Special Topics in Comparative Literature (488-0-1)

Topic

Remnants of Marx

Instructors

Jorg Kreienbrock
847/491-5788
1880 Campus Drive, Kresge Hall, Rm 3323
Office Hours: Mon, 12-1 PM or by appointment

Meeting Info

Kresge Centennial Hall 2-331: Tues 2:00PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

Remnants of Marx

What is left of Marx? This class investigates the emergence and actuality of Karl Marx's thought in the context of its political, philosophical, scientific, and literary contexts in the first half of the 19th century. We will read Marx in conversation with a variety of interlocutors among them the philosophers Hegel and Feuerbach as well as the writers Heinrich Heine, Ludwig Börne, and Georg Büchner.
Readings will focus on the early writings of Marx: The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature; German-French Yearbooks (On the Jewish Question, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, letters to Ruge and Bakunin); The Communist Manifesto; The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte; German Ideology; Theses on Feuerbach as well as some journalistic writings (Law on the Theft of Wood). Key concepts that will be discussed are the notion of critique, the idea of universal human rights, the swerving motion (clinamen) of historical progress, the status of affects (anger, shame) in political discourse, and the aesthetics of revolution.
In addition to close readings of Marx's writings, we will discuss their reception in 20th-century theoretical debates in the works of Bertolt Brecht, Georg Lukacs, Louis Althusser, Jacques Derrida, and Werner Hamacher.

Registration Requirements

Graduate students only

Teaching Method

Seminar

Evaluation Method

Paper, final

Class Materials (Required)

All materials will be made available on canvas