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Marx
Towards the Centre
of Possibility
Marx
Towards the Centre
of Possibility
Edited, translated, andwith an introductionby Gavin Walker
Kōjin Karatani
With support from the Japan Foundation
This English-language edition published by Verso 2020
Originally published in Japanese as Marukusu sono kanōsei no chūshin, 1974 © Kōjin Karatani 2020
Translation and Introduction © Gavin Walker 2020
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the author and translator have been asserted
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Verso
UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG
US: 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Verso is the imprint of New Left Books
ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-058-7
ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-779-1 (LIBRARY)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-059-4 (UK EBK)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-060-0 (US EBK)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Karatani, Kōjin, 1941- author.
Title: Marx : towards the centre of possibility / Kojin Karatani.
Other titles: Marukusu sono kanōsei no chūshin. English
Description: London ; Brooklyn, NY : Verso, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “Originally published in 1974, Kojin Karatani’s Marx: Towards the Centre of Possibility has been amongst his most enduring and pioneering works in critical theory. Written at a time when the political sequences of the New Left had collapsed into crisis and violence, with widespread political exhaustion for the competing sectarian visions of Marxism from 1968, Karatani’s Marx laid the groundwork for a new reading, unfamiliar to the existing Marxist discourse in Japan at the time. Karatani’s Marx takes on insights from semiotics, deconstruction, and the reading of Marx as a literary thinker, treating Capital as an intervention in philosophy that could be read as itself a theory of signs. Marx is unique in this sense, not only because of its importance in post-68 Japanese thought, but also because the heterodox reading of Marx that Karatani debuts in this text, centered on his theory of the value-form, will go on to form the basis of his globally-influential work”– Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019044487 | ISBN 9781788730587 (paperback) | ISBN 9781788737791 (library binding) | ISBN 9781788730600 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Socialism. | Marxian economics. | Communism and literature. | Marx, Karl, 1818–1883.
Classification: LCC HX73 .K36413 2020 | DDC 335.4–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019044487
Typeset in Sabon by MJ & N Gavan, Truro, Cornwall
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
Contents
Acknowledgements
Note on the Translation
‘Karatani’s Marx’ by Gavin Walker
Preface to the English Edition
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Notes
Index
I would like to thank above all Kōjin Karatani himself, for discussions and exchanges on the present book, and for agreeing to the translation of this early work of his, which has had such an important effect on the development of critical theory in Japan.
Thanks to Michael Bourdaghs and Ken Kawashima for their support of the project, to Sebastian Budgen, Rosie Warren, Cian McCourt, and others at Verso for their editorial support, and to Rachel and Anne for their love and support.
I initially translated the text while I was a faculty fellow at the Institute for the Public Life of Art & Ideas at McGill University, and finished the final editing of the text while a visiting researcher at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at Kyoto University, a wonderful place to work. I thank Kenta Ohji for his invitation, and all the staff of the Institute for their support during my stay.
The translation and publication were made possible in part by support from the Japan Foundation UK, who provided a Translation Grant, and by support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Throughout this volume, Japanese language is transliterated according to the modified Hepburn system. Karatani’s original text, like the bulk of Marxist theoretical writing in Japanese until recently, has only a very limited reference apparatus, with no bibliography, and no specific citations. For this English-language edition, all citations in the text have been sourced to original texts, or to their major English-language translations.
All texts of Marx and Engels have been referred to the editions of record: the Marx-Engels Collected Works (Moscow, London, New York: Progress Publishers, Lawrence & Wishart, and International Publishers) in English, and the Marx-Engels Werke
