X

I shall conclude by remembering the proper name of Marx, the world revolutionary theorist, and thus finally seizing the power of the concept of “counter-memory” itself:

It is clear that the arm of criticism cannot replace the criticism of arms. Material force can only be overthrown by material force; but theory itself becomes a material force when it has seized the masses. Theory is capable of seizing the masses when it demonstrates ad hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical. To be radical is to grasp things by the root. But for man the root is man himself…. The criticism of religion ends with the doctrine that man is the supreme being for man. It ends, therefore, with the categorical imperative to overthrow all those conditions in which man is an abased, enslaved, abandoned, contemptible being—conditions which can hardly be better described than in the exclamation of a Frenchman on the occasion of a proposed tax upon dogs: “Wretched dogs! They want to treat you like men!” (“Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction,” Karl Marx: Early Writings, trans./ed. T.B. Bottomore, 1964, 52, emphasis in original).