Marx has changed. What we read, how we read and why we read Marx have all altered dramatically. This book explores these multiple new Marxes. In ten thematic chapters, Carver examines unfamiliar texts and new aspects of Marx's writings, ranging from vampires in Capital to his vision of communism in recently re-edited manuscripts. Marx's career in democratic politics is re-evaluated, and his relationship to the gender politics of his day and ours is explored. Most importantly, Carver re-assesses the strengths and weaknesses of Marx as a theorist and critic of capitalist society. This book will appeal to anyone who wants a fresh perspective on Marx, arising from a reconciliation of historical scholarship with the "de-centredness" of postmodern writing.

DIVTwelve theoretical and historical essays emanate from a novel, shared poststructuralist conception of political economy./div

Diverse Marxian intellectual cultures are having important effects on political struggles over the subjects of history and knowledge, international law, television, the state, democratic theories and institutions, bodies, sexuality, masculinity, environmentalism, postmodernism, labor, the meanings of the end of the USSR, children, archaeology, the meanings of Columbus, cartography, the North American economy, welfare, NAFTA, the Gulf War, higher education, and the many other topics discussed by the contributors to this important volume. These essays show readers how Marxism's continuing vitality derives from its profound allegiance to diverse struggles for social justice. At this moment we need progressive imaginaries alternative to the tired and ineffectual ones that have left us with enormous challenges and compelling questions on every aspect of contemporary social relations. Here, well-known thinkers are joined by important new voices in exploring fruitful directions for vision, analysis, and political action. This is without question the best collection of mediations so far on postorthodox Marxian tendencies in contemporary global cultures.

Poststructuralist Marxism, or post-Marxism, is a theoretical viewpoint that elaborates and revises the work of Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault. Unlike traditional Marxism, which emphasizes the priority of class struggle and the common humanity of oppressed groups, post-Marxism reveals the sexual, racial, class, and ethnic divisions of modern Western society. This book surveys the different versions of post-Marxist theory: the economic theory of Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff, the historical methodology of Michel Foucault, the political theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, the feminism of Judith Butler, the materialist philosophy of Pierre Macherey, and the cultural studies of Tony Bennett and John Frow. Providing a coherent framework for these otherwise quite divergent theorists, Philip Goldstein outlines the history of Marxist philosophical or theoretical views and explains how they all count as post-Marxist.

A distinct and original post-structuralist approach to Marx, allowing him to be read in a new light.

From the Copernican revolution of Immanuel Kant to the cognitive mapping of Fredric Jameson to the postcolonial politics of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, representation has been posed as both indispensable and impossible. In his pathbreaking work, The Abyss of Representation, George Hartley traces the development of this impossible necessity from its German Idealist roots through Marxist theories of postmodernism, arguing that in this period of skepticism and globalization we are still grappling with issues brought forth during the age of romanticism and revolution. Hartley shows how the modern problem of representation—the inability of a figure to do justice to its object—still haunts today's postmodern philosophy and politics. He reveals the ways the sublime abyss that opened up in Idealist epistemology and aesthetics resurfaces in recent theories of ideology and subjectivity. Hartley describes how modern theory from Kant through Lacan attempts to come to terms with the sublime limits of representation and how ideas developed with the Marxist tradition—such as Marx’s theory of value, Althusser’s theory of structural causality, or Zizek’s theory of ideological enjoyment—can be seen as variants of the sublime object. Representation, he argues, is ultimately a political problem. Whether that problem be a Marxist representation of global capitalism, a deconstructive representation of subaltern women, or a Chicano self-representation opposing Anglo-American images of Mexican Americans, it is only through this grappling with the negative, Hartley explains, that a Marxist theory of postmodernism can begin to address the challenges of global capitalism and resurgent imperialism.

Warren Breckman critically revisits thrilling experiments in the aftermath of Marxism.

Is regarded as the most important response to the philosophies of desire, as expounded by thinkers such as de Sade, Nietzsche, Bataille, Foucault and Deleuze and Guattari. It is a major work not only of philosophy, but of sexual politics, semiotics and literary theory, that signals the passage to postmodern philosophy.

This book traces the crystallisation of post-Marxism as a specific theoretical position in its own right and considers the role played in its development by post-structuralism, postmodernism and second-wave feminism. It examines the history of dissenting tendencies within the Marxist tradition and considers what the future prospects of post-Marxism are likely to be.