Understanding Marx, Understanding Modernism

by Mark Steven (Editor), Paul Ardoin (Editor), S. E. Gontarski (Editor), Laci Mattison (Editor)

Overview

A concentrated study of the relationships between modernism and transformative left utopianism, this volume provides an introduction to Marx and Marxism for modernists, and an introduction to modernism for Marxists. Its guiding hypothesis is that Marx's writing absorbed the lessons of artistic and cultural modernity as much as his legacy concretely shaped modernism across multiple media.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501372308
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	07/28/2022
Series:	Understanding Philosophy, Understanding Modernism
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.54(d)

About the Author

Mark Steven is Senior Lecturer in Twentieth- and Twenty-first Century Literature at the University of Exeter, UK. He is the author of Red Modernism: American Poetry and the Spirit of Communism (2017) and Splatter Capital (2017).

Paul Ardoin is Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas at San Antonio, USA.

S. E. Gontarski is Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State University, USA. He is the author or editor of 29 books and, with Paul Ardoin and Laci Mattison, he is series editor of the Bloomsbury series, Understanding Philosophy, Understanding Modernism. The serie editors were also volume editors for the initial books in that series: Understanding Bergson, Understanding Modernism (Bloomsbury, 2013) and the follow-up, Understanding Deleuze, Understanding Modernism (Bloomsbury, 2014). Gontarski's recent books are: Beckett's “Happy Day”: A Manuscript Study (2017) and Revisioning Beckett: Samuel Beckett's Decadent Turn (Bloomsbury, 2018).

Laci Mattison is Assistant Professor of 20th Century British Literature at Florida Gulf Coast University, USA.

Table of Contents

Series Preface

Introduction: Modernist Marx, Marxist Modernism
Mark Steven, University of Exeter, UK

Part 1 – Conceptualizing Marx
1. Greek Ideology and Modern Politics in Marx's First Works
Giacomo Bianchino, City University of New York, USA
2. Before the Manifesto: Märchen and the Impulse to Exorcism
Peter Riley, Durham University, UK
3. The Communist Manifesto and the Exhumation of Literature
Alex Niven, Newcastle University, UK
4. On France: Revolutions and Communes
Owen Holland, University of Oxford, UK
5. Jupiter Against the Lightning-Rod: Literary Form in the Grundrisse
Dominick Knowles, Brandeis University, USA
6. The Voices of Capital: Poetics of Critique Beyond Sentiment and Cynicism
Daniel Hartley, Durham University, UK
7. The Dialectics of Utopia: Critique of the Gotha Program
Regenia Gagnier, University of Exeter, UK
8. Posthumous Publications: Capitalism's Circuits and Reading for Totality
Treasa De Loughry, University College Dublin, Ireland, and Miles Link, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

Part 2 – Marx in Modernism
9. Marx in the Modernist Novel
Julian Murphet, University of Adelaide, Australia
10. Marx and Modernist Poetry
Kristin Grogan, Rutgers University, USA
11. Marx and Cinema
Angelos Koutsourakis, University of Leeds, UK
12. Theatrical Proletarians
Michael Shane Boyle, Queen Mary University of London, UK
13. Marx, Music, Modernism
Sarah Collins, University of Western Australia
14. Constructing Socialism: Marxism, Modernism, and Architecture
Tyrus Miller, University of California, Irvine, USA
15. Marx and Popular Modernism
Esther Leslie, Birkbeck University of London, UK

Part 3 – Glossary of Key Terms
16. The Commodity
Josh Jewell, University of Exeter, UK
17. Labor
Veronica Brownstone, University of Pennsylvania, USA
18. Value
Rory Dufficy, Australia and New Zealand School of Government
19. Money
Marina Vishmidt, University of London, UK
20. The General Formula of Capital
Adam Morton, University of Sydney, Australia
21. Class
Elinor Taylor, University of Westminster, UK
22. Technology
Trevor Strunk, DeSales University, USA
23. Family
Kate Montague, University of Exeter, UK
24. Ideology
Harry Warwick, University of Southampton, UK
25. Alienation
Ana Tomcic, University of Exeter, UK
26. Materialism
Fiona Allen, University of Exeter, UK
27. Colonization
Paul Young, University of Exeter, UK
28. Nature
Margaret Ronda, University of California, Davis, USA
29. Revolution
Colleen Lye, University of California, Berkeley, USA
30 Communism
Conall Cash, Cornell University, USA
31. Utopia
Cat Moir, University of Sydney, Australia

Notes on Contributors
Index

Editorial Reviews

Understanding Marx, Understanding Modernism provides the initiate and veteran scholar alike with an excellently curated selection of essays addressing the bound development of historical materialism and modernist cultural production. Both ecumenical and precise in their arguments and readings, the interventions in Understanding Marx, Understanding Modernism are indispensable contributions to the field of politics and art.” —Ruth Jennison, Associate Professor of English, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA

“Sidestepping dogmatic readings of Marx and formalist modes of modernist studies, this thoughtfully arranged volume expands and clarifies a growing collective understanding of what Marxism and literature have to do with each other. Deeply knowledgeable and finely argued, the essays collected here not only provide support and explication for students of Marxism and modernism, but also draw on new and submerged understandings of Marx's work to outline the capaciousness of Marxian methods for scholars of literature and culture.” —Amy De'Ath, Lecturer in Contemporary Literature, Culture and Theory, King's College London, UK

“This discerningly assembled volume offers a coherent yet never monolithic picture of what Marx meant, and did not mean, to modernist practitioners across the arts. It also illuminates pressures and presences in Marx's writings ranging from Epicurean philosophy to the fortunes of the Paris Commune and clarifies key Marxian terms in glosses as precise as they are economical. The component entries stand on their own, but those who read from beginning to end will be rewarded with a deepened sense of how literariness, theory, and history interfused in key writings and movements in the arts before and after 1900.” —Douglas Mao, Russ Family Professor in the Humanities, Johns Hopkins University, USA

From the Publisher