Ivan Ascher
University of California, Berkeley
Department of Political Science
ascher@socrates.berkeley.edu


Theory, Practice and Theater

Insofar as practice is that which defies and defines theory, the
Marxian project of critical-revolutionary Praxis runs the risk of
being aporetic.  That is why Marx, this paper argues, deploys
distinctly theatrical tropes and metaphors in an effort to steer clear
of the contradiction while working to resolve it once and for all.

Without following the Althusserian line, one can readily distinguish
in Marx two forms of theorizing, two theoretical practices:  one,
displayed in the German Ideology or the 1844 Manuscripts, is parasitic
on the discourses it critiques, and suffers from the same shortcomings
it identifies in others.  The other is a theatrical form, encountered
in the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, the Manifesto of the
Communist Party, and in Capital; it is less obviously aporetic, partly
because it is cast in terms that accommodate both the distinction of
theory and practice and their fundamental connection.  Ultimately,
however, even the theatrical model of critique cannot sustain or
accomplish the project of revolutionary Praxis, if only because it
necessarily relies on generic categories of Tragedy and Comedy, which,
inherited from a Hegelian tradition, both precede and outlast what
resolution they promise.