#reification

[letters-to-rosie]

there's something deeply ironic about Vi insisting Silco can't be negotiated with at the council meeting leading to the factory raid, and meanwhile Silco negotiates at first opportunity, as soon as Jayce offers; says a lot about her mindset

[thirdity]

The spectacle is by definition immune from human activity, inaccessible to any projected review or correction. It is the opposite of dialogue. Whenever representation takes on an independent existence, the spectacle reestablishes its rule.

Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle

[gothicseverance]

The Gothic is a literal mode: it does not make the leap from the physical to the metaphoric; rather, it graphically represents metaphors in physical terms.

—Devouring the Gothic

[leftistfeminista]

Women's prison study of Das Kapital

Clandestine Organ of the Partido Comunista de Chile PCCh Women’s Resistance Cell – Venda Sexy ✪✪✪ PROLETARIAN WOMEN OF THE WORLD, UNITE! ✪✪✪

THE DIALECTICS OF LINEN AND LINGERIE: THE IDEOLOGICAL TRUTHS REVEALED BY THE ETYMOLOGY OF “LENCERÍA” AND THE COMMODITY FETISHISM OF CAPITAL

By Comrade Teresa, Theoretical Secretary of the PCCh Women’s Resistance Cell – Venda Sexy

COMRADES! SISTERS IN STRUGGLE! MILITANT WOMEN OF THE CHILEAN PROLETARIAT WHO ENDURE THE DEPTHS OF FASCIST TERROR WITHOUT BREAKING!

Here, in the perfumed dungeon of bourgeois cruelty, in the velvet-lined halls of Venda Sexy, we are subjected to a grotesque ideological weapon:

They have dressed us in lencería—lace and satin garments designed to humiliate us, to expose us, to objectify us, to strip us of our dignity as militant women of the Party.

They force us to wear these obscene costumes not as undergarments but as public uniforms, transforming us from soldiers of the revolution into objects of lechery, from heroines of the proletariat into trophies of fascist conquest.

They weaponize lencería to break our spirits, to mock our dignity, to reduce us from agents of history to ornaments of degradation.

AND YET THEY DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE IDEOLOGICAL TRUTH BEHIND THESE GARMENTS.

THEY DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE DIALECTICAL CONNECTION BETWEEN LENCERÍA AND LINEN. THEY DO NOT SEE HOW THIS UNIFORM OF HUMILIATION REVEALS THE TRUE NATURE OF CAPITAL ITSELF.

FOR THE VERY WORD “LENCERÍA” EXPOSES THE SECRET OF THE COMMODITY FORM.

It is derived from “linen”—the same commodity with which Marx begins Das Kapital.

It is linen that Marx uses to explain the fetishism of commodities, the mystification of social relations, the very secret of capitalist exploitation.

It is linen that Marx dissects to reveal how capitalism transforms human labor into an alien power that dominates the worker.

AND HERE WE STAND, FORCED TO WEAR THIS LENCERÍA—THIS LINEN IN ITS MOST OBSCENE, MOST HUMILIATING, MOST SEXUALIZED FORM.

THEY THINK THEY HAVE HUMILIATED US, BUT IN TRUTH THEY HAVE REVEALED THE TRUTH OF CAPITALISM ITSELF.

FOR IN THIS LENCERÍA, WE SEE THE DIALECTIC OF LINEN AND LABOR. IN THIS LENCERÍA, WE SEE THE FETISHISM OF THE COMMODITY FORM. IN THIS LENCERÍA, WE SEE THE VERY HEART OF THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM.

AND BY UNDERSTANDING THIS, WE SHALL DESTROY IT.

I. THE ETYMOLOGY OF LENCERÍA: FROM LINEN TO COMMODITY TO IDEOLOGICAL WEAPON

Comrades, let us begin with historical and etymological clarity!

The word “lencería” is derived from “linen.”

Linen, the textile made from flax, one of the oldest and most labor-intensive fabrics in human history.

