Fall 2012

CULT 860

Contemporary Marxism

Monday 4.30 (West 1001)

Professor Paul Smith

psmith5@gmu.edu

http://mason.gmu.edu/~psmith5/

Phone: 3-4206

Office hours by appointment

SCHEDULE

August 27^th is our introductory class and, because of Labor Day,
Sept 10^th is the first full session. We will then meet every Monday, except that,
as per the university calendar, we will meet Tuesday October 9^th
instead of October 8^th. Last class is December 3^rd and any work
to be graded will be due no later than 10 days after that final class.

ASSESSMENT

The semester will be divided into four modules of different lengths.
Assessment will be based on two 10-page essays (which may be done
collaboratively with other class members) on topics arising from any
of the modules and which will have been pre-approved by me.

MODULE ONE (4 weeks)

Fredric Jameson: “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture,” “Postmodernism,” “Culture and Finance Capital,
” “Class and Allegory in Contemporary Mass Culture: Dog Day Afternoon as a Political Film,” “
Utopia as Replication,” “Globalization as a Philosophical Issue,” “Globalization as a Political Issue,” and
Representing Capital: A Reading of Volume One

MODULE TWO (2 weeks)

Alain Badiou, The Communist Hypothesis, along with essays by Bruno Bosteels and Slavoj Zizek, and
Greg Meyerson, "Post-Marxism as a Compromise Formation.”

MODULE THREE (4 weeks)

Kevin Anderson, Marx at the Margins, Bruno Bosteels, Marx and Freud in Latin America,
Kevin Floyd, The Reification of Desire, along with selections from Silvia
Federici, Caliban and the Witch, Kathi Weeks, The Problem with Work, and Rosemary
Hennessy, Profit and Pleasure, and Greg Meyerson, "Rethinking Black Marxism"   

MODULE FOUR (3 weeks)

Chris Harman, Zombie Capitalism: Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx, EndNotes
issue #2, "Misery and the Value Form,” and selections from “Culture and Crisis,” a special issue of Cultural Logic.