Marxism and Bodies

[Catherine Driscoll]

I think there are "free to" versions of Marxism -- free to have a different 
kind of work etc. Which is certainly not what Nietzsche means by free to, but 
not totally alien either. Would Deleuze & Guattari count, even though their 
version of the body is not one common to Marx or most Marxism? I do think of 
them as Marxist which is probably not a safe thing to say here. I think some of 
the intersections between feminist thought and Marxism would be a fair place to 
look, or strange post-Nietzschean but also sympathetic-to-Marxism philosophers 
like Lingis. I think you're only going to find the focus I think you're looking 
for in versions of Marxist thought which have another reason for looking at 
the "the body". But then again when you ask if "this" is the root of the 
problem, I'm not enirely sure what problem you're talking about.

Catherine

Quoting Thomas Seay <entheogens at yahoo.com>:


> Re-reading Nietzsche's "Birth of Tragedy" last night,
> it occured to me how little some marxisms treat the
> question of the body (instincts, etc) and the
> liberation of the body.  Why is this?  Could it be
> that
> some marxisms emphasize teleology in which the body
> figures only as a means to an end and de-emphasize
> ontology?  Is this the root of the problem?  If not, 
> what is?
> 
> In such marxisms, the body is referred to in passing
> rather negatively.  At best it should be "free from"
> starvation, war, etc....but no mention of "free to",
> no affirmation.Apart from that the body seems not to
> exist or only abstractly as the "v" in variable
> capital.  Very often any attempts to speak of a
> liberation of body is cast off as "petit bourgeois
> individualism" and the persecution of homosexuality by
> certain tendancies of the left (especially in the
> past) is one of the terrible outcomes of such an
> orientation.  Then, too, there were the adoptions of
> the taylorist methods and enclosure of bodies inside
> factories and inside States.
> 
> But which threads of marxism AFFIRM the body and argue
> for its liberation?  What is their vision of the body?
> Since there seem to be many different points of view
> on LBO, I would like to hear about that.
> 
> Thomas
> 
> =====
> "Nothing is true, everything is permitted."
> 
> "Money eats quality and shits out quantity"
> -William Burroughs
> 
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-- 
Dr Catherine Driscoll
School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry
University of Sydney
Phone (61-2) 93569503

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