MARXIST SUMMER SCHOOL 2023
PROGRAM AND READINGS:
Week 1 (June 30 – July 6)
Opening Dinner, June 30th
Marxism and Philosophy
This seminar will engage both Marx and Marxism’s encounter with crucial figures and ideas in the history of philosophy. Through readings from Epicurus, Baruch Spinoza, Georg Hegel, Georg Lukacs, Herbert Marcuse and Louis Althusser, we will focus on understanding and building the foundations for a materialist philosophy of the present.
Reproduction, Biopower, and Sexual Politics
An exploration of reproductive, sexual and bio-politics in contemporary capitalism. The seminar will examine how Marx’s theory of labor-power and its appropriation by capital entails a radical revision of dominant conceptions of biopower. It will also explore the emergence of offshore reproduction, the ongoing attempt to replace the symbolic authority of the Father, and three key problems that emancipatory politics has historically come up against: love, sexual difference and the education of children. Readings will include Alain Badiou, Laura Briggs, Friedrich Engels, Shulamith Firestone, Michel Foucault, and Sophie Lewis.
Week 2 (July 7 – 13)
Political Power and Class Struggle
An examination of key concepts in the Marxist understanding of political power, the state, and social class. The rightward turn in politics today and the conditions that characterize contemporary class struggles will be addressed. Readings will include works by Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, Nicos Poulantzas, and Ugo Palheta.
Fantasy, Fetish, and the Radical Imagination
This seminar will explore both the liberating and ideological role fantasy plays in the cultural world and analyze the fetishes and the notion of the fantastic engendered by capitalism. We will also explore how modern technology has impacted this fantasy world and how Marxism can help us recapture the radical imagination and overcome the disenchantment of the world. Readings will include works by Cornelius Castoriadis, Guy Debord, Henri Lefebvre, and Bernard Stiegler.
Closing Dinner, July 13th
MARXISM AND PHILOSOPHY, @ 12PM
JULY 1: Gramsci on the Study of Philosophy & Marx’s 11th Thesis on Feuerbach
(Peter Bratsis / Carlos Frade)
Antonio Gramsci. Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Edited and Translated by QUINTIN HOARE and GEOFFREY NOWELL SMITH. INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS, 1971: Pages 321-343 - The Study of Philosophy
Labica, Georges (1987) Karl Marx: Les thèses sur Feuerbach.
Frank Ruda, Idealism Without Idealism, 2014, Angelaki (19)1: Pages 83-98
Karl Korsch, Marxism and Philosophy. Monthly Review Press, 2008
JULY 3: Praxis, Totality and Dialectics in Georg Lukács’ History and Class Consciousness (Kostas Gousis / Victor Strazzeri)
Georg Lukács ([1923] 1971), History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics, Merlin Press:
“The phenomenon of reification”, pp. 83-110;
“Towards a Methodology of the Problem of Organisation”, pp. 295-343.
_______. ([1925?] 2000), A Defence of History and Class Consciousness: Tailism and the Dialectic, London/New York: Verso:
“I. Problems of Class Consciousness”, pp. 48-63.
JULY 4:
Alienation
(Paul Reynolds)
Karl Marx, 1844 Economic and Philosophical (Paris) Manuscripts (especially the sections on ‘Estranged Labour’, and ‘Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic and Philosophy as a Whole’
Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach
JULY 5: Spinoza, Commodity Fetishism, Real Abstraction (Kiarina Kordela)
Spinoza, Ethics, Part I and until proposition 7 of part II
Beth Lord Spinoza's Ethics, 15-48
Marx Capital: Volume 1, "The Fetishism of the Commodity and Its Secret" (Penguin, 163-177)
Kordela: Epistemontology in Spinoza-Marx-Freud-Lacan, chapter 2: “Materialist epistemology: Marx and Sohn-Rethel with Spinoza and psychoanalysis,” 53-72
Intellectual and Manual Labour: A Critique of Epistemology,
JULY 6: Althusser and Philosophy: Spinoza (Panagiotis Sotiris)
Panagiotis Sotiris, Rethinking Structure and Conjuncture in Althusser, Historical Materialism 22.3-4 (2014).
