The divide between representation and material reality is itself a constructed effect of capitalism

Evidence

The problem, however, is that the sort of thing I want to understand is this very distinction between what we see as a realm of signs or representations, and an outside or an underneath. The economic and political transformations, I shall argue, were themselves something dependent on the working of this peculiar distinction. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 94

Categorization

• QUESTION: Mitchell’s core methodological inversion — that the sign/underneath dichotomy is itself an artifact — is worth chasing through his later chapters to see how he proves it.
• XREF: connects to: Historical materialism has begun to treat space and geography as causal forces in capitalism — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 2207; Damaged happiness mirrors the false whole under capitalism. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 947; Commodity fetishism conceals labor as the reality underlying the appearance of goods. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 577 (+4 more)