#real subsumption

[thelonguepuree]

Alternatively, perhaps, the rupture is something to which we make a show of facing up; of recognising the misery of retreat, and holding ourselves in the melancholy recognition of the passing of all that was good, meanwhile nursing a flame for its eventual return. Either way it is the same: whether as presence or lack, the past shrouds the specificity of the present.

“The History of Subsumption,” Endnotes 2

[spaceintruderdetector]

Walmart to compete with thrift stores,flea markets,garage sales

Wow, lemonade stands beware. 

https://wtop.com/consumer-news/2020/05/walmart-teams-with-thredup-to-sell-used-clothing-online/

[rematerializationchamber]

Under neoliberalism, the ability to enjoy or make art can seem like a consolation prize for entrepreneurial subjectivity, the best modality of that sort of subjectivity rather than a respite from it. Enjoying and making art, in some ways, become more and more the same experience of curation in internet-based art — the value of an individual work becomes hard to differentiate from the value of being able to circulate it meaningfully and make its value augment itself through greater exposure.

[adornography]

If one thinks about it carefully, the idea of this ‘real’ subsumption (which Marx opposes to merely ‘formal’ subsumption) goes a long way beyond the integration of the workers into the world of the contact, of money incomes, of law and official politics: it implies a transformation of human individuality, which extends from the education of the labour force to the constitution of a ‘dominant ideology’ capable of being adopted by the dominated themselves.

—Étienne Balibar, “Preface” to Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities

[adornography]

I remained convinced that the hegemony of the dominant classes was based, in the last analysis, on their capacity to organize the labour process and, beyond that, the reproduction of labour-power itself in a broad sense which includes both the workers’ subsistence and their cultural formation.

—Étienne Balibar, “Preface” to Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities