Borrowing practices in modern revolution-making: from Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte to Rancière’s The Names of History
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.38140/aa.v55i2.7731Keywords:
Karl Marx, Jacques Rancière, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, performative politicsAbstract
Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte has served as a locus classicus for postmodern interpretations of Marxism’s contemporary legacy and relevancy due to its thematisation of the performative, imaginary, psychological and linguistic aspects of revolutionary politics. This work has been used to redeem and rethink Marxian revolutionary politics along postmodern lines beyond its orthodox varieties, positioning Marx as an important forerunner of contemporary “post-Marxian” radical philosophy. I here argue that Jacques Rancière should feature prominently in this scholarship on the so-called postmodern Marx. Although having first offered a scathing reading of The Eighteenth Brumaire in The Philosopher and His Poor (1983), I demonstrate how Rancière offers a more affirmative yet implicit interpretation in The Names of History (1992). By determining the nature, value and potential of Rancière’s poststructuralist reworking of central themes from The Eighteenth Brumaire, I aim to deepen understanding of radical politics’s performative and affective aspects.
Downloads
References
Benjamin W. 2007. The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. In: Arendt H (ed). Illuminations: essays and reflections. New York: Schocken Books.
Braudel F. 1972. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean world in the age of Philip II. Volume I. New York: Harper and Row.
Butler J. 2002. Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. New York and London: Routledge.
Carver T. 2002. Imagery/writing, imagination/politics: reading Marx through the Eighteenth Brumaire. In: Cowling M and Martin J (eds). Marx’s ‘Eighteenth Brumaire’: (post)modern interpretations. London: Pluto Press.
Carver T. 1998. The postmodern Marx. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Clark T. 1973. The absolute bourgeois: artists and politics in France 1848-1851. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Cobban A 1999. The social interpretation of the French revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
M Cowling and J Martin J (eds). 2002. Marx’s ‘Eighteenth Brumaire’: (post)modern interpretations. London: Pluto Press.
Cowling M. 2002. Marx’s Lumpenproletariat and Murray’s Underclass: Concepts Best Abandoned? In: M Cowling and J Martin (eds). Marx’s ‘Eighteenth Brumaire’: (post)modern interpretations. London: Pluto Press, pp. 228-242.
Davis O. 2010. Jacques Rancière. Cambridge and Malden: Polity Press.
Derrida J. 1994. Spectres of Marx: the state of the debt, the work of mourning and the New International. New York: Routledge.
Hallward P. 2009. Staging equality: Rancière’s theatrocracy and the limits of anarchic equality. In: Rockhill G and Watts P (eds). Jacques Rancière: history, politics, aesthetics. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Hill C. 1995. The English Bible and the seventeenth-century revolution. London: Penguin.
Hobbes T. 1642. De cive: philosophical rudiments concerning government and society.
Hobbes T. 1651. Leviathan or the matter, forme and power of a commonwealth ecclesiasticall and civil.
Laclau E and Mouffe C. 1985. Hegemony and socialist strategy: towards a radical democratic politics. London: Verso.
Man J. 2009. The Gutenberg revolution: the story of a genius and an invention that changed the world. New York: Bantam Books.
Martin J. 2002. Performing politics: class, ideology and discourse in Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire. In: Cowling M and Martin J (eds). Marx’s ‘Eighteenth Brumaire’: (post)modern interpretations. London: Pluto Press.
Marx K. 2002. The eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. In: Cowling M and Martin J (eds). Marx’s ‘Eighteenth Brumaire’: (post)modern interpretations. London: Pluto Press.
Marx K and Engels F. 1992 [1848]. The communist manifesto. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Marx K. 1978. The class struggles in France 1848-1850. Marx/Engels collected works. Vol. 10. New York: International Publishers.
Nikulin D. 2012. The names of history: Rancière’s new historical poetics. In: Deranty J-P and Ross A (eds). Jacques Rancière and the contemporary scene: the philosophy of radical equality. London and New York: Continuum.
Pauwels M. 2015. The spectre of radical aesthetics in the work of Jacques Rancière. PhD thesis. Pretoria: University of Pretoria.
Price R. 2002. Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte: ‘hero’ or ‘grotesque mediocrity?’ In: Cowling M and Martin J (eds). Marx’s ‘Eighteenth Brumaire’: (post)modern interpretations. London: Pluto Press.
Rancière J. 2011. Althusser’s lesson. London and New York: Continuum.
Rancière J. 2007. On the shores of politics. London and New York: Verso.
Rancière J. 2005. From politics to aesthetics? Paragraph 28(1): 13-25.
Rancière J. 2003. The philosopher and his poor. Durham and London: Duke University.
Rancière J. 1999. Disagreement: politics and philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Rancière J. 1994. The names of history: on the poetics of knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Rancière J. 1989. The nights of labour: the worker’s dream in nineteenth-century France. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Renault E. 2012. The many Marx of Jacques Rancière. In: Deranty J-P and Ross A (eds). Jacques Rancière and the contemporary scene: the philosophy of radical equality. London and New York: Continuum.
Thomson A. 2011. On the shores of history. In: Bowman P and Stamp R (eds). Critical dissensus: reading Rancière. London and New York: Continuum.
Watts P. 2010. Heretical history and the poetics of knowledge. In: Deranty J-P (ed). Jacques Rancière: key concepts. Durham: Acumen.
Watkins G. 2002. The appeal of Bonapartism. In: Cowling M and Martin J (eds). Marx’s ‘Eighteenth Brumaire’: (post)modern interpretations. London: Pluto Press.
Webb D. 2002. Here content transcends phrase: The eighteenth Brumaire as the key to understanding Marx’s critique of utopian socialism. In: Cowling M and Martin J (eds). Marx’s ‘Eighteenth Brumaire’: (post)modern interpretations. London: Pluto Press.
Woodford C. 2017. Subjects of subversion: Rancière and Butler on the aesthetics of politics. In: Street A, Alliot J and Pauker M (eds). Inter views in performance philosophy: Crossings and conversations. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
##submission.downloads##
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Matthias Pauwels
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
