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Home , Alec McHoul, Hegelianism

Post- & Radical Politics post-structuralism & radical politics Specialist Group of the PSA

Group Convenor Alan Finlayson Department of Political Theory and Government University of Wales Swansea Singleton Park Swansea SA2 8PP

Email: [email protected]

Newsletter Editor James Martin newsletter Department of Social Policy & Politics Goldsmiths College University of London no. 2, june 2000 New Cross London SE14 6NW

Email: [email protected]

Visit our web site: http://homepages.gold.ac.uk/psrpsg/ where this Newsletter is available as a PDF document editorial identity, politics and so on. This can be put down Alan Finlayson to watching too many Open University programmes as a teenager and to the common I don’t need to tell anyone reading this about the tendency of straight, white, middle-class boys to disciplinary technologies that are rapidly extending appropriate the struggles of Latin Americans or themselves into our workplaces. QAA and the urban community theatre groups. But, whatever ‘benchmarking’ of subject specifications are a my subjective motivations the objective necessity headache for all of us. The ease with which they of opening up the social to wider ranging can be employed as textbook examples of contestation persists. We can do this in our ‘governmentality’ hardly compensates for the everyday lives as customers of the UK state but we increased workload they demand. should also be doing it in our work lives and in our teaching. But where there is normalisation there is also the opportunity for subversion. The QAA Coming from a sociology/cultural studies sort of benchmarking statement for politics and background I was somewhat surprised to discover international relations is satisfyingly vague. It how narrow departments of politics are. The specifies, for example, that undergraduates should benchmarking statement, perhaps, offers an typically be taught to critically engage with opportunity to open up the boundaries of what is ‘definitions of the boundaries of the political’. taught as politics. From a theoretical stance this Unfortunately it does not specify that this should might entail the attempt to promote the also be a typical level of achievement for academic recognition that politics is itself the foundational staff. But one could make the case that this point of modernity and not that which our epoch enshrines within official documentation one of the must transcend. But it also includes opening up things that those of us under the influence of post- the subject matter of political studies – into structuralism would like to achieve. Granted, the popular culture/media, spatiality, medico-legal interests and aims of each of us are varied. Some apparatuses, the educational system itself are no doubt most turned on by the opportunity (increasingly a paradigmatic example of what to talk about metaphorical substitution. Others get Deleuze calls ‘the control society’) and so on. As their jouissance from sliding up and down on the benchmarking statement acknowledges signifiers. Speaking as one who doesn’t know his ‘Politics and IR reach out to disciplines such aporia from his asshole, my interests and aims are as anthropology, cultural studies, , embarrassingly modest. I find it enough of a sociology, geography, history, law or literature.’ challenge, at the present conjuncture, to simply be Add to this the fact that applications to political; to keep open spaces for contestation and departments of politics are falling at a faster rate challenge the hypnotic effect of discourses of than they are across HE as whole and we can inevitability and the managerialist politics they argue that not only are we in line with the real legitimise. I got into ‘intellectual’ pursuits because of our subject but also that self-interest I ‘discovered’ that culture was political and that demands we make our courses more relevant to many of the most significant of radical advances the contemporary of social and political come about after struggles on the terrain of culture life. – struggles that in turn challenge us to think again about what grounds our theories of ,

Post-Structuralism & Radical Politics Newsletter No. 2 1 But how open or closed are departments of sender of the first card receive a copy of the politics in the UK? I have no really concrete DFEE’s latest policy document on HE, signed by evidence to support most of the assertions I have David Blunkett. If nobody replies I shall donate made about the closure of politics departments. my entire collection of Lyotard to the Cancer Anecdotally I am aware of, for example, Research shop just around the corner from my Derrideans who feel forced to go and write about house, quit the university life, take a course on Rawls because they have been told they will not elementary survey and apply for jobs find employment unless they do so. I have heard with the Institute of Public Policy Research in stories that certain departments will not give a order to end my days researching HE curriculum second look to a CV citing publications on post- provision. My future is in your hands. structuralism no matter its quality. We all know that we feel obliged to tailor our applications in news ways that downplay our ‘fringe’ interests and make James Martin us look mainstream but this is not a unique feature of the lives of post-strutcuralists. After all, politics The PSRPSG now has its own mailing list. If you as a discipline is dominated by white males and join, you will receive the emails that all other teaching gender or ethnic politics is not always members receive. This makes it possible to send central to undergraduate degree programmes. But around news, have discussions etc. Anyone can how extensive and how real is this kind of join if they have an email address. Should you find exclusion? Fantasies of oppression are not it overwhelmingly stimulating, or even uncommon amongst radicals. discouraged depressingly dull, you can leave as well. However, from teaching a Foucauldian approach to haircare by leaving you don’t get any news and info regimes in the hardly counts as the greatest of from/about the group since the mailing list has contemporary human rights violations. So perhaps now taken over as the group’s principal form of I am imagining it all, desperate to avoid the communication. The PSA-run ‘discussion group’ Hegelian ‘loss of the loss’ that Zizek sometimes has now been dropped (owing, in part, to a bangs on about. worrying lack of discussion). So I want the people who read this (both of you) to provide me with some facts. Do we Go on, have a look. The website is: actually have any evidence that qualified people with interests in non-traditional approaches to http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/poststruc- political theory or analysis are marginalized? Are radpols/ you prevented from teaching certain topics, texts or themes? Have you tried to convince colleagues Also, the PSRPSG website has now moved. It is to critically evaluate ‘definitions of the boundaries now located at : of the political’ and found them scowling? Of course such questions do not apply solely to post- http://homepages.gold.ac.uk/psrpsg/ structuralists. What about the status of contemporary feminist theory, media studies, the Tell your friends, students, etc. politics of literature and so on – do you have evidence that these are or are not being * encouraged. Answers to these questions could comment: politics and governmentality help this specialist group fulfil one of its key aims: Barry Hindess, Professor of , Australian to support and defend post-structuralists within National University, Canberra. the discipline of politics in the UK. Maybe I’m 's studies of the political wrong and there is no need to do any such thing. of modern government have inspired a substantial Or maybe, because of the individualised nature of body of academic work devoted to the analysis of our work lives, such a collectivist intention has no liberal and neo-liberal government in the societies solid grounding on which to build itself. Perhaps you are quite content now you have your research grant to travel to Paris next semester and consequently unconcerned with anything as mundane as the curriculum. Either way, as usual, * answers on a postcard to Alan Finlayson, A longer version of this comment will appear in the Blackwell Companion to Political Sociology. I am grateful to the editors Department of Politics, University of Wales (Kate Nash and Alan Scott) for permission to make use of it Swansea, Singleton Park, Swansea, Wales. The here. Post-Structuralism & Radical Politics Newsletter No. 2 2 of the modern West.1 A curious feature of this subordinating it to some external principle of development is that the Foucaultian study of legitimacy but rather with the work of conducting government has been taken up largely by the affairs of the population in the interests of the sociologists and historians while in departments of whole. Government, in this sense, is not restricted Government and Political Science Foucault is to the work of the government and the agencies it treated largely as a or normative controls. Much of it will also be performed by theorist who has little to contribute to the agencies of other kinds, by elements of what is substantive analysis of politics. now called : churches, employers, financial institutions, legal and medical One why these studies have not been taken professionals, voluntary associations. The work of up in such departments is surely to be found in the governing the state as a whole, then, extends far intellectually conservative character of political beyond the institutions of the state itself. science as a discipline. In this brief comment, however, I want to focus on a reason of a different The Foucaultian accounts of liberalism and neo- kind: namely, that this powerful analysis of liberalism takes this analysis further by focusing on modern government has little to say about the forms of government that aim, as far as possible, partisanship which is central to conventional to work through the promotion of certain forms understandings of modern politics. In fact, of freedom and arranging conditions so that the Foucault rarely uses 'politics', 'political' and related resulting activity furthers the common good. terms to invoke matters of partisan dispute: Perhaps the most significant contribution of this instead they refer primarily to the work of literature has been its careful exploration of the government. Thus, when he insists, in the closing ways in which this governmental politics extends section of his Tanner Lectures on Human Values, beyond state agencies to make use of practices of that liberation 'can only come from attacking ... individual self-government and of diverse political rationality's very roots' (1981, p. 254) his elements of civil society. argument is clearly directed against the political rationality that, in his view, underlies the modern Nevertheless, there are fundamental aspects of of government. politics which this perspective has so far failed to address. One is the politics of resistance that The art of government, as Foucault describes it, Foucault himself invokes in his normative critique takes up a version of the classical view that the of political reason. For my purposes, however, the government of the state has its own proper more important silence of the governmentality purpose or telos, that the state should be 'governed literature concerns the governmental significance according to rational principles which are intrinsic of partisan politics.2 to it' (1991, pp 96-7). Foucault insists that the normative claims of this art of government should Partisanship is intrinsic to what Weber describes as be distinguished from two alternative perspectives: politically oriented action, action that is aimed at justification of rule in terms of a universal order exerting influence on the government of a political laid down by God (and therefore not intrinsic to organisation. Action may be 'politically oriented' in the state) and 'the problematic of the Prince', this sense without participating in the work of which is primarily concerned with 'the prince's government itself. Where the focus of Foucault's ability to keep his principality' (ibid., p. 90). His 'political reason' is on the overall pursuit of the point in making these distinctions is not to interests and the welfare of the state and the endorse the classical view of the purpose or telos of population ruled by the state, that of Weber's government – quite the contrary, as we have seen 'politically oriented action' is on the partisan – but rather to present the modern government of activities of parties, pressure groups and social the state as a systematic attempt to realise that movements and, of course, of individuals or purpose. factions within them.

