Materialism without matter

Abstraction, Absence and Social Form

Dados Bibliográficos

ID5726331
AutoresA Toscano (0009-0007-5156-5414, Goldsmiths University of London, autor correspondente)
Ano2014
Volume28
Fascículo7
Páginas1221-1240
Data de publicação2014-11-10
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoTextual Practice (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0950-236X • E-ISSN: 1470-1308
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/0950236x.2014.965901
OpenAlexW2064360610
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas19

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