Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T01:29:48.330Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - Liberation theory: variations on themes of Marxism and modernity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

Crystal Bartolovich
Affiliation:
Syracuse University, New York
Neil Lazarus
Affiliation:
University of Warwick
Get access

Summary

It must initially appear improbable that disciplinary fields constituted around critiques of capitalism and colonialism have given a meager reception to liberation theory. I will return to a tendency among postcolonial critics to disown liberation discourses and practices, and indeed all forms of anticolonialist rhetoric and organization. But first I want to consider why so few of the major Marxist metatheorists in Europe undertook to examine the roads taken by Marxism on colonial terrains. Even if we allow that analyses inspired by Leninist strategies for class and anti-imperialist struggles diverged from the epistemological and aesthetic concerns of Marxisms in the advanced capitalist countries, this indifference takes its place within the wider and longstanding exclusion of non-western knowledge from the canons compiled by metropolitan scholars. In a wide-ranging and provocative essay Göran Therborn acknowledges that Marxism became “the main intellectual culture of two major movements of the dialectics of modernity: the labour movement and the anti-colonial movement” (1996: 74). Yet when considering “Marxism in the New Worlds,” he underestimates the creativity and innovations of Latin American and Asian Marxisms, makes remarkably flimsy allusions to its Chinese form, and joins a larger constituency in rejecting Africa as a player in the discourses of Marxism and modernity. Thus while singling out the Martinican Fanon for his capturing of the violent traumata of modernity in the colonial zone, he goes on to assert that most important Marxist intellectuals of Africa tend to be non-black:

Black African culture very different from the Marxist dialectic of modernity, has not (yet) been able to sustain any significant Marxist intelligentsia. (78)

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×