Capitalism strips cultural objects and beliefs into monetized museum pieces.
Evidence
The power of capitalist realism derives in part from the way that capitalism subsumes and consumes all of previous history: one effect of its ‘system of equivalence’ which can assign all cultural objects, whether they are religious iconography, pornography, or Das Kapital, a monetary value. … In the conversion of practices and rituals into merely aesthetic objects, the beliefs of previous cultures are objectively ironized, transformed into artifacts. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 13
Categorization
- XREF: Resonates with the commodification-through-erasure argument I traced across my Islamophobia and empire reading. — connects to: Capitalism subsumes all prior history by converting beliefs into monetized aesthetic objects — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 13; Capitalist commodification displaces the aesthetic value of art — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 69; Capitalism failed to strip social life of historical consciousness embedded in culture (+3 more)
- FICTION: The Predator-deck image of the British Museum — cultural objects assembled as trophies from across slaughtered lifeworlds — is a vivid worldbuilding seed.
Related
- Capitalism subsumes all prior history by converting beliefs into monetized aesthetic objects (similarity 0.92)
- Cultural criticism that embraces universal commodification becomes indistinguishable from commodity fetishism (similarity 0.81)
- Capitalist commodification displaces the aesthetic value of art (similarity 0.80)
- Capitalist exchange abstracts objects from the real labor that produced them (similarity 0.80)
- Capital’s dominance is the real message of every cultural product (similarity 0.79)
Broader Connections
- Capitalism subsumes all prior history by converting beliefs into monetized aesthetic objects
#corroborates(0.95) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 13 - Capitalist commodification displaces the aesthetic value of art
#corroborates(0.92) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 69 - Capitalism failed to strip social life of historical consciousness embedded in culture
#contradicts(0.88) - Fine art loses aesthetic value when removed from its creative location into wealth
#exemplifies(0.82) - Culture that is fully commodified becomes unusable and merges with advertising
#expands(0.80) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 120 - Capitalism commodified things for their exchange value, not their intrinsic worth
#expands(0.75) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 122