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Title: Marx: The video. A politics of revolting bodies Reference: Director, Laura Kipnis. Abstract: A postmodern-experimental-revisionist bio-pic on Karl Marx – this is Marx after the collapse of communism, after feminism, after Freud. Based on Marx’s letters to Engels, which were largely concerned with the state of his own body, it recounts a body continually erupting with painful boils and carbuncles into new and grotesque configurations (all the while Marx was writing Capital and anticipating social revolution it was his own body that was in revolt). The body becomes a site of displacement, both for the thwarted revolution and for the problematic issues of sex, subjectivity and the role of women (outside production) deleted from the public-sphere Marx-in-theory. (Abstract provided by V-Tape.). Library of Congress subjects: Sociology subjects: Reviews and Numerical Ratings
(4) This experimental, independent video invites sociological theorizing in the form of a collage of complex social issues. Connections between, for example, the proletariat and the bourgeois (physical and social body), social order, moral regulation and body image demand the viewer to rethink Marx’s theories about class relations. As the narrator reads excerpts of his letters to Engels during the writing of Das Capital, a time when he suffers from the eruptions of carbuncles, the viewer witnesses a process that on the hand documents and analyzes the production of theory and illness and on the other questions Marx’s purpose and effects of his writing. This visual text pushes Marx’s writing into the landscape of post-modernism. Once there, issues around writing and being written, (reminiscent of Wittig and Winterson) are raised with probing thoughts such as: The modern construction of the ideal working-class body is one that is managed through capitalist commodities aimed to contain its horror. What happens if we view such an attempt to manage the (physical and social) body as a “social collective act” to “will the disappearance of the body” and contain the masses. This video requires a class on visual text reading practices, representation and post modern theories. With that in place, it is an excellent opportunity to discuss how theories come to be produced, how they are received, and approaching canonized texts in a new and exciting way. Appropriate for Social Theory (probably end of term), Critical Theory, Moral Regulation, Gender, Social Construction of the Body. This is for students who have some knowledge of theory and reading visual texts. Doreen Fumia (1.5) This documentary supplies the observer with a biographical account of Marx's battle with the Carbuncle disease while endeavoring to complete Das Capital. It then attempts (very poorly) to demonstrate the manipulative ways in which Western Culture is obsessed with constructing the body. The conceptual theoretical framework is present, however, it needs further development. This documentary could have been composed better, and as a result, it earns a 1.5 rating. Carlos Torres (undergraduate) (2.5) This dramatization advances the thesis that while Marx was writing Capital, the failed/repressed revolutions of 1848, which sought to create a new social body, were expressed both through Marx’s body (in outbreaks of boils) and at a societal level in the newly-defined “hysteria”. A 2nd is that capitalists profit when the bourgeois body is seen as revolting – e.g., the self-loathing of women as they talk about their bodies contributes to the success of numerous hygiene products. These two theses mix metaphors - in the 1st, the body revolts, while in the 2nd, the body is revolting – so the video is complex. A 3rd point is that Marx’s own relations with working class and women, illustrated by an account of a maid who bore his child, were troubled. This video wouldn’t be so useful for explaining Marx’s historical context to students, since little information is given about 1848 and subsequent movements. But it humanizes Marx, offers a feminist critique of Marxism, and provides an uncommonly interesting account of body image issues. Kathy Bischoping (2.5) This strikes me as a collaborative project gone awry – it tries to do too much – it could be a biographical portrait of marx, it could be a narrative of the diseased body, it could be about the politics of bodily regulation – and it schizophrenically jumps back and forth among these possibilities. Some sections are lovely, while others are thin & weak. Some subtleties are a bit disturbing (Marx is shown as being overcome when reading Woolstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women). The dramatizations are a bit cheesy but if you can get over it, snippets of this could be used to greta effect in classes on theory, the body, or activism. You’d have to choose carefully. Andie Noack
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