Keywords - Queering Marxism: from month to month
Seminar 5 (11+12 June) in PAF
Keyword: Racial
more information coming soon
reading:
Karen E. Fields, and Barbara J. Fields, Racecraft the Soul of Inequality in American Life London: Verso, 2014. Chapter 1: “A Tour of Racecraft,” 22–75, and Chapter 4: “Slavery, Race and Ideology in the USA,” 111–148.
Saidiya Hartman, The Belly of the World: Note on Black Women’s Labors, In Soul, A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society, Berkeley: Taylor & Francis, 2016.
Williams, R. (1988) “Racial,” in Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, London: Fontana, 1988, 249–250.
additional reading:
continue with the final section from Ashely Boher, Part Three: Possibilities.
Seminar 4 (30 April + 1 May) in PAF
Keyword: Family
The term from Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society by Raymond Williams for this seminar is “family” We will start by reading this short text followed by “The Origin of the Family Private Property and the State,” by Friedrich Engels, and “Crisis of Care?” by Nancy Fraser. The first establishes a platform to discuss the link between patriarchy, family, private property, and capital accumulation. It does this by investigating kinship structures and the emergence of the family under different historical conditions and asks why the monogamous family emerged at the time it did and what purpose it serves. Nancy Fraser picks up where Engels leaves off, with a discussion of the family in the 20th and 21st Century under conditions respectively of liberal, state managed, and financialised capital. She extends the notion of the crisis of capital, though an expanded account of social reproduction, which includes the “background conditions of capitalism”—the family, education, healthcare, but also processes of subjectification, such as cultural and artistic work—all of which for her come under the rubric if care. Additional readings from Ursula Le Guin, explore possible iterations of sexuality, gender, and family through science fiction. The seminar will begin with a synopsis of the previous session by members of the group and will include student led presentations and discussion.
reading:
Nancy Fraser, “Crisis of Care,” in Social Reproduction Theory, Remapping Class, Re-centering Oppression, edited by T. Bhattacharya, 21- 36. London: Pluto Press, 2017.
Friedrich Engels. The Origin of the Family Private Property and the State, Pantianos Classics, chapter 2 “The Family,” 25 - 62.
R. Williams, “Family,” in Keywords: a Vocabulary of Culture and Society, 131-134, London: Fontana, 1988.
Already read for seminar 3:
Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari, (2000), Anti—Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, London: The Athlone Press, 2000. “Preface” by Michel Foucault, xi – xiv; Chapter 1 “Desiring—Production,” 1 – 8; Chapter 9 “The Civilized Capitalist Machine,” 220–240.
Additional reading:
U.K. Le Guin, “Coming of Age in Karhide,” in The Matter of Seggri, Unchosen Love, The Birthday of the World and Other Stories, London: Gollancz, 2002. 1- 90.
A.J. Bohrer, Marxism and Intersectionality, Race, Gender, Class and Sexuality under Contemporary Capitalism, New York: Columbia University Press, 2020. Chapter 4. “Intersectional Critiques of Marxism,” 159-181.
Seminar 3 (25+27 March) Bergamo
Keyword: Experience
The term from Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society by Raymond Williams for this seminar is “experience.” We will read this short text by Williams alongside an essay from Himani Bannerji - “Building from Marx: Reflections on ‘Race’, Gender and Class.” This follows on from the Stuart Hall read in the previous seminar, in its analysis of base and superstructure - Bannerji arguing against simple determination, to consider how we understand and locate experience within the social ontology, as part of a fully informed political thinking. Here, she asks how the “subject agent” appears not simply as a mechanical element but as a mediating form of consciousness. We will continue reading Ashley Boher, this time addressing a history of Queer, Feminist, Anti-Racist, and Anti-Imperialist Marxism, of which Banerjee is a part. A second reading session will address two sections from “Anti Oedipus” by Deleuze and Guattari, the first chapter introducing the “desiring machines,” and a later chapter on the “capitalist machine” the authors rearticulating a history of capitalism described by Marx in his text on primitive accumulation from Capital. The seminar will begin with a synopsis of the previous session by members of the group and will include student led presentations and discussion.
reading:
Bannerji, H., in The Ideological Condition, Selected Essays on History, Race and Gender, Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2020. Chapter 1. “Building from Marx: Reflections on ‘Race,’ Gender and Class,” 5–22.
