Book contents
- After Marx
- After Series
- After Marx
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Black Marxism and the Antinomies of Racial Capitalism
- Chapter 2 Eco-Criticism and Primitive Accumulation in Indigenous Studies
- Chapter 3 Screening Insurrection: Marx, Cinema, Revolution
- Chapter 4 Marxist Ecology and Shakespeare
- Chapter 5 There Is No “More Commodification”: Periodizing Capitalist Transformation
- Chapter 6 The Irreconcilable: Marx after Literature
- Chapter 7 The Rise and Fall of the English-Language Literary Novel since World War II
- Chapter 8 Literature and the State
- Chapter 9 Post-Soviet Aesthetics
- Chapter 10 Lu Xun’s Literary Revolution in Chinese Marxism
- Chapter 11 Latin American Literature and Dependency Theory Today
- Chapter 12 Industry Culture: Labor and Technology in Marxist Critical Theory
- Chapter 13 In Service to Capital: Theater and Marxist Cultural Theory
- Chapter 14 Hidden Abodes and Inner Bonds: Literary Study and Marxist-Feminism
- Chapter 15 Poetry and Revolution
- Index
- References
Chapter 1 - Black Marxism and the Antinomies of Racial Capitalism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 March 2022
Book contents
- After Marx
- After Series
- After Marx
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Black Marxism and the Antinomies of Racial Capitalism
- Chapter 2 Eco-Criticism and Primitive Accumulation in Indigenous Studies
- Chapter 3 Screening Insurrection: Marx, Cinema, Revolution
- Chapter 4 Marxist Ecology and Shakespeare
- Chapter 5 There Is No “More Commodification”: Periodizing Capitalist Transformation
- Chapter 6 The Irreconcilable: Marx after Literature
- Chapter 7 The Rise and Fall of the English-Language Literary Novel since World War II
- Chapter 8 Literature and the State
- Chapter 9 Post-Soviet Aesthetics
- Chapter 10 Lu Xun’s Literary Revolution in Chinese Marxism
- Chapter 11 Latin American Literature and Dependency Theory Today
- Chapter 12 Industry Culture: Labor and Technology in Marxist Critical Theory
- Chapter 13 In Service to Capital: Theater and Marxist Cultural Theory
- Chapter 14 Hidden Abodes and Inner Bonds: Literary Study and Marxist-Feminism
- Chapter 15 Poetry and Revolution
- Index
- References
Summary
This essay offers a genealogy of the term “racial capitalism” as it has been used to reflect upon the promise and limitations of Marxism for understanding racism. The essay departs from Cedric Robinson’s important history and theory of black radicalism, Black Marxism and the Making of the Black Radical Tradition, which first established the provenance of the idea of racial capitalism for scholarly inquiry. It proceeds by outlining a longer intellectual history of Black engagements with coeval determination, and relative strategic importance of, racial domination and economic exploitation for understanding the movements of Black history from slavery to civil rights. Beginning in the New Deal era and extending through the neoliberal era, it traces a line of thinking that extends from W. E. B. Du Bois, C. L. R. James in the 1930s, through key writings on Marxism and race by Stuart Hall in the 1970s and 1980s, and culminating in contemporary analyses of the interplay of racism and capitalism in the rise of mass incarceration in the US in work of Ruth Wilson Gilmore.
Keywords
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- After MarxLiterature, Theory, and Value in the Twenty-First Century, pp. 23 - 39Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022
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