Unlearning Marx

The theories of Karl Marx and the practical existence of the Soviet Union are inseparable in the public imagination, but for all the wrong reasons. This book provides detailed analyses of both Marx’s theory of history and the course of Russian and Soviet development and delivers a new and insightful approach to the relationship between the two. Most analyses of the Soviet Union, from any perspective, focus on trying to explain the failure to establish socialism, giving too much weight to the political pronouncements of the regime. But, for Marx, this approach to historical explanation is back-to-front, it's the political tail wagging the economic dog. When we move our focus from the stated aims of building socialism, and look at what actually happened in Russia from emancipation in the 1860s, through the Soviet era to the 1990s, we can clearly see the patterns which Marx identified as the essential features of the transition from feudalism to capitalism in England from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth. As such, the Soviet experiment forms an important part of Russia’s transition from feudalism to capitalism and provides an excellent example of the underlying forces at play in the course of historical development. Unlearning Marx will surprise Marx’s admirers and his detractors alike, and not only shed new light on Marxism's relationship with the Soviet Union, but on his ongoing relationship with our world.

What does it mean to unlearn? Once we have learned something, is it ever possible to unlearn that something? If something is said to have been unlearned, does that mean that it is simply forgotten or does some residual force of learning, some perverse force, also resonate in ways that might help us to rethink traditional approaches to teaching and learning? Might we say that education today is haunted by the spectre of unlearning?This book invites readers to reflect on the possibilities of knowing, reflecting, understanding, teaching and learning in ways that allow us to imagine the other side of education, the side which understands non-knowledge, ignorance, stupidity and wonder as potentially the most important learning experiences we can ever have. In a series of provocative essays by some of the world's most renowned theorists in philosophy, psychoanalysis, cultural studies, politics and education, The Pedagogics of Unlearning challenges us to think again about what we mean when we talk about learning - about what it really means to learn - and whether the kinds of learning we imagine in our classrooms and daily lives are actually synonymous with the sort of learning we envision when we think and talk about the purpose and passage of education.If you think you know what education and learning are doing, what teaching strategies do, and what learning outcomes are, then this book asks you to think again, to unlearn what you have learned, to learn to unlearn.TABLE OF CONTENTS // Éamonn Dunne, "Preface: Learning to Unlearn" - Jacques Ranciere, "Unwhat?" - Deborah Britzman, "Phantasies of the Writing Block: A Psychoanalytic Contribution to Pernicious Unlearning" - Sam Chambers, "Learning How to Be a Capitalist: From Neoliberal Pedagogy to the Mystery of Learning" - John D. Caputo, "Teaching the Event: Deconstruction: Hauntology and the Scene of Pedagogy" - Paul Bowman, "The Intimate Schoolmaster and the Ignorant Stifu: Postructuralism, Bruce Lee and the Ignorance of Everyday Radical Pedagogy" - L.O. Aranye Fradenburg and Eileen A. Joy, "Unlearning: A Duologue" - Aidan Seery, "After-word(s)"The Pedagogics of Unlearning originated at a conference held at Trinity College, University of Dublin, 6-7 September 2014.

This practical book offers a guide to finding, choosing, and applying theoretical frameworks to social sciences research, and provides researchers with the scaffolding needed to reflect on their philosophical orientations and better situate their work in the existing landscape of empirical and theoretical knowledge. Using a multifaceted approach, the book provides clear definitions, primary tenets, historical context, highlights of the challenges and contemporary discussion and, perhaps more importantly, concrete and successful examples of studies that have drawn on and incorporated each theoretical framework. The authors define and explain the connections among such concepts as ontology, epistemology, paradigm, theory, theoretical frameworks, conceptual frameworks, and research methodology; describe the process of finding and effectively using theoretical and conceptual frameworks in research; and offer brief overviews of particular theories within the following disciplines: sociology, psychology, education, leadership, public policy, political science, economics, organizational studies, and business. The book also has a dedicated chapter on critical theories, and for each theory, provides a definition, explores how the theory is useful for researchers, discusses the background and foundations, outlines key terms and concepts, presents examples of theoretical applications, and gives an overview of strengths and limitations. This book offers a useful starting point for any researcher interested in better situating their work in existing conceptual and theoretical knowledge, but it will be especially useful for graduate students and early career researchers who are looking for clear definitions of complex terms and concepts, and for an introduction to useful theories across disciplines.

While the past 300 years have witnessed immense growth in productive capacity, the ‘logic’ of capitalist production is now pushing progress in all the wrong directions. We’ve passed the point where our biggest enemy is material scarcity. Our problems no longer revolve around insufficient production, but iniquitous distribution - and the fact that we’re fast running out of planet - and these are problems that capitalism cannot solve. Taking in a diverse range of contemporary and historical evidence - from the Putney Debates of 1647 to Modern Monetary Theory, from John Locke to Thomas Piketty, from the Rights of Man to the rise of identity politics How Capitalism Ends navigates a path through current affairs, history, economics and philosophy and sets the scene for the conversation we, as a civilization, urgently need to begin…

The Routledge Companion to Vsevolod Meyerhold brings together a wealth of scholarship on one of the foremost innovators in European theatre. It presents a detailed picture of the Russian director’s work from when it first emerged on the modern stage to its multifarious present-day manifestations. By combining an historical focus with the latest contemporary research from an international range of perspectives and authors, this collection marks an important moment in Meyerhold studies as well as offering a new assessment of his relation to today's theatre-making. Its dynamic blend of research is presented in five sections: Histories enlarges on more conventional subjects like the grotesque and Biomechanics, to overlooked topics such as Meyerhold's ‘failed’ projects and his work in film; Collaborations and Connections extends understandings of Meyerhold’s well-known collaborative capacities to consider new cultural influences and lesser known working relationships; Sources engages with hitherto untapped material in Meyerhold’s oeuvre by reproducing and contextualising previously untranslated primary sources on his work; Practitioner Voices offer lively, on the ground, testimony of the contemporary impact of Meyerhold's practice; Meyerhold in New Contexts maps the routes of his practice across continents and examines ways in which his work is being applied in a number of contemporary scenarios, such as motion capture, computer-based 3D visualisations, and the ‘new normal’ of digital pedagogy. This is a key resource for students and scholars of European Theatre, acting theory, and actor training, as well as for those more broadly interested in the socio-political impact of theatre.

George Orwell wrote in Nineteen Eighty Four that ‘If there is hope, it lies in the proles.’ A century earlier Marx was unequivocal: the future belonged to the proletariat. Today such confidence might seem misplaced. The proletariat has not yet fulfilled Marx’s expectations, and seems unlikely ever to do so. How could Marx have entertained the notion that the proletariat would emancipate humanity from capitalism and from class rule itself? This book, first published in 1988, attempts an explanation by examining the sources and development of Marx’s concept of the proletariat. It contends that this was not only a crucial element in Marx’s theory but a significant departure in socialist thought. By examining this concept in detail the book uncovers a major contradiction in Marxian thought: although the proletariat is assigned a momentous task it is chiefly depicted as the class of suffering which is why, historically, it has preferred security to enterprise.

Performing Marx looks at what it means to be a Marxist dealing with contemporary political and theoretical developments in the twenty-first century. Drawing upon Marx's work, Western Marxism, and poststructuralist theory, Bradley J. Macdonald explores how a living tradition of Marx's ideas can constructively engage a politics of desire and pleasure, ecological sustainability, a politics of everyday life that takes seriously popular culture, and the nature of globalization and of the radical forces being arrayed against the logics of global capitalism. By engaging such crucial issues, Macdonald also provides important clarifications of the work of William Morris, Guy Debord and the situationists, Michel Foucault, Antonio Negri, Ernesto Laclau, and Chantal Mouffe, as they relate to Marx.

Basic treatment of fundamental concepts of discrete event simulation. Appropriate as Jr./Sr. level introductory simulation text in Engineering, Management, Computer Science; a second course in simulation and an introduction to stochastic models. Features many examples, figures and tables.