Capital functions as the protagonist-subject of Marx’s Capital
Evidence
When persons are personified, they are made in the image and likeness of the ur-person, Capital. Capital is the subject in this world; all other actors are figures, masks, faces, prosopopoeic personifications of the subject. This is the primacy of Capital already emblazoned in the title Capital, the place nineteenth-century novels most often reserve for the subject: Capital is the subject of Capital, as David Copperfield or Jane Eyre or Daniel Deronda are the subjects of David Copperfield, Jane Eyre, and Daniel Deronda. The analytic importance of this subject position, an idea advanced by the trope of personification more than by exposition, is not only that Capital is the protagonist of modernity, but that the workings of capitalism are described by this subjectification and embodiment of an abstraction. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1981
Categorization
- DEFINE: Explains the slippery but central concept of personification in Marx — persons are made in the image of the ur-person, Capital.
- BMF: The claim that Capital is the bildungsroman protagonist of Marx connects obliquely to David Copperfield as a named subject, and to the bildungsroman-as-becoming-subject reading of The Namesake.
- XREF: connects to: Marx’s organic composition of capital extends to the organic composition of individuals — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2313; Marx explains capital better than class and class contradiction is not master key; Marx decentered identity by lodging subjects inside un-chosen historical practices (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- Marx explains capital better than class and class contradiction is not master key
#expands(0.80) - Marx’s organic composition of capital extends to the organic composition of individuals
#expands(0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2313 - Marx decentered identity by lodging subjects inside un-chosen historical practices
#expands(0.75)