Bad Marxism: Capitalism and Cultural Studies, Pluto 2004
‘Hutnyk packs more dynamite in his sentences than any other writer I know.’ Amitava Kumar, Penn State University
Cultural Studies commonly claims to be a radical discipline. This book thinks that’s a bad assessment. Cultural theorists love to toy with Marx, but critical thinking seems to fall into obvious traps. / After an introduction which explains why the ‘Marxism’ of the academy is unrecognisable and largely unrecognised in anti-capitalist struggles, Bad Marxism provides detailed analyses of Cultural Studies’ cherished moves by holding fieldwork, archives, empires, hybrids and exchange up against the practical criticism of anti-capitalism. Engaging with the work of key thinkers: Jacques Derrida, James Clifford, Gayatri Spivak, Georges Bataille, Homi Bhabha, Michael Hardt and Toni Negri, Hutnyk concludes by advocating an open Marxism that is both pro-party and pro-critique, while being neither dogmatic, nor dull.
Pluto Press 2004
Trinketization 
“Review of John Hutnyk’s Bad Marxism: Capitalism and Cultural Studies (2004, London: Pluto) Approx. Words: 2,900 by By Michelangelo Paganopoulos
Bad Marxism is the third major work of John Hutnyk focusing on the problems of representation in the culture industry, largely inspired by the writings of Marx, Adorno, and Spivak, among others. The book follows The Rumour of Calcutta (1996), in which Hutnyk highlighted the problem of representation in ethnography, and the Critique of Exotica (2000) on the political ambiguity of the notion of ļæ½hybridityļæ½ in culture. With Bad Marxism, Hutnyk responds to his two previous books by articulating a sense of political urgency for activism during and after fieldwork in both anthropology and cultural studies.
Bad Marxism begins as a critique of ethnography and anthropology by underlying the power of travel in colonial and post-colonial times. Hutnyk associates the impact of travel with the violence inflicted on slaves during and after their displacement, and imaginatively connects travel and slavery with contemporary ethnographic tourism. In this context, he argues, both Malinowski and Clifford are members of the same ļæ½colonial projectļæ½ this time glossed as globalisation by neoliberal ideologyļæ½ (2004″…. [continues….] {its by By Michelangelo Paganopoulos}
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Review of John Hutnykās Bad Marxism: Capitalism and Cultural Studies (2004, London: Pluto)
Approx. Words: 2,900
By Michelangelo Paganopoulos
Bad Marxism is the third major work of John Hutnyk focusing on the problems of representation in the culture industry, and largely inspired by the writings of Marx, Adorno, and Spivak, among others. The book follows The Rumour of Calcutta (1996), in which Hutnyk highlighted the problem of representation in ethnography, and the Critique of Exotica (2000) on the political ambiguity of the notion of āhybridityā in culture. With Bad Marxism, Hutnyk responds to his two previous books by articulating a sense of political urgency for activism during and after fieldwork in both anthropology and cultural studies.
Bad Marxism begins by underlying the power of travel in colonial and post-colonial times in a critique of ethnography and anthropology. Hutnyk associates the impact of travel with the violence inflicted on slaves during and after their displacement, and imaginatively connects travel and slavery with contemporary ethnographic tourism. In this context, he argues, both Malinowski and Clifford are members of the same ācolonial projectā¦ this time glossed as globalisation by neoliberal ideologyā (2004, p.10).
In illustrating his point, Hutnyk is suspicious of Cliffordās āalarmingā tone about the rising of the Asian market (Ibid, p.39) arguing that Clifford, like his predecessor, āoffer awe frustrated travel tales and stalled research projectsā (p. 49), which support the status quo of their respective time: the colonial aggression of Malinowskiās world, and the aggression of the free market in Cliffordās time. In another ethnographic reference, Hutnyk underlines Cliffordās indifference to the political struggle of the Zapatistas against the corrupted Mexican government in the latterās ethnography of Chiapas. He then, rightly wonders:
How useful are even āhistoricalā and āpoliticalā juxtapositions without thinking politically about what to do with them? And what does this mean for anthropology? (Hutnyk, 2004, p.p. 32-33)
But the first part of Bad Marxism is not intended to be a criticism of Clifford. Rather, the book is a general critique of the anthropological discourse as a whole, and the rise of cultural studies as its natural product. In the heart of Bad Marxism lies Hutnykās critique of Cliffordās (and anthropologyās for the same reasons) concept of the ethnographic claim for āheterogeneityā at fieldwork in the representation of selected ethnographic material in the form of ācollageā (a word suspiciously close to ācollegeā). It is though this problematic idea of āheterogeneityā that Hutnyk investigates Derridaās political ideas on the urgent need for āmultiplication of forms of mediaā, a topic that Hutnyk has already examined before in relation to Derridaās writings on the silencing of alternative voices by the dominant culture (2000: 230-1).
