A Deep Plough: Unscrambling Major Post-Marxist Texts from Adorno to Žižek

The post-Marxian philosophy boasts of its historical transcendence over the basic framework of Marxism, which is not different from the post-modern Marxism in terms of historical ontology: they are built on the transcendence of the modern by the post-modern. The post-Marxian philosophers believe that the foundation of social history, on which Marxism is built, will be inevitably reduced to the residue of history. An entirely new social civilization is supposed to come up with a heterogeneous reality for this radical criticism. Therefore, most of the post-Marxian thinkers criticize Marx from a certain perspective while constructing their own critical platform, for example, Baudrillard, with his Mirror of Production and For a Critique of Political Economy of Sign published in the 1970s. As a student of Lefebvre, Baudrillard is also influenced by Roland Barthes and Guy Debord In Society of Spectacle, Debord rewrites the beginning of Marx's Capital, in which "an immense accumulation of spectacle" replaces Marx's "immense accumulation of commodities." From the Society of Spectacle to The Consumer Society, the commodity exchange of Marx is turned into the exchange of signs. The mirror of production on which Marx relies is broken while the fantasy of post-modern media becomes the real ruler in today's capitalist society. In addition, Baudrillard declares the death of modernity and industry (the mode of material production), which also accounts for his refutations of Marxism. The latest events include Mark Poster's replacement of Marx's mode of production with his mode of information and Zizek's adoption of the Lacanian symptoms in place of Marx's material relations. In general, the post-Marxian philosophy attempts to stride beyond the old Marxist domain, which is a significant heterogeneity in theory. This book is the second volume of the two volume book written by Zhang Yibing; the first volume includes classical Western Marxism texts, and this second includes what he calls "post-Marxian" texts. Born in 1956, he belongs to the second generation of scholars studying "Western Marxism" philosophy in the Mainland China. His first article was published in 1982 and in the second half of 80'ies, he started his books. Zhang Yibing, has chosen a brand new method for China -textual studies- which was very rarely applied. With his sharp critical reflections, and deep background investigation on how those thinkers have developed their ideas, he is one of the outstanding names in that generation. His influential books include, Back to Marx: The Philosophical Discourse in the Context of Economics; Back to Lenin---A Post-textological Reading on Philosophical Notes; The Impossible Truth of Being: Imago of Lacanian Philosophy; Symptom Reading and Ideology: A Textological Reading of Althusser; The Subjective Dimension of Marxian Historical Dialectics;Atonal Dialectical Imagination: The Textual Reading of Adorno's Negative Dialectics; and Against Baudrillard- Deconstruction of a Post-modern Academic Mythos. Preface Introduction Notes on Translation CHAPTER I: ATONAL DIALECTICAL IMAGINATION: READING OF ADORNO’S NEGATIVE DIALECTICS 1. Introduction: A Preparative Work of Critical Methodology 1.1. A Critical Principle of Deconstruction and Theoretical Structure? 1.2. Re-interpreting Dialectics: The Downfall and Salvation of Philosophy in Market 1.3. Dialectics is Not a Freezing Position 1.4. The Totality and the Antagonistic World that Cannot be Engulfed 2. Dialectics: Disintegrated Logic 2.1. Against “The First Philosophy” 2.2. Nothingness and Being in Non-dualistic Gestalt 2.3. Logic of Identity: “Metaphysical Thaumatrope” 2.4. Against Practice: The Spell of “Production for Production’s Sake” 3. Non-identity: Categorical Constellation in Negative Dialectics 3.1. Dialectics: Consciousness of Non-identity (The Other) 3.2. Non-identical Semantic Field 3.3. Constellation: The Existential Form of Non-identity 3.4. The Categorical Constellation of Negative Dialectics 4. The Primacy of Subject and the Priority of Object 4.1. The Transcendental Character of Idealistic Subject and Social Unconsciousness 4.2. The Illusion of the Primacy of Subject and Self-alienation of Anthropocentrism 4.3. Vacancy of Emperorship: Precedence and Mediation of Object 5. Reification, Alienation and the Resistance 5.1. Resolving of “Object” and New Illusion about Experiential Immediacy 5.2. Rejecting Objectivity and Opposing Reification 5.3. Alienation Logic: Fantasy of Philosophical Imperialism 6. Negative Dialectics and Materialism 6.1. Critical Theory and Materialism 6.2. The Concept of Spirit Understood by Idealism 6.3. Negative Dialectics and Materialism CHAPTER II: THE PSEUDO-BEING PRESENTED BY IMAGES: REINTERPRETING GUY DEBORD’S THE SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE 1. Reversal of the Inverted World of the Spectacle 1.1. The Ontological Presentational Aberrance of Social Existence 1.2. The Forms of Spectacle’s Dominance 1.3. Spectacular Imperialism and Irresistible Hegemony 1.4. Separation: the Deep Realistic Background of Presentational Spectacle 2. Fetishism of Spectacle: The Totally Successful Colonization of Commodity 2.1. From Fetishism of Commodity to Fetishism of Spectacle 2.2. The Pseudo-effect and Pseudo-recreation in the Process of Being Watched 2.3. The Spectacle: Counterfeiting Life in the Paradise of Commodity 3. Pseudo-being and the Spectacular Time 3.1. Static Society and Cyclical Time 3.2. Bourgeois and Irreversible Time 3.3. Time of Consumption and Pseudo-cyclical Time 3.4. Spectacular Time: Pseudo-events Producing Toy Bricks 3.5. Spectacular Time Synchronous with Pseudo-cyclical Time 4. Spectacular Ideology and Its Subversion 4.1. The Spectacle as Materialized Ideology 4.2. Revolution of Everyday Life: Subversion of the Spectacle CHAPTER III: FROM APE TO MAN, A SUBVERSIVE PERSPECTIVE: CRITICAL READING OF JEAN BAUDRILLARD’S MIRROR OF PRODUCTION 1. Introduction 2. Baudrillard: A Marxist before? 