From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU)
Date: Fri Oct 28 2005 - 23:00:16 EDT
If I remember correctly, there may be very important similarities between Keenan's Derridean reflections and Michel Henry's earlier analysis of the impossible equation in what was translated as Marx: Philosopher of Human Reality (Tom Rockmore wrote the intro to the English version). Perhaps both are examples of fluent Marxese? Yours, Rakesh ps I have moved again and most of my books are still in boxes. On Fri, 28 Oct 2005 19:48:36 -0700 Michael Perelman <michael@ECST.CSUCHICO.EDU> wrote: > Keenan, Thomas. 1993. "The Point is to (Ex)Change It: Reading .Capital. > Rhetorically." in Emily Apter and William Pietz, eds. Fetishism (Ithaca: Cornell > University Press): pp. 152-85. > > 169: C1, p. 128: Marx describes the residual after abstracting away all use value. > He calls the residual a "gespenstige Gegenstandlichkeit." "There is nothing of them > left over but this same ghostly objectivity, a mere jelly of undifferentiated labor." > 168: LC, p. 46 "each one of them completely resembles the other. They all have > the same phantomic reality. Metamorphosed into identical sublimes, samples of the > same indistinct labor." > 168: "Because they resemble each other, as all ghosts do, having no phenomenal or > sensible features by which to distinguish "themselves," the operation of which they > are the remnant can finally occur. Thanks to their resemblance, the condition of > exchange are met -- the very exchange that leaves them, atomless, behind. Without > ghosts, no exchange." > 169: "the commodity as ghost is a figure for the most rigorous of reductions, the > radical elimination of all traces of use value, with one exception: the residue of > the abstraction itself." > 171: C1, p. 152 "The secret of value-expression, the likeness and equivalence of > labor ... could not be deciphered until the concept of human similarity or equality > had already acquired the permanence of a popular prejudice." "But [it] is first > possible only in a society where the commodity form is the general form of > labor-product." > Compare the following to Sohn-Rethel. > 171: "Exchange is possible because abstraction reveals the common humanity > surviving in the things exchanged." > 171: In other words, human is equated with ghostly. > 176: C1 143-4 "We see then, that everything our analysis of the value of > commodities previously told us is repeated by the linen itself .... Only it reveals > its thoughts in a language with which it alone is familiar, the language of > commodities." > > > -- > Michael Perelman > Economics Department > California State University > Chico, CA 95929 > > Tel. 530-898-5321 > E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
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