Abjection and Formlessness

This article seeks to construct historical and conceptual bridges between digitality, value, and categories of social difference, understanding them as distinct yet interconnected forms of abstraction. To do so, it elaborates on Seb Franklin’s idea that the formalizing logic of capital operates through the differential allocation of form and formlessness. It argues that value-mediated sociality operates through a logic that allocates form while producing a gendered or racialized formlessness as its disavowed or abject precondition, articulating capital’s abstract domination with other forms of extra-economical dispossession and violence. The first section outlines a Marxian conceptual framework grounded on the notions of real abstraction, social form, and subsumptive form-determination. The following section explores the relation between form and formlessness, translating this dynamic into political economic terms. The third section analyzes the role of digitality, interpreting digital abstraction, in a Sohn-Rethelian key, as logically and historically linked to a form of social synthesis grounded in the exchange relation. The conclusion briefly suggests how this analysis can serve as the foundation for a critique of digital technologies that continues the Marxian critique of technological neutrality while sharply contrasting with commonly held views of digital abstraction as detached from its sociopolitical context of emergence

Mental Health and Psychiatry · Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy · Philosophy · Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Politics

• The violence of abstraction

  Derek Sayer•The violence of abstraction•1989

  Incluir item

• Time, Labor, and Social Domination

  Open Access•Moishe Postone•Time, labor, and social domination•1993

  Incluir item

• Grundrisse

  Karl Marx•Readings in Economic Sociology•2002

  Incluir item

• The spectral ontology of value

  Christopher J Arthur•Critical Realism and Marxism•2003

  Incluir item

• Mute Compulsion. A Marxist Theory of the Economic Power of Capital

  Open Access•Andreas Portillo•Transdisciplinar. Revista de…•2024

  Incluir item

• The Spectre of Capital

  Open Access•Christopher J Arthur•The Spectre of Capital•2022

  Incluir item

• A Ghost Turning into a Vampire

  Open Access•Riccardo Bellofiore•Re-reading Marx•2009

  Incluir item

• Rereading Marx in the Age of Digital Capitalism

  Catherine Fuchs•Rereading Marx in the Age of…•2019

  Incluir item

• Intellectual and Manual Labour

  Alfred Sohn-Rethel•Intellectual and Manual Labour•2021

  Incluir item

• Immanent Externalities

  Rebecca Carson•Immanent Externalities•2023

  Incluir item

• The Mismeasure of Wealth

  Patrick Murray•The Mismeasure of Wealth•2016

  Incluir item

• Fatal Couplings of Power and Difference

  Ruth Wilson Gilmore•The Professional Geographer•2002

  Incluir item

• Sohn-Rethel and the Origin of ‘Real Abstraction’

  Anselm Jappe•Historical Materialism•2013

  Incluir item

• The Open Secret of Real Abstraction

  Open Access•A Toscano•Rethinking Marxism•2008

  Incluir item

• The Micro-Politics of Capital

  Open Access•David A Duquette•Perspectives on Politics•2004

  Incluir item

• Automating Inequality

  Hannah Lebovits•Public Integrity•2019

  Incluir item

• On the Dialectics of the Value-Form

  Open Access•Hans-Georg Backhaus•Thesis Eleven•1980

  Incluir item

• The Culture of Abstraction

  Open Access•A Toscano•Theory Culture & Society•2008

  Incluir item

• Golden Age of Analog

  Alexander R Galloway•Critical Inquiry•2022

  Incluir item