Adventures of the Symbolic: Post-Marxism and Radical Democracy

Columbia Studies in Political Thought / Political History

by Warren Breckman

Marxism's collapse in the twentieth century profoundly altered the style and substance of Western European radical thought. To build a more robust form of democratic theory and action, prominent theorists moved to reject revolution, abandon class for more fragmented models of social action, and elevate the political over the social. Acknowledging the constructedness of society and politics, they chose the "symbolic" as a concept powerful enough to reinvent leftist thought outside of a Marxist framework. Following Maurice Merleau-Ponty's "Adventures of the Dialectic," which reassessed philosophical Marxism at mid-century, Warren Breckman critically revisits these thrilling experiments in the aftermath of Marxism.

The postmarxist idea of the symbolic is dynamic and complex, uncannily echoing the early German Romantics, who first advanced a modern conception of symbolism and the symbolic. Hegel and Marx denounced the Romantics for their otherworldly and nebulous posture, yet postmarxist thinkers appreciated the rich potential of the ambiguities and paradoxes the Romantics first recognized. Mapping different ideas of the symbolic among contemporary French thinkers, Breckman traces a fascinating reflection of Romantic themes and resonances, and he explores in depth the effort to reconcile a radical and democratic political agenda with a politics that does not privilege materialist understandings of the social. Engaging with the work of Claude Levi-Strauss, Cornelius Castoriadis, Claude Lefort, Marcel Gauchet, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and Slavoj Žižek, Breckman uniquely situates these important theorists within two hundred years of European thought and extends their profound relevance to today's political activism.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, History

376 pages, Hardcover

First published May 21, 2013

About the author

Warren Breckman is Associate Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania and executive editor of the Journal of the History of Ideas.

Reviews

[Luke Echo]

Reasonable survey of a pretty broad field of work. Good introductory text I think