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Outside the Head: From Abstraction to Subtraction

Lecturer: Jai Bentley-Payne

Originally Taught: Winter School 2023

This course will offer a grounding in theoretical approaches to the practical metaphysics of the capital-relation. Oriented by a reading of real abstraction centred on the concept of form-determination, we will detail a counter-philosophical itinerary of materialism as an overdetermination of forms. The course will build on a critical account of Alfred Sohn-Rethel’s critique of epistemology by situating the abstractions of private-property, law, the value-form and the individuated-subject within a nexus of relations that make up the actually existing metaphysics of capital. Such an account of real abstraction can offer critical insights into a wide range of contemporary phenomena, from financial objects, to computation and artificial intelligence, to the impasse of politics. The course will culminate in a proposal for how we might think political form in light of the problematic of real abstraction by turning to the conception of subtraction found in the work of Alain Badiou, and reading it through notions of self-abolition and communisation.

Lecture 1. Abstraction

In this first lecture we look at key arguments in the development of real abstraction as an idea. We start by introducing the main insights from the work Alfred Sohn-Rethel, from the unique properties of the exchange-relation, to the division of intellectual and manual labour, and the abstractions of measurement and quantification.  We then look at various ways that exchange and the money-form have been identified as integral to the social development of philosophy.

Readings:

  • Sohn-Rethel, Alfred. 2021. Intellectual and Manual Labour: A Critique of Epistemology. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books.
  • Seaford, Richard. 2012. ‘Monetisation and the Genesis of the Western Subject’. Historical Materialism 20 (1): 78–102. https://doi.org/10.1163/156920612X632782.
  • Toscano, Alberto. 2014. ‘Materialism without Matter: Abstraction, Absence and Social Form’. Textual Practice 28 (7): 1221–40. https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2014.965901.

Further Reading:

  • Thomson, George. 1972. The First Philosophers: Studies in Ancient Greek Society. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
  • Adorno, Theodor W. 2001. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Stanford, Calif.; Cambridge: Stanford University Press ; Cambridge University Press
  • Colletti, Lucio. 1992. ‘Introduction’. In Karl Marx: Early Writings, translated by Tom Nairn, 7–56. London: Penguin.

Lecture 2. Form-Determination

Form-determination [formbestimmung] is essential to the core arguments of real abstraction, not only as they relate to Sohn-Rethel’s critique of epistemology, but for how we might conceive of real abstraction beyond the narrow confines of exchange. This lecture will look how the concept of form-determination has led to a deeper philosophical understanding of Marx, and how in turn this can lead to a richer appreciation of real abstraction.

Readings :

  • Bellofiore, Riccardo, and Tommaso Redolfi Riva. 2015. ‘The Neue Marx-Lektüre: Putting the Critique of Political Economy Back into the Critique of Society’. Radical Philosophy, no. 189. https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/the-neue-marx-lekture.
  • Marx, Karl. 1990. ‘Chapter 1: The Commodity’. In Capital Volume I, 125–77. London: Penguin Books.
  • Rubin, Isaak Illich. 1973. ‘Thing and Social Function’. In Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value, translated by Milos Samardzija and Fredy Perlman. Montreal: Black Rose Books.

Further Reading:

  • Marx, Karl. 2010. ‘Difference Between The Democritean And Epicurean Philosophy Of Nature’. In Marx & Engels Collected Works Volume 1, 25–105. London: Lawrence & Wishart
  • Endnotes. 2010. ‘Communisation and Value-Form Theory’. In Endnotes 2: Misery and the Value Form, 68–105. London, UK: Endnotes UK.

Lecture 3. Overdetermination

Debates around conceptions of real abstraction have largely been caught up in privileging either the historical development of abstract labour on the one hand, or the exchange-abstraction on the other. In this lecture we take a different approach by elucidating the capitalist social formation as a multiplicity of forms. We consider how private property, law and other forms overdetermine the value-form and ultimately bear on a common philosophical understanding of subjectivity that in itself can be understood as a real abstraction.

Readings:

  • Balibar, Étienne. 2017. ‘“My Self,” “My Own”: Variations on Locke’. In Citizen Subject: Foundations for Philosophical Anthropology, 74–91. Commonalities. New York: Fordham University Press.
  • Pashukanis, Evgeniĭ Bronislavovich. 2002. ‘Commodity and Subject’. In The General Theory of Law & Marxism, 109–33. Law & Society Series. New Brunswick, N.J: Transaction Publishers
  • Toscano, Alberto, and Brenna Bhandar. 2015. ‘Race, Real Estate and Real Abstraction’. Radical Philosophy, no. 194 (December): 8–17.

Further Reading:

  • Rekret, Paul. 2019. ‘Cogito Ergo Habo: Philosophy, Money and Method’. In Commoning with George Caffentzis and Silvia Federici, 61–80. London: Pluto Press.
  • Montag, Warren. 2017. ‘A Parallelism of Consciousness and Property: Balibar’s Reading of Locke’. In Balibar and the Citizen Subject, edited by Warren Montag and Hanan Elsayed, 157–81. Critical Connections (Edinburgh University Press). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
  • Miéville, China. 2004. ‘The Commodity-Form Theory of International Law: An Introduction’. Leiden Journal of International Law 17 (2): 271–302. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0922156504001827.
  • Althusser, Louis. 2017. Philosophy for Non-Philosophers. Translated by G. M. Goshgarian. New York: Bloomsbury.

Lecture 4. Information

The intersection of informatic computation and financialisation has not only signalled the privilege of so-called immateriality, it has ushered in an apparent return of the abstract. In this lecture, we consider a dialectical account of computational and financial technology that takes up the challenge of preserving the understanding of real abstraction, while offering a critical account of statistical, informatic and financial systems that render objective, and then separate, and differentiate in concrete terms, despite their pretensions to immateriality.

Readings:

  • Beller, Jonathan. 2021. ‘The Social Difference Engine and the World Computer’. In The World Computer: Derivative Conditions of Racial Capitalism, 3–62. Thought in the Act. Durham: Duke University Press.
  • Joque, Justin. 2022. Revolutionary Mathematics: Artificial Intelligence, Statistics and the Logic of Capitalism. London New York: Verso.
  • Jones, Campbell. 2016. ‘The World of Finance’. Diacritics 44 (3): 30–54.

Further Reading:

  • Franklin, Seb. 2021. The Digitally Disposed: Racial Capitalism and the Informatics of Value. Electronic Mediations, vol. 61. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Lecture 5. Subtraction

In this final lecture we return to the difficulties posed for philosophy and politics by the problematic of real abstraction. If politics is always delimited by the material practices, abstractions and incorporations of the capital-relation, then a renewal of an immanent political form can only be inaugurated in modalities of thought and practice that break down their own limits. Here, we turn to a proposal for how we might think political form by bringing together a theory of communisation with a subtractive conception of politics from Alain Badiou.

Readings: