Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 October 2007
Karl Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte can be read as a guidebook, but it is also a site of pilgrimage for those seeking to come to terms with the Marxist legacy, from within and from without. This essay examines the reading and citing of The Eighteenth Brumaire by Marxist and non-Marxist political analysts, historians of the Second Republic, and cultural theorists. Invoking this text and claiming to rescue it from the distorted glosses others have given it, readers both confront and evade their own political and intellectual anxieties.