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Language in Ernst Bloch’s Speculative Materialism

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Published Sep 2023

Nathaniel Barron

Author: Nathaniel Barron
Nathaniel Barron offers the first book length account in English of Ernst Bloch’s contribution to a Marxist philosophy of language. It is ambitious both in situating Bloch’s ideas in the broader Marxist engagement with language as it currently exists, and in using Bloch’s utopian categories to challenge that engagement. In particular, Barron reads Voloshinov’s insights into language through Bloch’s categories, and argues that Bloch advances on Voloshinov by offering an understanding of the social materiality of language which is more useful for challenging fascist forms of utterance.

Biographical Note

Nathaniel J.P. Barron, Ph.D. (2018), University of Central Lancashire, is Teaching Fellow in Social Theory at the University of Birmingham.

Readership

This book is of interest to (Marxist) philosophers of language; critical theorists interested in Ernst Bloch; and scholars working in utopian and future studies more generally.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction
1 Bloch’s Marxism
2 Philosophy of Language as a Problem
3 Outline of the Book

1 Bloch’s Utopian Materialism
1 Kant ‘Burning’ through Hegel
2 Tendency
3 Possibility
4 Latency

2 Bloch’s Anacoluthon
1 The Anacoluthon
2 The Anacoluthon as Trace
3 The Anacoluthon as Linguistic Tendency
4 The Anacoluthon as Linguistic Latency

3 Bloch and Marxist Philosohpy of Language
1 Voloshinov and Relationality
2 Refraction
3 Neo-Kantianism
4 Freudianism

4 Bloch and Fascism
1 Marx’s Incipit
2 The Eighteenth Brumaire
3 The Expressionism Debate
4 Fascism and Language, Then and Now: Postscript

References
Index