Back in his Critique of Exotica (2000), Hutnyk highlighted the political urgency in Derridaās calling for āpolitical vigilance before the mediaā, quoting, however, that this does not mean āāa protest against the media generallyāā (2000, p.230). Derrida by underlying the endless possibilities of āhybridityā in terms of āmultiplicationā of voices gives a political spin to the Humanitarian disciplines, such as anthropology and cultural studies, manifested by an urgent feeling for social change. Political urgency is a vivid feeling that also runs throughout Bad Marxism in the need for a future dynamic development of ācultureā as a form of both resistance and inclusion. However, for Hutnyk, capitalist society (including education and research) stands still in a state of āparalysisā. He overdramatic writes:
The world is fucked up. Conditions of despair; prospects appear slim (p.80)ā¦
What is it that allows this silencing of the Third World and class politics of the First World Modernity? ā¦It amounts to class struggle without class, or class analysis without struggle ā¦Derrida writes of contemporary capitalist society in a way that seems again to homogenize and simplify āand lead to paralysis- at the very time that he wants to warn against these things (2004, p.103)
At times, Hutnykās own phrases, such as āthe system of colonial plunderā that is āisolating and dividingā national markets (p.89), or the aggression of ādirect foreign investmentā within āthe context of superexploitationā (p.106), are often used by nationalist, or ātraditionalistā movements, such as the indigenous movements of Latin America, or the nationalist-religious groups in sectarian Europe -from the Balkans to Ireland. This kind of language tends to regard national identity as threatened by an imagined āevil capitalist Modernityā, if such a monster really exists.
Still, Hutnykās observations on the power of speed in the process of producing, circulating, and reproducing information, as well as his criticism of the assumed worldwide āfree accessā to the Internet (2004, p.p.63-4), return to the Critique of Exotica and his question on the connection of āhybridising capitalism that sells culture and technologyā to the colonialism of the so-called āThird worldā (2000: 218-9). The point is that the so-called āfree-accessā to the Internet is a privilege of the ādevelopedā countries: the more a country is economically ādevelopedā and expanded in the world market, the cheapest and easier access to the Internet it provides to its citizens.
Thus, the Internet is another commodity that separates ādevelopedā from āsemi-developedā and āThird Worldā countries. It is not a human right which would ideally confirm the freedom of the individual in terms of choice and movement, because simply you do need money to connect to the āglobal worldā, in the same way you need money to travel and do anthropology: neither are free, nor bohemian, as romantic notions of anthropology tend to be. In Hutnyk, the discourse of contemporary anthropological method is strictly a matter of business, and the anthropological and cultural package sold in the university market has the aesthetic form of Cliffordās self-reflexive fieldwork.
In Critique of Exotica, Hutnyk draws a sharp parallel line between the work of NGOs on the one hand, and the ācultural development of Madonna or Kula Shakerā on the other, as both morally based on āwell-meaning but naĆÆve notions of solidarityā (2000, p.219). In Bad Marxism he continues his investigation on multiplicity, solidarity, and hybridity, this time in the context of the Empire (2000) by Hardt and Negri.
By comparing the writings of Hardt and Negri in the Empire with Marxās Notes On Indian History (1947) Hutnyk focuses on the Indian Rebellion of 1857: he notes that Hardt and Negri depict the intervention of the British government as a ādirect responseā(!) (Hardt and Negri, 2000: 36) to the rebellion. However, as Hutnyk points out, Marx read the Indian rebellion of 1857 through the wider historical context of a number of rebellions against the British Empire. Hardt and Negri, instead, overemphasize on Marxās assertion that the future of India was determined by Europe (Hutnyk, 2004: 124), ignoring the fact, always according to the writer, that Marxās assertion was consistent with political activism and should be understood as such.
Hutnyk offers three suggestions in resolving the above problem of historical representation in anthropology: first, a return to the history of anti-colonial movements for our better understanding of historical ātransitionsā (p.137). Second, in response to the cultural relativism of our times, he offers for once more āorganizationā as the means to move forward:
Organization matters, but it must actually be organized not simply namedā¦ Organized how is the issue… the question of organization that must necessarily be asked in terms of what is required for any ārevolutionary consciousnessā to succeed against oppression (Hutnyk, 2004, p.p. 136-7, 143)
For Hutnyk, political action presupposes āorganizationā: his reading of Spivakās method of ālearning to learn from belowā (p.p.145-51) comes to life when he conceptualises it into Maoism! Shockingly to a European reader liker me, Hutnyk wonders: āWhat would be part of a return to Mao today?ā (p.146), and even more controversially, that ālearning to learn from below perhaps could be a credo for rereading Mao in anthropology, sociology and cultural studies todayā (p.147). Hutnyk argues that ālearning to learnā should never be a āneutral methodā but always has to be a politicised act.
