Abstract

This thesis constitutes the first sustained attempt to locate twenty-first-century Anglo-American fiction in relation to Marxist literary criticism, resulting in a solid set of original-reference material for those undertaking work on writers Jonathan Lethem, Dana Spiotta, China Miéville, Thomas Pynchon, and Kim Stanley Robinson, or more generally on the intersections between literature, Marxist critical theory, and philosophy.

The project uncovers the topics, concerns, and forms of a collection of contemporary cross-genre narratives that I take to instantiate a new political designation occurring after post-Marxism. Moving from the collapse of “actually existing socialism” to the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century, the study identifies five authors who demonstrate a willingness to forge fresh dialogues with Marx, Marxism, and left radical politics. Envisioning how society is shaped by the interaction of subjects operating within the capital relation, the selected fictions of these authors set out to recuperate and regenerate the Marxist intellectual tradition through an unashamedly anti-capitalist approach to the post-millennial world.

In focusing upon British and American narrative, the study will redress the current disparity within the Marxist critical tradition between the pervasiveness of critical political economy and the relative lack of scholarly attention to Marxist literary criticism, and the contemporary novel in particular. In addition, it argues the contemporary moment offers an opportunity for the development of a more critical and rigorous Marxist conceptual knowledge that exists beyond the boundaries of postmodern epistemology. The imperative to pursue Marxist readings of contemporary literature has been undertaken by a small group of critics in recent years, and this study will seek to make a significant contribution to this emerging field of scholarly endeavour.