This article argues against the radical displacement of class analysis and the decentering of capitalism within contemporary theoretical narratives, the political pusillanimity of post-Marxist “culturalist” discourses, and offers a historical materialist critique of the “politics of difference.” The authors argue that much of what falls under the rubric of “difference” politics amounts to little more than a demand for inclusion into the club of “representation” —a posturing which they argue merely reinscribes the banality of liberal pluralism rooted in the ideology of free-market capitalism. The authors advance an approach to “difference” and “race” that seeks to reanimate these constructs by acknowledging their embeddedness in capitalist social formations and material relations of power.
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