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204_Marxist_Criticism.pptx
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- 2. Prepared by GayatriNimavat Roll No. :6 M.A. semester 3 Batch : 2022-24 Paper 204: Criticism 2 Email id : [email protected] Enrollment no. : 4069206420220019 Submitted to the Department of English, MKBU
- 3. Road Map OfPresentation The Influence of Althusser What Marxist Critics do? Conclusion References Karl Marx FriedrichEngels What is Marxism DefinitionsofTerms Marxist Literary Criticism 1. āEngelsianāMarxistCriticism 2. āLeninistāmarxistcriticism
- 4. Marxist cultural theoryoriginates in the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the nineteenth century. The Marx-Engels analysis of society and the conditions of production spilled over into an analysis of culture. (Nayar) Marxist criticism is a mode of literary and cultural analysis that views works of art as products of their historical and material contexts. Drawing on the theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Marxist critics examine the ways in which literature reflects, reinforces, or challenges the social, economic, and political structures of a given era. Introduction
- 5. Karl Heinrich Marx,(born May 5, 1818, Trier, Rhine province, Prussia (Germany)- died March 14, 1883, London, England), revolutionary, sociologist, historian and economist. He was a bourgeois Jew from a predominantly Catholic city within a country whose official religion was evangelical Protestantism. In October 1997, The New Yorker billed Karl Marx as 'the next big thinker', a man with much to teach us about political corruption, monopolisation, alienation, inequality and global markets. Even this intended compliment serves only to diminish him. Karl Marx was a philosopher, a historian, an economist, a linguist, a literary critic and a revolutionist. Although he may not have had a 'job' as such, he was a prodigious worker: his collected writings, few of which were published in his lifetime. (Wheen) Who Started It? -> Karl Marx
- 6. But we canāthave Marx without Friedrich Engels Friedrich Engels, (born Nov. 28 1820 Barmen, Rhine province Prussia died Aug 5, 1895, London, Eng), was a German socialist and philosopher. Frederick Engels is often referred to as the world's first Marxist Nothing can be farther from the truth, Engels was a collaborator of Marx, contributing in equal measure to the evolution of the Marxist world outlook. However, with his characteristic self-effacing modesty. Engels may have proudly accepted this status, Marx and Engels jointly wrote prefaces to every new edition of the Communist Manifesto on its frequent republication in several languages To the 1883 German edition, published soon after Marx's death. (Yechury)
- 7. What is Marxism? Marxismis a general theory of the world in which we live, and of human societyasapartofthatworld. IttakesitsnamefromKarlMarx(1818-1883),who,togetherwithFriedrich Engels (1820-1895), worked out the theory during the middle and latter partoflastcentury.(Burns) The philosophy of Marxism is materialism. It analyzes class struggle and advocates for a transition to a classless society through the abolition of private property and the means of production. Marxism is grounded in materialismandthecritiqueofpoliticaleconomy. AccordingtoLeninthereareThreeSourcesandThreeComponentPartsof Marxism: materialist philosophy, critique of political economy and socialistpolitics.(Lenin)
- 8. Bourgeois: The class ofpeople in bourgeois society who own the social means of production as their Private properties i.e., as capital. Capitalism: The socio-economic system where social relations are based on commodities for exchange, in particular private ownership of the means of production and on the exploitation of wage labour. Proletariat: The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labour power and does not draw profit from any kind of capital; whose weal and woe, whose life and death,whose sole existence depends on the demand for labour. (Marx: The Communist Manifesto) Definitions of Terms
- 9. The Marxist criticismof literature begins, naturally enough, with Karl Marx, although he himself wrote comparatively little specifically on literature. Its theoretical basis is the relationship of literature to society definedbyMarxintheIntroduction to the Critique of Political Economy.(Hyman) In the preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy Karl Marx sets forth one of thebasicnotionsofMarxistliterarycriticism,thenotionofthe"superstructure".(Lisman) The apparent discrepancy between the relative autonomy of art and economic determinism has been problematic for Marxism. Mainstream Marxist literary criticism attempts to reconcile this discrepancy by maintainingthat worksof literature do not immediately reflect ideological and economic factors, butrather are the result of a whole series of "levels" which "mediate" between the literary work and the capitalist economy. Marxist Literary Criticism
- 10. Similarly, proletarian literature,or the committed literature of the Marxist, is considered to be not merely a passive reflection of proletarian social relations. The proletarian writer reflects economic and social reality not merely by showing the effects of economic and social injustice upon individual personalities, but by creating characters who typify the historic plight that many proletariats experience. TwofundamentalassumptionsofMarxistliterarytheorymustbeexaminedmoreclosely: (1)allculturalproductionismediatedbythesub-structure; (2)thebestliteratureactivelyattemptstopromotesocialchange.(Lisman) Two main streams of Marxist criticism, of the 1960s and of the 1970s, The Engelsian Marxist criticism, which stresses the necessary freedom of art from direct political determinism. The Leninist Marxist criticisminsistsontheneedforarttobeexplicitlycommittedtothepoliticalcauseoftheLeft.(Barry)
