reactions to come together as a textbook case of the laws of economics, a new socio-technical world had to be assembled to hold them together.’ If Weizman demonstrates, or tries to demonstrate, how the or ‘network’ assemblage model multiplies agency, Mitchell’s work stresses also the de-reification of capitalism, as its flip side. He refers to global forces of capital’, to ‘so-called contest any conception of what he calls homoficient historical logic.’ This ‘capitalism’s is replaced with a new formulation: industrial capitalism no longer appears ‘oil-based self-sufficient. Its success depends on other forces, which are both essential to and disjunctive with the process we call capitalist development.’ Very obviously indebted to Foucault’s equivocal of capitalism into capitalisms, which is equivocal ‘pluralization’ because located in proximity to the theorizations of neo-liberalism of plural capitalism, we can see a strangely rigid standard set for the functioning of capitalism that, perhaps obviously, at no point seems to regard any reference to Marx’s actual analysis as necessary. On the one hand, this type of work indicates how Latourian, or Latour-style, analysis allows an entry into the empirical not immediately burdened with the risk of reproducing the world as we find it. The act of de-reification allows access to the minutiae of reality that certain forms of critique tended to displace or disable. On the other hand, the difficulty, however, is that this restoration of analysis occludes other forms of notably that of capitalism and does not necessarily lead to a ‘reality’ – – restoration of agency. The very means that allow tracking of networks struggle if those ramify or solidify too far. In fact, for all the de-reification we can in ‘networks’ fact say that capitalism operates as a but this doesn’t seem to multiply ‘network’,
reactions to come together as a textbook case of the laws of economics, a new socio-technical world had to be assembled to hold them together.’ If Weizman demonstrates, or tries to demonstrate, how the ‘network’ or assemblage model multiplies agency, Mitchell’s work stresses also the de-reification of capitalism, as its flip side. He refers to ‘so-called global forces of capital’, to contest any conception of what he calls ‘capitalism’s homoficient historical logic.’ This is replaced with a new formulation: ‘oil-based industrial capitalism no longer appears self-sufficient. Its success depends on other forces, which are both essential to and disjunctive with the process we call capitalist development.’ Very obviously indebted to Foucault’s equivocal ‘pluralization’ of capitalism into capitalisms, which is equivocal because located in proximity to the theorizations of neo-liberalism of plural capitalism, we can see a strangely rigid standard set for the functioning of capitalism that, perhaps obviously, at no point seems to regard any reference to Marx’s actual analysis as necessary. On the one hand, this type of work indicates how Latourian, or Latour-style, analysis allows an entry into the empirical not immediately burdened with the risk of reproducing the world as we find it. The act of de-reification allows access to the minutiae of reality that certain forms of critique tended to displace or disable. On the other hand, the difficulty, however, is that this restoration of analysis occludes other forms of ‘reality’ – notably that of capitalism – and does not necessarily lead to a restoration of agency. The very means that allow tracking of networks struggle if those ‘networks’ ramify or solidify too far. In fact, for all the de-reification we can in fact say that capitalism operates as a ‘network’, but this doesn’t seem to multiply
nottingham_paper.docx