Marxist criticism is arguably the most politically and socially engaged of the various critical theories we have explored. As Tyson describes it, Marxist criticism has an agenda: “If  a work criticizes or invites us to criticize oppressive socioeconomic forces, then it may be said to have a Marxist agenda.” But the name “Marx,” and certainly the political legacy of Marxism, evoke various abstracted images that will strike many as problematic and at best irrelevant for English majors. What do we do?

Forget the abstractions and think about the materials. And in the process, we can think more about the ideologies (another keyword in Marxist theory) that are at work in the texts we interpret, and also at work in our interpretations.

In focusing on class and the socioeconomic forces that inform our beliefs, politics, culture, and society, Marxism extends the discussion of identity we began with African American criticism and continued with critical theories of gender and sexuality. Class and economics are another marker and shaper of identity. And as Marxists would argue, class is often the least recognized determinant of identity due to the often hidden (occluded) powers of capitalist ideology.

I have borrowed elements of Marxist literary and cultural criticism second hand, from the German critic Walter Benjamin. We will be reading his famous essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” from 1936. I studied and applied Benjamin to my doctoral dissertation, since he provides insights on rethinking art from the perspective of photography. That’s what I was interested in doing with 19th c American autobiography, a study that eventually became my first book: Mediating American Autobiography: Photography in Emerson, Thoreau, Douglass, and Whitman.

The key insight from Benjamin, and in my admittedly otherwise limited view, a key to understanding the uses of Marxist criticism, is the focus on materiality. We have cultural works and texts–all the things you are thinking about for your projects, or that you have been studying and reading. Those works and texts, though they come to us (usually) as finished products, in fact those products are abstracted from the concrete social and economic contexts in which they were produced. Marxism literary criticism trains its eye on rethinking cultural works by way of their material conditions. If we want to think more about the material conditions of the works we are studying, reading, writing, then Marxist theory might be of use. And if we want to think about what Benjamin calls the “politics of art,” this critical theory is very relevant.

One useful distinction he makes, thinking about photography as a technology of reproduction that undermines (and thus politicizes) traditional art and its aura: exhibition value displaces cult value. Consider this image from the photographer Atget that Benjamin has in mind, and contrast with something like a Van Gogh. What’s the difference, and how might that difference be viewed in terms of politics?

Applications.

As an application, in addition to the Benjamin essay, I think of the Robert Pinsky poem “Shirt.”  [Here is Pinsky reading it in a video from the New Yorker.] We can read this text from any and all of the critical perspectives studied thus far: New Criticism/Formalism, Structuralism, Deconstruction, Reader Response, Psychoanalytic, New Historicism, Critical Race, Postcolonial, Gender/Sexuality.

What does Marxist critical theory help us to see and do with this poem? Would you say that this poem is particularly relevant for a Marxist reading? And if so, are there texts that are less relevant? How might concepts and questions from Marxist criticism be of use to you in the development of your seminar project?

For another example that foregrounds, or perhaps re-envisions, the materiality of reading and literacy, consider this scene from the recent movie The Post. We are reminded of the labor that goes into writing, the production and the process of getting words into print.

Rhetorical Materials.

If we focus more materially and deliberately on our own ideologies (call them also “theories” and “critical perspectives” and “interpretations”), we will strengthen our argumentation. Marxist criticism, in its concern with “false consciousness” and the belief that every idea potentially masks or hides its social and political conditions, can help us think more about our rhetoric: credibility, validity, counterargument.

With our seminar projects, we should address the credibility of our critical sources. What makes a source credible? [In the older rhetorical terms used by Aristotle, this is the appeal to ethos]

We need to think about the validity of our reasoning, specifically the warrants linking our reasons to our claim [This is a matter of logos, the presentation of our evidence and logic. For further discussion, see chapter 11 in The Craft of Research]

We must also consider the potential weaknesses in our own argument and the potential strengths in perspectives other than our own. In other words, take up a counterargument. [Related to logos, this is also an appeal to pathos]