<< On the other hand, I haven't read any postmodernist discuss articles and
books [about] Wood, Callinicos, Geras, etc. Perhaps postmodernists consider
them irrelevant or beneath their attention.
>> This is an interesting point. It may reflect my ignorance of pomo, which is considerable, as I became sick of it very early and run screaming whenever I have to encounter it, but I have not read many detailed engagements by pomos with Marxism either. There is an embarassing book by Derrida on Marx, but it hardly acknowledges that there is a Marxist tradition as opposed to a solitary figure. Laclau and Moore had a book that was big a decade ago that did contain a series of caricatures of various figures in the Marxist tradition; Geras attacked in in Discourses of Exremity.
There was an anthology a while back--I have a copy somewhere--called something like Marxism and the Critique of Culture. It reflected a lot of bad appropriation of Gramsci and a certain amount of uniformed sneering at Lukacs asa literary critic, but mainly a lot of stuff about how great G was a cultural critic, if only we can read around that embarassing class analysis and talk of revolution.
As to deailing with Ellen Wood, Norman Geras and Alexis Callinicos--or indeed Allen Wood, G.A. Cohen, and John Roemer--Ithere is virtually nothing. Basically I think that pomos find Marxism a lot less interesting than Marxists find pomo. Marxists toa certain degree have to be interested in pomo: it is the dominant turn in certain sectors of the academy where most Marxsits live these days. (Outside those parts of the academy, it doesn't exist--just try deconstructionism on a federal judge. A state judge would probably hold you in contempt of court.)
But while pomos had to be interested in Marxism at first, since it was the major intellectual tradition on the left and had won a foothold in the academy after the 60s, it is now no longer an intellectual force with any substantial following in the academy (never mind in the working class; probably it never was there in this country). It's not a pole of attraction for students who might be drawn to it rather than pomo in areas where pomo is in; people aren't writing exciting new Marxist books or engaging in a lively Marxist debate in the journals. So it's neither an important target in terms of academic politics or intellectual interest. It won;t get you tenure or advanacement to write about it when you could write about the (de)Construction of (Ma)donna's (post)Moderrn (hyper)Sexuality.
So that's why I think pomos are not interested in Marxism. In a sense,w ho can blame them?
The discussion about whether and to what extend the pomos are bourgeois bigwigs overstates their cultural weight considerably. Pomo is an academic industry of some importance in the "soft" disciplines, notably English Literature. It has outposts in the wilder reaches of history and legal academics and is hegemonic in women's studies and ethnic and third world studies. In philosophy, however, it is regarded as a joke in major prestige departments and places that aspire to be like them. In the social sciences it's below notice. (I used to be a philosophy prof and got my doctorate in philosophy and political science.) In the natural sciences, it isn't, except when a physicist like Sokal pokes fun at it.
In the wider world outside the academy, where I live now, an intelligent, educated, well-read thoughtful person could live her whole life and never hear of it or register its characteristic themes. I doubt whether the judge I clerk for has a clue what it is. Do you think she's missing anything?