{"id":74,"date":"2011-04-20T14:37:27","date_gmt":"2011-04-20T14:37:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/wordpress\/?p=74"},"modified":"2021-12-04T17:20:21","modified_gmt":"2021-12-04T17:20:21","slug":"reconsidering-commodities-markets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/?p=74","title":{"rendered":"Reconsidering Commodities & Markets"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seminar: Reconsidering Commodities & Markets
\n<\/strong>Wednesday May 4th, 2011 @ 1pm
\nUniversity of Essex Room 3.108<\/p>\n

Seminar presentations by: Cecelia Cassinger (Essex), Emma Dowling (Queen Mary), Stephen Duncombe (NYU), George Tsogas (Cass)<\/p>\n

What would commodities say if they could speak? Marx\u2019s question can seem playful in some registers. And yet, objects voice themselves not only through our playful \u2013 or rueful \u2013 gaze. \u00a0If Marx had listened long enough, these talking commodities would have announced the traumas of their exploitative and violent birthing to him. Likewise the rise of consumer culture, the proliferation and intensification of the commodification, can be understood as the expansion of the violence of accumulation all across the social field. Today the critique and denunciation of these forces have become yet another commodity in the spectacle; something we witness today in the backlash against banks, bankers and speculators and all the glorified preening of capitalist consumption they stand for. Is this trend, then, the \u2018new spirit of capitalism\u2019?<\/p>\n

And yet, an alternative exists to the vicious dynamics described above. \u00a0One thinks, for instance, of the practices of Russian constructivists during the 1920s employing their artistic practices and knowledges to turn commodities from passive objects into\u00a0active participants in the building of a more liberatory world: to make them into comrades. Yet, how attractive is this vision to the postmodern consumer? Is it more or less dangerous than its alternative? Today, therefore, we need to reconsider \u201cthe state of things\u201d created by commodity logic. Both bloody commodities and comradely objects exist all around us: \u00a0the stubborn existence of sweatshop production and labor exploitation exist side-by-side with the proliferation of \u2018helpful\u2019 technologies and all sorts of interactive gadgets and participatory media networks. Is this the inauguration of a new era of ethical production through the commodity form or the latest and most comprehensive example of alienation, one that is now self-managed through the fetish of ethical consumption? \u00a0What would objects now say to us?<\/p>\n

Papers:
\n\u2013 Cecelia Cassinger \u2013 The violence of personal branding: on the commodification of the subject
\n\u2013 Emma Dowling \u2013 The Business Model of Social Movements
\n\u2013 Stephen Duncombe \u2013 Dream Politics and Commodity Aesthetics
\n\u2013 George Tsogas \u2013 The Commodity-Form in Cognitive Capitalism<\/p>\n

Sponsored by the Essex Management Centre<\/a> and the Centre for Philosophy and Political Economy<\/a><\/p>\n

For more information and to register contact Stevphen Shukaitis (sshuka@essex.ac.uk).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seminar: Reconsidering Commodities & Markets Wednesday May 4th, 2011 @ 1pm University of Essex Room 3.108 Seminar presentations by: Cecelia Cassinger (Essex), Emma Dowling (Queen Mary), Stephen Duncombe (NYU), George Tsogas (Cass) What would commodities say if they could speak? Marx\u2019s question can seem playful in some registers. And yet, objects voice themselves not only […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stevphen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76,"href":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions\/76"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}