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Marxist Criticism

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Often called the father of communism, Marx was both a scholar and a political activist. ... and totalitarian order through laughter, parody, and grotesque realism ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Marxist Criticism


1
Marxist Criticism
2
Who is Karl Marx?
  • He was a 19th-century philosopher, political
    economist, sociologist, humanist, political
    theorist and revolutionary. Often called the
    father of communism, Marx was both a scholar and
    a political activist.
  • He was concerned particularly with the effect of
    the economy upon human life.
  • He is the author of The Communist Manifesto.

3
The Gist of the Theory
  • All society revolves around economic conditions.
  • No human exists on a social island.
  • A person, according to Marxists, is a product of
    his or her economic conditions.

4
Key Terms
  • Class refers to the economic group to which one
    belongs
  • Class conflict disputes between different
    classes (i.e. industrial working class v. the
    owners of production)
  • Ideology ideas, beliefs, forms, and values of
    the ruling class that circulate through all the
    cultural spheres

5
Key Terms Contd
  • Hegemony force that designates the continuous
    ideological domination of the ruling class over
    all other classes through nonviolent means (i.e.
    church, school, family, media, arts, trade
    unions, etc.)
  • Commodity a good or service produced primarily
    for monetary exchange and profit
  • Carnivalesque forms of unofficial culture that
    resist official culture, political oppression,
    and totalitarian order through laughter, parody,
    and grotesque realism

6
Marxism and Literature
  • Literature reflects the social institutions that
    produce it.
  • It is itself a social institution and has a
    particular ideological function.
  • Literature reflects class struggle and
    materialism.
  • Literary works are themselves products of their
    respective eras.

7
Questions a Marxist Critic Asks
  • What role does class play in the work what is
    the author's analysis of class relations?
  • How do characters overcome oppression?
  • In what ways does the work serve as propaganda
    for the status quo or does it try to undermine
    it?
  • What does the work say about oppression or are
    social conflicts ignored or blamed elsewhere?
  • Does the work propose some form of utopian vision
    as a solution to the problems encountered in the
    work?

8
Keep in Mind
  • How power is distributed in the work
  • The function of and concern with wealth within
    the work
  • The ways the characters express their own
    socioeconomic class
  • The socioeconomic class of the author and the
    time period in which he or she wrote
  • The way the work supports or refutes the hegemony
    (ruling force).

9
Key Ideas
  • Stages of History
  • Feudalism
  • Capitalism
  • Communism
  • Materialism
  • Mode of production (agricultural) (industrial)
  • Means of production (Bourgeoisie)

10
Ideas Cont.
  • Class struggle
  • Each system is characterized by the exploitation
    of one class over the other
  • Dialectic
  • Thesis- one condition
  • Antithesis- brings in the opposite condition
  • Synthesis-two opposites will be in conflict until
    the produce a higher stage
  • Internal contradictions
  • Each class system carries the seeds of its own
    distruction

11
Cont.
  • Capitalism
  • Cruelest
  • Ownership concentrated in the ever shrinking
    upper class
  • Working class
  • More and more tech
  • Fewer and fewer jobs
  • Wages pushed ever downward
  • Worker more and more alienated

12
Cont.
  • Class Consciousness
  • Workers will become aware of their condition
  • End of history
  • Class conflict the engine of change
  • Communism end class
  • System free of exploitation will last forever

13
Apply It
  • Think of two major ideological influences in our
    society and use the Marxist approach to discuss
    their impact upon our thinking.
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