As he describes it, then, the art of government is In fact, while politically oriented activity may not concerned not so much with the business of taking be directly governmental, the problem of how to over the state, keeping it in one's possession or deal with it has always been one of the central concerns of governmental reason. We can begin our discussion of this point by observing that the 1 Three edited collections (Burchell et al 1991, Barry et al 1996, Dean & Hindess 1998) provide useful samples. There are recent surveys of the field in Dean 1999 and Rose 1999. 2 For a related argument, see O'Malley et al, 1997 Post-Structuralism & Radical Politics Newsletter No. 2 3 scope for a certain kind of partisanship is already At one level the aim of such devices is to minimise inscribed in the classical view of the purpose or inducements for citizens to engage in politically telos of government – a view which, as Foucault oriented action by enabling them to pursue their describes it, the modern art of government also concerns in other ways, notably through contract adopts. Far from preventing partisanship, the and the market: the promotion of certain kinds of identification of this telos with the common interest individual autonomy also serves to inhibit political (or some equivalent) serves rather to establish the participation At another, it is to limit the partisan terms in which partisan dispute will be conducted. influence of parties, pressure groups and public Thus, in a pattern that will be familiar to political officials by removing significant areas of public activists of all , the common interest provision from the realm of political decision, and and more particular, sectional interests are thought relying instead on suitably organised forms of to be quite distinct and yet are frequently market interaction. This, of course, is less a confused: invocation of the one becomes a reduction in the overall scope of government than standard means of promoting the other and an a change in the means by which government is opponent's appeal to the common interest is exercised: a form of government that works readily seen as just another sectional manoeuvre. through the administrative apparatuses of the state is displaced in favour of one that works on While the conduct of partisan dispute in such individuals and organisations through the terms will be present under any form of disciplines imposed by their interactions with government, we should expect it to flourish where others in market and quasi-market regimes. Since the freedom of members of the subject population this limited dismantling of the administrative is promoted by the predominant rationality of apparatuses of the state is itself conducted by government. In his essay 'Of parties in general', for partisan politicians and their chosen advisers, example, notes that partisan groups those who are not persuaded by the neo-liberal 'rise more easily, and propagate themselves faster case – and many of those who are – will see in this in free governments, where they always infect the procedure ample scope for the pursuit of new legislature itself, which alone could be able, by the forms of partisan advantage. steady application of rewards and punishments, to eradicate them'. (Essays. pp. 55-6) The most I began by observing that its failure to address the notable feature of this passage is its view of partisan character of modern politics may be one partisan politics as a damaging infection of of the why the Foucaultian analysis of government that prudential leadership should aim government has hardly been taken up in to control. This fear of what partisanship might do departments of Government and Political Science to government has been a long-standing feature of and I have now suggested that this failure should governmental reason but, as Hume's comment also be seen as a serious limitation of the indicates, it is has a particular resonance for liberal Foucaultian treatment of liberal and neo-liberal and neo-liberal government. government. To make this point is not to raise an objection to the governmentality perspective. This point suggests that the characterisation of Rather, it is to show that this perspective has liberal and related rationalities of government in considerably more to offer our understanding of terms of their emphasis on governing through the contemporary politics than it has yet been able to decisions of autonomous individuals is seriously deliver. incomplete: they are also substantially concerned to defend the proper purposes of government References from the impact of partisan politics. It is partly for Barry, A., Osborne, T. & Rose, N. (eds.) (1996). Foucault and this reason that secrecy and deliberate misdirection Political Reason: liberalism, neo-liberalism and rationalities of are so commonly employed by even the most government. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. liberal of governments. The neo-liberal push of recent decades has taken this defence further by Burchell, G., Gordon, C. & Miller, P. (eds.) (1991). The corporatising and privatising various kinds of state Foucault Effect. Studies in governmentality. Chicago: University of activity, insulating central banks from political Chicago Press. control and promoting the use of market or Dean, M. (1999). Governmentality: power and rule in modern society contractual relationships between and within . London: . government agencies and between those agencies and citizens.

