Postmodern Prince : Critical Theory, Left Strategy, and the Making of a New Political Subject

by Sanbonmatsu, John

• ISBN13: 9781583670903
• ISBN10: 1583670904
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-05-01
• Publisher: Monthly Review Pr

Summary

John Sanbonmatsu'sPostmodern Princeis a work of political theory with a focus on questions of strategy. At the same time it provides an original and illuminating intellectual history of the Left from the 1960s to the present. It examines the politics of the New Left in the 1960s, showing how its expressivism led to political division and also prepared the ground for postmodernism. It shows also how the political economy of academic life in an increasingly commodified society strengthened the basis of postmodernism.The Postmodern Princeprovides a historically grounded critique of postmodernism, and a history of how the socialist Left has helped to create its ideas. In the course of this two-sided critique, it develops a brilliant account of a Marxism that sets itself the task of building a collective political subject--a successor to Machiavelli'sPrinceand Gramsci'sModern Prince--capable of challenging capitalism in its moment of global crisis.Sanbonmatsu demonstrates the limitations of the work of Foucault, and more recently, Hardt and Negri's much-acclaimedEmpire. In the process he validates for Marxism the classical idea of politics as hegemonic in scope, revolutionary in aspiration, and dependent on the capacity of leadership to rise to unforeseen challenges. He draws on an extraordinary range of historical, political, and philosophical analyses to set out the preconditions for a renewal of strategic and theoretical vision for the Left.

Author Biography

John Sanbonmatsu is assistant professor of Philosophy and Religion at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, MA.

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS	7	(2)
INTRODUCTION	9	(12)
1 ROMANCING THE LEFT	21	(30)
A Romantic Structure of Feeling	23	(8)
Faith vs. Works	31	(6)
The Pentecostal Mysticism of Norman O. Brown	37	(9)
Morbid Symptoms Appear	46	(2)
The Expressivist Legacy	48	(3)
2 SPEAKING IN TONGUES	51	(20)
The Cyborg Speaks in Tongues	55	(8)
"Breaking the Silence": Postmodernist Identity Politics	63	(3)
La Lingua Continua	66	(2)
Expressivism as Reification	68	(3)
3 BAROQUE THEORY	71	(30)
"Use Value" and the Baroque Arsenal of Theory	76	(11)
Commodity Aesthetics	87	(3)
Trend Innovation in Theory	90	(6)
Against the Autonomy of Theory	96	(2)
Theory as Practice	98	(3)
4 THE FRENCH IDEOLOGY	101	(24)
Althusser, Foucault, and the Liquidation of Experience	103	(11)
"Two, Three...Many Geists": Reification and the Automaton Empire	114	(5)
The Catechism of Praxis	119	(6)
5 THE PRINCE AND THE ARCHAEOLOGIST	125	(32)
Exemplary Lives	125	(6)
The Virtù of the Modern Prince	131	(3)
Strategy and the Modern Prince	134	(3)
Foucault's "Great Refusal" of Strategy	137	(6)
Teaching Literacies of Power	143	(4)
Against Pedagogy	147	(6)
Reversal of Fortune	153	(4)
6 THE POSTMODERN PRINCE	157	(46)
Form in Modern Political Thought	160	(8)
Lenin's Leviathan	168	(4)
Enter, Stage Left: The Modern Prince	172	(6)
Unity and Difference: The Challenge of Translation	178	(4)
The Postmodern Prince	182	(9)
Totality and Perception	191	(8)
Toward a New Theory of the Whole	199	(4)
7 METAHUMANISM	203	(21)
Empathy and Attentiveness to Others	208	(6)
Humanism, Suffering, and Love	214	(4)
New Gnosis	218	(5)
The Fight for Eros	223	(1)
EPILOGUE	224	(4)
NOTES	228	(34)
INDEX	262