DePaul Law Review Volume 53 Issue 3 Spring 2004: Symposium - Race as Proxy in Law and Society: Emerging Issues in Article 12 Race and the Law The Apogee of the Commodity Anthony Paul Farley Follow this and additional works at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/law-review Recommended Citation Anthony P. Farley, The Apogee of the Commodity, 53 DePaul L. Rev. 1229 (2004) Available at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/law-review/vol53/iss3/12 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Law at Via Sapientiae. It has been accepted for inclusion in DePaul Law Review by an authorized editor of Via Sapientiae. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. THE APOGEE OF THE COMMODITY Anthony Paul Farley* If commodities could speak... 1 -Karl Marx I would be sorry if they understood me. Until now it has gone ac- cording to my wishes with these people; and I hope even now that this exordium will so bewilder them that from now on they see nothing but letters on the page, while what passes for mind in them is torn hither and thither by the caged anger within.2 -J.G. Fichte The black is the apogee of the commodity. It is the point-in time as well as in space-at which the commodity becomes flesh. And, for the system of capital, the black is both the instrument of its demise and the vehicle of its ensoulment. Provisionally, let us call the time and space of ensoulment Virginia, 1619 A.D.