Commodity Fetishism Research Articles

Presentness

Typically, the structures of consciousness in how we experience time—or the broader phenomenological question of temporality—divide said experience into past, present, and future. These distinctions are not self-evident; rather, they are shaped by politics, institutions, society, economy, and so forth. Indeed, in his expressed engagement with historical materialism, Walter Benjamin claims that history—as one such structuring of temporality—is neither ideal nor causal, discrete nor universal, determined by the past nor exclusive to the future. Rather, it is a living process of present-future-pasts folding in on themselves. And a “real state of emergency”—recall that he wrote Theses on the Philosophy of History in early 1940 in France, where he was living in exile, having escaped Hitler’s Nazi regime—lays bare this fold of history, for its temporality is one that disrupts the anticipatory relation to the future as a type of progress and with it also the normalization of injustice as a necessity in history.
 The critical temporality Benjamin proposes resists the notion that the past can be understood exclusively in the precise moment in which it is recognized (frozen as an eternal image). In other words, historical moments are often naturalized, petrified as objective elements of our reality, and this reification—or estrangement from the totality—mirrors the logics of commodity fetishism. The task, in turn, is to illuminate how history is not a congealed “thing” and thus release its existence as process so that we may see ourselves in the totality of history rather than merely as its reified products. This critical temporality is an imperative that makes clear our agentive relation in creating the possible. This active sensing of the temporal, as it were, is where I turn my attention. I offer this meditation on presentness as an epistemological horizon, drawing on my work on both the ephemerality of performance and its politicized relationship to the US-Mexico border.

Female Sexuality in Contemporary Pakistani English Fiction

Female sexuality has remained a taboo subject in Pakistani literary and cultural representations. However, a considerable shift has occurred in contemporary Pakistani English fiction. Focusing on female bodily behaviour, the fiction explicates multiple shades of female sexual relations and experiences outside the cultural and religious norms in an unusually direct and explicit fashion. This study analyses the way Pakistani fiction, written in English, responds to the variety of different ideologies imposed upon women’s bodies and sexuality. It analyses some key sexual experiences of pubertal sexual awakening, postmarital sex, women’s urge for proactive sexual intercourse, and disavowal of motherhood, pregnancy and birthing. The collective representation of female sexuality in each case embodies a transgressive experience outside the shame/shameless, licit/illicit binaries. However, the representation, despite its explicitness, does not constitute in any way women’s sexual autonomy against the predominant masculine discourses. The issues have been analyzed within the framework of debates on the female body, heterosexuality, the male gaze and commodity fetishism.

Public and Private in the Study of Biosociality and Biocapitalism

The concept of biosociality is associated with the problematic of the role of knowledge about life and the laws of inheriting genetic information in the processes of the emergence and formation of social order and the transformation of social practices. An example of such changes can be considered the transformation in modern medical practice of the diagnosed risk of breast cancer to a disease that requires preventive treatment. This case reveals a radical change in the relationship between public health and modern biomedicine. Such changes in social practices are impossible without extrapolating scientific knowledge to the public sphere with its subsequent appropriation by various social groups. This appropriation is made possible by the diffusion of the public/private boundary. At this point, the concept of biosociality intersects with a popular notion of biocapitalism. The term itself is not conventional, along with it are also used concepts such as cognitive or communication capitalism, lively capital. The concept of biocapitalism is a product of development of the traditions of political economy, concerning the reduction of the problem of the genesis of the social order in the field of Economics. Observed in the theory “proven” and “universal” economical laws act as an important source of development of society. The well-known theorist of biocapitalism K.S. Rajan, trying to eliminate this latent universalism, introduces the concept of contingence, removing the strict economic determinism. However, the approach developed by Rajan does not make it possible to conceptually describe the problem of public/private because of the elimination of aspects related to the existence of the level of global capital. Following J. Damit and T. Tanner, the author of this article seeks a solution to this problem in the analysis of new forms of commodity fetishism inherent in biocapitalism.

