Marx and its discontents: five constructive critiques to Marxian thought

In-class presentation and paper (optional).

The course is open to all students enrolled in the MA and PhD programs of the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences. It is recommended to students who are interested in high-level theoretical engagement with social theory.

This course discusses five types of critiques and revisions of Karl Marx’s political philosophy, which are particularly relevant for contemporary social theory: 1) The cultural critique of Marxian economic determinism, the Gramscian notion of hegemony, and their application to the discursive reading of populism; 2) The feminist critique of the Marxian notion of productive labor and its influence on contemporary political theories of care and social reproduction; 3) the autonomist interpretation of the Marxian concept of the general intellect and its significance for the analysis of new forms of accumulation and division of labor in the age of AI; 4) the postcolonial critique of Marx’s supposed Eurocentrism; 5) and the political ecology critique of the nature-capitalism nexus in Marx’s writings. Taken all together, these five critiques will allow students who are interested in working in the (post-)Marxist tradition to refine their theoretical approaches and apply them to social and political research.