- 11. From the 1930s,however, a rich variety of 'Engelsian' Marxist criticism flourished, either in exile, or in suppressed or underground form. The group now called the Russian formalists had flourished in the 1920s, until disbanded by the Party, and should be mentioned here, even though their work is not strictly Marxist in spirit. The most prominent members of the group were Victor Shklovsky, Boris Tomashevsky,andBorisEichenbaum. Shklovsky's concept of 'defamiliarization' or 'making strange' (expounded in the essay 'Art as Technique'), holds that one of the main effects of the language in literature is the achievement of making the familiar world, to look as a world totallynewforus. Aswiththeconceptofdefamiliarization,thereisacarefuldistinctionherebetween reality itself and its verbal representation in a work of literature, so that we are steered away from any notion that literature simply mirrors reality in a documentaryway. (Barry) āEngelsianā Marxist Criticism
- 12. The significance ofLenin'sstrategic andtactical writingsfor the struggle of the working class has been recognized by proletarian parties and movements the world over. Hence the ideology of the revolutionary proletariat is termed Marxism-Leninism. "Leninism is Marxism of the era of imperialism and the proletarian revolution. To be more exact, Leninism is the theory and tactics of the proletarian revolution in general, the theory and tactics of the dictatorship of the proletariat in particular"(Stalin). This simple truth has evaded Andersen in his search for a "Western"Marxism. Marxism-Leninism identifies the state as a special apparatus for the systematic use of force by one class against another in order to extend the relations of domination and subordination existing at the level of relations of production to all spheres of social life. "The State is a product and manifestationoftheirreconcilabilityofclassantagonisms".(Prasad) āLeninistā Marxist Criticism
- 13. Much recent Marxistthinking on literature has been influenced by the work of the French Marxist theoretician Louis Althusser (1918-1990), and his contribution will becomeclearifweoutlinesomeofthekeytermsandconceptsheintroduced. For instance: overdeterminism, Ideology, repressive structures, relative autonomy, decentering, ideological structures,etc. His Engelsian announcements, do not censure Marxist tendency to imprison art and literature with economics. Nevertheless, it is intended to release literature in ahighdegree. Due to both: his innovative perspective and reformulation of the Marxist vision of literature,AlthussercouldbeconsideredarevisionistofMarxism.(Barry) The Influence of Althusser
- 14. 1. They dividethe literary work content in: overt (surface) and covert (hidden). Then they make a relation between the hidden subject of the literary work with elemental Marxist topics such as class struggle, clashes of large historical forces, conflicts betweensocialclassesandsoforth. 2. Another method used by Marxist critics is to relate the context of a work to the social- classstatusoftheauthor. 3. A thirdMarxistmethodistoexplain thenatureof a wholeliterary genreintermsof the socialperiodwhich'produced'it. 4. A fourth Marxist practice is to relate the literary work to the social assumptions of the time in which it is 'consumed', a strategy which is used particularly in the later variant ofMarxistcriticismknownasculturalmaterialism. 5. A fifth Marxist practice is the 'politicisation of literary form', that is, the claim that literaryformsarethemselvesdeterminedbypoliticalcircumstance.(Barry) What Marxist Critics do?
- 15. Conclusion In summary, KarlMarx and Friedrich Engels' work laid the foundation for Marxism, a theory encompassing philosophy, economics, and literary criticism. Their influence is evident in fields like political economy and the analysis of literature. Marxist literary criticism delves into the hidden dimensions of literary works, connecting them to class struggle, historical forces, and social contexts. While different branches of Marxism exist, they share the core principles of materialism, critique of political economy, and socialist politics, shaping our understanding of society, economics, and literature.
- 16. References Anderson, Perry. Considerationson Western Marxism. Verso Books, 1979. Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Manchester University Press, 2002. P. 156 Burns, Emile. What is Marxism? CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 1939. Hyman, Stanley Edgar. āThe Marxist Criticism of Literature.ā The Antioch Review, vol. 7, no. 4, 1947, pp. 541ā68. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/4609242. Accessed 20 Oct. 2023. Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich. āThe Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism.ā Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/mar/x01.htm. Accessed 21 October 2023. Lisman, C. David. āMarxist Literary Theory: A Critique.ā Journal of Aesthetic Education, vol. 22, no. 2, 1988, pp. 73ā85. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3333124. Accessed 20 Oct. 2023.
- 17. Marx, Karl. AContribution to the Critique of Political Economy. C. H. Kerr, 1904. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. Edited by David McLellan, translated by Samuel Moore, OUP Oxford, 2008. Nayar, Pramod K. An Introduction to Cultural Studies. Viva Books, 2008. P. 59 Prasad, Madhu. āLeninism and āWestern Marxismā: A Critique of Perry Andersen.ā Social Scientist, vol. 10, no. 4, 1982, pp. 3ā12. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3520325. Accessed 20 Oct. 2023. Shklovsky, Viktor. āāArt as Technique.āā https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate/modules/fulllist/first/en122/lecturelist- 2015-16-2/shklovsky.pdf. Accessed 21 October 2023. Stalin, Joseph. The Foundations of Leninism. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2011. Wheen, Francis. Karl Marx: A Life. Norton, 2000. Yechury, Sitaram. āFrederick Engels: Co-Founder of Marxism.ā Communist Party of India (Marxist), https://cpim.org/content/frederick-engels-co-founder-marxism. Accessed 20 October 2023.
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