How (not) to decolonise Marx/ism, w. Terrell Carver

Friday 27 March, 2pm-3pm
Arts West, Room 156
University of Melbourne (Parkville campus) 

This seminar will centre on Carver’s recently published essay "How (not) to decolonize Marx/ism”. Since the late 1970s, postcolonial theorising and decolonising activisms have directed attention to a taken-for-granted Eurocentrism in Marx/ism. Since the early 2000s, the explosion in available texts, published in original languages and in English translation, has enabled these critiques to develop. Scholars of Marx and activists within Marxism have sometimes responded defensively with apologetics. We will analyse an exemplar of this dogmatic and moralising genre, showing how it deploys three tropes that commonly structure intellectual biography and scholarly commentary. These three story-telling devices are: projection, passivity, and hermeticism. Shifting gear, and proceeding from an agent-oriented reading strategy, we will then consider an alternative theoretical practice. In our recovering, re-thinking, and rereading of the relatively neglected and undervalued Part VIII of Capital, Vol. 1, we argue that Marx/ism represents an important ally and inspiration for decolonisers. That demonstration resets the terms through which Eurocentrism supposedly makes sense.

Terrell Carver is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Bristol, UK. He has published widely on Marx, Engels, and Marxisms, including texts, translations and biography; and on sex, gender, and sexuality, including masculinities, feminist theory and queer studies. His latest books are Marx (Polity, 2018); Engels Before Marx (Palgrave, 2021); and The Life and Thought of Friedrich Engels, 30th anniversary edition (Palgrave, 2021). He is co-editor-in-chief of Contemporary Political Theory, and co-general-editor of three book series: Routledge Innovators in Political Theory (Taylor & Francis); Marx, Engels, and Marxisms (Palgrave); Globalization (Rowman & Littlefield).

All welcome, no registration necessary.