Gazing at “Fetishes” 2.0: Using the Spectacle Concept to Understand Consumer Cultures in the Age of Digital Capitalism

This paper argues that Debord’s La Société du Spectacle was a syncretism of contemporary US criticism of the consumer society and the power of the image and of the Marxist tradition. First it elucidates the notion of commodity fetishism for Marx and Debord’s détournement of it. It then establishes the connection between the history of consumer cultures, in terms of their visual dimension, with that of production systems. Then Debord’s development of the notion of spectacle is analyzed as a typical critique of Fordism. Finally, the paper addresses the relevance of the concept of spectacle in the post-Fordist digital era.

Expanding our sociolinguistic horizons? Geographical thinking and the articulatory potential of commodity chain analysis

AbstractConceptual linearity and analytic parochialism (aka focus) can make it more difficult for sociolinguists or discourse analysts to apprehend the far‐reaching, exploitative ways inequality is nowadays produced. A suitably material‐cum‐materialist class critique certainly entails empirical and phenomenological worlds flagged by, for example, multi‐sited ethnographies but otherwise side‐lined as merely “extra‐situational” in much talk/text‐directed scholarship. I propose we think more geographically by properly engaging spatiality à la Harvey (1990) and especially the radical politics of simultaneity (Massey, 2005)—the literal, “right‐now” connectedness of places and people. To this end, and allied with deepening interest in political economy, I combine the principles of articulation theory with the procedures of commodity chain analysis for picking apart an epitomic, contemporary manifestation of extreme privilege: the business‐class meal. The proposed discourse‐centred commodity chain analysis offers an ecumenical but systematic framework for tracking how commodity fetishism is actually and discursively accomplished (or not) across dispersed voices, stories, and social meanings.

REKLAMLARLA AKTARILAN ESTETİK DUYGUNUN META FETİŞİZMİ OLUŞUMUNA ETKİSİ ÜZERİNE NİTEL BİR ARAŞTIRMA

Meta fetişizminin etkisindeki toplumlarda gerçek ihtiyaçlardan ziyade yapay ihtiyaçlar tüketim döngüsüne sokulurken ürünün piyasaya sürülmesiyle birlikte üreticisi üzerinde hâkimiyet kurması yaratıcı emeği metaya dönüştürmektedir. Bütünlüğündeki toplumsal süreçlerden arınarak şeyler arası ilişkinin göstergesine dönüşen emek, tüketim döngüsünde olağanüstü erk sahibi konumundaki fetiş nesne haline gelmektedir. İhtiyaç dışı/fazlası ürünleri tüketerek deneyim ve farklılık tüketmeyi hedefleyen tüketici ise meta fetişizminin süreğenliğini desteklemektedir. Reklamların metayı estetik görünüşünü kullanarak fetişleştiren başlıca etmenlerden olduğu düşünülmektedir. Bu çalışmanın amacı, reklamlarda sunulan estetik duygunun meta fetişizmi üzerindeki rolünü belirlemektir. Çalışmada derinlemesine görüşme tekniği kullanılarak pazarlama ve reklamcılık alanında uzman 5 kişi ile yüz yüze görüşmeler yapılmıştır. Elde edilen bulgular çalışma kapsamında değerlendirilerek reklamların metaların estetik güçlerini öne çıkararak meta fetişizmi oluşumuna katkı sağladığı sonucuna varılmıştır. Ayrıca çalışmanın hem reklamcılık alanında faaliyet gösteren firmalara ışık tutması hem de literatürde meta estetiği, meta fetişizmi ve reklam ilişkisini inceleyen çalışmaların azlığı sebebiyle daha sonra yapılacak çalışmalara alt yapı oluşturması hedeflenmektedir.

On the necessity of money in an exchange-constituted economy: the cases of Smith and Marx

AbstractThe debate over theories of the nature of money has recently been revisited in this Journal. This paper shifts the focus from the stuff that is being positioned as money to the social totality. Credit theorists claim that commodity theories of money imply monetary neutrality and a primacy of real analysis. In contrast, this paper argues based on Marx and Smith that, independently of whether money is a commodity or credit, the necessity of money depends on the constitution of the economy in terms of the relation between production and circulation. If social production is constituted through the exchange between private specialised producers, money is not neutral but essential. For Smith, real analysis is nevertheless meaningful, in that, he treats the spheres of exchange and production separately. By contrast, Marx exposes real analysis as commodity fetishism and stresses the mutually constitutive social relations between money, commodity exchange and capitalist production.

