In Epistemology in Spinoza, Marx-Freud-Lacan, Kiarina Kordela gives us what has been sorely lacking in recent work on biopower: a reflection on how the commodification of self-actualization anchors the current moment of late capitalism. Through a series of joyful readings of Spinoza, Marx, Freud, and Lacan, Kordela opens a perspective not just on bio- power, but on our own singular essence irreducible to capitalism's inces- sant repetition of the same old same old. This is a work to be reckoned with, to be thought about, and above all to be enjoyed. Timothy Campbell, Professor of Italian, Department of Romance Studies, Cornell University At a moment when philosophy appears blocked in pointless antinomies, between either constructivism, or new materialism and speculative realism, Kiarina Kordela breaks with these antinomies and reveals those seemingly radical opponents as tacit accomplices – or “couples” in Bachelardian sense. Kordela's couragious advance aims for what philosophy can do best: it takes a position, it draws clear lines of demarcation, and it gives a superb overview of the current situation on philosophy's battleground. Robert Pfaller, University of Art and Industrial Design, Linz This page intentionally left blank Epistemontology in Spinoza-Marx-Freud-Lacan A. Kiarina Kordela steps beyond extant commentaries on Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism – from A. Sohn-Rethel to L. Althusser, É. Balibar, Slavoj Žižek, and others – to show that in capitalism value is the mani- festation of the homology between thought and being, while their other aspect – power – is foreclosed and becomes the object of biopower. Using monistic Marxian/Lacanian structuralism as an alternative to dominant models from Plato and Kant to phenomenological accounts, deconstruction, and other contemporary approaches, Kordela expertly argues that Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism is a reformulation of the Spinozian thesis that thought (mind) and things (bodies or extension) are manifestations of one and the same being or substance. Kordela’s link between Spinoza and Marx shows that being consists of two aspects, value and power, the former leading to structuralist thought, the latter becoming the object of contemporary biopower. Epistemontology in Spinoza-Marx- Freud-Lacan intervenes between two dominant lines of thought in the reception of Marx today: on the one hand, an approach that relates Marxian thought to psychoanalysis from a Hegelian/dialectical perspective and, on the other hand, an approach that links Marxism to Spinozian monism, at the total exclusion of psychoanalysis. This book will interest scholars and researchers who study Marxism, (post)structuralism, psychoanalysis, critical theory, ontology, epistemology and theories of representation, theoreticians of cultural studies and com- parative literature, aesthetic theory, including the relation of art to economy and politics, and biopolitics. A. Kiarina Kordela is Professor of German and Director of the Critical Theory Program at Macalester College, and Honorary Adjunct Professor at the Writing and Society Research Center, University of Western Sydney, Australia. She publishes on topics such as literature, philosophy, psycho- analysis, critical, political, and film theory, intellectual history, and biopolitics. Routledge Innovations in Political Theory For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge. com/Routledge-Innovations-in-Political-Theory/book-series/IPT Rethinking Utopia Place, Power, Affect David M. 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Kiarina Kordela First published 2018 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Taylor & Francis The right of A. Kiarina Kordela to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-06835-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-15803-7 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Taylor & Francis Books Contents List of tables ix Acknowledgments x Note on citing Spinoza’s Ethics and the Treatises xi Epigraph xii Introduction 1 Chapter summaries 7 1 Words and things in the era of value, power, and biopower 13 Dominant secular epistemology, and epistemontology 13 Commodity fetishism and structuralism 22 Being qua value, and the methodology of commodity fetishism 24 Other attempts to challenge the dominant secular epistemology 27 Being qua power-of-self-actualization 41 Classical ideology and commodity fetishism or biopolitical ideology 43 Being qua power-of-self-actualization and qua value, or fallen being 46 2 Materialist epistemontology: Marx and Sohn-Rethel with Spinoza and psychoanalysis 53 Two lines of secular epistemology 53 Real abstraction, and intellectual and manual labor 54 The capitalist (mutual) abstractification of productive labor and value 59 Parmenides’s coins do not accrue 62 viii Contents God, or substance, or labor-power 64 The law of historical materialism 67 Sohn-Rethel’s methodology: commodity fetishism 68 3 Psychoanalysis and structuralism 73 Object and time 75 Drive, lack, desire 86 Postscript on fantasy 90 4 Dialectics, or valences of structuralism 95 Dialectics 96 Structuralism 105 Kafka’s valences 111 Coda 114 5 Value: The aesthetic itinerary from content to structure 126 6 Marx and psychoanalysis 151 Conceptual, methodological, epistemontological affinities 152 Commodity fetishism and materialist epistemology: from bourgeois ideology to the constitutive imaginary, and from interiority-exteriority to extimacy 155 From surplus-value to surplus-enjoyment 160 7 The other side of value: Substance, labor and enjoyment, or biopolitics according to Spinoza, Marx and Lacan 166 Jouissance of the real 169 Temporality of the jouissance of the real 172 Aspects of labor and their temporalities 179 Labor and the historical modes of its “loss” and “counting” 181 Imitation enjoyment as a religious practice 187 Spinoza’s democracy and secular salvation 190 Index 201 Tables 4.1 Dialectics in Adorno and Lukács 103 4.2 Structure of Postmodern Dialectics 109 Acknowledgments I would like to thank Alya Ansari (Macalester ’19) and Nick Chun (Macalester ’19) for helping with the editing process and composing the index during our 2017 summer research collaboration. A big thank you to Parker Field, Macalester alumnus and freelance editor, researcher and writer based in New York, who generously volunteered his professional expertise in editing. I would also like to thank Natalja Mortensen, the senior editor of the Political Science sector of Routledge, for her interest in my work. My gratitude to Macalester College and my friends and colleagues there, and to the international intellectual community with all the con- ferences, symposia, and talks that have offered the opportunity to discuss several of the ideas presented here. I would like to thank in particular Andrew Benjamin, Marie-Hélène Brousse, Tony Brown, Cesare Casarino, Joan Copjec, Tim Dean, Filippo De Lucchese, Jeff Diamanti, Jonathan Michael Dickstein, Heiko Feldner, Nathan Gorelick, Sean Grattan, Christian Haines, Maire Jaanus, Jan Jagodzinski, Sigi Jöttkandt, Onur Kartal, Lydia R. Kerr, Sheila Kunkle, Franco Milanesi, J.D. Mininger, Mariana Roa Oliva, Brian D. O’Neil, Jason M. Peck, Andrew Pendakis, Luis Recoder, Juan Robaina, Bastian Ronge, Matthias Rothe, Arun Sal- danha, Hoon Song, Yannis Stavrakakis, Imre Szeman, Gautam Basu Thakur, Andrea Ughetto, Dimitris Vardoulakis, Véronique Voruz, Eliza- beth Weed, and Caroline A. Williams – for generously showing their appreciation of my work by inviting me to contribute to their edited col- lections and journal issues, or by translating and/or commenting on my work in other languages, and generally promoting its dissemination. Last but not least, my gratitude goes to the greatest and most permanent source of inspiration, my students, for their unmitigated thirst for knowledge and for challenging convenient thinking.