Marx: Towards the Centre of Possibility by Kōjin Karatani, and: Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition by Cedric J. Robinson, and: Marx in Motion: A New Materialist Marxism by Thomas Nail, and: Transgender Marxism ed. by Jules Joanne Gleeson and Elle O'Rourke

Abstract

Reviewed by: Marx: Towards the Centre of Possibilityby Kōjin Karatani, and: Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Traditionby Cedric J. Robinson, and: Marx in Motion: A New Materialist Marxismby Thomas Nail, and: Transgender Marxismed. by Jules Joanne Gleeson and Elle O'Rourke Matthew Bost Kōjin Karatani, Marx: Towards the Centre of Possibility. Trans. Gavin Walker. London: Verso Books, 2020. 160 pp. Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. 3rdEd. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. 429 pp. Thomas Nail, Marx in Motion: A New Materialist Marxism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. 247 pp. Jules Joanne Gleeson and Elle O'Rourke, eds. Transgender Marxism. London: Pluto Press, 2021. 305 pp. In the conclusion to "What is an Author?" Michel Foucault singles out Karl Marx as one example of an "uncommon kind of author" whose name is not merely attached to a set of texts, a system of belief or a scientific discipline. Whereas these more common forms of authorship treat the author of a text or theory as an originary point that can be imitated, challenged, or discredited, Marx functions instead as someone who produces a set of "rules for the formation of other texts" that render his thinking internally heterogeneous, "creat[ing] a possibility for […] texts, concepts and hypotheses" that differ from Marx's while nonetheless belonging to the discursive field he founded. This sense of internal heterogeneity prompts a continual "return to origin" on the part of those indebted to Marx, a "reexamination of Marx's [texts]" that "modifies Marxism" by re-performing it from new perspectives and in new historical conjunctures, while retaining Marx's relevance as the proper name attached to an evolving logic of practices. One can find examples of this heterogeneity in Marx's continual revision of [End Page 268]his theories throughout his own life, from his immanent critique of philosophy to his working-through of the failure of the 1848 revolutions, his turn to political economy, and his late grappling with the Paris Commune. Insights like Foucault's have also grounded a robust tradition of conceptually focused re-readings of Marx that emphasize the internal heterogeneity of his thought. These readings include, at a minimum, Louis Althusser's diagnosis of an "epistemological break" between an earlier humanist and later materialist Marx, Jean-François Lyotard's pluralization of Marx into a swarm of desires and affects, Jacques Derrida's interrogation of the ambivalent specters haunting Marx's work, Thomas Kemple's and Charles Barbour's engagement with Marx's criticism of other authors as a form of rhetorical invention, and Barbour's reading of Marx's texts in The Marx Machineas a fragmentary collection of conceptual machines, "disassembled in a manner that opens onto innumerable possible assemblages" outside the circumstances of their composition. Finally, the power of continual returns to Marx has been felt every time his work has been re-performed in a new political context, from the debates in the various Internationals, to those who used Marx's work as a standpoint from which to critique the USSR and other "actually existing socialisms." It also extends to the ways that Marx's work has been a resource for anti-colonial politics, traditions of Black radicalism and Indigenous resistance, feminist and queer analyses of reproductive labor and sexuality under capitalism, and recent discussions of communicative and platform capitalism, tendencies discussed respectively by Vijay Prashad, Robin D.G. Kelley, Glen Sean Coulthard, Silvia Federici, Kevin Floyd, and Nick Snricek, to name just a few. This brief sketch indicates the vast resources that have emerged from thinking through Marx's differences and breaks with himself, from re-signifying his concepts, and from subjecting him to immanent critique that points out the partiality of his perspective while maintaining the radical horizon of his work. It also prompts more specific questions that might guide future scholarly and political uses of Marx's work: What rhetorical or critical moves have accompanied the return(s) to origin Foucault discusses? What can these moves tell us about useful ways to place Marx's texts in conversation with new perspectives and contexts? And...