Gift versus Trade: On the Culture of Science Communication

This article aims at a critical reevaluation of the trading zone concept (Galison). It starts from a case study of the Faraday–Whewell collaboration in coming to terms with electrolysis experiments. The case is supposed to be an example of a trade zone of science/philosophy interaction though it demonstrates the unequal nature of the “trade.” This requires the analysis to log in some details concerning Galison’s metaphor of trading zones, which reveals its market-oriented connotations. The following criticism of the market metaphor for science applies a revised version of Boris Hessen’s argument (“commodity fetishism”) against misinterpretation of technology by some British scientists. A closer look at the ancient trade rituals in Marcel Mauss’ seminal work enables discovering another cultural pattern for describing scientific communication as opposed to trade—gift. This helps picture science as a distribution of social roles and statuses and uncovers the normative and value dimension of gift zones language.

The Radical Republican Structure of Marx’s Critique of Capitalist Society

In this paper, I argue that Marx’s political and social theory expresses ideas that we can characterize as ‘radical republican’ in nature. By this term, I mean a theory of the nature of human beings as essentially social in nature, of free individuality as a function of the developed interdependence of the social context to which one has access for self-development, of a concept of the common good as the socio-economic wealth of the community as oriented toward the ends of social and individual developmental aims and goods, and a concept of justice as the maintenance of these criteria. Marx’s critique of capitalism is a genuinely political critique in that is embraces the economic and social dimensions of human reality. Marx’s ideas about exploitation, alienation, commodity fetishism, and so on, all are categories that describe the defective nature of capitalism as the negation of the values of radical republican ideas.

Commodity Fetishism, Legal Fetishism, Converted Forms, and Aesthetic Fetishism

In this paper, we analyse two recent contributions to the Marxist critique of the political economy of art: the article “Artistic Labor and the Production of Value: An Attempt at a Marxist Interpretation” by José María Durán and the book Art and Value: Art’s Economic Exceptionalism in Classical, Neoclassical and Marxist Economics by Dave Beech. While Durán emphasizes the emergence of the legal category of intellectual property rights as crucial for value production in art, Beech has reached the contrary conclusion that artistic labour does not produce value and that artistic production is therefore excepted from capitalist commodity production. In our paper, we criticize both conclusions. While agreeing with Beech that artistic labour does not produce value and is thus excepted from the ideology of commodity fetishism, we believe that through the ideology of converted forms it nevertheless becomes part of capitalist commodity production. We would argue that the sector of artistic production, through the converted form of monopoly rent, establishes a production relation with other, competitive, sectors of capitalist economy. This production relation is enabled by the ideology of aesthetic fetishism, supported by the ideology of legal fetishism through the category of intellectual property rights. Contrary to Durán, we thus conclude that intellectual property rights allow for a hidden transfer of surplus value produced by the workers in the competitive sectors of the capitalist economy.

Commodity Fetishism, Legal Fetishism, Converted Forms, and Aesthetic Fetishism

In this paper, we analyse two recent contributions to the Marxist critique of the political economy of art: the article “Artistic Labor and the Production of Value: An Attempt at a Marxist Interpretation” by José María Durán and the book Art and Value: Art’s Economic Exceptionalism in Classical, Neoclassical and Marxist Economics by Dave Beech. While Durán emphasizes the emergence of the legal category of intellectual property rights as crucial for value production in art, Beech has reached the contrary conclusion that artistic labour does not produce value and that artistic production is therefore excepted from capitalist commodity production. In our paper, we criticize both conclusions. While agreeing with Beech that artistic labour does not produce value and is thus excepted from the ideology of commodity fetishism, we believe that through the ideology of converted forms it nevertheless becomes part of capitalist commodity production. We would argue that the sector of artistic production, through the converted form of monopoly rent, establishes a production relation with other, competitive, sectors of capitalist economy. This production relation is enabled by the ideology of aesthetic fetishism, supported by the ideology of legal fetishism through the category of intellectual property rights. Contrary to Durán, we thus conclude that intellectual property rights allow for a hidden transfer of surplus value produced by the workers in the competitive sectors of the capitalist economy.