2.1. Mauss’ Symbolic Exchange and the Grassroots Romanticism 2.2. Bataille’s Non-useful Philosophy of Grassrootsism 2.3. Hidden Logic Support in The System of Object and The Consumer Society 3. Marxism: Transgression of Historical Materialism 3.1. The Mirror of Production: What Does the Young Baudrillard Object to? 3.2. Rejection of the Gestalt of Historical Materialism 3.3. Methodological Root Cause: Transhistorized History 4. Ontology of Production: I Produce, Therefore History Is. 4.1. Mis-criticism of Use Value and “Exchange Value” 4.2. Theoretical Stick of Symbolic Exchange in Primitive Societies 4.3. Down with the Utilitarian Ontology of Production 4.4. Re-questioning the Marxist Criticism of the Capitalist Mode of Production 5. Critique of Labor Ideology 5.1. Metaphysical Evil of Labor: The Concrete vs. the Abstract; Quality vs. Quantity 5.2. Guilt of the Productive Labor 5.3. Good Labor and Beautiful Non-labor 6. Marx and the Domination of Nature 6.1. Conception of Enslaving Nature in Enlightenment 6.2. “Half-revolution” of Marxist View of Nature 6.3. Big Law and the Big Necessity of Nature 7. Marx and Ethnocentrism 7.1. The Big History and the Big Dialectics 7.2. Categories of Analysis and Ideology 7.3. Is the Anatomy of Man a Key to the Anatomy of Ape? 7.4. Historical Materialism and West-centrism 8. Riddle of Monkey Anatomy and Ape Analysis 8.1. New Dialectical Interpretation of the Master and the Slave 8.2. Difference between the Artisan’s Work and the Useful Labor 8.3. The Logical Anatomies of Man, Monkey and Ape 9. Historical Materialism and Euclidean Geometry of History 9.1. Legitimacy of Articulating the Archaic History with a Contemporary Discourse 9.2. Does Historical Materialism have the Universality of Science? 9.3. Outdated Economic Root of Historical Materialism 9.4. Origin and New Revolution of “the Political Economy of the Sign” CHAPTER IV MARX’S PRESENCE AND NON-PRESENCE: READING OF JACQUES DERRIDA’S SPECTERS OF MARX 1. Radical Presence of the Absent Specters 1.1 Why did Derrida Write the Specters of Marx? 1.2. A Memory Politics of Dancing with the Specters 1.3. Marx and the Interpretation of Specters 1.4. Historical Pedigree of Derrida’s Specter Theory 2. Theoretical Logic of Derrida’s Specter Theory 2.1. Deconstruction and the Impossible Specter 2.2. Speaking for Marx’s Specters 3. Marx in différance: the deconstructed spiritual legacy 3.1. We Are All Heirs to Marx. 3.2. Disjointed Time and Disjointed Presence 3.3. Error of the Ontological Response of the Specters of Marx 3.4. Contemporary Capitalism and “The End of History” CHAPTER V HOLLOW MAN: PERPETUAL CONSTITUTION OF A FANTASTIC SCENE – TEXTUAL INTERPRETATION OF SLAVOJ ZIZEK’S SUBLIME OBJECT OF IDEOLOGY 1. Introduction: Grafting Lacan onto Marx 1.1. The Contemporary World in the Eyes of Marx 1.2. The Correlation between the Contradiction and the Drive of Capitalism 1.3. Marx’s Surplus Value vs. Lacan’s Surplus Enjoyment 1.4. From Tragedy to Comedy: An Overall Take-over of Marx by the Lacanian Discourse 2. Impossibility: The Political Position of the Post-Marxian Trends 2.1. Habermas and Foucault: Two Traditional Ideas of Subject in the Shadowgraphs of Contemporary Theories 2.2. Althusser and Lacan: The Heterogeneity in the Nothingness of the Subject 2.3. Deleting Nostalgia: Spectacle of the “post-Marxist” Social Revolution 2.4. Irremediable Trauma: The Post-Marxian Political Ideas of Zizek 3. Marx Invents the Lacanian Concept of Symptom 3.1. Non-essential Mysterious Form: Freud and Marx 3.2. “Scandal”: The Unconscious of the Commodity Form 3.3. The Body of Money: The Indissoluble Sublime Material 3.4. Blind: the Essence of Ideology 4. Social Symptom and Incomplete Fetishism 4.1. Social Symptom: The Breakdown Point of Universal Ideology 4.2. Fetishism: The Misunderstanding of the Inverted Presentation 4.3. The Incomplete Fetishism in the Material Dependency Being Exactly the “Appearing Point” of the Social Symptom 5. The Positive Cynicism and the Illusion of Ideology 5.1. Marx: Two Kinds of Ideological Critiques 5.2. Ideology: The Frankfurt School and Althusser 5.3. Cynicism and Modifications in Contemporary Ideology 5.4. Ideological Fantasy and the Post-ideological Era 6. Materialized Faith and Fantasy- Reality 6.1. Marx Plus Lacan: The Materialized Faith 6.2. Fantasy-modulated Social Reality 7. Ideological Fantasy and Surplus Enjoyment 7.1. Questioning Althusser’s Ideological State Apparatuses 7.2. Kafka in Lacanian Horizon 7.3. Zhuang Zi’s Butterfly Dream and the Ideological Dream Bibliography