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Futures of the Lumpenproletariat Lumpen: Vagrancies of a Concept from Marx to Fanon (and on) by Bennett Dempsey Carpenter Program in Literature Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Roberto Dainotto, Supervisor ___________________________ Wahneema Lubiano ___________________________ Anne Garréta ___________________________ Nancy Armstrong Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate Program in Literature in the Graduate School of Duke University 2019 i v ABSTRACT Lumpen: Vagrancies of a Concept from Marx to Fanon (and on) by Bennett Dempsey Carpenter Graduate Program in Literature Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Roberto Dainotto, Supervisor ___________________________ Wahneema Lubiano ___________________________ Anne Garréta ___________________________ Nancy Armstrong An abstract of a thesis/dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate Program in Literature in the Graduate School of Duke University 2019 Copyright by Bennett Dempsey Carpenter 2019 Abstract This dissertation, Lumpen: Vagrancies of a Concept from Marx to Fanon (and on), tracks the concept of the lumpenproletariat from its coinage by Karl Marx through its reworking by Franz Fanon, the Black Panthers and others in the context of the colonial liberation and Black Power movements, and onwards into contemporary debates about populism, identity, politics, and the end of work. From its origins an unstable concept, the lumpenproletariat raises a series of interrelated questions about the relation of class to interest, interest to identity, and identity to politics. Succinctly, the dissertation asks: what happens to the Marxian project when the future of productive labor seems in doubt, both as a source of capital valorization and as a foundation for political action? Contemporary engagement with the category of the lumpenproletariat has typically focused on the latter as a symbol of the irreducible autonomy of the political, ignoring the concept’s empirical referent. Separately, a growing body of literature has grappled with the increase of economically redundant surplus populations produced, in part, by technological automation, a phenomenon obliquely reflected in recent philosophical fascination with, for instance, bare life, necropolitics and the abject. Such work has however rarely considered the political ramifications of such transformations. What we would need, then, is a theoretical framework capable of grasping both aspects iv of this twofold problematic—the determinacy of dispossession, the indeterminacy of its political expression. The beginnings of such a framework can be found, I argue, in the writings on the lumpenproletariat in the work of Frantz Fanon, James Boggs, and the Black Panthers. Developing their scattered insights, I argue that the lumpenproletariat names both the tendential production of an economically redundant surplus population and the lack of any automatic correlation between this (or any) social condition and political subjectivation. This gap between economic and political, structure and subject, becomes then the space for the creative articulation of a collective subject as a properly political project. This is precisely the task of a socialist politics today. Whether in terms of its objective position at the point of production or its subjective consciousness of the need for revolution, the decline of the industrial proletariat has often been figured as synonymous with that of socialist politics. In contrast, my dissertation suggestions that a recuperation of the rich and half-forgotten legacy of the lumpenproletariat emerging out of the Black radical tradition can help provide a model for constructing a powerful socialist movement in the present. v Dedication To Attila, always, and to Geraldine and Frans-Willem, for getting me started. vi Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iv List of Tables ................................................................................................................................. ix List of Figures ................................................................................................................................. x Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................................... xi 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 1 1.1 The Trumpen Proletariat .................................................................................................. 1 1.2 Outline of Chapters ......................................................................................................... 13 2. Messes and Masses in Marx: Origins of the Lumpenproletariat ...................................... 29 2.1 People and Populace ....................................................................................................... 29 2.2 Masses and Classes ......................................................................................................... 44 2.3 The Tatters of a People ................................................................................................... 61 2.4 Afterlives of the Lumpen ............................................................................................... 79 3. “OK. We are Lumpen. Right on”: The Lumpenproletariat and the Black Radical Tradition ........................................................................................................................................ 99 3.1 Seize the Time .................................................................................................................. 99 3.2 The Dark Proletariat...................................................................................................... 108 3.3 Les Damnés de la Terre ................................................................................................ 132 3.4 From Boggs to the Black Panthers .............................................................................. 155 4. Planet of Slums: Futures of the Lumpenproletariat ......................................................... 175 4.1 Wretched of the Berth ................................................................................................... 175 4.2 Misery and Multitude ................................................................................................... 193 vii 4.3 A Lumpen Populism? ................................................................................................... 225 5. Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 246 References ................................................................................................................................... 269 Biography .................................................................................................................................... 281 viii List of Tables Table 1: Bukharin's Taxonomy of Social Classes ..................................................................... 94 ix List of Figures Figure 1: Figure 1: Seize the Time Benefit Announcement, The Black Panther Community News Service, Saturday October 10, 1970 ........................................................ 107 Figure 2: Semiotic Square of Capitalist Social Relations ...................................................... 248 x Acknowledgements I would like to thank the members of my committee, among other things for their patience, as a project that began as an analysis of the 19th-century city novel stubbornly insisted on morphing into something else entirely. Roberto Dainotto has seen me through every stage of this process and has consistently provided incredible intellectual engagement, insightful feedback and, above all, kindness. Wahneema Lubiano has been a mentor in more ways than I can name, including some that I probably shouldn’t; suffice it to say that if you are ever involved in a building occupation, she is an invaluable resource to call on. Anne Garréta’s deep generosity, curiosity and persistence in reaching out kept me going at moments when my energy was flagging; my second chapter wouldn’t have come together without her, even if it still doesn’t contain as much cultural analysis as she would like. Nancy Armstrong’s provocations on population and/in the novel got me started down the path that culminated in this project, and she stepped in again at the end to push me to sharpen it. Throughout it all, I have been grateful to her for making intellectual work seem compelling, exciting, and fun. This project emerged at the intersection of theory and praxis, and I would particularly like to thank the organizers and activists who helped to give it form. Aiden Graham recruited me into public housing organizing in my early days in Durham. Sendolo Diaminah has been a friend, comrade, mentor, co-conspirator and sounding board at every stage of this process. Hashim Benford helped sharpen my thinking xi around the challenges of community organizing and Bryan Proffitt provided lessons from 20 years of activism and organizing. In addition I would like to thank Anna Grant, Jillian Johnson, Anthony
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