UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS

The Weapon of Theory Reconsidered: Anti-Colonial Marxism and the Decolonial/Postcolonial Imaginary

This paper is a critical-comparative study which examines the historical and theoretical distinctions between decolonial/postcolonial thought and the tradition of anti-colonial Marxism. The author argues that anti-colonial Marxism has been obscured and distorted by the contemporary decolonial/postcolonial imaginary. To correct this, the author responds to several objections prevalent in these literatures by clarifying misconceptions about anti-colonial Marxism and demonstrating the limits of the critics’ presuppositions. Focusing on the writings of Frantz Fanon, Amílcar Cabral, Thomas Sankara, and Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, the paper reconstructs the ‘principles’ of anti-colonial Marxism. In conclusion, the author argues that the ‘revolutionary theory’ of these thinkers remains relevant to present-day global relation and the persistent conditions of neocolonialism and capitalist imperialism.

Note: A revised version of this paper has been published as “The Weapon of Theory Reconsidered: Anti-Colonial Marxism and the Post-Cold War Imaginary” (See, ‘Publications’) and another part of the paper was developed into a presentation for 2022 Radical Philosophy Association, titled “Anti-Colonial Marxism in the Decolonial/Postcolonial Imaginary” (See CV).

Feminism, Marxism, and Historical Critique: Formal and Real Subsumption Revisited (CO-AUTHORED w/ Larry A. Busk)

This paper draws on decades-long debates about key aspects of feminist and Marxist critique, namely the historical status of patriarchy or male-dominance in relation to capitalism, to assert the possibility of a strategic and theoretical unity between feminism and Marxism, and, by implication, on how best to interpret Marx’s historical critique. The paper draws these inquiries together to suggest that not only that such a ‘unitary theory’ is possible, but that the necessity for such a theory emerges from capitalism’s own historically appropriative logic. Thus, rather than viewing the ‘transhistorical’ status of patriarchy as a source of methodological or strategic fracture between these traditions, the paper reconstructs a feminist adaption of Marx’s concepts of formal and real subsumption and what these concepts tell us not only about capitalist appropriation of antecedent social and economic forms but also of its capacity to produce new forms of gendered exploitation and oppression. The emphasizes the totalizing character of capitalism’s historical appropriation and insists on the need for a ‘unitary theory’ between Marxism and feminism in response to the question of ‘transhistorical patriarchy’. 

Note: A revised version of this paper has been accepted for publication at Historical Materialism (Forthcoming 2023).