Post-Structuralism & Radical Politics Newsletter No. 2 4 Dean, M. & Hindess, B. (eds.) (1998). Governing : produced—over-produced some might say—a studies in contemporary rationalities of government. Melbourne: phenomenal fourteen books since the appearance Cambridge University Press. of The Sublime Object Of in 1989). There is Foucault, M. (1981). Omnes et Singulatim: Towards a also, perhaps more interestingly, the inclusion of Criticism of 'Political Reason'. In S. McMurrin (Ed.), The some previously unpublished material. Tanner Lectures on Human Values, II (pp. 223-254). Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. I say ‘more interestingly’ because these unpublished essays give us a feel for the issues that Foucault, M. (1991). Governmentality. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon, & P. Miller (Ed.), The Foucault Effect (pp. 87-104). are currently occupying Zizek’s . Here, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. among other things, we find him pooling his philosophical resources (primarily Lacan and Hume, David (1987[1742]). Essays: Moral, Political and Literary. Hegel) to get to grips with problems presented by Indianapolis: Fund recent social-technological change. Thus Lacanian O'Malley, P., Weir, L., & Shearing, C. (1997). fantasy enters cyberspace (see ‘Is it Possible to Governmentality, criticism, politics. Economy & Society 26(4), Traverse the Fantasy in Cyberspace’, p.102-124) 501-17. and the Hegelian subject is faced with the possibility of being ‘cloned’ (see ‘Of Cells and Rose, N. (1999). Powers of Freedom: reframing political thought . Selves, p.302-320). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Weber, M. (1978). Economy and Society. An outline of interpretive All in all Wright and Wright provide the reader sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press. with a good sampling of the Zizekian corpus. This, of course, is not to deny the possibility of Zizek book reviews anoraks quibbling over the editorial choices they Elizabeth Wright and Edmond Wright (eds), The made. I myself found it somewhat strange that Zizek Reader (Oxford, Blackwell, 1999). chapter five of The Sublime Object Of Ideology (‘Which Subject of the Real?’) was not included. I Slavoj Zizek is part of the cultural and say this because Wright and Wright declare that intellectual fabric of contemporary British life. the specific aim of The Reader is to distinguish in Consider, for example, a recent Times Higher Zizek’s work ‘the centrality of Lacan’s concept of Education publication which placed him among the the Real’.(p.2) That said, their use of other ‘thirty great ’ of the future (See Predictions: extracts to introduce and focus on this thirty great minds on the future, p.311-320). Why the problematic and difficult notion work quite well fascination with a philosopher whose (see particularly, ‘The Undergrowth of Enjoyment: argumentation is soaked through with reference to How Popular Culture can Serve as an Introduction the speculative of Kant, Hegel and to Lacan’ p.11-36). Schelling? Why, to shift emphasis slightly, is a thinker who is so concerned to champion ideas as To conclude: I am sure (anorakish quibbling aside) obscure as Lacan’s gaining such a cultural that this edited collection will, for the uninitiated, foothold? The answer can, as the great man work well as a useful introduction to the Zizekian himself says in the preface to The Zizek Reader, be corpus. To the reader familiar with Zizek, it will partly explained by the way his ‘theoretical line of give a sense of how his thought is currently argumentation is sustained by numerous examples evolving. from cinema and popular culture, by jokes and political anecdotes often dangerously approaching Robert Porter the limits of good taste’(p.viii). Queen's University, Belfast

Elizabeth and Edmond Wright have undoubtedly Donn Welton (ed.), Body and Flesh: A Philosophical helped to further raise the profile of Zizek by Reader (Blackwell, Oxford, 1998) and Donn editing this collection of his work. The Zizek Welton (ed.) The Body: Classical and Contemporary Reader is divided into three parts (part one, Readings (Blackwell, Oxford 1999). 'Culture', part two, 'Woman', part three, 'Philosophy') and is made up of extracts from the As even the comparatively few pages of this many articles and books he has written over the newsletter have hitherto demonstrated, the body last decade or so (according to the bibliography has become one of the key themes of provided at the end of the book Zizek has contemporary social and political theory,

Post-Structuralism & Radical Politics Newsletter No. 2 5 generating a burgeoning field of literature in the The second collection, The Body, is part of the process. These two edited collections from Blackwell series Readings in Continental Blackwell add to that field, though in very Philosophy. As the publicity on the back of this different ways. The earlier of the two, Body and text indicates, it ‘brings together for the first time Flesh concentrates on contemporary theory. It foundational twentieth-century texts on the brings together previously published and newly concept of the body’. Starting with the commissioned pieces organised around three phenomenology of Husserl, Heidegger and areas: different theoretical approaches to the body; Merleau-Ponty, the book tracks philosophy’s so-called ‘constitutional matrices’ such as the lived interest in the body through Lacanian body and body image; and the body in a series of psychoanalysis, Foucauldian , and material contexts including cosmetic surgery and French feminist semiology. It combines both the military. Necessarily since its focus is on extracts from primary texts and commentaries by contemporary theorisations of the body, feminist such thinkers as , Alphonso Lingis, work dominates the content of the book. Extracts Kelly Oliver, David Michael Levin. As a book that from Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble (London, collects together such a wide range of materials, it Routledge 1990) and Bodies That Matter (London, furnishes an excellent starting point for students Routledge 1993) and reprinted articles from Susan concerned to explore a particular theme - the body Bordo sit alongside new pieces by Susan Hekman - within the Continental philosophical tradition. in the opening section on theory. The work of Iris Readers are given the opportunity both to engage Young, Bordo and Kathryn Pauly Morgan make with original texts and to explore some of the up the bulk of the final section on the ‘flesh of debates those original pieces have generated. The culture’. To readers familiar with feminist book also provides some intellectual background literature, there is thus little that is new here. The to the kinds of debates dealt with in The Body and utility of the book in this regard, is that it simply Flesh. Indeed at the end of the introduction, brings together pieces from disparate sources into Welton enjoins the reader to take up this latter one collection. work; a work whose ‘writers… take their bearings from the theories represented’ in The Body (p. 6). But this is not only a book about feminist What is intriguing for me, is that a collection like interventions in debates around the body. Each of The Body will sell to a large extent because of the the sections includes other kinds of material. The kinds of contemporary engagement with first section on ‘theory’ opens with a piece by Rom corporeality charted in The Body and Flesh. Harré on the distinction between sex and gender Although The Body is presented as prior, offering which is followed by an extract from Butler. The an account of the theories from which current juxtaposition of the two is useful in exposing the analysts of the body start, its very and complex ways in which the cultural and biological viability as a text may be said to come about are understood from within competing because of these latter-day concerns, concerns that philosophical perspectives. In a similar way, the are not exclusively, nor even predominantly, final piece in this opening section, in effect, takes philosophical. This is most definitely not to up the constructionist challenge posed by Butler denigrate either the collection nor the work and Bordo and argues for a ‘renaturalisation’ of contained therein; both illuminate key elements of the body. The central section displays work from the intellectual preoccupations that spawned positions as diverse as phenomenology, today’s fascination with the body. The Body serves a psychology, psychoanalysis and sociology, name- very useful purpose in pulling together this checking such thinkers as Husserl, Descartes, material for the reader. In order to fully appreciate Bourdieu and Chodorow along the way. While the the politics of the body that constitutes and is final section is again laden with feminist work, it constituted by the philosophical discourse of the also tackles issues such as the body in Hebrew and body, however, it needs the counterpart of The early Christian scripture, and at the other extreme, Body and Flesh. perhaps, the technological possibilities of virtual bodies. For me, it is this other work that is of most Moya Lloyd interest, because the least familiar and the least Queen's University, Belfast reproduced. For a course on the body, it would be a useful text to add to any reading list for it Stuart Sims (ed.), Post-: A Reader successfully conveys the diversity of current (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999) thinking on issues of corporeality.

