The world’s unity is material — one capitalist mode of production — not ideological.
Evidence
Jameson claims that one cannot proceed from the premiss of a real unity of the world ‘without falling back into some general liberal and humanistic universalism’ That is a curious idea, coming from a Marxist. One would have thought that the world was united not by liberalist ideologythat the world was not at all constituted in the realm of an· Idea, be it Hegelian or humanistbut by the global operation of a single mode of production, namely the capitalist one, and the global resistance to this mode, a resistance which is itself unevenly developed in different parts of the globe. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 401
Categorization
- XREF: Core of the reader’s research: Ahmad’s materialism against discourse-determinism. Also connects to the parallel drawn for the reader between Jameson here and Spivak’s strategic essentialism — Ahmad rejects essentialism’s liberal-humanist framing outright, unlike late Spivak who worried about residence-in essentialism. — connects to: The world forms one contradictory capitalist unity, not three separate worlds — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 163; Capitalism operated simultaneously through multiple modes of production, not a single wage-labor system. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 252; Global capitalism is hierarchical, not divided into monolithic blocs — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 588 (+8 more)
Broader Connections
- The world forms one contradictory capitalist unity, not three separate worlds
#corroborates(0.95) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 163 - The world’s unity is material and shown through accumulated inquiry
#corroborates(0.85) - Global capitalism is hierarchical, not divided into monolithic blocs
#expands(0.80) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 588 - Capitalist production relations are reproduced socially and ideologically, not just economically
#qualifies(0.80) - Capitalism operated simultaneously through multiple modes of production, not a single wage-labor system.
#qualifies(0.75) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 252 - History’s unity is a developing process, not a presupposition.
#expands(0.75) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 812 - Marx conceived social unity as constructed out of difference, not identity
#expands(0.75) - The economy is a constructed concept rather than a natural object.
#expands(0.72) — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 538 - Capitalist logic is a fragile political construction, not an inevitable order.
#qualifies(0.72) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 140 - Society’s unity is self-produced by its members, unlike nature’s observer-made unity
#qualifies(0.72) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 168