Review: Capital Is Dead: Is This Something Worse?, by McKenzie Wark

Abstract

Book Review| March 01 2020 Review: Capital Is Dead: Is This Something Worse?, by McKenzie Wark Capital Is Dead: Is This Something Worse?, by McKenzie Wark. Verso, 2019. 208 pp./$25.95 (hb). Madeleine Collier Madeleine Collier Madeleine Collier is a writer, researcher, and filmmaker based in New York City, currently pursuing an MA in film and media studies from Columbia University. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Afterimage (2020) 47 (1): 89–92. https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.2020.471016 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Madeleine Collier; Review: Capital Is Dead: Is This Something Worse?, by McKenzie Wark. Afterimage 1 March 2020; 47 (1): 89–92. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.2020.471016 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAfterimage Search The commonsense pedagogical notion that questions are more important than answers is rarely borne out with the theoretical conciseness enacted by McKenzie Wark in her new volume, Capital Is Dead: Is This Something Worse? In seven short chapters, Wark extends the provocative suggestion that capital has lost its own devil's bargain with the information economy and today a more ruthless mode of production lurks in our midst. Capital Is Dead roots its critical engagement in a Debordian détournement not of Das Kapital itself but rather of the extracted ideals that have crystallized over the subsequent centuries into a Marxist mythology (35). The text is framed principally as a thought experiment, a project that pays fitting homage to Karl Marx's innovation of new forms of expression suited to contemporary conditions. For the span of her argument, Wark invites the reader to suspend institutionalized modes of engaging with capitalism, clearing the imaginative... You do not currently have access to this content.