Left-Legalism and the Antinomies of Resistance: From the Jewish Question to the Mueller Report with Peter Bratsis

In the face of the ongo­ing right­ward shift in pol­i­tics, much of the resis­tance that has arisen on the nom­i­nal left has focused on for­mal and legal­is­tic efforts. From the calls for the impeach­ment of Trump to the dec­la­ra­tions of hous­ing and health­care as ‘rights’, the efforts to over­come the cur­rent polit­i­cal impasse imag­ine exist­ing polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions and norms as capa­ble of pro­vid­ing a solu­tion to the very same polit­i­cal real­i­ties that char­ac­ter­ize them. This class will review Marx­ist legal and polit­i­cal the­o­ries with a focus on bet­ter under­stand­ing the lim­i­ta­tions and antin­o­mies of cur­rent efforts to resist the right through the lan­guage and insti­tu­tions of law. Does left-legal­ism func­tion to strength­en the very insti­tu­tions and norms that con­sti­tute the cap­i­tal­ist state? What forms of resis­tance would be nec­es­sary for break­ing the exist­ing polit­i­cal hege­mo­ny and cre­at­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a demo­c­ra­t­ic society?

(2:00–4:00pm): a six week course begin­ning Octo­ber 5th, 2019 — $15 per ses­sion or $80 for all six sessions.

Readings:

Left Legal­ism / Left Cri­tique By Wendy Brown, Janet Halley

Insur­gen­cies: Con­stituent Pow­er and the Mod­ern State by Anto­nio Negri

The Poulantzas Read­er by Poulan­tazas Nicos

Pashuka­nis: Select­ed Writ­ings on Marx­ism & Law (Law, State, and Soci­ety Series) by Evgenii Bro­nislavovich Pashukanis

Karl Marx: Select­ed Writ­ings (Sec­ond Edi­tion) by Karl Marx, David McLel­lan ed.

Click here to watch this sem­i­nar on our Youtube channel!

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