Bad Marxism: Capitalism and Cultural Studies - John Hutnyk

Bad Marxism is a critical political analysis of Cultural Studies. It assesses the radical credentials of a discipline that commonly claims to be radical, but is often disengaged from political movements and political struggles as they are actually found in the world today. In particular, Hutnyk looks at how Cultural Studies has used and abused Marxism - that while cultural theorists engage with Marx, their interpretations of Marx ensure that much of his radical political potential is lost. The book focuses on a number of key theorists who are all in some way influenced by, or comment, on Marx: Jacques Derrida, James Clifford, Georges Bataille, and Michael Hardt and Toni Negri in Empire. Coming from diverse intellectual and disciplinary positions (from anthropology to very rarefied philosophy), these theorists have from different directions been highly influential on contemporary cultural studies. Hutnyk attempts to be attentive to the diversity of their positions, but also shows how within that diversity certain common problems emerge, centering on their treatment of Marx and their use of Marxist categories, which leads them and Cultural Studies to an ineffective politics.