In illustrating his point, Hutnyk offers another fascinating critical note on the writings of Bhabha regarding the latterās ādisplacementā of the word ādialecticsā with an ahistorical notion of āhybridityā, a notion already presented in Bad Marxism as a commodity through Hutnykās reading of the Empire. In this context āhybridityā clearly becomes an ideological weapon in the hands of the elites. āHybridityā, similar to Durkheimās notion of the āsacredā in religion, has mystifying powers. Hutnyk argues that just as Bhabha replaces the word ādialecticsā with āhybridityā, the āreplacement of the Third Worldist solidarity work and internationalist politics with a cosmopolitan āpostcolonial eliteā politicsā (p.150) also takes place.
The solidarity of the proletariat is a theme running throughout Hutnykās latest work, and in particular the increasing alienated conditions of work and indifference of the individual for the wider social interest. In Bad Marxism there is a feeling that hybridity threatens solidarity:
The advent of hybridity theory is the displacement of an anti-imperial political organization into the glamour of the leftist publishing sector. Mao becomes as much a t-shirt slogan as complexity and ambivalence become buzzwordsā¦ The Raj is still red, white and blue, the stripes just run a different angle
(2004, p.151)
Hutnykās urgency for political activism is strongly associated to his ideas of an increasing divided and alienated proletariat force, the elimination of solidarity among the workers, and the exploitation by the global market of historical figures who used to be representatives of alternative politics to capitalism. It is in this neoliberal āpostmodernā cultural fascism, in which each āRevolutionā (Mayday demonstrations, Che, Chomski, the Asian Dub Foundation, eco-living, and so on) becomes a fragmented, and thus, weak force, divided in endless and ever-increasing numbers of āincommunableā āsingularā (p.132) events, which are isolated from each other remaining unconscious of the wider historical picture of the world. Conversely, the mystical words of āproletariat solidarityā instead of being a realistic aim, it becomes a working classā legendary but also pointless ideal. Hutnykās position in a moral sense is not much different from Durkheimās own ideals of āsocial solidarityā and ācollective consciousnessā, which were produced and defined as moral oppositions to the increasing individualism of his time (1893). Still, obviously Hutnyk looks at social organization in its dynamic potentiality for political, economic, and historical change, rather than in structural terms as Durkheim did.
In an anthropological context, Hutnykās deep idealism shouts that the time is now for ālearning to learn how to do sociology and activism, anthropology and solidarity, Marxism and Revolutionary politics, togetherā (p.151). How to actually do that? This question leads us to the final and arguably best part of Bad Marxism: Batailleās war on war in his library.
The final part of Bad Marxism focuses on Batailleās life and his notion of āexpenditureā. It is centralized around the question of āhow useful an experiment would it be to try to āapplyā Batailleās notion of expenditure to politics todayā (p.177). The chapter is divided in four parts sketching four different aspects of Bataille: the first part, entitled āLibrarianā, focuses on Batailleās double life and his surreal aesthetics in relation to his strong anti-war sentiment. I feel that Hutnyk at times idealizes Bataille forgetting for a moment that Bataille was himself part of the greater group of artists and intellectuals who sprang out of two World Wars. From this perspective, Bataille is not so special. Already from the beginning of the Twentieth Century a number of scholars had urgently pointed to the institutionalisation of violence through academic education, Virginia Woolf among them:
What reason is there to think that a university education makes the educated against the War? Again, if we help an educated manās wife go to Cambridge are we not forcing her to think not about education but about war?ā
(Woolf, V. in Room of Oneās Own View/Three Guineas, Oxford: Penguin, 1992, p.195)
Following Batailleās anti-war sentiment, Hutnyk looks at the ālibrarianā in Batailleās third role as the āActivistā. Hutnyk emphasizes on Batailleās absolute denial of any form of authority and/or categorization, as well as total moral freedom. Bataille has described as āappallingā thought (p.168) the possibility of any patronization by a political party, agency, or enterprise. It is through this kind of surreal realism that the fourth face of Bataille, that of the āAnthropologistā, breaks through the limits of participant observation in sociology and anthropology: Batailleās analysis of Maussās classic study of The Gift (1926), and particularly the idea that āa gift is never a giftā, leads to Batailleās apocalyptic vision of āa world in ruinsā (p.180) described in terms of āexcess of growthā, self-destruction, and apocalyptic war. Hutnyk functionally applies Batailleās āgrowth of expenditureā theory in the world today āin a period of capitalist slump, crisis of credit, overextended market, defaulted debt, and threatening collapse, the strategy of war looms largeā (p.178). In this way, Hutnyk draws his own world of contemporary hell.
