ClassInfo

"All I know is that I am not a Marxist", Marx (supposedly) said. This ironic detachment implies an insight: how a political philosophy is put to use will depend on the changing social and political circumstances. Marx' philosophy itself owes its emergence to strands of thoughts and political struggles that had long existed. As such, it escapes authorial control and can be reconstructed as a coherent body of work only after the facts. With this premise as our point of departure, we will look into key texts by Marx to determine, first of all, the place of politics within Marxist thought (drawing on Rosa Luxemburg, Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, or Chantal Mouffe). We will then discuss pathbreaking rewritings of Marx in the context of anti-colonial struggles and the emergence of various emancipation movements (among others by Michel Foucault, Silvia Frederici, or Frantz Fanon). Finally, we will explore the role of production and labor in Marxist politics: Is Marxism hopelessly productivist or can we formulate a radical critique of labor from its point of view? This class includes a week of asynchronous work and two talks (by Bini Adamczak on queer Marxism and Nikhil Pal Singh on Marxism and race).

· Understand that various culture products as forms of production that produce, perform, and/or contest African American identity and the construction of Blackness.

· Sharpen attention to how African Americans negotiate(d) identities in a variety of places (city/nation) during various timeframes of German history: colonialism, WWI, WWII, Postwar, Divided Germany, Unified Germany.

"All I know is that I am not a Marxist", Marx famously said. This move of detachment responds to an insight: how a (political) philosophy or theory - this difference will have to concern us - is put to use will ultimately be beyond the control of their inventors. Yet more radically understood, Marx' philosophy is itself the result of concrete struggles and political intervention and as such it escapes authorial control and can be reconstructed as a coherent body of work only after the fact. This course will historically contextualize the emergence of Marx' modes of theorizing in the 19th century and its German idealist origins. Marx' canonization along party lines, perhaps the most influential version of Marxism commonly called classical Marxism, will be brought into view mostly through the lens of those many heterodox strands within Western Marxism that put forward a different form of Marxism (e.g. black Marxism, the workerist movement, feminist and anti- and postcolonial Marxism and so on). And in doing so, the seminar will familiarize students with Marx' writings, arguments and key concepts such as class, social totality, value or productive labor.

Most texts will be provided via canvas, however, you are asked to get the English edition of "Capital, Vol. 1" in the translation by Ben Fowkes

Michel Foucault calls Fascism a "disease of power" suggesting that Fascism is not a singular occurrence and that it is connected to power's normal functioning. In the course of this seminar, we will explore theories of Fascism of various political provenance many of them coeval with Fascism or from its immediate aftermath. Yet the questions raised at the time are still relevant and contentious: How sharp do we need to distinguish between National Socialism and Fascism, for example, in its Italian, Spanish or other form? Has Fascism an existence proper or can it be subsumed under the heading totalitarianism? Is Fascism the end of capitalism or its continuation by other means? What is the relation between media and Fascism? Can we

theorize Fascism without considering the mediascapes in which it emerges? How is Fascism rendered fashionable and fascinating? Besides these primarily political or epistemological inquiries, we will also include theories, films and literature which investigate Fascism's mediation strategies and its seductive power.