Marx and Poetics: A Live Conversation with Keston Sutherland (Online and In Person. 11th April 2023)

**CHANGE OF VENUE**

We will be joined by poet and scholar Keston Sutherland to discuss the poetic language used in the works of Marx. In an essay entitled ‘The poetics of Capital’,  Sutherland contrasts Marx’s use of language with that of Henry Mayers Hyndman’s bungled translation of Marx’s Capital, published in 1881, as England for all. As Sutherland notes,

“Marx assaults his reader with the image of beloved limbs ripped up and darling heads crushed flat. Hyndman softens the mental lighting so that these same beloved bodies instead more agreeably just ‘fade away’, ephemeral as an enchanted fairy in a forest dim by Keats. The workers who in Marx are crushed, sucked out, laid waste, decertified, elasticated, tortured and distorted into human specks, stumps and fractions, are by Hyndman regenerated in the language of literary respectability as lyric poets, ‘who now rejoice in the gleam of a transient prosperity, only to be cast into a deeper despair on the next stagnation.”

^{Keston Sutherland, ‘The Poetics of Capital’ in Capitalism: Concept, Idea, Image. Aspects of Marx’s Capital Today.}

It isn’t simply enough to understand the intellectual and critical content of Marx’s writings. To fully grasp Marx’s ideas we have to understand Marx’s poetics. As Sutherland notes, Marx’s “Capital is both critique and poetics at once”.

This session will take place both online via Zoom and in person at The Southern Belle, Brighton, UK. The Southern Belle can be found on 3 Waterloo Street, Hove, BN3 1AQ. Join us in Venue from 7pm and online from 7:30pm (UK time). To book a free place in the venue, click here. For any questions, please message me at explodingappendix@gmail.com

This session will be run as part of the Exploding Appendix Avant-garde Art Practice and Research Group’s meetup which happens every three weeks. The sessions are free and open to everyone. For our upcoming sessions from January to June, see here.

The online session will also take place via Zoom (https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83137714158?pwd=TDRWYUcxTExiRXBieGMyeVpubm1yUT09). The meeting ID is 831 3771 4158.  The passcode is “446987”.

This session will be run by Bradley Tuck and take place on Tuesday the 11^st April 2023 from 19:00 – 22:00 (UK time). If you have any questions, please message me at explodingappendix@gmail.com