Performing Marx: Contemporary Negotiations of a Living Tradition (S U N Y Series in Political

226 Pages·2006·0.7 MB·English

by  Bradley J. MacDonald

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Performing Marx
SUNY series in Political Theory
Contemporary Issues
Philip Green, editor
P E R F O R M I N G M A R X
Contemporary Negotiations
of a Living Tradition
BRADLEY J. MACDONALD
S TAT E U N I V E R S I T Y O F N E W Y O R K P R E S S
Published by
State University of New York Press
Albany
© 2006 State University of New York
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Macdonald, Bradley J.
Performing Marx : contemporary negotiations of a living tradition /
Bradley J. Macdonald.
p. cm. — (SUNY series in political theory. Contemporary issues)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7914-6665-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Socialism—Philosophy. 2. Communism—Philosophy. 3. Marx, Karl, 1818–1883.
I. Title. II. Series.
HX73.M315 2006
320.53'15—dc22
2005008566
ISBN-13: 978-0-7914-6665-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction
Genealogies of Performance 1
One Marx and Living Traditions 13
Two Marx and Desire 31
Three Ecologizing Marx?
William Morris and a Genealogy of Ecosocialism 47
Four Marx and a Politics of Everyday Life:
Revisiting Situationist Theory 67
Five Finding Marx Through Foucault 91
Six (Re)Marx on the Political:
Antonio Negri, Antagonism,
and the Politics of the Multitude 113
Conclusion
Globalizing Marx?
Radical Politics in the Twenty-first Century 139
Notes 165
Index 199
v
Acknowledgments
AS WITH ALL WORKS that have developed over a number of years, the ideas
and arguments that would become Performing Marx began in fits and starts,
originally articulated in articles, essays, and papers delivered to different audi-
ences and published in different forums. This means, of course, that there are
many individuals who have been part of this intellectual process and who
have been extremely instrumental in helping me bring this manuscript to
publication. First, I want to thank Michael Rinella at SUNY Press for being
quick to see the worth of this book and getting the comments of two anony-
mous reviewers to me in seemingly record fashion. This, I think, speaks to the
incredible efficiency—and deserved reputation—of their editorial process.
Along the way of formulating my ideas and arguments, I was helped
immensely by discussions and dialogues with the following individuals, many
of whom read and commented on aspects of this manuscript: Clyde Barrow,
Terrell Carver, William Chaloupka, William Connolly, Zillah Eisenstein,
Manfred Enssle, Keith Foskin, Kevin Foskin, Eugene Holland, Timothy Luke,
Peter McLaren, William Niemi, Dan O’Connor, Manfred Steger, Paul Trem-
bath, and Jim Wiltgen.
As we have learned in different ways from the thought of Marx and Niet-
zsche, intellectual work is never the result of a disembodied intellectual exis-
tence; it can only flourish in a rich soil of affective and social support. In this
respect, I want to thank Susanne for continuing to provide such a fertile
ground, a provision that has meant many hours of my absence in the life of a
relationship.
I am grateful for kind permission from copyright holders to republish the
following in revised and/or partial form: chapter 1, “Marxism as a Living Tra-
dition: Some Metatheoretical Issues,” Strategies: Journal of Theory, Culture, and
Politics, Volume 12, Number 2, 1999, pp. 203–217 (see http://tandf.co.uk/jour-
nals); chapter 2, “Marx and the Figure of Desire,” Rethinking Marxism, Volume
11, Number 4, 1999, pp. 21–37 (see http://tandf.co.uk/journals); chapter 3,
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“Eco/Theory at the Millenium,” Strategies: Journal of Theory, Culture, and Pol-
itics, Volume 13, Number 1, pp. 5–8, and, “William Morris and the Vision of
Ecosocialism,” Contemporary Justice Review, Volume 7, Number 3, 2004, pp.
287–303 (see http://tandf.co.uk/journals); chapter 4, “From the Spectacle to
Unitary Urbanism: Reassessing Situationist Theory,” Rethinking Marxism, Vol-
ume 8, Number 2, 1995, pp. 89–111 (see http://tandf.co.uk/journals); chapter
5, “Marx, Foucault, Genealogy,” Polity, Volume XXXIV, Number 3, Spring
2002, pp. 259–284; and, chapter 6, “Thinking Through Marx: An Introduc-
tion to the Political Theory of Antonio Negri,” Strategies: Journal of Theory,
Culture, and Politics, Volume 16, Number 2, 2003, pp. 85–95 (see http://tandf.
co.uk/journals).
INTRODUCTION
Genealogies of Performance
Performance will be to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries what discipline
was to the eighteenth and nineteenth: an onto-historical formation of power
and knowledge.
—Jon McKenzie
IN A THEORETICAL tour de force, Jon McKenzie argues in Perform or Else
(2001) that our current world is increasingly defined by performance.1 In this
discussion, McKenzie focuses on the interrelated and multi-layered perfor-
mance discourses that have increasingly infiltrated our lives in organiza-
tional, technological, and socio-cultural ways. For McKenzie, at least, such a
recognition of our transformed social and cultural conditions is important
(that is, a transformation from “discipline” to the mutational, post-Fordist
logic of “performance” as a contemporary discourse of domination and con-
trol), for it allows us to perceive the limitations of our previous conceptual-
izations and look toward new pathways of struggle that tweak and contest our
current normative horizons, modes of resistance he argues are best captured
by the neologism “perfumance.”2 The latter represent the always already
counter-performances inscribed within the normative matrixes of our perfor-
mance regimes. While performances demand adherence, such a demand is
always undermined by the contingency of their enactment. In a sense, though
not raised by McKenzie, such an “onto-historical” discussion could not be
more relevant to our understanding of Karl Marx’s theory in the twenty-first
century: in what way can Marx’s ideas “perform” and/or “perfume” in our cur-
rent context? Thus, in what ways have Marx’s ideas been a part of the nor-
mative horizon of performances in our world? Importantly, how do Marx’s
ideas and concepts represent, if at all, lines of flight, destratifying molecular
struggles, a conceptual “perfumance” in the way that McKenzie indicates?
1