Hutnyk concludes that āthe massive accumulation that is the excess of an arms tradeā, as well as āMay day marchesā, āfashionista style warsā and āBeckham haircutsā are all expenditures in a system that wastes itself. However, where is the āplayfulā (p.161) side of Bataille that Hutnyk is talking about I canāt really see. Still, this is as much a provocative, as well as poetically modern reading of Batailleās work in relation to his personal double life, and with the emphasis on the individual, rather than on vague suffocating moral ideas of ācommunityā. Bad Marxism represents Bataille as a lonely hero-librarian, and an activist, who makes war on war from his archives.
Conclusions
A book is a bus stop on the way from here to there and the destinations are not foretold. Or at least the ticket is an all-day passā¦ Through Cliffordās travelling theory and routed predicaments, Derridaās ten-point telegram, Hardt and Negriās Empire and Batailleās library. There is an accumulation of trinkets arranged in a way that I believe amounts to a āBad Marxism- analysis of where we are now. This is never conclusive and always open.ā
(Hutnyk, 2004, p.21)
Since Hutnyk labels himself a ābad Marxistā (p.p.189-92), Bad Marxism is in itself a satire of contemporary self-reflexive anthropological writing and cultural studies. In the same way Malinowski used āpolyphonic heteroglossiaā (p.33) in describing his experiences at fieldwork, and in a similar way to Cliffordās multi-vocal ethnography, or Batailleās journeys, which āso often seemed to stallā (p.158), Hutnykās Bad Marxism is the result of a contribution of many different thinkers, anthropologists with different backgrounds, and students, who are acknowledged in the opening pages of the book. Hutnykās method, if there is one, is not much different from his predecessors. The difference, according to Hutnykās reading of Bataille at the end of the book, is that Hutnyk, similar to Bataille, is conscious of his position and thus, politically active:
Being bad at Marxism means our ideas cannot be immediately deployed into the kind of project that institutes something that will not be able to budgeā¦ yet, let us at least insist on this, that Bad Marxism must always be directed to a critique of Marxism in the interests of a better Marxism. Dialectically. (Hutnyk, 2004: 192)
This is self-reflexive anthropology. At times Hutnykās admirable idealism sounds desperate to move anthropology forward. However, the more he fails to move forward the more interesting the book becomes, and that is because the book is in itself a reflection of the anthropology of the past and present. Bad Marxism is in itself a āreactionary productā of the contemporary academic industry, published in London. Therefore, it is also part of the āflirtationā of information through the āideology of transnational corporate enterprisesā (p.38). Hutnyk consciously takes us through his own glasses to a historical trip from anthropology to cultural studies, in order to demonstrate the lapses of the ethnographic method at fieldwork (with serious political and economic implications), which has been unquestionably inherited from Malinowski to Clifford, and is ānow packaged in fee-paying postgraduate coursesā (p.6), such as mine. But Hutnyk also asks: āCan anthropology become something better than it has been?ā (2004, p.34)
Certainly this book does not have the answer. Hutnykās marriage of self-reflexive ethnography of travelling (Clifford) with activism (Marx) is to say the least vague, if not meaningless, cruelly summed up by his superfluous dialectic sentence: āClifford plus Marx, travel plus a political projectā (p.50), and probably part of the whole new āpackageā of āanthropological discourseā. The writer would be the first to admit that the ticket for the bus he is referring to in the above quote might be a āday-passā but the destination is nowhere. Instead, this is a humorous, and at times overdramatic critique of the problems of representation in ethnographic work and cultural studies, in perfect continuation with The Rumours of Calcutta: Tourism, Charity and the Poverty of representation (1996), and Critique of Exotica (2000). With Bad Marxism Hutnyk establishes himself as one of the most original and radical contemporary thinkers of cultural studies, specializing on the problem of representation, colonialism, and the culture industry. The bookās relentless pace and sharp sarcasm is certainly a deeply political outtake on the history of anthropology and the birth of cultural studies, offering a much-needed criticism of the construction of Humanities on the basis of fieldwork, as well as questioning the future of the discipline.
References
Hutnyk, J. (1996) The Rumour of Calcutta: Tourism, Charity and the Poverty of Representation London: Zed Books
(2000) Critique of Exotica: Music Politics and the Culture Industry London: Pluto Press
(2004) Bad Marxism: Capitalism and Cultural Studies London: Pluto Pr
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An Alternative to Capitalism (Marxism?)
The following link takes you to an essay titled: “Home of the Brave?” which was published by the Athenaeum Library of Philosophy:
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/steinsvold.htm
John Steinsvold
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