Bound to Labor: Life & Labor in (Early) Marx and (Early) Derrida

Noys, B. (2016) Bound to Labor: Life & Labor in (Early) Marx and (Early) Derrida. the minnesota review, 2016 (87). ISSN 0026-5667

[thumbnail of MR Noys 2016.doc] Text
MR Noys 2016.doc
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.

Download (61kB)

Abstract

The work of Marx has often been treated as an ontology and metaphysics of labor, and this “ontology” has often been resisted in the name of life. In particular, in a series of recent theoretical works, the “savage ontology of life,” as Foucault names it, has been posed against the “limits” of political economy and Marx. This claim to escape the bind of labor and of Marx is critiqued by a return to the early Marx and the early Derrida to explore a different reading of the binding of life to labor. Contrary to Derrida’s later reading, in Specters of Marx [1994], which tends to confine Marx to the metaphysics of presence and of labor, we read the early Marx alongside Derrida’s early reading of Antonin Artaud to disrupt this bind. The work of Marx is re-read as a complex and fissured probing of the problem of detachment from the bind to labor that is never a pure escape. This is not to reinforce our real binding to labor, but a way to suggest new forms of mapping and thinking this binding as contradictory and as capable of being exploded from within.

Publication Type: Articles
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General)
H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor
J Political Science > JC Political theory
Divisions: Academic Areas > Institute of Arts and Humanities > English and Creative Writing
Related URLs:
Depositing User: Benjamin Noys
Date Deposited: 24 Mar 2016 10:10
Last Modified: 28 May 2021 14:20
URI: https://eprints.chi.ac.uk/id/eprint/1793

Actions (login required)

View Item
View Item
▲ Top

Our address

I’m looking for