----- Original Message ----- From: Anne J <annenewyork at hotmail.com> Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2000 10:04 PM Subject: Marx on Suicide book party in NY Feb. 20
Dear Friend,
Will you please forward this press release to any lists you think may be interested in this new publication?
Book Party for _MARX ON SUICIDE_
Eric A. Plaut and Kevin Anderson, editors of a new book, _MARX ON SUICIDE_, will discuss the work and the contemporary issues to which it speaks at a book party on Sunday, February 20. The party, which will take place at the Parish House parlor of Washington Square Church, 133 W. 4th St. in Manhattan, will begin at 6:30 p.m.
Refreshments will be served, and a $5 voluntary entrance donation entitles one to a 25% discount on the book.
Charles F. Herr, a clinical psychologist, will also comment on the book and the editors' introductions.
Eric A. Plaut is a Professor Emeritus at Northwestern University Medical School, and author of _Grand Opera: Mirror of the Western Mind_. Kevin Anderson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, Northern Illinois University, and author of _Lenin, Hegel and Western Marxism_.
In 1846, two years before the publication of the _Communist Manifesto_, Karl Marx published his little known essay "Peuchet on Suicide." In it he translated some pathbreaking studies of suicides, mainly of women in early nineteenth-century Paris, conducted by Jacques Peuchet. Yet as Plaut emphasizes, Marx's essay is not a straightforward translation. He altered some of Peuchet's language, and added passages, resulting in an essay that strongly reflected Marx's own position on the subject. "Marx makes the point," says Anderson, "that it is not only the workers, but the whole of bourgeois society, that suffers under dehumanized social relations."
_Marx on Suicide_ presents Peuchet's essay in the original French, Marx's essay in the original German, and a new translation of Marx's essay into English. In two substantial introductory essays, Plaut and Anderson comment on Marx's text and situate it in the context of his life, his philosophy, and his championing of women's liberation.
The party is sponsored by News and Letters Committees, the Marxist- Humanist organization. Call (212) 663-3631 for more information.