Abstract Life, Abstract Labor, Abstract Mind

Charles Thorpe and Brynna Jacobson

A chapter in The Capitalist Commodification of Animals, 2020, vol. 35, pp 59-105 from Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Abstract: Drawing upon Alfred Sohn-Rethel's work, we argue that, just as capitalism produces abstract labor, it coproduces both abstract mind and abstract life. Abstract mind is the split between mind and nature and between subject/observer and observed object that characterizes scientific epistemology. Abstract mind reflects an abstracted objectified world of nature as a means to be exploited. Biological life is rendered as abstract life by capitalist exploitation and by the reification and technologization of organisms by contemporary technoscience. What Alberto Toscano has called “the culture of abstraction” imposes market rationality onto nature and the living world, disrupting biotic communities and transforming organisms into what Finn Bowring calls “functional bio-machines.”

Keywords: Abstract life; abstract labor; science; technology; Karl Marx; Alfred Sohn-Rethel (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:rpeczz:s0161-723020200000035004

DOI: 10.1108/S0161-723020200000035004

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