Thursday, January 30th, 2014 Intimate Immateriality : Reading Marx in India in the 1940s

Description

Most of Marx’s own writings were not published till the 1930s. Over the next few decades, these ‘new’ books were read around the globe for and against classical Marxist theories. Thus, the Indian historians too engaged in debates on Marx’s writings. They read The German Ideology to challenge Soviet theories like ‘dialectical materialism’. They also read Notes on Indian History to dismantle such claim that Marx argued
that British rule was bringing social revolution in India. These interventions fundamentally changed the mode of writing Marxist history of colonial India. Interestingly, however, these ‘new’ books especially Notes on Indian History and The German Ideology could not have been materially present in India in the 1940s. Nonetheless, as I will show, these books were read politically fruitfully. My paper historicizes this Marx reading culture in India in the 1940s, trapped in the uneven political economy of global circulation of Marxist texts.

Prasanta holds a Bachelor of Arts (BA) from the University of Calcutta; and an Honours Bachelor in Arts (HBA) from the University of Toronto. He had been organizing Group Theatre activism in India for over two decades. Currently, he is pursuing his PhD in History at the University of Toronto, where he has completed the collaborative programs in Book History and Print Culture and, in South Asian Studies. His research examines the political economy of the global circulation of Marxism through India. His hypothesis is that Marxism became global because it was written not by a few authors but by the political economy of its circulation. Prasanta has been invited to present his research at a number of universities in North America.