Marx for Cats: A Radical Bestiary
At the outset of Marx for Cats, Leigh Claire La Berge declares that “all history is the history of cat struggle.” Revising the medieval bestiary form to meet Marxist critique, La Berge follows feline footprints through Western economic history to reveal an animality at the heart of Marxism. She draws on a twelve-hundred-year arc spanning capitalism’s feudal prehistory, its colonialist and imperialist ages, the bourgeois revolutions that supported capitalism, and the communist revolutions that opposed it to outline how cats have long been understood as creatures of economic critique and liberatory possibility. By attending to the repeated archival appearance of lions, tigers, wildcats, and “sabo-tabbies,” La Berge argues that felines are central to how Marxists have imagined the economy, and by asking what humans and animals owe each other in a moment of ecological crisis, La Berge joins current debates about the need for and possibility of eco-socialism. In this playful and generously illustrated radical bestiary, La Berge demonstrates that class struggle is ultimately an interspecies collaboration.
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Marx for Cats: A Radical Bestiary
At the outset of Marx for Cats, Leigh Claire La Berge declares that “all history is the history of cat struggle.” Revising the medieval bestiary form to meet Marxist critique, La Berge follows feline footprints through Western economic history to reveal an animality at the heart of Marxism. She draws on a twelve-hundred-year arc spanning capitalism’s feudal prehistory, its colonialist and imperialist ages, the bourgeois revolutions that supported capitalism, and the communist revolutions that opposed it to outline how cats have long been understood as creatures of economic critique and liberatory possibility. By attending to the repeated archival appearance of lions, tigers, wildcats, and “sabo-tabbies,” La Berge argues that felines are central to how Marxists have imagined the economy, and by asking what humans and animals owe each other in a moment of ecological crisis, La Berge joins current debates about the need for and possibility of eco-socialism. In this playful and generously illustrated radical bestiary, La Berge demonstrates that class struggle is ultimately an interspecies collaboration.
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Marx for Cats: A Radical Bestiary

Marx for Cats: A Radical Bestiary

by Leigh Claire La Berge
Marx for Cats: A Radical Bestiary

Marx for Cats: A Radical Bestiary

by Leigh Claire La Berge

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$27.95 

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Overview

At the outset of Marx for Cats, Leigh Claire La Berge declares that “all history is the history of cat struggle.” Revising the medieval bestiary form to meet Marxist critique, La Berge follows feline footprints through Western economic history to reveal an animality at the heart of Marxism. She draws on a twelve-hundred-year arc spanning capitalism’s feudal prehistory, its colonialist and imperialist ages, the bourgeois revolutions that supported capitalism, and the communist revolutions that opposed it to outline how cats have long been understood as creatures of economic critique and liberatory possibility. By attending to the repeated archival appearance of lions, tigers, wildcats, and “sabo-tabbies,” La Berge argues that felines are central to how Marxists have imagined the economy, and by asking what humans and animals owe each other in a moment of ecological crisis, La Berge joins current debates about the need for and possibility of eco-socialism. In this playful and generously illustrated radical bestiary, La Berge demonstrates that class struggle is ultimately an interspecies collaboration.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781478023883
Publisher: Duke University Press
Publication date: 10/02/2023
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 416
File size: 67 MB
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About the Author

Leigh Claire La Berge is Professor of English at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, and author of Wages Against Artwork: Decommodified Labor and the Claims of Socially Engaged Art, also published by Duke University Press.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction. Cat out of the Bag  1
Part I. Menace and Menagerie: The Feudal Mode of Production and Its Cats, 800–1500
1. Lion Kings  25
Intermezzo 1. The Lion-Cat Dialectic  53
2. The Devil’s Cats  58
Part II. The Feline Call to Freedom: Slavery and Revolution in the Age of Empire, 1500–1800
3. Divine Lynxes  95
Intermezzo 2. The Tiger-Tyger Dialectic  125
4. Revolutionary Tigers  129
Part III. Our Dumb Beasts: The Rise of the Bourgeoisie and Its Appropriation of Cats, 1800–1900
5. Wildcats  177
Intermezzo 3. The Cat-Mouse Dialectic  207
6. Domestic Cats, Communal and Servile  212
Part IV. Every Paw Can Be a Claw: Revolutions with Cats, Revolutions Against Capitalism, 1900–2000
7. Sabo-Tabbies  251
Intermezzo 4. The Cat-Comrade Dialectic  288
8. Black Panthers  294
Epilogue. Pussy Cats  329
Notes  339
Bibliography  363
Index  383
 
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