Abstract

My thesis develops the claim that Marx's complex response to Enlightenment rationality and modernity holds an important interpretive key for the postmodernism debates. Various conceptions of Enlightenment rationality are implicated in the often rancorous disputes among the poststructuralist and Habermasian camps about the nature of modernity. However, the debates' passionate disagreements especially intensify over Marx's contributions to these questions. ;Criticisms of Marx as a productivist with a teleological view of historical change are central negative responses. Adoption of a language paradigm for critical theory is offered, by Habermas at least, as enhancing some deficient features of Marx's formulations. I claim that not only is a "fruitful tension" among the divergent views of these camps possible, but a similarly constructive relationship can be construed between them and Marx. That is, significant positive affiliations among Marx, Habermas and the poststructuralists are found in their commitment to criticizing ideological aspects of Enlightenment rationality and modernity. ;In taking the work of Marx as an interpretive key, I find that the most helpful construction of poststructuralist and Habermasian positions is set out via interpretive commentaries of the debates. This approach illustrates that whatever theoretical vitality and political relevance the debates exhibit is due, at least in part, to the positive connections between them and Marx's notion of "critique." ;Criticisms of Marx point toward central features of his materialist conception of history, critique of capitalism, and project of critical-revolutionary social change. Particular forms of these criticisms are either overdrawn or mistaken by Habermas and the poststructuralists in their effort to distance themselves from Marx's theoretical and political legacy. Once it is shown that Marx can be purged of the most pernicious forms of these criticisms, and despite reservations that remain about the tenability of some of his theses, a way is open for the debates to appropriate valuable insights from Marx's critique. Thus, the debates' contemporary perspectives on and critical-practical engagement with ideological features of the Enlightenment legacy and capitalism can be revitalized by articulation with Marx's materialist critique