From Political Topographies to Political Logics: Post-Marxism and Historicity

Abstract

This paper engages with the question of the historical and ontological status of the logics of hegemony articulated by Ernesto Laclau. It interrogates the concept of real abstraction that Laclau mobilises to explain the historical status of his theory. It is argued that while Laclau grounds his conceptual system in an ontology of generalised antagonism, this is done to the exclusion of formally conceiving the historical conditions of those logics. The paper demonstrates that it is the irreducible gap between reflection on historical and ontological conditions of possibility from which the most pervasive critiques of Laclau's work are derived. In turning to the work of Alfred SohnRethel, the paper suggests a different conception of real abstraction, one which locates the sources of abstraction in the division of mental and manual labour. In drawing on the Marxist analysis of real abstraction and the division of labour, the essay seeks to deflate the subsumption of politics to ontology and to turn attention to the logics which condition the possibility of social struggle todaynamely, the logics of contemporary capitalism.

The Head, the Hand, and Matter: New Materialism and the Politics of Knowledge

“…8. For a more extensive analysis of Sohn-Rethel's theory of real abstraction see Rekret and Choat (2016); Toscano (2008). 9.…”

Digital Objects, Digital Subjects: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Capitalism, Labour and Politics in the Age of Big Data

“…For a convincing critique of Latour's history of modernity see Pels (1995), Jacob (1995) & Choat (2017. 6 For a broader accounting of Sohn-Rethel's argument see Rekret and Choat (2016). The argument in this section is developed more extensively in Rekret (2016;2018c).…”

A critique of new materialism: ethics and ontology

“…548-9, 874-5, 1993. 9 On Sohn-Rethel's reading of Descartes, see Rekret (forthcoming) and Rekret and Choat (2015). 10 I draw here on a series of studies of the relationship between accumulation and the concept of waste in Locke.…”