Bad Marxism

John Hutnyk

Description

Cultural Studies commonly claims to be a radical discipline. This book thinks that's a bad assessment. Cultural theorists love to toy with Marx, but critical thinking seems to fall into obvious traps.

After an introduction which explains why the 'Marxism' of the academy is unrecognisable and largely unrecognised in anti-capitalist struggles, Bad Marxism provides detailed analyses of Cultural Studies' cherished moves by holding fieldwork, archives, empires, hybrids and exchange up against the practical criticism of anti-capitalism.

Engaging with the work of key thinkers: Jacques Derrida, James Clifford, Gayatri Spivak, Georges Bataille, Homi Bhabha, Michael Hardt and Toni Negri, Hutnyk concludes by advocating an open Marxism that is both pro-party and pro-critique, while being neither dogmatic, nor dull.

Introduction: Cultural Studies as Capitalism

Part I: Clifford's Ethnographica

1. Clifford and Malinowski

2. Fort Ross Mystifications

Part II: [e-mail]

3. Fever

4. Spectres

5. Struggles

Part III: Tales from Raj

6. On Empire

7. Difference and Opposition

8. The Chapatti Story

Part IV: Bataille's Wars: Surrealism, Marxism, Fascism

9. Librarian

10. Activist

11. Anthropologist

12. Provocateur

Conclusion: The Cultivation of Capital Studies

Notes

References

Index

Sujets

• Political Ideologies
• Political Science
• Democracy

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 juin 2004
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781849644693
• Langue: English

Extrait

Bad Marxism

Bad Marxism Capitalism and Cultural Studies

John Hutnyk

LONDON • ANN ARBOR, MI

First published 2004 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106

www.plutobooks.com

Copyright © John Hutnyk 2004

The right of John Hutnyk to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 0 7453 2267 0 hardback ISBN 0 7453 2266 2 paperback

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services, Fortescue, Sidmouth, EX10 9QG, England Typeset from disk by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd, Chennai, India Printed and bound in the European Union by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne, England

231

208

Part 3

v

Part 4

Fever Spectres Struggles

3 4 5

155 163 170 177

19 35

17

55

Part 1

57 78 96

115 128 139

153

6 7 8

113

Acknowledgements

1 2

Introduction: Cultural Studies as Capitalism

Clifford and Malinowski Fort Ross Mystifications

[e-mail]

Clifford’s Ethnographica

Bataille’s Wars: Surrealism, Marxism, Fascism

On Empire Difference and Opposition The Chapatti Story

Librarian Activist Anthropologist Provocateur

Part 2

Tales from the Raj

Index

Notes

References

Contents

1

vii

183

243

9 10 11 12

Conclusion: The Cultivation of Capital Studies

Acknowledgements

This book is to be blamed in part on Anne Beech, who suggested I write it after I made an intemperate, obvious and not very original comment at a conference in Stoke-on-Trent in 1996.* My comment had to do with the fact that it was not Marxism that fell with the Soviet Union, but only ‘sausage-and-three-veg’ versions (the phrase is from Ian Wilson) of something that was not (was no longer) recognisable as communism insofar as that means participation of all the people in decisions about how they will live. The suggestion was that there was now an opportunity to kill off the opportunists, to sort wheat from chaff, and other metaphors I did not really use with restraint or style. Instead of dismissing or celebrating an end of communism – a polarisation of two identical pathological and mor- bid stupidities – I thought we might attend to an even worse Marxism, an ever contrary, ever renewed, ruthless critique of every- thing, party of the new type, open polemic kind of rampant Marxist intelligence.† The form of this book was conceived in the notorious Pink House in Puri with Ben Rosenzweig, Cassandra Bennett and Elizabeth Wong. They know what strange forces shaped the plan; I hope they are not too surprised at its execution. This book now works through some of that motivation in the fields of anthropol- ogy, philosophy and cultural studies that govern my days in the regime that is Goldsmiths College. I owe my colleagues and stu- dents there much more than I can say. They know who they are if I don’t list them all. In addition to those already mentioned, parts of this writing were also read by Saul Goode, Seth Lazar, Imogen Bunting, John Gledhill,

