Invisible Leviathan: Speculations on Marx, Spivak, and the Question of Value

Abstract

"Marxism," as Louis Althusser correctly observed, "has in its history passed through a long series of crises and transformations" (1979,237). However, if it is to survive as a living intellectual and political force into the twenty-first century, then its prac- titioners must respond in particularly creative ways to the present "crisis of Marx- ism.'' For the crisis is an especially acute one. I say this for two reasons. First, per- haps more than at any time during this century Marxism has succumbed to an ebullient Right enjoying an unprecedented ideological hegemony. Second, this defeat by the Right has been exacerbated by Marxism's current unpopularity on the Left. Regarded as essentialist, foundationalist, and totalizing-in short, as too "modem"-Marxism's indifference toward and/or effacement of "otherness" and "difference" has been meticulously exposed by postmodern, poststructuralist, and postcolonial critics.

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