CRITICAL-THEORY, HISTORICAL MATERIALISM, AND THE OSTENSIBLE END OF MARXISM - THE POVERTY OF THEORY REVISITED

This essay notes the extent to which poststructuralism/postmodernism h ave generally espoused hostility to historical materialism, surveys so me representative examples of historical writing that have gravitated toward the new critical theory in opposition to Marxism, and closes wi th a discussion of the ironic evolution of a poststructurally inclined , anti-Marxist historiography. Counter to the prevailing ideological c onsensus that Marxism has been brought to its interpretive knees by a series of analytic challenges and the political collapse of the world' s ostensibly ''socialist'' states, this essay argues that historical m aterialism has lost neither its power to interpret the past nor its re levance to the contemporary intellectual terrain.