Post-Structuralism & Radical Politics Newsletter No. 2 6 The humanities academic market is replete with and that Laclau and Mouffe underplay the rich readers. No matter what the topic a reader is to be variety of the Marxist tradition; Laclau and Mouffe found. Publishers are constantly on the lookout see in Geras’s insistence on remaining within the for a new theme, a new catch phrase, which might Marxist tradition a rigidity and inconsistency which capture an audience, squeeze a little more profit he cannot finally justify. Underlying this debate are out of an overly competitive market. Given these of course important political differences: Geras profit driven motives it is surprising that it has insists on the centrality of the working class to any taken so long for a reader in post-Marxism to find anti-capitalist project; for Laclau and Mouffe the its way into the bookshops. The publication of forms which political opposition to capitalism Stuart Sims’ book is then both cause for both takes cannot be read off from the structure of disappointment and celebration. Disappointment economic production independently of the variety as it shuts down one of those corners ignored by of antagonisms and identifications characteristic of the reader gargantuan until recently; ambivalent late capitalist societies. If anything the pertinence celebration because it establishes the credentials of of these debates is emphasised in the year 2000, post-Marxism as a cultural phenomenon which has with the resurgence of anti-capitalist protest across edged open the portals of academic publishing to the world, and the exploitation of new hegemonise a small slice of the publishing mill. technologies to challenge the hegemony of late capitalist political and economic institutions. My Sims has not himself an easy task. The moment one reservation about these selections is that Sims a label is attached to a ‘new academic movement’ ignores the theoretical core of Hegemony and Socialist is the moment when its limits become difficult to Strategy (the concepts of antagonism and establish. Suddenly it is obvious that post-Marxism hegemony developed in chapter 3 of that book) to has been with us ever since Marx wrote- in the focus instead on the political differences. As a spectres, ambiguities and uncertainties which consequence the substantive theoretical concerns haunt his text, in the irresolvable aporias which underlying these differences may remain structure academic Marxist debate of the twentieth mysterious to new readers. century: structure versus , necessity versus contingency, ideology versus . Moreover, The second section for the book is for me the obituaries have been read over Marx’s grave in most interesting. The main focus of this almost each decade of the last century: post-Marxist 100 pages (the largest section in the book) is on anxiety is no new phenomenon. Sims wisely sticks what Sims terms post-structuralist writing. He to the last decades of the twentieth century, includes selections from Lyotard, Baudrillard and selecting material from three traditions of thought: Derrida all with direct reference to Marx, all of debates regarding the post-Marxist work of Laclau which feed directly into post-Marxist theoretical and Mouffe; post-structuralist and post-modern reflection. The best piece is Lyotard’s attack (as interventions; and feminist critiques of western Sims terms it) on Marx culled from Libidinal Marxism. This selection both limits the ambit of Economy (1973). ‘The Desire Called Marx’ marks post-Marxism, while securing a delimited space for Lyotard’s break with Marxism, but also suggests an debate. aesthetic strand to post-Marxism which the dry, logical arguments of Laclau and Mouffe belie. The first section includes excerpts from the work Lyotard performs the conclusions that Laclau and of Laclau and Mouffe, as well as a representative Mouffe reach. As a consequence he rejects sample of the responses to their work- from both critique, rejects the standards of commensurable sympathetic and antagonistic critics. A key argument, and bemoans the paranoid guardians of moment in this debate was the exchange between leftist discourse who discipline the intertextual Geras and Laclau and Mouffe, in the pages of New libidinal strata which fragment the body of the Left Review during the 1980s. Geras’s ad hominem Marxist text. The moving body of capital exceeds attack on Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, linked to any theoretical discourse of unification he his trenchant rejection of ‘the impoverishment of suggests, thus bringing us back indirectly to one of Marxist thought’ sets a tone reminiscent of Marxist the themes raised by Laclau and Mouffe’s ideological warfare against the evils of capitalism, intervention. Can there be a politics of the left yet accents the substantive differences marked by once it is acknowledged that there are no the post-Marxist turn. Sims includes excerpts from privileged gateways though which we can enter the both this debate, and from Laclau and Mouffe’s hallowed halls of neutral and scientific . 1985 book Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Geras Lyotard’s ‘Memorial to Marxism’ refuses the wager holds that the charge of essentialism is misplaced, of establishing one discourse as trans-generic; Post-Structuralism & Radical Politics Newsletter No. 2 7 rather he views the universalising strand in assumptions of Marxist theory. It was given the lie Marxism as just another genre, which exists in to in many socialist countries where, if anything, uneasy simultaneity with others. He identifies the feminist revolution of the 1960s and 1970s was within Marxism a desire to set itself up as the judge, thwarted rather than furthered. Selections form who both identifies asymmetries and suggests a the work of Caroline Ramazanoglu and Sylvia resolution of the problems thus identified. In Walby address Marxism’s inability to address Lyotard’s view the desire to iron out paradox, to patriarchy, and suggest productive interplays seek sublation, relies on the establishment of just between Marxism and Feminism. Interestingly, such criteria, and, as a consequence, the none of the selections in this section of the book colonisation of other genres by one which seeks to reject Marxism as a theoretical framework out of maintain its own dominance. hand, instead focusing on those aspects of Marxism which complement feminist struggles This colonising imperative is identified too by against gender inequality, such as the question of Baudrillard’s The Mirror of Production, and Soja’s emancipation, and the recognition of household Postmodern Geographies. Baudrillard notes that labour as work. While this illuminates the Marxism identifies with two aspects of the modern productive interplay between Marxism and other project which its opposition to capitalism forms of political struggle, this section has the dissimulates. First, nature is signified as an ideal disadvantage of not highlighting those feminist , there to be exploited by man through writers who reject the Marxist text out of hand, production. Thus nature is deemed functional to such as the radical critique of Marxism by writers the satisfaction of certain natural human needs. such as Judith Butler and Michelle Barrett. This is The ‘human’ is thence defined in terms of this perhaps the weakest point of this collection, natural necessity and produced as the subject of ignoring as it does the identity politics of second capital and production. Marxism cannot escape wave feminism, and concentrating on productive these imperatives, and thus cannot feign to serve relations and patriarchy. as an alternative model for the transformation of human life. Its fate is already told in the story of Despite these reservations though this book is an nineteenth century political economy. informative and well-selected reader about the politics of Post-Marxism. Sims provide brief but These and other selections raise the question of informative introductions to all of the essays, and whether or not post-Marxism is a form of critique delivers a book which will be a useful reader for of contemporary political conditions, which allows undergraduate and graduate courses addressing the for the projection of an alternative politics arising question post-Marxist politics in the new century. from the , misapprehensions, and It is to be hoped that a reader such as this inspires lies presented as fate by the current system. Can students to go back to the primary texts, while we with any identify the imperatives of introducing them to the main concerns which the such a system in order that strategies of attack or critique of Marxism over the past three decades reform can be envisioned? If post-Marxism is to raises for a post-Marxist politics. avoid the misprision of twentieth century Marxist analysis does it have to acknowledge that this Mark Devenney misprision is a consequence of its own practice, Bath Spa University College and if so what are the implications of this recognition for the structuring of an alternative Philip Barker, Michel Foucault: An Introduction politics? The selections in this book do not really (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998). begin to answer these questions, and Derrida’s vague comments about democracy avenire, and about This is a puzzling book that seems to contain two the politics of a new International does little to distinct books within its pages. The first is, as the answer this question. author promises in his introduction, a book designed to offer "a number of entry points into The last section of the book addresses feminist the work of Michel Foucault in a way that is clear, challenges to Marxism. Selections from the work is easy to read and avoids an overly technical of Rosalind Coward and Heidi Hartmann point to vocabulary" (p.xi). The second is a book that the unspoken assumption within Marxist theory wishes to open up Foucault's work in a manner that questions of gender inequality can be that Barker argues is most faithful to Foucault's addressed once has been eliminated. own project, using his ideas to "think differently" This unwarranted optimism is built into the basic Post-Structuralism & Radical Politics Newsletter No. 2 8 or "think against" Foucault, taking Foucauldian itself became a central part of Foucault's texts such as the essay "What is Enlightenment?" theorisation of subjectivity as self-transformation as the starting-point for a "critical attitude" in his later years, and Barker quite rightly draws towards the present social and political world. This attention to this aspect of his work. Unlike many second approach appears to take Barker's book other theorists of his generation Foucault never away from the realm of being an introductory offered a systematic "Foucauldianism" for, as he textbook aimed at undergraduates in theory, wrote: "In this sense I consider myself more an philosophy, sociology and English and thus experimenter than a theorist; I don't develop somewhat compromises what is indeed an deductive systems to apply uniformly in different excellent account of this diverse thinker. fields of research. When I write, I do it above all The first five chapters offer a thematic to change myself and not to think the same thing introduction to Foucault's work and, generally, as before." these are clearly expressed and demonstrate that Occasionally in these expository chapters Barker knows Foucault's work very well indeed. Barker fails to offer the non-specialist introduction In eschewing a chronological framework for his he promised, and perhaps a slightly more book Barker has chosen a harder format for a contextualised account of Foucault's ideas might textbook, as students tend to prefer more also have been welcome, for example, one that traditional narrative strategies. But the book showed how certain of his interests, such