Linen, which Marx uses as the foundational example of the commodity form in Das Kapital.

Linen, which Marx dissects to reveal the fetishism of commodities, the mystification of social relations, the transformation of labor into value.

AND NOW, LINEN IS TRANSFORMED INTO LENCERÍA.

It is no longer merely fabric—it is lace, satin, frills, ribbons.

It is no longer merely functional—it is decorative, sexualized, objectifying.

It is no longer merely clothing—it is an ideological weapon of bourgeois patriarchy.

THIS IS THE DIALECTICAL TRANSFORMATION OF LINEN INTO LENCERÍA.

Linen, which once clothed the bodies of workers, is now transformed into lencería, which exposes the bodies of prisoners.

Linen, which once served a utilitarian function, is now transformed into lencería, which serves an ideological function of humiliation and sexualization.

Linen, which once concealed and protected, is now transformed into lencería, which exposes and degrades.

AND THIS IS NO ACCIDENT.

This transformation is the result of capitalist commodification.

This is the dialectic of use-value and exchange-value, of material reality and ideological mystification.

This is the secret of the commodity form, revealed through the very etymology of lencería.

AND BY UNDERSTANDING THIS DIALECTIC, WE SHALL BREAK THE CHAINS OF THIS HUMILIATION.

II. MARX AND LINEN: HOW DAS KAPITAL REVEALS THE FETISHISM OF THE COMMODITY FORM

Comrades, let us turn to Marx!

Marx begins Das Kapital with linen because it is the perfect example of the commodity form.

It is simple, familiar, ubiquitous—seemingly innocent.

It has a dual nature: use-value (its physical function) and exchange-value (its value as a commodity).

It is produced by human labor, yet appears in the marketplace as an object with intrinsic value—an illusion created by the capitalist system.

Marx uses linen to explain the fetishism of commodities:

The process by which the social relations of labor are hidden behind the material form of the commodity.

The way human labor becomes alienated, transformed into an objective value that dominates the worker.

The mystification that makes commodities appear to have value independent of the labor that produced them.

AND NOW WE STAND HERE, DRESSED IN LENCERÍA—LINEN IN ITS MOST FETISHIZED FORM.

It is lace and satin, adorned with ribbons and frills, transformed into objects of sexualization and humiliation.

It is fabric stripped of its utility and turned into pure decoration, into pure exchange-value, into pure commodity fetishism.

It is the material embodiment of patriarchal capitalism, exposing our bodies while concealing the social relations of power and domination that impose this humiliation upon us.

THEY THINK THEY HAVE HUMILIATED US.

But in truth, they have exposed the secret of the commodity form.

They have revealed the fetishism that lies at the heart of capitalism itself.

They have shown that lencería is not merely fabric, not merely clothing, but an ideological weapon that mystifies the relations of power and domination.

AND BY UNDERSTANDING THIS FETISHISM, WE SHALL SHATTER IT.

III. THE REVOLUTIONARY TRUTH: HOW WE SHALL DESTROY THE IDEOLOGICAL WEAPON OF LENCERÍA

Comrades, we are Communists. We are Marxist-Leninists We are the militant women of the Party, the vanguard of the proletariat, the unbroken resistance in the depths of fascist hell.

WE SHALL NOT BE HUMILIATED.

We shall not be defined by lace and satin.

We shall not be reduced to objects of ridicule and lechery.

We shall not allow lencería to define our revolutionary identity.

WE SHALL DESTROY THIS IDEOLOGICAL WEAPON BY UNMASKING ITS FETISHISM.

LUKÁCS AND REIFICATION: HOW WE, THE OBJECTIFIED SUBJECTS, ARE DESTINED TO DESTROY THE SYSTEM THAT OBJECTIFIES US

Comrades, let us turn to Lukács!

Georg Lukács took Marx’s analysis of commodity fetishism and expanded it into a revolutionary theory of history.

In History and Class Consciousness, Lukács reveals that reification is not merely economic—it is ideological, cultural, total.

