Mediations Journal

Editors' Note

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 14:36:58 CST

Fredric Jameson: A New Reading of [Capital]

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 16:19:54 CST

Is Capital about labor, or unemployment? Does Marxism have a theory of the political, or is it better off without one? Fredric Jameson previews the argument of his forthcoming book, Representing Capital.

Anna Kornbluh: On Marx’s Victorian Novel

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 16:17:00 CST

As out of place as Marx himself might have been in Victorian England, Capital is less out of place than one might have thought among Victorian novels. But this does not have to mean that its mode of truth is literary. Anna Kornbluh explores the tropes that propel Capital in order to establish the novel relationship Marx produces between world and text.

Roland Boer: Marxism and Eschatology Reconsidered

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 16:11:19 CST

The variations on the thesis of Marxism’s messianism are too many to count. But is it plausible to imagine that Marx or Engels took up Jewish or Christian eschatology, in any substantial form, into their thought? Roland Boer weighs the evidence.

Reiichi Miura: What Kind of Revolution Do You Want? | Punk, the Contemporary Left, and Singularity

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 16:08:27 CST

What does punk have to do with Empire? What does singularity have to do with identity? What does the logic of rock ‘n’ roll aesthetics have to do with a politics of representation? What does the concept of the multitude have to do with neoliberalism? The answer to all these questions, argues Reiichi Miura, is a lot more than you might think.

Alexei Penzin: The Soviets of the Multitude: On Collectivity and Collective Work: | An Interview with Paolo Virno

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 15:06:05 CST

One of the principle conundrums that confronts the theorization of the multitude is the relationship it entails between individual and collective. Alexei Penzin, of the collective Chto Delat / What Is To Be Done?, interviews Paolo Virno.

Nataša Kovačević: New Money in the Old World: | On Europe's Neoliberal Disenchantment

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 16:25:32 CST

What is left of the promise that was Europe? Does anything Utopian remain of the European project, or is it destined to become just another neoliberal power? Nataša Kovačević reviews Perry Anderson’s The New Old World.

Kevin Floyd: Queer Principles of Hope

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 15:02:08 CST

In the “marketplace of ideas,” Marxism and queer studies are often presumed to be divergent and even opposed discourses. Contemporary work in both fields makes the case for a convergence. Kevin Floyd reviews José Esteban Muñoz’s Cruising Utoptia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity.

Madeleine Monson-Rosen: Under a Pink Flag

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 15:05:49 CST

Is there a feminine relation to copyright in the contemporary period? Madeleine Monson-Rosen reviews Caren Irr’s Pink Pirates: Contemporary Women Writers and Copyright.