as manages well to stitch the different parts of discipline and prisons, were linked to projects and Foucault's oeuvre together, linking the work on movements within during the early 1970s. power and to the later texts on But generally this part of the book succeeds in subjectivity, and the technologies of the self. demonstrating the continuing relevance for Chapter one commences with an overview of contemporary thought of Foucault's work. Foucault's views on authorship and the nature of a However, the last two chapters push the text, drawing mainly upon the essay "What is an book into quite different territory, and the student Author?" and the Archaeology of Knowledge. hoping for more succinct exposition might well This is a good place to start and, although Barker start to flounder at this point. The style becomes emphasises the implications for literary criticism of denser, other thinkers than Foucault are Foucault's non-biographical and anti-commentary introduced without much warning, and a more mode of criticism, the points about how we read personal tone, especially in the final chapter, texts are applicable - though rarely thought intervenes, with the author musing upon the through sufficiently - to any social science subject nature of the concept of "between" as a challenge that works upon authors and texts. In the second to metaphysical categories of thought alongside chapter Barker emphasises how Foucault's model semi-autobiographical remarks upon life in of a politics of discourse feeds into his account of Brisbane. Barker might protest that he is trying to power/knowledge. This chapter not only offers a develop the genre of the introductory textbook, useful account of Foucault's strategic sense of remaining faithful to Foucault's model of the power as a set of relations rather than a property, writer as experimenter, but these two chapters but also lists a set of features in Foucault's work stand out too much from the rest of the book to that might foster a "progressive" contemporary really work well. politics; it also swiftly rebuts the simplistic criticism of Foucault as a moral relativist that is all Chapter six, drawn from a conference paper, tries too frequently wheeled out in many places. to develop a form of productive critical Chapters three and four Foucault's ideas engagement with Foucault, one which refuses to upon subjectivity, examining his theorisation of simply knock down his arguments in the name of the intertwining of the human subject with the rise a more truthful or objective system, and which of a disciplinary society in Discipline and Punish. Barker terms "thinking against". This is more There is a fascinating account of the famed interesting work, but again somewhat distinct from meeting on television in the 1970s between what we might expect in an introductory text. Chomsky and Foucault that demonstrates how Overall this is an idiosyncratic book, much more Foucault's dismissal of the universals of human so than, for example, a similar book such as A nature and justice are not just statements designed Foucault Primer by Alec McHoul and Wendy Grace. to enrage and bewilder Chomsky (which they also This is no bad thing, perhaps, given the rather do), but are central to Foucault's rethinking of dreary format of most textbooks, but it does subjectivity in terms of the technologies of the self mean that Barker is only partially successful in his in his later work. Writing and philosophical work Post-Structuralism & Radical Politics Newsletter No. 2 9 employment of a more innovative style of writing literalization of the Christian doctrine of such an introduction. incarnation such that motion, history, logical 'transitions' etc. 'move' or happen as they do Andrew Thacker because of some extra-human agency, however University of Ulster at Jordanstown vaguely defined or alluded to. The argument of The Myth of is that an incarnatory view of John Rosenthal, The Myth of Dialectics: Reinterpreting matter, or an economic as dialectical the Marx-Hegel Relation (London/New York: materialists have construed it, is just as loopy as Macmillan, St. Martin's, 1998). Hegel's incarnatory view of spirit. An 'idealism of matter' is thus, in Rosenthal's view, just as The Marx-Hegel relationship was put to the world phantasmagorical as an idealism of concepts. In as a 'solution' to the 'problem' of understanding an inspired and productive burst of anger, Marx. This took place in mid-1859 in Engels's Rosenthal actually asks 'what in any case is material short and abbreviated review of Marx's (also short about a price'? Hallelujah! Or rather hooray. and abbreviated) A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. This review asserts that Marx is However, anger has its unproductive side as well. the worthy successor to Hegel in the pantheon of Rosenthal's book is written against what he terms wissenschaftlich systematizers, precisely because 'Hegeloid' Marxism, reputedly an attempt to Marx was in some sense the right kind of rewrite Marx in a Hegelian vein, rather than a philosopher of the sciences -- the sciences of materialist one, thus saving 'dialectics' from nature, history and thought.1 Ever since, it has -- and Stalinism, supposedly. Perhaps been another problem making sense of what fortunately there is not all that much about such Engels was trying to say about Marx—and Hegel, writers in The Myth of Dialectics, save brief notes and and materialism, and science, and (s) (und names, e.g. Tony Smith, C.J. Arthur, Jairus Banaji, so weiter, usw, usw ...)—precisely because Engels's Michael Eldred, Hans-Georg Backhaus -- nor is 'helpful' metaphorical apparatus of inversions and there very much effort expended in giving them a head-standings, rational kernels and mystical shells genealogy back to Lukács or Labriola or whoever. was far from perspicuous.2 Engels's comments Indeed all he really says in this regard is that their reinvoked a Young Hegelian argument and work was written as a response to the total and apparatus, and stimulated Marx—sadly, as unifying anti-Hegelianism of Jon Elster and John Rosenthal points out—to repeat and re-mix both Roemer in the later 1970s and the 1980s. This the concepts and even more importantly the basic tight focus has inspired Rosenthal to devote idea itself: that readers have to get straight about himself to the underlying texts and issues, but Marx and Hegel in order to appreciate the analysis rather unfortunately -- and inexplicably -- it has and argumentation of Capital. come between him and any research into those who have been thinking along lines similar to his Rosenthal actually solves the problem of what over the last 25 years or so, and the debates that Marx could have meant by 'coquetting' with have been generated. I am thinking here in Hegel's terminology in the exposition of the particular of David-Hillel Ruben's Marxism and conceptual transition from exchange-value to Materialism (on Hegelian philosophy and Christian money in Capital, and he has even persuaded me incarnation), the Terence Ball and James Farr that a (very limited) analogy here with Kant's edited collection After Marx (on a 'new transcendental method can be helpful in making materialism' in Marx), and -- apologies to all -- of sense of these passages. Briefly the argument is myself in Marx's Social Theory (on exchange- that Marx was semi-ironically warning the reader relations, money and the labour theory of value). that Hegelian terminology actually suited an Rosenthal's research runs as far as Roman exposition of a conceptual inherent in a very Rosdolsky and Jindrich Zeleny, which is fine as a specific set of concepts -- the concepts that define place to start, but both have been translated into and enable the experience of exchange-relations in English since the later 1960s (the latter by me), capitalist society. However (so the Marxian and they have found a place in the literature. warning continues), the reader should take care Somehow Rosenthal didn't find us. not to draw Marx himself and Hegel too closely together in more substantial ways, even if in some While this may look like a pathetic plea for some reversed, inverted or 'rational' form. Rosenthal 'billing', I am going to argue rather that attention rightly interprets Hegel's philosophy as a to this literature would have improved Rosenthal's argument immensely, and basically saved his Post-Structuralism & Radical Politics Newsletter No. 2 10 backside. Ultimately his reading of Marx fails to something human. This is basically the argument convince -- me, anyway -- precisely because his of commodity fetishism that Marx derived from excellent inquiry into exchange-value does not Charles de Brosses5 (humans attribute magical or push on to deal with labour. By structuring his divine powers to idols -- which are of course reading and exposition of Capital around 'The material and inanimate -- and so constitute social Marx-Hegel Relation' (and its most recent re- relations of power for priestly classes). Rosenthal interpreters) Rosenthal has failed to engage with is right, and original -- I think -- in drawing a Marx's covert affair with . This is precise analogy here between commodity fetishism deployed in Marx's own assumptions about and the way that Hegelian philosophy works (spirit abstract labour as a substance, or quasi-substance, manifesting itself in the human institutions and and its role as reductio of the labouring activities events that constitute changing power relations in that for Marx constitute the sum total of social history). Or as Rosenthal puts it: 'For in labour. Given that Rosenthal aims to defend his examining the phenomena of economic value—all reading of Marx as itself a useful and productive of which are in effect, monetary-phenomena—Marx critique of capitalist social production, this seems made the curious discovery of an object domain in to me a fair point on which to take him up. In which the inverted relation between the universal other words, there is an important part of and the particular which constitutes the distinctive Rosenthal's exposition that is forever Marxist principle of Hegelian in fact obtains' (though not obviously Hegelian), and that when it (p. 147). This serves not so much to illuminate is subjected to the kind of reading strategy that Marx as to overshadow Hegel. In other words, drives the rest of Rosenthal's excellent critique, it Marx would have been better off saying what he will have to go down as well. had to say, using precisely the concepts that he did, without cutely signposting to readers any The reading strategy that Rosenthal deploys in The coquetting with terminology that resembles Myth of Dialectics is admirably radical as a method. Hegel's dialectical thinking, but in a merely He begs no questions in that he honestly asks: superficial and potentially misleading way. what if anything is 'Hegelian' in Marx? what could 'Hegelian' have meant to him, at different times, Here is where I start to diverge from Rosenthal and in different works? what did Engeloid (and Marx). Both Rosenthal and Marx rush rather Marxists identify as 'Hegelian', and why did they too quickly, I think, to an ill-defined historical think it was good? what is Marx trying to say in the thesis that and capitalism have 'Hegelian' sections of his analysis? why is so little something special in common (there is nothing of the rest of Marx's analysis even apparently like a vague idea for sparking generations of 'Hegelian'? and -- the Big One -- what, from a academic controversy, and sometimes some rather contemporary perspective, is actually going on in good books, cf. Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic Hegel anyway? and the Spirit of Capitalism). Rosenthal wants to argue that Marx's account of money as an This is truly refreshing, and it is difficult to incarnation of value traces both a Hegelian overpraise it. Rosenthal ultimately sees Hegel's philosophical pattern (albeit unimportantly) and an philosophy as not so much Christian in some economic truth in historical development (vastly Biblical or doctrinal sense, as imbued with a important), or as he says, 'the money commodity is derived from, but also deviating from, the Christ of commodities' (p. 187). Whereas, I Christian ideas of the Incarnation -- God think that historically, sociologically and manifesting Himself in the material world and the conceptually the more general argument about historical world, both universally and particularly, religious and economic fetishism works much even in the person of just one human, His Son. better because it says enough, and because it is (There is a thesis waiting to be written on Hegel universally applicable. You don't really need and Rosicrucianism .... I'm serious!4) Rosenthal is Christ to make sense of money as a term in Marx's really saying that there is a merely accidental analysis of value in exchange, but it certainly helps similarity, no more than that, between the to have a sense of idolatry and class-politics. Still, structure of the (imaginary) Christian cosmos and the specifics of Hegel's version of Christian the 'real world of commodity exchange' (p. 140). mysticism may have helped Marx to sharpen his Marx's genius in his consideration of value and method of investigation and incidentally to say money is to see them as conceptual incarnations something lowering about Christianity (always a (realized in the social relations and material things political and intellectual temptation). But then, as we call 'economic'), not of anything divine, but of we know from various comments that Marx made Post-Structuralism & Radical Politics Newsletter No. 2 11 along the way, he was inclined at some points to provides him with an explanation not only for minimize 'Hegelian' qualities in his presentation, stable exchange-values but also for profit, i.e. and at other points to agree with some reviewers value-expansion. Trying to resolve an apparent that his work resembled Hegel's in ways that could paradox—getting something out of nothing, which be important, though why and in what contexts is allegedly can't be true—Marx scoffs at the political not really explored. I guess that for Marx there economists' inability to find the solution to the was no bad publicity. riddle (and he sniffs at 's lack of ambition in putting the problem aside so quickly). The use Continuing this theme, I move on to labour in of the concept 'labour-power' as a property Marx's conceptual exposition, and to Aristotle and specific to human labour as a substance is traditional school-philosophy, which Marx does famously Marx's solution -- supposedly this not highlight, nor do his reviewers and property, ascribed only to humans (why not other commentators (until recently).6 However, animals ...?), means that human labour-power is Rosenthal's reading strategy should really have capable of producing more labour as output than extended a bit further, namely to asking questions is required in labour-terms as an input. Marx was not just about Marx's theory of exchange-value terribly pleased with this solution, and it is very and money, where fetishism and Hegel do have elegant and neat. But I think that it is also terribly their respective expository and analytical value, but problematic, and it could do with a good dose of also about Marx's delicately balanced link with a Rosenthal's radical reading strategy (which, labour theory of value, and the notable intricacies needless to say, I have already tried to do in print). of his critique of the political economists (not to Rosenthal, though, leaves this area of Marx's mention the ambivalence of his link with analysis just as it is. Aristotle's discussion of labour and money). As with the political economists, and so with The real problem with Marx's concept of labour, I Aristotle, Marx both agrees and disagrees with think, is that he presumes that the activities which what (he thinks) they say. Rosenthal simply does in different societies are termed 'labour' must all not explore this, but rather assumes, or apparently necessarily have 'something in common' Whereas assumes, that Marx's exposition of the nature of I think that this is a classic category mistake, and labour, labour-power, and abstract and concrete that Wittgenstein's ' resemblance' is actually labour are all unexceptionable and sensible ways of the more convincing way to understand what explaining how capitalism works. I'm afraid that I labour is. On that method, we do not just assume don't think that this aspect of Marx's analysis does that because we use the same word to describe work, although -- relief! -- I think that it can be various things or activities it follows that they must severed from Marx's more productive theory of all have something in common. Instead we 'look value-in-exchange as a fetishism that licences class- and see'. What we see is more like the varying politics, much as Rosenthal describes it. sorts of differences that we see (or think we see) amongst family members when we say that they It seems to me that Marx posits labour as a are family-members. Thus I am not persuaded substance, or quasi-substance, in a reductio of the that there is any 'natural' category of activity labouring activities in society that he thinks are 'labour' such that a common substance or reductio required by the supposedly equational character of (the expenditure of abstract labour-power) is the value-exchange. This provides him with two reason why we use the term 'labour' as a universal things. Firstly, an explanation of what value (at to distinguish these activities from others. some distant level of abstraction) is supposed to represent, since he rejects the argument (or get- Basically I think that our use of 'labour' is both out) in Aristotle (and in 'modern' economics from socially constructed differently in different Jevons onwards) that value is simply a contingent societies, and also messy as anything in each. and subjective ascription of 'worth' in money- Moreover Marx's evident argument that this terms, and that therefore profit (or loss) effectively 'common something' in labour is explicable as a comes out of nothing. Rather Marx follows the substance, or quasi-substance (i.e. it is a line of thought in Smith and Ricardo that value potential—labour-power—that is expended and must stand for something substantial that materialized, and is measurable, at least in terms of exchangeable commodities have in common, and 'more' and 'less') is merely stipulated (it is said 'to that this common substance must have something happen' behind the backs of exchangers), rather to do with labour. Secondly, Marx's view that than demonstrated in more detailed and labour is a substance, or quasi-substance, also convincing terms. To make matters worse, the Post-Structuralism & Radical Politics Newsletter No. 2 12 labour-substance defies even the laws of Anthony Elliott (ed.), The Blackwell Reader in Aristotelian physics by producing more of itself Contemporary Social Theory (Blackwell, Oxford and out of itself for no good reason other than that Massachusetts, 1999). this hypothesis is the one that 'solves' the 'problem' of profit. Incidentally, it also builds a Will ‘contemporary social theory’ ever lose its naturalized ratchet into capitalist economic contemporaniety? If we take the phrase to refer to relations in the form of the tendency of the rate of whatever is current in social theory at a given time profit to fall (as variable capital -- from which any then one might be tempted to say that it will never profit derives -- is said to decline as a proportion fade away, that it will always refer to the cutting of total capital in the system). This of course edge of social analysis regardless of what the provides a kind of guarantee of revolutionary future has in store for ‘social theory’. But this possibilities, given that worsening crises not only seems counter-intuitive on a number of fronts. affect the proletariat but also the bourgeoisie, and First, such a blasé answer to the problem of indeed the latter decline in number. Evidently for contemporaniety is at odds with the acute Marx this was another good analytical reason for temporal sensitivity that marks much of what we opting for the labour-power solution, but for the call ‘contemporary social theory’. If there is one rest of us, I suggest, the reasoning is backwards in thing we can be sure of as regards contemporary that the conclusion drives the axioms. Rosenthal social theory it is that it is obsessed with change, needs to ask some hard questions about labour transformation, temporal disjunctions and novelty and its role in Marx's analysis, and also in a all because it is obsessed with the rapidly changing convincing political economy of the present. here and now. Under different conditions, say post-postmodern ones, contemporary social Summing up, I would say that this is a good book theory may look very old hat indeed; my guess is about Marx. It centres Capital. It challenges several that ‘contemporary’ may come to signal a strangely Marxisms old and new. It is highly textual about presentist attitude in social theory, an attitude both Marx and Hegel. It pays admirable tribute to arising from the fact that ‘we theorists’ emerged Wal Suchting, whose work had similar . But caught between our post-WW2 insecurities and there are inexplicable and damaging 'silences' in our millenial fantasies. A second reason for the research, and that is at least partly the reason questioning the on-going, timeless nature of why the author doesn't carry his reading strategy contemporary social theory is that there are vast and general argument as deep into the issues as he tracts of social analysis currently in existence that could (and should) have done. do not fall under the remit of contemporary social theory. And it is not just that these other forms of Terrell Carver social inquiry are not theoretical, or not influential, University of Bristol even if they are contemporary. Rather, the borders of this territory we occupy called NOTES contemporary social theory are very well policed 1. This review is discussed in detail in Terrell Carver, indeed. If we do not exactly know what it is that Engels (Oxford: OUP, 1981, repr. 1991), ch 7. we do that makes us all contemporary social 2. The origins of these mixed metaphors in Engels's theorists we certainly know that it is not what early Young Hegelian writings is discussed in detail those other social theorists call social theory. So in Terrell Carver, Marx and Engels: The Intellectual there is, at least, a negative definition of Relationship (Brighton: Harvester/Wheatsheaf, 1983), ch. 4, esp. pp. 105-6. contemporary social theory that suggests that it is 3. , Texts on Method, ed. and trans. Terrell temporally specific and, therefore, capable of Carver (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975), pp. XX; becoming non-contemporary; ‘that old-fashioned Rosenthal cites this volume, though not this contemporary social theory’ students will say when section. asked about Foucault, Habermas, Gilroy, 4. See Philosophy of Right, trans. T.M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957 and repr.), p. 303 n. Haraway, Butler and the like. Related to the fact 34. that contemporary social theory tends to define 5. See Karl Marx, Texts on Method, ed. and trans. itself negatively, against other social theory is the Terrell Carver (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975, pp. 11, 175 fact that when it does try to define itself positively n. in the abstract and/or in terms of its research 6. See Scott Meikle, Essentialism in the Thought of Karl Marx (London: Duckworth, 1984). practice it breaks apart. In some sense, contemporary social theory is already old- fashioned; the new kids on the block are a new

