Tuesday, March 3, 2009

I haven't put up any new posts in a few days. I'm getting tired of using the link-blog format, even if I appreciate other people's link blogs quite a bit. At some point, not yet, of course, I would like this blog to become something entirely different, more of an outlet for my research. I think this probably won't be until after I've taken my preliminary exams. Or I might split it up, so that I have a second blog devoted entirely to research run-off. I'll leave you with a couple of links. I'm working on a review of the autonomous Marxist Christian Marazzi's first book to be translated into English, Capital and Language (Semiotext(e), 2008), and I've found a couple other reviews of the book here and here. I will say this about William Dixon's review (the second one): I think that his claim that Marazzi ignores history is rather unjust, for two reasons. First, it's not really true; Marazzi continually situates the development of the New Economy (his term for the finance-based, tech-based economy that began to exist in the 1980s and that came into maturity in the 90s) in a historical trajectory based on global legal, political, and social changes. Second, this book is not attempting to fully theorize the totality of the New Economy along with its numerous particulars after the manner of Marx in Capital or Keynes in The General Theory. The series in which it has been released in North America, Semiotext(e)'s "Post-Political Politics" series, consists of a number of short interventions into various theoretical currents rather than massive theoretical treatises on techno-capital. But some of the complaints that Dixon makes are just. See what you think.

2 comments:

Kinohi Nishikawa said...

Thanks for alerting us to Marazzi's book. How would you situate him relative to other recent Italian Marxist work?

Alex Greenberg said...

Marazzi is an economist, for one thing. He is interested in looking at finance and labor, and he does not, at least within this book, elaborate in great depth upon those topics that Hardt and Negri have discussed at length. He discusses the multitude, but only against the backdrop of New Capitalism, which is the centerpiece of his analysis.