* Many years earlier, before returning to school as a ‘mature’ student, I had worked as a packer for a pottery importer in Australia. Most of our wares – hideous Toby Jugs – came from Stoke-on-Trent. I just had to get this in – my family still has the mugs – Hi Dave, Marie-ann, Cheryl, Darren, Kim, Keri, Joshua, Henry, Daisy (meow), Ella, Lily, Mabel and Megan. † In 1996 this book was provisionally calledBad Marxism, Lousy Leninism and Mad Maoism – To the Barricades or the Book Arcades?Luckily it got a bit more focused since then. Early or partial versions of the core sections are ref- erenced in the bibliography as Hutnyk (1997a, 1997b, 1998b, 1998c, 2002b, 2003).

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viii Acknowledgements

Victor Alneng, Howard Potter and Steve Wright. Everyone knows that writing acknowledgements is not the last thing to be done before packing the manuscript off to the publishers; it is an accretion and cumulative record, updated haphazardly, but I hope without too many omissions, of debts and gratitudes. Given idiosyncrasies of style, thanks are often overwrought when claiming reciprocity and obligation, but without exchanges with, influences, and gifts in kind, awesome and terrible, there would be no book: Gayatri Spivak, Mick Taussig, George Marcus, Nicola Frost, Carrie Clanton, Penny Harvey, Javier Taks, Sheila Robinson, Anthropology Departments (Manchester, Goldsmiths), Reading Groups (Charterhouse, Transl- asia, Marx, Heidegger, Adorno), Angie Mitropoulos, Danny Sullivan, Peter Phipps, Nikos Papastergiadis, Atticus Narrain, Julian Henriques, Elena Papadaki, the Centre for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, Scott Lash, Yin Shao-loong, the staff and students of the Department of Intercultural Studies at Nagoya City University, Masahiko Tsuchiya, Kaori Sugishita, Klaus Peter Koepping, Ashis Nandy, Don Miller, Scott McQuire, Malcolm Crick, Virinder Kalra, Alexander Bard, Tim Youngs and Sophie Richmond. For assistance in getting early parts published I thank Vijay Prashad, Amitava Kumar, Gareth Stanton, Stephen Nugent (Critique of Anthropology), Peter Wade (Manchester Anthropology Papers), Geert Lovink (Nettime), Abdul Karim Mustapha (Rethinking Marxism), Joost van Loon, Rob Shields (Space and Culture), Stephen Clarke (Travel Writing and Empire), Bobby Sayyid (Contemporary South Asia).

Introduction: Cultural Studies as Capitalism

What is the point of polite erudition? A frisson of enthusiasm in the service of coffee shop chats and glossy publishing houses? Books on Marxism are legion and justifications for adding to this corner of the culture industry are few. Arguing that contemporary cultural theory has opportunistically failed in its take-up of the philosophy of praxis, or effectively to engage any kind of politics, persuasion or purpose that matters, is hardly going to endear me to my well-read betters. Nonetheless, I read recent encounters with Marxism in order to clear a path to something more. Ruthless critique of every- thing is the credo, relentless and dutiful, focus the procedure. The writings gathered here engage with Marx’s latter-day culturalist epigones as promoted in the marketplaces of cultural theory. I ask you, what is this Marx that we are offered up now, just when we need him more than ever? The approach of this book is to mark out a double strategy that (a) critiques the work of influential theorists – James Clifford, Jacques Derrida, Antonio Negri – who have had substantial impact in the last ten years with versions of Marx that are eclectic and often diverting, but substantially misconstrued. Second, (b) the book pres- ents the study of culture through these figures as a wider concern than that usually identified as cultural studies proper – that is, cul- tural study is also about geo-politics, theory, war, capitalism. The book approaches cultural studies on a global scale, such that the influence of Georges Bataille, Frankfurt School critical theory, post- structuralism, reflexive anthropology, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ˇ SubalternStudies,SlavojZiˇzek,SamirAminand‘even’thatthree- headed beast ‘Marx-Lenin-Mao’ are also relevant in a mode of inquiry that should not be parochially defined. Despite the expansiveness of the above list, I do not presume to ® address all studies of culture or all ‘cultural studies’ . Rather, the task is to ask if the theoreticians that cultural studies draws upon, as well as those in anthropology and related socio-cultural disciplines, offer

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