Chapter Five Continuations
We have arrived at the point where the tradition
becomes a diaspora. Henceforth, Marxism is declined
in the plural and the vicissitudes of history mean
that we must refer to post-Marxism as much as to
Marxism. This involves the whole range of topics
covered by the Marxist tradition, but is particularly
glaring in the case of language on account of Stalin’s
suffocation of debate. That is why, rather than offering
a catalogue of insights into language by authors
identified with Marxism (a list has been suggested
in the previous chapter and I am bound to have
forgotten some names), I am going to focus my efforts
on two conceptualisations of language, one of which –
Voloshinov’s – explicitly identified itself as Marxist,
while the other – Deleuze and Guattari’s – has a
complicated relationship with Marxism which for
the most part remains implicit.- Voloshinov
Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, the only work
that explicitly seeks to elaborate a Marxist philosophy
of language, has a complicated history. The text
was published in French in 1977 under the name
of Bakhtin, in a collection directed by Bourdieu.^1
(^1) See Bakhtin 1977.