Louis Althusser, Essays in Self-Criticism, Verso, 1974:
Pages 135 - 150
Louis Althusser, For Marx, Verso:
Pages 85-106, 108-126, 159-216
REPRODUCTION, BIOPOWER, AND SEXUAL POLITICS, @ 7 PM
JULY 1: Marxism and Sexuality from Reich and Sex-Pol through Marcuse's Sexual Politics to Contemporary Marxist Analyses of Sexuality (Paul Reynolds)
Peter. Drucker, (2014) ‘Conceptions of Sexual Freedom in Marcuse, Foucault and Rubin’. The Journal of the International Network of Sexual Ethics and Politics 2 (1): 31-38.
Holly Lewis, (2022 Revived Ed). The Politics of Everybody: Feminism, Queer Theory and Marxism at the Intersection. London: Zed Books (Introductions)
Paul Reynolds (2003) ‘Some Thoughts on Marxism and Theorising of Sexuality and Sexual Politics in Pasteur P, Niederacher S and Mesner M (eds) Sexualitat Unterschichtenmilieus und ArbeiterInnenbewegung, Leipzig: Akademische Verlagsanstalt
Paul Reynolds (2018) Sexual Capitalism: Marxist Reflections on Sexual Politics Culture and Economy in the 21st Century in Triple C 16-2, p 696-706
JULY 3: Foucault after Spinoza, Marx, Lacan: Labor-Power and Radical Revisions of Bios and Biopower (Kiarina Kordela)
︎ Kiarina Kordela “Biopolitics, From Tribes to Commodity Fetishism,” in Differences 24: 1 (Spring 2013): 1-29.
︎ “Monsters of Biopower: Terror(ism) and Horror in the Era of Affect,” in the special issue on “The Power of the Monstrous,” ed. Filippo De Lucchese and Caroline A. Williams, of Philosophy Today, 60:1 (Winter 2016): Pages 193-205.
Michel Foucault's “Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-6, trans. David Macey. New York: Picador, 2003: Chapter 11
Baruch Spinoza, The Ethics and Selected Letters, Translated by Samuel Shirley, Hackett Publishing, Company, Inc. 1982: Part 1 of the Ethics
Beth Lord, Spinoza's Ethics, Indiana University Press, 2010: Pages 10 - 48
Kiarina Kordela, “(Psychoanalytic) Biopolitics & Bioracism,” in Umbr(a) (2011): 10-25 (republished as “(Marxian-Psychoanalytic) Biopolitics & Bioracism,” in Penumbr(a), ed. Sigi Jöttkandt and Joan Copjec. Melbourne: Re. Press, 2013: Pages 279-291
A. Kiarina Kordela, “Spinoza’s Biopolitics: Commodification of Substance and Secular Immortality” in Spinoza’s Authority, Volume 1: Resistance and Power in Ethics, ed. A. K. Kordela, et al., London: Bloomsbury, 2018: Pages 197-217
Michel Foucault. The History of Sexuality. Volume 1: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1990, etc.
Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford University Press), etc.
Paolo Virno, A Grammar of the Multitude (Semiotext(e))
JULY 4: The Dialectic of Sex (Peter Bratsis / Kristin Lawler)
Firestone, Shulamith. The Dialectic of Sex : the Case for Feminist Revolution. New York :Morrow, 1970.
