Hello! This is my first post on Lemmygrad.
I have a lesson from my Literature Theory class in college about Marxist analysis. It has some stuff about “British Cultural Materialism”, “American New Historicism” and calls Simone de Beauvoir a Marxist among other things. I have a basic understanding of ML theory, though not enough to properly counter what is being said here.
The lesson is in PDF form, but I formatted it to Markdown and uploaded it to PrivateBin, here. I will also attach a screenshot showing the final questions regarding the lesson.
What points are there to be made against what is written there? It often feels like idealism and the lesson itself is filled with pseudo-Marxists.
Thank you comrades!
Yeah, this is giving off vibes of OP trying to show off that they think they are smarter than the professor.
Marxist literary critique is just one vantage point of literary criticism.
I would recommend Terry Eagleton’s “Literary Theory - An Introduction”. I was a comp lit university teacher and eagleton always came in handy to explain criticism.
That’s a good book. Well worth a read. If OP is really pushed for time, the first 3–4 pages of the conclusion provide a good summary of some key points.
My intentions was to find out if this is accurate to Marxist theory, as educational institutions only show Marxism as a very negative ideology, from what I heard. It had basic mentions of dialectical materialism and kind of felt accurate when it came to basic Marxist terms, but I just felt skeptical about it.
Sometimes it’s better to just wait and observe for a bit. In most subjects, if Marx is even brought up, it is in a pluralistic but not necessarily negative light. This also works as a means of undermining it, but that’s as a biproduct of liberal ideology rather than an agenda as such.
Red bashing is a thing in philosophy, history, and poli-sci. Econ just ignores him and literary and sociological courses tend to have a positive view.
That’s a great way to explain it. (I can’t open the link, though.) I’ve never thought of it in those terms but I get inordinately annoyed when I see it. I describe it as ‘using Marx as if he were just another thinker’. But historical materialism offers a total worldview. You can’t just chop and change. Well, you can and they do, in the east that you describe.
Often, it’s: Foucault said X, Weber said Y, and Marx said Z, and here’s how, together, they can help us understand ABC. Usually something relating to societal ills, colonialism, exploitation, etc – the authors’ hearts tend to be in the right place.
But that’s a big problem because if Marx is right (he is), he’s incompatible with most of the ‘critical’ Western canon. He can’t be synthesised with e.g. Weber or Foucault because their central assumptions are at odds with each others’.
Huh, looks like I linked it incorrectly. Here is the link plainly:
http://www.abstraktdergi.net/this-ruthless-criticism-of-all-that-exists-marxism-as-science/
It’s an essay by J Moufawad-Paul on how Marxism’s status as an attempt at a scientific understanding of political-economy is its very foundation and must be defended, both from self-professed “Marxists” who disparage this element as well as liberal academics who do just as you describe, treating it as merely another “lens” and functionally as a sort of rhetorical flavor and roleplay rather than a method to understand the world:
I do think Weber and Foucault are quite interesting and can be useful, but they do not hold the same ground that Marx and his successors do.
Thanks for this. I quite like JMP but I haven’t read this essay. If that quote is anything to go by, I’ll enjoy this one, too. I agree about Weber and Foucault; they can be useful, especially if they’re read in light of a Marxist perspective.
A wise advise. Most people do not follow it, they are driven by their prejudices and beliefs with no corrections by observation. I fail to follow it frequently. But this is human nature, since it is more mentally economical (i.e., lazy).