Marxism's collapse in the twentieth century profoundly altered the style
and substance of Western European radical thought. To build a more
robust form of democratic theory and action, prominent theorists moved
to reject revolution, abandon class for more fragmented models of social
action, and elevate the political over the social. Acknowledging the
constructedness of society and politics, they chose the "symbolic" as a
concept powerful enough to reinvent leftist thought outside a Marxist
framework. Following Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Adventures of the
Dialectic, which reassessed philosophical Marxism at mid century,
Warren Breckman critically revisits these thrilling experiments in the
aftermath of Marxism.
The post-Marxist idea of the symbolic is dynamic and complex, uncannily
echoing the early German Romantics, who first advanced a modern
conception of symbolism and the symbolic. Hegel and Marx denounced the
Romantics for their otherworldly and nebulous posture, yet post-Marxist
thinkers appreciated the rich potential of the ambiguities and paradoxes
the Romantics first recognized. Mapping different ideas of the symbolic
among contemporary thinkers, Breckman traces a fascinating reflection of
Romantic themes and resonances, and he explores in depth the effort to
reconcile a radical and democratic political agenda with a politics that
does not privilege materialist understandings of the social. Engaging
with the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Cornelius Castoriadis, Claude
Lefort, Marcel Gauchet, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and Slavoj
Žižek, Breckman uniquely situates these important theorists within two
hundred years of European thought and extends their profound relevance
to today's political activism.