JULY 5:
Marxism and the Body (Paul Reynolds)
Stephen R. Bates (2015) ‘The Emergent Body: Marxism, Critical Realism and the Corporeal in Contemporary Capitalist Society’, Global Society, 29:1, 128-147
John G Fox (2015) Marx, The Body and Human Nature Houndsmill: Palgrave Macmillan (Chapters 1 & 9)
Joseph Fracchia (2008) ‘The Capitalist Labour-Process and the Body in Pain:The Corporeal Depths of Marx’s Concept of Immiseration’ Historical Materialism 16 (2008) 35–66
Rosalind Pollack Petchesky (2013) The Body as Property: A Feminist Re-vision, Twenty-One
Social reproduction
Cinzia Arruzza (2016) Functionalist, Determinist, Reductionist: Social Reproduction Feminism and its Critics Science & Society, Vol. 80, No. 1, p 9–30
Women, and Capitalist Social Reproduction: Marxist Feminist Essays Historical Materialism Books Leiden Brill (Chapter 13 p278 -308)
Lise Vogel (2013) Marxism and the oppression of women: toward a unitary theory / by Lise Vogel; new introduction by Susan Ferguson and David McNally. Historical Materialism Book, Leiden Brill (New Introduction, Introduction and Ch9 & 10)
JULY 6 (UPDATE JULY 5):
Abolishing the Family, Reinventing Love: ‘still
the cross we’ve got to bear’
(Carlos Frade)
Badiou, Plato’s Republic (Polity, 2012), chapter 8, entitled Women and Families, PLUS Plato’s own take in The Republic, 449a-480a, i.e. Book V (the full significance of these issues, and of Badiou’s update, so to say, of Plato’s Republic, can be envisaged by the fact that Badiou gets rid of Adeimantus and replaces him with a feminine character, Amantha, unquestionably the most interesting character together with Socrates).
Lewis, Sophie (2019) Full Surrogacy Now – Feminism Against the Family, London: Verso
Badiou, In Praise of Love (published by The Serpent’s Tail, 2012).
WEEK TWO
POLITICAL POWER AND CLASS STRUGGLE, @ 12 PM
JULY 7: Politics and Emancipation: Marx’s On the Jewish Question
(Kostas Gousis / Victor Strazzeri)
Karl Marx (1843), “On the Jewish Question”, in Marx and Engels Collected Works, v. 3, pp. 146-174.
Georg Lukács ([1968] 1991), The Process of Democratization, SUNY Press, “Part I. Bourgeois Democracy as a False Alternative for the Reform of Socialism”, pp. 71 – 81.
JULY 8: Nicos Poulantzas: Political Power and Social Classes (Peter Bratsis / Panagiotis Sotiris)
Nicos Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes, Verso:
Part 1 “General Questions”, Chapters 1, 2, 3
JULY 11: On The Growing Fascistization of Life and the Disorientation About the Ways to Combat It. (Carlos Frade)
Ugo Palheta (2021) Fascism, Fascisation, Antifascism, https://www.historicalmaterialism.org/blog/fascism-fascisation-antifascism
See critical responses by Enzo Traverso (2021) Universal Fascism? A Response to Ugo Palheta, https://www.historicalmaterialism.org/blog/universal-fascism-response-to-ugo-palheta
and David Renton (2021) On Violence: A Reply to Ugo Palheta’s ‘Fascism, Fascisation, Antifascism’, https://www.historicalmaterialism.org/blog/violence-reply-to-ugo-palhetas-fascism-fascisation-antifascism
Moore, H and Tracy, J (2020) NO Fascist USA: The John Brown ANTI-KLAN Committee and Lessons for Today’s Movements (the Foreword by Robin D.G. Kelley is excellent). San Francisco: City Lights.
JULY 12: City and Class Struggle (Alkistis Prepis)
Lefebvre, Henri. Writings on Cities. Translated by Eleonore Kofman και Elizabeth Lebas. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2000.
Chapter 7: The Specificity of the City (100-103)
Chapter 14: The Right to the City (147-159)
Harvey, David. Rebel Cities. From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. London, New York: Verso Books, 2012
Chapter 5: Reclaiming the City for Anti-Capitalist Struggle (115-140, 151-153)
JULY 13: Re-evaluating Tolerance (Michael Pelias & Peter Bratsis)
Repressive Tolerance from: Robert Paul Wolff, Barrington Moore, Jr., and Herbert Marcuse, A Critique of Pure Tolerance (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), pp. 95-137.