Post-Structuralism & Radical Politics Newsletter No. 2 13 liberal political theory, psycho-Hegelianism, post- Most of all, though, in bringing these texts colonial theory, queer theory, theories of the body together Elliott has done a great service to all and so on. Contemporary social theory has cast its those who have ‘contemporary social theory’ listed seeds to the winds but it may have forfeited its under their research interests by highlighting two own life in the process. There is always the fundamental axioms of life; (a) ‘all that is born possibility, then, that far from being a timeless must die’ and (b) ‘carpe diem’. pursuit of the grounds of social theory, or for that matter a quaint historical experiment, Iain MacKenzie contemporary social theory will be dead within Queen's University, Belfast one or two generations. That contemporary social theory should face up to this possible end is the Simon Critchley and William R. Schroeder (eds), A only thing that may prolong its life. Companion to (Oxford, Blackwell, 1999). The great merit, to my mind, of Elliott’s collection is that he explicitly deals with these conundrums. The market for academic dictionaries, He avoids the pitfalls of a timeless presentation by encyclopaedias, companions and the like is giving contemporary social theory a history and a apparently inexhaustible. At any rate the desire of future, a context and a transgressive momentum. publishing houses to produce an ever expanding The history is to be found in the texts he selects by range of such guides can be discerned from a Marcuse, Barthes, Lacan and Foucault while the cursory survey of the philosophy shelves of future is to be found in the extracts, for example, virtually any bookshop, and some level of demand from Honneth, Gilman and Weeks (theorists who must be being met, as well as engendered, by the would not normally make their way into abundant supply. After discussing this addition to collections of this kind). The context is to be the Blackwell Companion series I will briefly offer found in the neatly structured Parts - ‘The Theory some more general comments on the role of the of the Subject’, ‘Social Structure and Institutional revived dictionary genre as a whole. Analysis’, ‘Contemporary ’, ‘Race, Multiculturalism, ’, ‘Feminism, Gender Critchley and Schroeder take Kant as their point and Sexual Difference’, ‘The of departure, and in 56 roughly chronological Modernity/Postmodernity Debate’ - while the essays examine a thorough range of figures transgressive momentum is in the choices Elliott arranged under thematic headings such as ‘The has made to represent each heading. For instance, Kantian Legacy’, ‘Three Generations of Critical the inclusion of Castoriadis in Part One gives a Theory’, etc., sensibly avoiding controversies very interesting flavor to discussions on concerning boundaries between structuralism, subjectivity, a flavor that is often excluded from poststructuralism, and the dishes one is usually served on this topic. by treating theorists from Lévi- Similarly, under the banner of ‘Contemporary Strauss onwards under the heading ‘Structuralism Critical Theory’, Wellmer’s inclusion speaks and After.’ Virtually all of the usual suspects are volumes as regards Elliott’s independence of mind covered, but as Simon Critchley notes, any attempt in making these selections given that Wellmer’s to be absolutely comprehensive is doomed to work has yet to gain wide recognition in the failure. Cixous, Virilio and Zizek are for example Anglophone world. So, this is a collection that absent, and others will doubtless identify other captures the state of contemporary social theory significant omissions. More troublingly, of 58 with aplomb. The selections reveal a deep chapters only five are written by women, and all awareness of the ever decreasing contemporaniety but five are devoted to male theorists. Vive la of contemporary social theory as it gives us both Différance... the classics of the canon, texts currently in the midst of their mid-life crisis, and the next The entries range from six to a dozen pages in generation of texts already proclaiming the length, the average being towards the lower end of inadequacies of their parents. This family portrait the range. Inevitably, all are constrained by their neatly captures the family resemblances and the limited length - it is simply not possible to do family squabbles, both of which at least remind us justice to the subtlety and complexity of any that ‘we contemporary social theorists’ are still a significant thinker within such a limit. The cost of family. brevity is often a sense of the literary and grammatical originality typical of the writers considered: the force and effectiveness of much Post-Structuralism & Radical Politics Newsletter No. 2 14 ‘Continental’ thought is often a matter of American academy’ (p. 5) and entertainingly conceptual and stylistic originality which is excoriating Anthony Quinton’s contributions to difficult, if not impossible, to convey within a the 1995 Oxford Companion to Philosophy as an truncated essay. instance of the ‘lingering prejudice’ and ‘intellectually intolerant’ attitudes still prevalent Typically, biographical is coupled with within the analytic establishment. William a synopsis of major works and an estimation of the Schroeder’s afterword takes on the difficult task of historical contribution and/or continuing attempting to draw the entries, and hence the relevance of a particular thinker. Exegesis is tradition, together. This is deftly achieved by an overwhelmingly sympathetic and clear, but a approach which offers a series of ‘perspectival cumulative overview of the development of maps’ (conceived after Nietzsche) to the reader Continental thought does not emerge with the rather than a narrative of ‘winners’ and ‘losers’, distinctiveness sought by the editors. Although the and through the identification of a series of essays are superficially linked - for example, ‘decision points’ from which future developments Robert Bernasconi’s entry on Arendt appropriately are predicted to arise: metaphysical and ontological directs the reader to others on Heidegger, Husserl, issues of dialectical method, historicity, Jaspers and Kant - it is often the case that each interpretation, reason and the self; and issues of functions as a freestanding capsule introduction. value orientation towards enlightenment, culture The continuity necessary to fully identify the and foundational concepts. Schroeder’s favoured character of the relationships obtaining between resolution of these debates is only sketchily theorists, despite the detailed index provided for indicated in his final section, but is the subject of a this purpose, is difficult to identify within the text. promised future work.

