Materialism without matter

Abstraction, Absence and Social Form

Bibliographic Data

ID5726331
AuthorsA Toscano (0009-0007-5156-5414, Goldsmiths University of London, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume28
Issue7
Pages1221-1240
Publication date2014-11-10
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueTextual Practice (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0950-236X • E-ISSN: 1470-1308
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/0950236x.2014.965901
OpenAlexW2064360610
LanguageEN
Citations received19

In light of the contemporary theoretical infatuation with ‘new’ materialisms, matter and materiality, this essay revisits the heterodox Marxian thesis according to which materialism may, in Étienne Balibar's formulation, have ‘nothing to do with a reference to matter’. The article explores variants of this materialism without matter: Antonio Gramsci's objections to Bukharin's ‘Marxist sociology’, Theodor W. Adorno and Alfred Sohn-Rethel's critiques of epistemology, and Isaak Illich Rubin's elucidation of the categories of Marx's value-analysis. It foregrounds a shift in this counter-intuitive materialism from subjective praxis to the categories of capital, in which ‘not one atom of matter enters’ (Marx). This recovery of an understanding of materialism as the critical analysis of real, social abstractions concludes with a reconsideration of Louis Althusser's ‘aesthetic’ reflections on the materialism of absence, as featured in his philosophical appreciation of the paintings of Leonardo Cremonini

Aesthetics · Cultural materialism (cultural studies) · Epistemology · Historical materialism · Infatuation · Marxist philosophy · Materialism · Materiality (auditing) · Nothing · Politics · Praxis · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Value (mathematics) · Law · Marxism and Critical Theory · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism · Political theory and Gramsci