[Xmca-l] Moishe Postone (1942-2018)

[Greg Thompson]

I imagine that a few here on the list may have heard of Moishe Postone's
recent passing (and a few more might be interested to hear).

I can't claim to have been particularly close to him but I can say that my
understanding of Marx was greatly informed by the staff meetings in which
teaching Marx (and others) to undergraduates was the topic year after year.
Moishe was always a passionate and thoughtful leader of these discussions -
a consummate teacher - and I know that I learned an immense amount from him.

I was just reading an essay of his and saw this:

"[Marx] makes clear that the categories of his analysis should not be
understood in narrow economic terms. Rather, they ‘express the forms of
being [Daseinsformen], the determinations of existence
[Existenzbestimmungen] . . . of this specific society’ (Marx 1973: 106,
trans. modified). As such, they are, at once, forms of subjectivity and
objectivity; they express ‘what is given, in the head as well as in
reality’ (Marx 1973: 106). That is, Marx’s categories purport to grasp as
intrinsically interrelated, economic, social and cultural dimensions of the
modern, capitalist form of life that frequently are treated as contingently
related, as extrinsic to one another. "

Felt it relevant somehow...

Full essay can be found here:
https://thecharnelhouse.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Moishe-Postone-Rethinking-Capital-in-Light-of-the-Grundrisse-2008.pdf

Best,
greg

-- 
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
WEBSITE: greg.a.thompson.byu.edu
http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson