

148 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Lanham, Md. : Lexington Books, [2012]

Summary:

Karl Marx has rarely, if ever, been treated as a writer. Charles Barbour argues not only that we can examine the literary and rhetorical aspects of Marx's texts, but also that, as soon as we begin to do so, those texts begin to take on new and entirely unexpected political implications. In the past, Marx scholars have characterized his literary remains as either a relatively coherent body of work or a structure cut in half by a single, all important "epistemological break." Neither metaphor really captures the incredible proliferation of documents that we retroactively label "Karl Marx." Barbour proposes that we characterize them, instead, as a machine or an assemblage of fragments and components that can be put together and taken apart in any number of ways for any number of purposes.

Focusing primarily on Marx's early polemical writings, and especially the debates with Bruno Bauer and Max Stirner, that make up most of the voluminous manuscript now called "The German Ideology," The Marx-Machine endeavors to show how some of Marx's most consistently denigrated and ignored works can in fact be approached as responses to Marx's contemporary critics. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction: Another Marx

The Leipzig Massacre 1

The Battle of the Huns 4

Bodies and Machines 8

A Schematic Design 12

Of Multiple Breaks: Marx in Res Publica

The Machinic Assemblage 19

Marx Reads Marx 20

To Swerve Away 23

On Popular Sovereignty 25

Human, Citizen, Worker 28

The Weavers' Strike 32

Revolution and Insurrection 34

After the Political 37

Copying Machines: Reading "The Leipzig Council"

A Pivotal Text 43

The Tattered Page 46

The Reading Lesson 50

Diabolical Doubles 52

Relation and Exchange 57

Ideology and Catachresis 60

Proper Names 63

The Place of Hegemony 65

The Fractured Essence: On Historical Materialism

Substance and Form 73

Historical Materialisms 75

The Demolition of Substance 78

Transforming Feuerbach 81

The Fractured Essence 83

The Impure Form 87

Circle or Line 91

Epicurean Differánce 93

Allegories of Writing: Marx and Literature

Writing Marx Reading 99

The House of Mirrors 100

Ghosts in the Machine 104

The Original Excess 108

The Double Scene 113

The Virtue of Machines 118

Parody and Equality 121

Conclusion: Marx and Us

A Final Obligation 127

The New Republicans 128

The Axiom of Equality 132

Parts With No Part 137.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780739110461

0739110462

9780739176078

0739176072

OCLC:

778424432