Joshua Clover

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Professor of English

Biography: 

Joshua Clover specializes in critical theory, Marxism, political theory, political economy, poetry and poetics. Interests include social movements, social reproduction theory, crisis theory and the end of capitalism. He is also a faculty member in the Department of Comparative Literature, and affiliated faculty in French and Italian Department, Film Studies Program and the Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory. He is affiliated with the Mellon Research Initiative in Racial Capitalism. 

His most recent book Riot.Strike.Riot: the New Era of Uprisings (Verso in 2016) theorizes riot as historically concrete form of class struggle, and uses the dialectic of riot and strike to develop a revised history of capital accumulation. He has contributed articles to journals from Representations to Critical Inquiry. Forthcoming work focuses on poetry and the transformation of the world-system, and particularly on the dynamic between overdeveloped nations and neocolonialism, oriented by Marx, Fanon, and Mariarosa Dalla Costa.

He has also published three books of poetry, most recently Red Epic; been translated into a dozen languages and appears in many anthologies including the Norton Introduction to Literature. 

Publication Spotlight

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Riot.Strike.Riot: the New Era of Uprisings
by Joshua Clover

Ferguson. Tottenham. Clichy-Sous-Bois. Oakland. Within capital’s core, the riot looms increasingly large within the repertoire of struggles. Rather than inchoate spasms or immiserated absence of the revolutionary idea, this book locates the riot within longue durée of capitalist transformation: facts not failures. Just as the turn to the strike two centuries ago signaled recompositions of class and society, the return of the riot testifies to current possibilities of anticapitalist struggle, featuring radicalized struggle beyond the labor market. Following the post-1600 course “riot-strike-riot,” the book departs from lapsed models of party and revolution, showing how shifting global strategies to restore profitability since the 1970s must inevitably open onto “circulation struggles” which pass through riot, and whose horizon is the commune.

Publications

Honors

  • Distinguished Visiting Professor, University of Paris VIII, 2016. 
  • Senior Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies, Warwick University, 2015. 
  • Co-convener, Residential Research Group, UC Humanities Research Institute, 2015.
  • Resident Fellow, Cornell Society for the Humanities, 2010-2011
  • Best American Poetry, 2003, 2001, 1997
  • Best Music Writing, 2009, 2007
  • Robert D. Richardson Award for Non-Fiction Writing, 1999
  • Pushcart Prize for Poetry, 1997, 1998
  • Walt Whitman Award for First Book of Poetry, Academy of American Poets, 1996
  • National Endowment for the Arts individual fellowship, 1994
  • Michener/Engle Fellowship in Poetry, 1993-1994
  • Resident Fellow in Poetry, Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown, 1992-1993
  • University Prize For Excellence in Teaching, 1991

Education & Interests:

  1. University of Iowa, 1991.