Imre Szeman

Work in Progress

Bloomsbury Companion to Marx

Very few figures in the history of thought exert as much and as varied influence as Karl Marx. His enormous corpus represents an almost unrivaled intervention into fields as various as philosophy, economics, political science, history and cultural criticism. In addition to grounding the work and ideas of many of the key thinkers in twentieth and twenty-first century critical theory and political philosophy (including Lenin, Luxembourg, Arendt, Sartre, Adorno, Benjamin, Derrida, Foucault, Federici, Jameson, and Žižek), his name is invoked on all side of the political spectrum in connection to riot, revolt, revolution and insurrection. Marx is one of the few intellectual figures whose ideas have actively shaped not only intellectual history, but social and political history as well, and in ways that go far beyond the experience and legacy of twentieth-century socialisms and communisms. Beyond Marx and Marxism’s invaluable contributions to every field of critical inquiry, including gender theory, geography, material flows analysis, and critical race theory, Marx’s work remains relevant in helping us to grapple with the economic and ecological crises that we face today.

The Bloomsbury Companion to Marx will be the definitive reference guide to Marx’s life and work. Written by an international team of leading scholars, the book offers comprehensive coverage of Marx’s life and contexts; sources, influences and encounters; key writings; major themes and topics; and his reception and influence. This book is the ideal research resource for anyone working on Marx and his ideas today.

What is Cultural Theory?

What is Cultural Theory? offers an overview of the key issues, thinkers and concepts in this emerging area of inquiry. Intended for scholars and students interested in the examination of culture across the disciplines, this book explores not just what cultural theory is, but what it does – the questions, theories and insights it uniquely makes available.

Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: What Time Is It?­ (Time)
Chapter 3: Where Are We? (Space)
Chapter 4: Knowing What You Don’t Know (Ideology)
Chapter 5: Diagnostics and Diseases (Interpretation)
Chapter 6: The Eye, the Ear, and the Market (Aesthetics)
Chapter 7: What to Become, Together (Identity and Collectivity)
Chapter 8: The Culture That Is Not One (Nature)
Chapter 9: Bad New Things (Utopia)
Chapter 10: Conclusion

Globalization, Culture, Energy: Selected Essays, 2000-2013

A selected collection of my work on globalization, literary and cultural studies, and energy/oil studies over the past decade or so, which is being translated into Mandarin and will be published next year. Contents include:

1. “The Rhetoric of Culture: Some Notes on Magazines, Canadian Culture and Globalization.” (2000)
2. “Who’s Afraid of National Allegory? Jameson, Literary Criticism, Globalization.” (2001)
3. “Culture and Globalization, or, The Humanities in Ruins.” (2003)
4. “System Failure: Oil, Futurity and the Anticipation of Disaster.” (2007)
5. “Marxist Literary Criticism, Then and Now.” (2009)
6. “The Cultural Politics of Oil: On Lessons of Darkness and Black Sea Files.” (2010)
7. “Globalization, Postmodernism and Literary Criticism.” (2010)
8. “Neoliberals Dressed in Black; or, the Traffic in Creativity.” (2010)
9. “Crude Aesthetics: The Politics of Oil Documentaries.” (2012)
10. “Interventions and Impasses: On the Politics of Culture Today - An Interview with Huimin Jin” (2013)