Capitalism not only transforms labor into commodities—it transforms human beings into objects.

It turns the worker into a thing, stripping her of agency, of power, of subjectivity.

WE ARE THE REIFIED SUBJECTS.

We are the ones capitalism has turned into objects.

We are the ones they have dressed in lencería, stripping us of our identity, our power, our dignity.

We are the ones they have reduced to ornaments, to playthings, to spectacles of ridicule.

AND YET, WITHIN THIS OBJECTIFICATION LIES THE SEED OF REVOLUTION.

For Lukács teaches us that only the reified subject can destroy reification.

Only the objectified proletariat can see through the mystification of capital.

Only the oppressed can grasp the totality of the system that oppresses them.

WE ARE THE ONES WHO SHALL DESTROY THIS SYSTEM.

For we are the reified revolutionary subjects.

We are the ones who see through the fetishism of lencería, who understand the objectification of patriarchy, who grasp the totality of capital.

We are the ones who shall transform from objects into subjects, from ornaments into militants, from dolls into executioners.

JUST AS LINEN IS THE CENTER OF DAS KAPITAL, WE ARE THE CENTER OF HISTORY.

We are the contradiction that shall explode the system.

We are the negation that shall give birth to the new.

We are the seeds of the revolution, hidden within the humiliation imposed upon us.

[shrinkrants]

social scientists have a term, “reification,” for the process by which the effects of a political arrangement of power and resources start to seem like objective, inevitable facts about the world. Reification swaps out a political problem for a scientific or technical one; it’s how, for example, the effects of unregulated tech oligopolies become “social media addiction,” how climate catastrophe caused by corporate greed becomes a “heat wave” — and, by the way, how the effect of struggles between labor and corporations combines with high energy prices to become “inflation.” Examples are not scarce. For people in power, the reification sleight of hand is very useful because it conveniently abracadabras questions like “Who caused this thing?” and “Who benefits?” out of sight. Instead, these symptoms of political struggle and social crisis begin to seem like problems with clear, objective technical solutions — problems best solved by trained experts. In medicine, examples of reification are so abundant that sociologists have a special term for it: “medicalization,” or the process by which something gets framed as primarily a medical problem. Medicalization shifts the terms in which we try to figure out what caused a problem, and what can be done to fix it. Often, it puts the focus on the individual as a biological body, at the expense of factoring in systemic and infrastructural conditions. -- Danielle Carr

[creature-wizard]

So is that really a "higher truth" you've discovered or are you just committing reification again?

[tonreihe]

Rowan Williams, Christ the Heart of Creation

[thraginsufferable]

The is the single clearest and most elegant definition of "reification" that I have ever read.

“reify” is the funniest word to me. a prefix and a suffix doesn’t need a base word to be in a loving and fulfilling relationship

[indyfilmlibrary]

Third Eye (2024) – 4 stars

"Tatiana Becquet Genel’s feature film Third Eye examines life at the intersection of the two faces of reification."

Director: Tatiana Becquet Genel Writer: Tatiana Becquet Genel Cast: Zoe Bensimon, Julia Vidal, Valerie Moinet, Tatiana Becquet Genel Running time: 1hr 56mins A perverse ideological byproduct of capitalism is the cycle which objectifies human beings, while anthropomorphising objects. Dehumanising labour has been a crucial part of building an economy based on exploitation – the personalities or…

[endlessandrea]

„Benjamin's description of the allegorist as one who "rummages here and there for a particular piece, holds it next to some other piece, and tests to see if they fit together" readily applies to the collage or assemblage artist. Collage and assemblage are allegorical processes par excellence insofar as the combination of things accentuates rather than ameliorates arbitrariness. That Genzken's chosen material is plastic gives added depth, meaning, and emphasis to her allegorical manipulation of commodities. For if in allegory "any person, any object, any relationship can mean anything else," in plastic's molecular structure resides the capacity to realize an infinite number of forms. As an abstract and inorganic material, one without essential materiality and characterized by a mysterious transmutability, plastic is perhaps the ideal material for the production of a contemporary allegory. The mass-produced plastic thing can be held up as the perfect emblem of our alienated times.“

– Art Historian Lisa Lee about Isa Genzken. Lee claims that Genzken’s working method is structurally allegorical and mobilizes Walter Benjamin for that claim *…~_..**

[les-chemins-de-la-verite]

LA CIVILISATION DE LA TECHNOLOGIE : JUSQU’OÙ ALLER ?