These comments are not intended not intended as Keith Spence criticisms of the individual essays, which are useful University College, Scarborough and informative, especially on ‘minor’ figures - in particular within , Phenomenology and - who tend to fall outside the current curriculum due to the vagaries of time, intellectual fashion and student demand. Many of the entries, such as Thomas McCarthy on Habermas, Richard Kearney on Ricoeur and Douglas Kellner on Marcuse, offer stimulating overviews of their subjects, and John Caputo’s ten pages on Heidegger stand out as a dense but comprensible interpretation which attends succinctly to the problems of the ‘turn’ and National without becoming overwhelmed by them. Inevitably, some are less satisfactory than others. Jacob Rogozinski’s five pages on Lyotard, for example, treat works prior to Le Différend in an unduly cursory fashion and have not been updated since the 1998 hardback edition to acknowledge Lyotard’s death. Until recently this might have been regarded as an understandable economy, but given the tedious sophistication of modern DTP technology it is surely not beyond Blackwell’s to include such minor but fundamental revisions in a paperback print run.

Simon Critchley’s introduction offers a careful and lively breakdown and critique of the tenuous Analytic/Continental divide, along the way identifying ‘Continental philosophy’ as a pathological ‘invention...or projection of the Anglo- Post-Structuralism & Radical Politics Newsletter No. 2 15 membership form

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Post-Structuralism & Radical Politics Newsletter No. 2 16