Fetishism Towards The Visual Appearance Of The Character's Avatar In The Online Mobile Game Of Ragnarok: Eternal Love

Advances in communication technology and the internet, video games developed into games that can not only be played by two people, but many people at once, even up to millions of people. Massive multiplayer online role-playing game or abbreviated as MMORPG is a video game that is played by many people at once and is set in a virtual world. MMORPG generally gives players the freedom to create their own avatars, ranging from race, skin color, hair color, to costumes. In Ragnarok Online Mobile: Eternal Love or usually likened to RoM: Eternal Love, players must pay a sum of virtual money to get (randomly) unique costumes to enhance their character's visual appearance. Players are willing to spend up to millions of rupiah to buy the desired costume. Commodity fetishism is now no longer limited to material objects such as luxury cars, expensive watches and branded bags, but also to virtual commodities and video games. As in the phenomenon of RoM: Eternal Love, fetishism is a virtual commodity.

Fanon and the Underside of Commodity Fetishism

In the present essay, I argue that portions of Frantz Fanon’s L’an V de la révolution algérienne (A Dying Colonialism) significantly contribute to, develop, and advance the Marxian theory of commodity fetishism. First, I describe and chart Fanon’s theorization of the transformations of the veil, the radio, and medicine in revolutionary Algeria, and map the homologous moments of each of these studies. Next, I give a brief synopsis of Marx’s account of commodity fetishism and argue that this theory leaves open questions about the way in which use-value plays a role in commodity fetishization in colonial contexts, and, by extension, in actual anticolonial political revolutions. The foregoing then paves the way for a re-evaluation of the central insights of Fanon’s studies of the veil, the radio, and medicine.

The Financial Logic of Internet Platforms: The Turnover Time of Money at the Limit of Zero

In the first two sections of Capital, Volume 2, Marx examines the factors that pressure capital to reduce its circulation and turnover times at the limit of zero. By doing so, he shines a light on the role played by transportation and communications industries in the accumulation process and the reasons that these sectors are important frontiers of productive capital investment and surplus value extraction. This article suggests how the Internet’s social-digital platforms, such as Google, Facebook, Amazon and Airbnb, work according to the logic expounded by Marx, thus generating extraordinary profits for financial capital. Also, because of this Marxian logic, the main source of these huge platforms’ profits is the informational work done by millions of people who access these websites to engage in recreational activities or to meet the demands for goods and services in a Society of the Spectacle (Debord) subsumed into commodity fetishism.

Māori Indigeneity and the Ontological Turn in Ethnography

This essay proposes an understanding of commodity fetishism that can mediate between divergent understandings of Māori indigeneity in a politically progressive way. To do this, an account of the Māori concept of whakapapa in terms of a recursive ontology is held up to a critique of such ontological turns in ethnography. The comparison shows that both approaches pursue ethnographic understanding in terms of a paradoxical relationship between creativity and politics. It is argued that the actual convergence of these apparently divergent ethnographic approaches places them, like postmodernist ethnographic forms developed since the 1980s, in the prolonged but still promising historical materialist critique of surrealism begun in the 1920s by the modernist avant-garde.

As categorias da alienação e do fetichismo na teoria social marxiana

Resumo O artigo objetiva analisar a teoria marxiana da alienação nos Manuscritos Econômicos-Filosóficos de 1844, Grundrisse e no Livro I d’O Capital. Partimos da premissa que a categoria da alienação adquire novas determinações na teoria social marxiana, que estão organicamente ligadas ao desenvolvimento do modo de produção capitalista e da consequente maturação da crítica da economia política realizada por Marx. Tais determinações se materializam no chamado fetichismo da mercadoria, a manifestação particular da alienação nos moldes da sociabilidade burguesa desenvolvida.

