
Contents
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Introduction Introduction
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Tackling the issues Tackling the issues
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Human nature Human nature
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Humans as embodied beings Humans as embodied beings
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Needs Needs
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Human labour Human labour
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Cooperative and social Cooperative and social
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Human consciousness Human consciousness
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Relationship with nature Relationship with nature
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Towards other species alienation and why other creatures, too, must become free Towards other species alienation and why other creatures, too, must become free
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Alienation, continuity and the epistemological break Alienation, continuity and the epistemological break
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Conclusion Conclusion
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2 Responding to Criticisms of Alienation Theory
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Published:December 2023
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Abstract
A great deal of time has elapsed since Marx first laid down his ideas on alienation in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts in 1844. A considerable volume of scholarship, theorization and empirical work on Marx and alienation has occurred since then, alongside various waves of theories and other work within the social sciences. Different theories and philosophies have raised interesting and challenging questions for how Marx understood alienation. Post-structuralism and post-modernism have posed questions as to what it is to be human. In those philosophies (and I am speaking very broadly here) any reference to some form of essence, a human nature, was eschewed for a fluid relative subjectivity that emerges from discourses and technologies of power. Anything that hints of some form of fixity or essence is automatically deigned to be faulty. The accusation of essentialism can be levelled against alienation theory, and, given the prominence I placed on human nature in Chapter 1, that charge requires a response. More recently, post-humanism and neo-materialism have queried the relationship between humans and nature, alongside the modernist impulse to privilege and centre humans (and a White, heterosexual, able-bodied, cis-male human at that) in understanding societies or environmental change. Those perspectives have sought to reorientate nature, from a passive, inert entity that does nothing without human input to one that possess its own agential potentials. Those are good points and again require a response.
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