Capitalism subsumes all prior history by converting beliefs into monetized aesthetic objects
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. Walk around the British Museum, where you see objects torn from their lifeworlds and assembled as if on the deck of some Predator spacecraft, and you have a powerful image of this process at work. 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: connects to: Capitalism is an infinitely plastic entity metabolizing all prior codes and social systems — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 19; Capitalist commodification displaces the aesthetic value of art — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 69; Capitalism’s material system is interwoven with cultural reproduction — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 122 (+12 more)
Related
- Capitalism strips cultural objects and beliefs into monetized museum pieces. (similarity 0.92)
- Capitalism’s material system is interwoven with cultural reproduction (similarity 0.86)
- Capitalism sustains itself by recycling readymade archaisms, never creating the new (similarity 0.85)
- Capital’s dominance is the real message of every cultural product (similarity 0.82)
- Capitalist realism reflects social decomposition, not just individual persuasion. (similarity 0.82)
- Cultural forms are causally rooted in the daily circulation of capital. (similarity 0.81)
- Capitalism depends on moral capital from the very traditions it displaced (similarity 0.80)
- Capitalist realism absorbed art’s militancy through creative industries synergies. (similarity 0.80)
- Capitalism now pre-formats desires before they can even emerge as subversive (similarity 0.80)
- Capitalism is an infinitely plastic system that dismantles all transcendent codes (similarity 0.80)
- Capitalist exchange abstracts objects from the real labor that produced them (similarity 0.80)
- Postindustrial capitalism severs the continuity with the past that genetic criticism relied on (similarity 0.80)
- Capitalism is an infinitely plastic entity metabolizing all prior codes and social systems (similarity 0.79)
- Subordinating social values to economic value is capitalism’s fundamental logic (similarity 0.79)
- Culture is not superstructural but is where financialized capitalism subjugates social values (similarity 0.79)
Broader Connections
- Capitalism reproduces itself by drawing civil and cultural life into conformity with its needs
#expands(0.90) - Capitalist commodification displaces the aesthetic value of art
#expands(0.85) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 69 - Capitalism’s material system is interwoven with cultural reproduction
#expands(0.85) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 122 - Capitalism and materialism shape a society’s entire worldview and value system
#expands(0.85) - Capitalism is an infinitely plastic system that dismantles all transcendent codes
#expands(0.85) - Capitalism now pre-formats desires before they can even emerge as subversive
#expands(0.85) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 24 - Capitalism’s rupture with older social forms makes their myths undecipherable to us
#expands(0.80) — Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 1674 - Under real subsumption, social life itself becomes object of capitalist speculation
#expands(0.80) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 457 - Capitalism cannot function without its ideological disguises and myths
#corroborates(0.80) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 96 - Critique of political economy becomes the critique of all history as domination
#expands(0.80) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 697 - Capitalism breaks with prior production yet continues domination over objects
#qualifies(0.75) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1602 - The divide between representation and material reality is itself a constructed effect of capitalism
#expands(0.75) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 94