Marxist Theory Flashcards
‘The Garden’ (1917) Ezra Pound - ‘the filthy, sturdy, unkillable…, “emotional…”
infants of the very poor”. “…anaemia” unruly and delirious movement of the poem mirrors common depictions of the poor in Victorian England - the poor at the prey of social protocols which oppress them, unsettling imagery
what does consumerism and capital create?
the dehumanising of social relations
‘To Penshurst’(1616) by Ben Johnson - “There’s none that dwell about them wish them
down; But all come in, the farmer and the clown, And no one empty-handed, to salute/Thy lord and lady, though they have no suit.” praises the country house but quietly shows envy and resentment of the privilege and extravagance
“the class that…
broke him for the pence that splash like brackish tears” - talks of betrayal, ventriloquising their provincialism - Tony Harrison voices the difficulty for working class voices to be heard through poetry - ‘Turns’
Dickens, Bronte, Gaskell, Lawrence, Orwell all criticise
the class system
More recent writers include
Caitlin Moran ,Irvine Welsh Jeanette Winterson
Dawson - “Whatever their sympathies with the poor and oppressed, the poets were…
…for the most part upper- and middle-class intellectuals who could only fear what the oppressed might do to right their wrongs.”
Dawson - “Insofar as they espoused the values of liberty and equality the Romantics could be seen as…
ideologues for the bourgeois revolution, helping to obscure the class nature of middle-class political demands”
Shelley in ‘a defence of poetry’ - ‘poets are the
unacknowledged legislators of the world’
‘Mask of Anarchy’ 1819 -‘Castlereagh’
- shaming real politicians by turning them into an allegory
‘Mask of Anarchy’ 1819 - “trampling to a…
mire of blood” is a viscerally realistic description which SHOCKS us
what is personified in ‘Mask of Anarchy’ 1819?
‘Anarchy’ and ‘hope’
‘Mask of Anarchy’ 1819 - the rousing ‘ye are many, they are few’ is addressing who?
‘men of england’
According to Jameson, “the very content of class ideology is…
relational, in the sense that its “values” are always actively in situation with respect to the opposing class”
Trotsky “Marxism alone can explain…
who it was who made a demand for such an artistic form and not another, and why” when looking at the literature of the past”
Trotsky - “The proclamations which are written by well-known Marxists…
not infrequently speak of landlords, capitalists, priests, generals and other exploiters”
Caliban - “This Island’s…
mine, by; Sycorax my mother / which thou takest from me” (I.II.337-338).
Caliban - “You taught me…
language, and my profit on’t / Is I know how to curse. The red plague rid you / For learning me your language!” (I.ii.366–368).
Caliban - “For I am all the…
subjects that you have Which first was mine own king. And here you sty me In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me The rest o’ th’ island.”
Prospero calls Caliban his…
“slave”
“Come forth, I say! There’s other..
business for thee. Come, thou tortoise!”
Enron - money is the one (thing) that…
gets their hand off their dick and into work.” “business is nature”
obsession with money drives mankind, juxtaposition, shows skewed morality, but also Darwinian
Enron - “railroads…
internet… slave trade”
flippant juxtaposition mocks capitalism and the ‘American Dream’, dark humour
Enron - “captain of all industry” to
“fraud sitting in jail”
social fall, “messiah like” to being told “Screw this”, “asshole! I hope your dick falls off!” by a prostitute, juxtaposition, highlights the extent of his fall
Marx - The bureaucrat has the world as
a mere object of his action.
Marx - “Theory is capable of gripping…
the masses as soon as it demonstrates ad hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical”
Marx - “Political Economy regards the proletarian …
like a horse, he must receive enough to enable him to work. It does not consider him, during the time when he is not working, as a human being”
Marx - “a human is an animal which can individuate itself…
only in the midst of society. Production by an isolated individual outside society … is as much of an absurdity as is the development of language without individuals living together and talking to each other”.
Eagleton - “to understand ideologies is to understand…
both the past and present more deeply; and such understanding contributes to our liberation”
Eagleton - “in the absence of genuinely revolutionary art, only a…
radical conservatism, hostile like Marxism to the withered values of liberal bourgeois society, could produce the most significant literature”