Theoconomy: Fixing the forecasting error

Most of the economic wealth accumulated by humans over all the ages is founded on an error of judgement or a delusion that to acquire wealth, possessions and status will bring permanent happiness. It is this deception which rises and keeps the economic household in continual motion. Founded on this delusion, humanity has created cities as well as common wealth, and invent and improve all the sciences and arts which ennoble and embellish human life. This delusion is also the cause of half of the world’s problems such as the unrelenting demand on the earth’s resources, pollution, world wars, et cetera. It is because of this delusion that the modern age is caught up in the philosophy of futility, fetishism of commodities and conspicuous consumption. This can no longer be tolerated. A new narrative ought to be found. Humans have to change their positions. A greater degree of mindfulness and consciousness are required. In this article, the nature and character of this deception in terms of Adam Smith’s universe of capitalism is expounded and a new narrative, theoconomy , is introduced to correct the error of judgement by humans.

Between Thanatos and Eros: Erich Fromm and the psychoanalysis of social networking technology use

Social networking technologies have become a ubiquitous framework for social interaction, serving to organise much of the individual’s social life. Such technological structuring affects not merely the individual’s psyche (as a psycho- technics), it also affects broader aspects of society (as a socio-technics). While social networking technologies may serve to transform society in positive ways, such technologies also have the potential to significantly encroach upon and (re) construct individual and cultural meaning in ways that must be investigated. Erich Fromm, who psychoanalytically describes humans as a product of their society and the economic systems within that society, may provide insight into the influence of social networking technologies in contemporary society. He sees the relationship between the individual and society as being in a constant state of dynamic change. Utilising Fromm’s psycho-societal insight, social networking technologies are shown to conflate and confuse the relation between Thanatos and Eros – the Thanatos of a lifeless and consumerist agenda-filled mechanisation, and the Eros associated with social engagement. Thanatos and Eros are tied together via social networking technologies. This results in, firstly, social networking technologies functioning predominantly to further capitalist agendas through the monetisation of these technologies – particularly in terms of linking commodity fetishism and the foundational social drive of the individual. Secondly, social networking technologies mechanise human action according to predictable behavioural paths through the use of these technologies, especially in terms of how socialisation is possible via these technologies (shaping how platonic and romantic relationships may take place in the contemporary world). Such a mechanisation of interpersonal engagement contrasts with Erich Fromm’s assertion that interpersonal relations (vis-à-vis love) are not “mere emotion”, but rather represent an interpersonal creative capacity and interplay. Fromm’s psycho-societal insights will show how contemporary individuals may take independent and responsible rational action to establish accountable and psychologically beneficial ways of engaging with others through social networking technologies.

The City as “Dissonant” Fetish: Urban (Re)production, Gentrification, and the Conceptual Limits of Commodity Fetishism

This article exposes important conceptual limits to urban commodification in theorizing urban (re)production. We interrogate the concept of commodity fetishism—the process through which commodities come to be seen as performing the social and economic relations of their production in the marketplace—and argue that efforts to commodify the city for consumption generally produce a “dissonant fetish.” We examine urban commodity fetishism among gentrifiers in Atlanta, Georgia. Understanding the city as a dissonant fetish has the potential to reframe geographical attention to dynamics of gentrification and urban development more broadly. Key Words: commodification, fetishization, gentrification, urban development, urban (re)production.

Reification and immaterial production

Reification, a central theme in radical social/political theory from the 1920s onward, has started falling out of fashion since the 1970s, a period when a number of crucial alterations in the composition of capital and labour start taking place, for example, the tendential hegemony of immaterial/biopolitical labour. The main goal of this article is to discuss reification in light of contemporary changes in the shape of capitalism such as the above. After discussing the relation between reification, alienation and commodity fetishism, I highlight, largely following Hardt and Negri, how reification under the hegemony of immaterial/biopolitical production is, on the one hand, intensified and, on the other hand, (potentially) easier to diagnose, diminish or overcome, due to the increasing emergence of the common as a social relation antagonistic to capital. The article concludes with a note on Wittgenstein and the critique of reification of the symbolic (language) and the ‘inner’ (affects) as the new extended terrain of struggle.