Preface to the Turkish Translation of Transcritique

Three of my books have been translated into English so far. It is a true delight
that all of them will be translated into Turkish. At the same time, I am concerned that the
time lag--they were written years ago--and the order of publication might cause
confusion to the readers, and so I thought it would be appropriate to offer some
guidance. These three books, Origins of modern Japanese Literature, Architecture as
Metaphor , and Transcritique , represent my work from the 1970s, the 1980s and the
1990s respectively. They show apparent shifts on my part. I named such shiftcontaining movements of criticism Transcritique. After Transcritique I shifted yet again.
One example is my most recent book, Toward a World Republic--Beyond CapitalNation-State (2006).
The largest shift lies in the style. Before this, in dealing with Kant or Marx, I did
not take the common approach of evaluating and criticizing them while presenting their
historical limitations. However, I did not present my own theories either. In Transcritique
I tried to present the possibilities of Kant and Marx only through my readings of their
texts. Instead of presenting my own views straightforwardly, I rather let the texts of
others speak them. In this sense, Transcritique was an extension of my work in literary
criticism. However, after this, I started to present my own theories in a systematic
manner.
While my style changed, I still hold to the same basic observations presented in
Transcritique. The following passage is from Transcritique.
It was amid the bourgeois revolution that these three -- capitalist economy, state
and nation -- were officially married. As in the trinity intoned in the French Revolution-liberty, equality, and fraternity--capital, state and nation copulated and amalgamated
themselves into a force that was inseparable ever after. Hence the modern state must
be called, sensu stricto, the capitalist nation-state. They were made to be mutually
complementary, reinforcing each other. When economic liberty becomes excessive
and class conflict is sharpened, the state intervenes to redistribute wealth and regulate
the economy, and at the same time, the emotion of national unity (mutual aid) fills up
the cracks. When facing this fearless trinity, undermining one or the other does not
work. (Transcritique, 278-9)
As can be seen from this passage, in order to elucidate the trinity of
capitalnationstate, I suggested going back to three basic modes of exchange from
which the trinity originates: reciprocity, plunder/redistribution and commodity exchange.
But in Transcritique, these ideas had yet to be fully developed. Since then, I have been
working to clarify them.
I dealt with three different modes of exchange by going back to pre-capitalist
social formations. Any social formation stands as a combination of these modes of
exchange. The difference between them is determined by which one of them is
dominant and how they are combined. For example, in the primitive community of
hunters and gatherers, the principle of reciprocity is dominant. That is, although plunder
and trade also take place, they are not conspicuous. Likewise, the fact that the mode of
commodity exchange is dominant in capitalist social formation does not indicate the
disappearance of other modes. Rather, they are transformed, and appear as the
conjugation of capitalnationstate. Based on such a view, I have been aiming for the

structural clarification of the entire history of social formations. My purpose is to

illuminate the path for going beyond the trinity of capitalnationstate.
In my view, it was Hegel who first grasped the trinitarian nature of
capitalnationstate, which we can see in Philosophy of Right. Because Hegels
understanding was idealistic, Marx tried to turn it around materialistically. In so doing,
Marx saw civil society (capitalist economy) as infrastructure and the state or nation as
super-structure. This leads to the idea that once the capitalist economy is superseded,
the latter will automatically be extinguished. Obviously, this is not true. This is why
Marxists repeatedly stumbled when it came to matters of the state and nation. This is
because Marx himself failed to see that the state or nation has a solid and real basis of
existence, which cannot be easily abolished. If we are to seriously supersede capital,
nation, and state, we need to first recognize what they are. To simply deny them leads
us nowhere. As a result, we are forced to accept the reality of them, which only makes
us scornful of ideas that attempt to supersede them.
Whereas Marx focused on modes of production, I believe that Hegels
Philosophy of Right can be turned around materialistically by basing our perspective on
modes of exchange. This does not mean that I have suddenly begun to criticize Marx.
As I wrote in Transcritique, Marx in Capital brilliantly clarified the structure of the
historical development of the mode of exchange known as commodity exchange.
However, because he did so by bracketing the state and nation, his theory of the state
was naturally inadequate. I believe that if one has the free time to criticize this, it would
be more productive to reconsider state and nation on ones own, using the method Marx
took in Capital. And so that is what I did.
However, it would have been impossible to do this kind of work through a rereading of Marxs texts, much less Marxist literature. Thus, I found it necessary to
construct my own theories. To me, this stylistic change was vitally important, but this is
not to make less of Transcritique . Rather, I would like to respond to a certain type of
criticism that was made against this book: that my understandings of Kant and Marx are
farfetched, if intriguing. That may well be the case, but I have no intention of playing the
academic game of competing over the correct interpretations of Kant and Marx.
Actually, there is no need for me to rely on Kant and Marx. But I would never have the
arrogance to deny my tremendous indebtedness to their great works.
Sept. 2007
Kojin Karatani