Category Archives: Historical Materialism

Lefebvre: State, Space, World

Posted on May 18, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Lefebvre, Henri. 2009. State, Space, World: Selected Essays. Edited by Neil Brenner and Stuart Elden. Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota University Press. [Intro, Ch. 1, 2, 3, 11] So far, as this particular reading confirmed, no other thinker seems better equipped than … Continue reading →

Posted in Antonio Gramsci, Carl Schmitt, Critique, GWF Hegel, Henri Lefebvre, Historical Materialism, Historical-Geographies, Karl Marx, Law, Marxism, Nation/Nationalism, Political Economy, Power, Scale, Sovereignty, Spatiality, Territory, Violence | 3 Comments

The Poverty of Theory Debate

Posted on April 26, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Thompson, E.P. 1978. “Poverty of Theory or An Orrery of Errors” Anderson, Perry. 1980. Arguments Within English Marxism. London: Verso. Is there any polemic more biting in its wit, rigor and distaste than E.P. Thompson’s (EP) “Poverty of Theory”? Today, … Continue reading →

Posted in Critique, Historical Materialism, Marxism, Political Economy, Power, The State | 2 Comments

Geographical Imaginations

Posted on April 26, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Gregory, Derek. 1994. Geographical Imaginations. Oxford: Blackwell. [Ch. 2 & 6] Chapter 2 sets out to explore critiques of the spatial science geography of the 1950s and 1960s from two perspectives: humanism and historical materialism, which were also in tense … Continue reading →

Posted in David Harvey, Gender, Henri Lefebvre, Historical Materialism, Post-Colonial, Race & Ethnicity, Spatiality, The Body | 1 Comment

Soja’s Postmodern Geographies

Posted on April 24, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Soja, Edward W. 1989. Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory. London: Verso. [Ch 1-3] I learned a lot from this book. Reading about Marxism and geography feels a bit like peering into a family album. Ed … Continue reading →

Posted in David Harvey, Dialectics, Henri Lefebvre, Historical Materialism, Marxism, Michel Foucault, Spatiality | Comments Off

Spaces of Capital

Posted on April 23, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Harvey, David. 2001. Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography. New York: Routledge. [Chapters from Part II]. Geography of Capitalist Accumulation (1975) In this first chapter, we can see Harvey beginning to develop much of what later becomes central aspects … Continue reading →

Posted in David Harvey, GWF Hegel, Historical Materialism, Karl Marx, Marxism, Political Economy, Primitive Accumulation, Spatiality, The State | 3 Comments

The Spatial Fix Revisited

Posted on April 20, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Harvey defines his notion of the “spatial fix” in terms of the junky that needs a “fix,” but that fix is entirely fleeting and never satiates the junky’s need for smack, or in this case capitalist expansion. The resolution is … Continue reading →

Posted in David Harvey, Historical Materialism, Marxism, Political Economy, Spatiality | 2 Comments

Hegemony and the Philosophy of Praxis

Posted on February 16, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

After reading Antonio Santucci’s short political biography on Gramsci and after re-reading some of the Prison Notebooks (edited and translated by J. Buttigieg), I want to offer a reading of the relation and significance of “hegemony” within what Gramsci conceives … Continue reading →

Posted in Antonio Gramsci, Dialectics, Hegemony, Historical Materialism, Marxism, The State | 2 Comments

Jacobins of the Black Atlantic

Posted on February 12, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

In the preface to Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History, Susan Buck-Morss credits the positive reception of her original article to the “unconventional topologies of time and space that it mapped out” (ix). The analogy with topology—a field in mathematics—is particularly … Continue reading →

Posted in Dialectics, Historical Materialism, Historical-Geographies, Post-Colonial, Spatiality, Violence | 2 Comments

Notes on “The German Ideology”

Posted on February 11, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Marx is moving away from questions of rights and philosophy to the study of political economy and capitalism. The book has both a political and a philosophical dimension. First, Marx and Engels are railing against German Idealism’s view that consciousness … Continue reading →

Posted in Historical Materialism, Karl Marx, Marxism, Political Economy, The State | 1 Comment

Imagined Communities

Posted on February 10, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Anderson, Benedict. 2006 [1983]. Imagined Communities. London: Verso. Anderson is first and foremost trying to account for nationalism from a Marxist perspective, citing for instance the conundrum of internecine strife in the Marxist region of Indochina in the late 1970s. … Continue reading →

Posted in Historical Materialism, Marxism, Nation/Nationalism, The State | 2 Comments