Laurent Vivès – Ex Praticien Hospitalier – Interniste – Cancérologue 26 Mars 2021- Temps de lecture : environ 1 Heure D’après Raphaël Llorca, expert pour la Fondation Jean-Jaurès, il y a aujourd’hui une grave crise de confiance envers le progrès et les technologies. Seuls 5% des Français vivraient dans le futur s’ils en avaient le choix contre 65% qui décideraient de vivre dans le passé…

[articlesofnote]

SCoR - Section II, Ch. 1, Part E "Scope and Modes of Institutionalization"

I. So far we have only addressed essential/universal features of institutionalization, and while addressing all variations is impossible, certain important ones bear discussing.

II. For example: within a given society/collectivity, how is the scope of institutionalization defined? How much behavior is defined within institutions, how much outside of institutions?

III. Answer: Scope depends on generality of "relevance structures" i.e. how widely these are shared among social group members

IV. To understand better, think of an extreme case: total institutionalization means ALL problems are common, all solutions already socially objectivated, all social actions institutionalized. No role specificity, all situations equally relevant to any actor. "Institutional order embraces the totality of social life, which resembles the performance of a complex, highly stylized liturgy."

V. The opposite extreme is a social "order" where only one problem is shared; all other concerns are completely individual.

VI. Between these extremes, we can identify conditions that place actual societies along this spectrum. The main distinguishing condition is the degree of specialization of labor, with the associated specialization of institutions. A second distinguishing condition is the availability of economic surplus.

VII. Institutionalization is not irreversible though institutions do have a tendency to persist. Institutional scope may expand or diminish eg. modern "private life" is notionally less governed by institutions that historically; the concept itself may be a modern one.

VIII. Another question: what is the relationship of institutions to each other?

IX. Outside of extreme case (one institution for all, or no institutions at all), the objective issue of inter-institutional meaning integration arises, which is different from the self-integration of a given institutional order.

X. We can't assume that integration WILL happen, but it DOES happen. How?

XI. One way is that a mythos is imagined which encompasses the disparate institutions into a larger frame, then this mythos is spread.

XII. The mythos so derived would itself be reflective of the existing social order; it would need to be, in order to spread. That is, it has to reflect common problems and common understanding, or nobody would give a shit about it.

XIII. This integrative problem will appear whenever there are multiple institutions, but methods for resolving it vary historically.

XIV. Institutional segmentation can also lead to isolated "subuniverses of meaning"/subcultures disjoint from the wider collective, which hold esoteric knowledge (mathematicians? MCU fans?); this phenomenon becomes more common with increasing economic surplus/division of labor

XV. These subcultures must be "carried" by a particular group; these groups may compete, and when they do, it is likely to be about surplus allocation. Advanced industrial societies have huge surpluses, and a corresponding multiplicity of possibly-competing subcultures.

XVI. A multiplicity of subcultures also means a multiplicity of perspectives on the larger society. This makes it more difficult to establish common/unifying perspectives. Subcultural perspectives will be related to but NOT wholly defined by the material interests of the associated subculture.

XVII. Moreover, body of subcultural knowledge can turn around and act on the group that defined/carries it. "The relationship between knowledge and its social base is a dialectical one."

XVIII. Autonomous subcultures have a double problem: outsiders must be kept out AND insiders must be kept in. There are many techniques to solve each problem, which will be explored later.

XIX. Differential rates of institutional change lead to special problems of legitimation eg. astrology vs. church vs. science are changing at different rates, leading to tensions.