Bohrer, A. J. Marxism and Intersectionality, Race, Gender, Class and Sexuality under Contemporary Capitalism, New York: Columbia University Press, 2020. Chapter 3. Queer, Feminist, Anti-Racist, and Anti-Imperialist Marxism, 123–157.
Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari, (2000), Anti—Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, London: The Athlone Press, 2000. “Preface” by Michel Foucault, xi – xiv; Chapter 1 “Desiring—Production,” 1 – 8; Chapter 9 “The Civilized Capitalist Machine,” 220–240.
Williams, R. “Experience,” in Keywords: a Vocabulary of Culture and Society, London: Fontana, 1988, 126–129.
Seminar 2 (20+21 January) Arnhem
Keyword: Culture
The term from Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society by Raymond Williams for this seminar is “culture” We will start by reading his short essay on this followed by two texts from Stuart Hall written twenty years apart: “Rethinking the ‘Base and Superstructure’ Metaphor” (1977) and “The Centrality of Culture: Notes on the Cultural Revolutions of Our Time” (1997). Taken from Selected Writings on Marxism these texts track Hall’s ongoing engagement with Marxism across three decades also in relation to cultural studies. From textual analysis of Marx in the late 70s which draws a more complex relationship between base and superstructure, to the 90s essay where Marxism is mediated through interventions coming from post structuralism, cultural identity and diaspora studies. We will continue reading Ashley Boher’s book Marxism and Intersectionality, Race, Gender, Class and Sexuality under Contemporary Capitalism which relates a history of intersectionality and explores the antagonisms and misunderstandings between these two frames of reference. Previous readings traced the development of intersectionality from within Black feminist activism and writing, as well as its historical links to the Marxist tradition. This session will address debates between the two, including the Marxist critique of intersectionality and visa versa. The seminar will begin with a synopsis of the previous session by members of the group and will include student led presentations and discussion on the term culture.
reading:
Bohrer, A. J. Marxism and Intersectionality, Race, Gender, Class and Sexuality under Contemporary Capitalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2020. Chapter One: The Intersectional Tradition and Chapter Two: Marxist Critiques of Intersectionality,” 81–122.
Hall, Stuart. “Chapter Two: Rethinking the "Base and Superstructure" Metaphor” (1977). In Selected Writings on Marxism, edited by Gregor McLennan. New York: Duke University Press, 2021, 62–90.
Hall, Stuart. “Chapter Twelve: The Centrality of Culture: Notes on the Cultural Revolutions of Our Time” (1997). In Selected Writings on Marxism, edited by Gregor McLennan. New York: Duke University Press, 2021, 316–34.
Williams, R. Culture, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. London: Fontana, 1988, 87–93.
Brown, Wendy. “In the Account of Neoliberalism." (2016). Youtube, user: European Graduate School. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqQ_dIjr3uU
Meadway, James. “After Neoliberalism.” (2021). Soundcloud: Politics Theory Other. https://soundcloud.com/poltheoryother/after-neoliberalism-w-james-meadway
Seminar 1 (13+14 Nov) Nida
reading:
Bohrer, A. J. (2020) "Chapter Zero: The Shared History of the Intersectional and Marxist Traditions," in Marxism and Intersectionality, Race, Gender, Class and Sexuality under Contemporary Capitalism, 31-78.New York: Columbia University Press, 2020. (You can also read the Introduction if you have time)
Marx, Karl. (1977) "Chapter XXVI, The Secret of Primitive Accumulation," in Capital Volume One, 667 – 670. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1977.
Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels, "Part 1. Bourgeois and Proletarians," in The Communist Manifesto, 667 – 670. London, Penguin Books, 2004.
Williams, R. (1988) "Capitalism," in Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, 50 – 52 London: Fontana, 1988.