Book contents
- After Marx
- After Series
- After Marx
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Black Marxism and the Antinomies of Racial Capitalism
- Chapter 2 Eco-Criticism and Primitive Accumulation in Indigenous Studies
- Chapter 3 Screening Insurrection: Marx, Cinema, Revolution
- Chapter 4 Marxist Ecology and Shakespeare
- Chapter 5 There Is No “More Commodification”: Periodizing Capitalist Transformation
- Chapter 6 The Irreconcilable: Marx after Literature
- Chapter 7 The Rise and Fall of the English-Language Literary Novel since World War II
- Chapter 8 Literature and the State
- Chapter 9 Post-Soviet Aesthetics
- Chapter 10 Lu Xun’s Literary Revolution in Chinese Marxism
- Chapter 11 Latin American Literature and Dependency Theory Today
- Chapter 12 Industry Culture: Labor and Technology in Marxist Critical Theory
- Chapter 13 In Service to Capital: Theater and Marxist Cultural Theory
- Chapter 14 Hidden Abodes and Inner Bonds: Literary Study and Marxist-Feminism
- Chapter 15 Poetry and Revolution
- Index
- References
Chapter 4 - Marxist Ecology and Shakespeare
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 March 2022
Book contents
- After Marx
- After Series
- After Marx
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Black Marxism and the Antinomies of Racial Capitalism
- Chapter 2 Eco-Criticism and Primitive Accumulation in Indigenous Studies
- Chapter 3 Screening Insurrection: Marx, Cinema, Revolution
- Chapter 4 Marxist Ecology and Shakespeare
- Chapter 5 There Is No “More Commodification”: Periodizing Capitalist Transformation
- Chapter 6 The Irreconcilable: Marx after Literature
- Chapter 7 The Rise and Fall of the English-Language Literary Novel since World War II
- Chapter 8 Literature and the State
- Chapter 9 Post-Soviet Aesthetics
- Chapter 10 Lu Xun’s Literary Revolution in Chinese Marxism
- Chapter 11 Latin American Literature and Dependency Theory Today
- Chapter 12 Industry Culture: Labor and Technology in Marxist Critical Theory
- Chapter 13 In Service to Capital: Theater and Marxist Cultural Theory
- Chapter 14 Hidden Abodes and Inner Bonds: Literary Study and Marxist-Feminism
- Chapter 15 Poetry and Revolution
- Index
- References
Summary
When read in light of Adorno’s “preponderance of the object,” The Tempest can be seen as bearing the marks of “primitive accumulation” in ways that can be made to challenge the ecologically catastrophic present. The unusual physical presence of wood in Shakespeare’s play in performance – especially given the play’s lavish display of suffering – opens it to serving as a critique of the reduction of the nonhuman world to mere “raw material” for human use, through which the subordination of some humans to others is also effected. In its physical form wood can be interruptive. Attentiveness to its refusal to reduce to human purposes in the excess of its seeming quiddity can open viewers to a “change of perspective” that, in turn, might lead to enhanced struggle for transformed conditions of existence – without the domination property relations establish – for humans and nonhumans alike: the goal of a properly Marxist ecology.
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- After MarxLiterature, Theory, and Value in the Twenty-First Century, pp. 71 - 85Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022
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