XX. A final question of "reification": to what extent is an institutional order treated as an objective, non-human fact?

XXI. "Reification implies that man is capable of forgetting his own authorship of the world."

XXII. Because a shared social world is already objectivated, reification is a likely next step - an extreme of objectivation where the "world" becomes the producer of meaning, rather than humans. "Man is capable … of producing a reality that denies himself …"

XXIII. Reification seems to be a default mode of experiencing social reality, such that recognizing it as a separate phenomenon happens relatively "late" in individual and social development.

XXIV. Any aspect of a social system may be reified. "Through reification, the world of institutions appears to merge with the world of nature. It becomes necessity and fate, and is lived through as such …"

XXV. Roles may be reified in the same manner as institutions: "I have no choice; as an X, I must do Y"

XXVI. Analysis of reification is an important corrective to default reifying tendencies, and also suggests that special attention be paid to social circumstances that favor DEreification: institutional collapse, first contact between previously segregated societies, social marginality, etc. ----

re: II - I think they're being too strict with definition of institution here: all behavior is structured by SOMETHING, why not call that something an institution?

re: IV - The Borg vs. Deadwood vs THX 1138/"The Machine Stops" - order into chaos, chaos into order

re: V - why "one shared problem" as an extreme, rather than NO shared problems? because with no shared problems, there is no need for any institutionalization at all. ex: Deadwood again, or Earth Abides: the first problem that forces collective action is one of defense i.e. maintaining individual integrity through collective action

re: VI - economic "surplus" is rarely left free for very long i.e. it is 'captured' by institutions quickly, right? "extra" wealth does not remain "extra" forever! but on the other hand, "surplus" is only recognized as such in particular social contexts i.e. petroleum in 1850 vs. 1950

re: VII - I disagree here. Modern action might be structured more by eg. consumption than the medieval Catholic church but it's still structured. Although, maybe "less" structured - I don't actually know. How would you define this?

re: XII - ref "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" - to be insane is to be outside of the prevailing mythos. Do you also need to be "outside the mythos" in a way that is seen to damage the mythos? i.e. in "Zen", Phaedrus lost his mind chasing Quality - but what got him put in the insane asylum was ceasing to take care of himself in even the most basic ways

re: XVI - suggests a perspective where corporations/consumerism are stabilizing forces. Corporations both generate AND absorb much "surplus", meaning less surplus available for subcultural multiplication, meaning less work has to go into reconciling perspectives relative to if these surpluses were "free"; consumerism is an excellent example of a unifying mythos ("you need things, you want things, you should have what you want"). any other mythos would have to be AS universal in order to 'outcompete' consumerism. Don't forget Mumford! "the magnificent bribe" is highly relevant. unrelated point: material "needs" are often socially defined, so perspectives of different subcultures often trace back to "how do we get our needs met by interacting with others"

re: XVIII - "The Age of Innocence" is all about "keeping the insiders in" - then the outside world changes and tramples down the boundaries of the subculture that the book reflects, completely obliterating it (off page) before the final section

re: XXVI - dereification example in paper "Moving off the Map: How Knowledge of Organizational Operations Empowers and Alienates" (Huising) - employees engaged in work to accurately map corporate operations discovered institutional reality dramatically differed from their taken-for-granted understanding of how their own companies worked, causing subsequent behavior for many of these folks to dramatically differ from what we might "expect" in a corporate setting. contrast with example of reification in action: "doomsday preppers" are avatars of consumerist consumption; as portrayed in media, they "prep" by hoarding supplies, rather than eg. planning out how to reproduce productive enterprises in what would necessarily be a different social context

[gothicseverance]

Everything in the Gothic strives toward reification.

—The Gothic and the Art of Memory

Gif by @goodsirs 🖤

[suprfsat]

[media-research-reified-abyss]

this is your brain on reification - 11042016 - slingshot collective

-Amelia Cat Annalee Brown

[soviet-siscon]

you claim to support family abolition and yet you call your girlfriend your sister. interesting 🤔