Platypus history of Marxism readings Fall/Autumn 2011 – Winter 2012 syllabus

I. What is the “Left?” — What is “Marxism?”


Chicago (School of the Art Institute of Chicago and University of Chicago) and New York City (New School University and New York University)

Chicago Facebook invitation: http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=186447294761195

Saturdays 1–4PM

Starting Sat. Sept. 10:

School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC)

112 S. Michigan Ave. room 920

Starting Sat. Sept. 17:

New School University New York (New School)

Lang Café, Eugene Lang Building

65 W. 11th St. ground floor (enter at 66 W. 12th St.)

Starting Sat. Oct. 1:

University of Chicago (UChicago)

The Reynolds Club 2nd floor South Lounge

5706 S. University Ave.

Sundays 1–4PM

Starting Sun. Sept. 11:

New York University (NYU)

Puck Building

295 Lafayette St. 4th floor Memorial Room

required / + recommended reading

Marx and Engels readings pp. from Robert C. Tucker, ed., Marx-Engels Reader (Norton 2nd ed., 1978)


Week A. Sept. 10–11, 2011 (NYU and SAIC only)

Spartacist League, “The senile dementia of post-Marxism” (2006)

• Moishe Postone, “History and helplessness: Mass mobilization and contemporary forms of anticapitalism” (2006)

Postone, “Theorizing the contemporary world: Brenner, Arrighi, Harvey” (2006)

+ Postone, “Necessity, labor, and time” (1978)


Week B. Sept. 17–18, 2011 (New School, NYU and SAIC only)

• Juliet Mitchell, “Women: the longest revolution” (1966)

• Clara Zetkin and Vladimir Lenin, “An interview on the woman question” (1920)

• Theodor W. Adorno, “Sexual taboos and the law today” (1963)

• John D’Emilio, “Capitalism and gay identity” (1983)


Week C. Sept. 24–25, 2011 (New School, NYU and SAIC only)

• Richard Fraser, “Two lectures on the black question in America and revolutionary integrationism” (1953)

• James Robertson and Shirley Stoute, “For black Trotskyism” (1963)

+ Spartacist League, “Black and red: Class struggle road to Negro freedom” (1966)

+ Bayard Rustin, “The failure of black separatism” (1970)

• Adolph Reed, “Black particularity reconsidered” (1979)

+ Reed, “Paths to Critical Theory” (1984)


Week 1. Oct 1–2, 2011

• epigraphs by James Miller (on Jean-Jacques Rousseau) and Louis Menand (on Edmund Wilson) on modern history and freedom

Page 1 of 4 | Next page