Responding to the far-reaching transformations of recent decades, Moishe Postone will outline an approach that seeks to place consideration of the historical dynamics of modernity at the center of critical social analysis.

Postone’s project argues that a renewed encounter with Marx’s seminal analysis of capitalism could significantly illuminate the global dynamics of the past century.  Nevertheless, it argues that one cannot simply return to Marx as he was commonly understood during much of the twentieth century. Rather, the weak points of traditional Marxist theories and the increasingly apparent inadequacies of many post-Marxist approaches suggest the need to rethink, as well as to reappropriate, Marx.

Moishe Postone is the Thomas E. Donnelley Professor of Modern History at the College at the University of Chicago. He teaches social theory and intellectual history and has written extensively on Marx, Critical Theory, recent global transformations, and modern anti-Semitism. He is currently Stadt Wien/IFK_Urban Fellow.