Status Updates From Marx: Towards the Centre of...

Okay yeah some interesting stuff on Marx still caring about Signifier-Signified distinctions when it comes to his critique of Philosophy and his critique of class (consciousness). Interesting for the Marx scholars out there but Karatani’s new analysis of value form has remained stagnant for 30 pages, he’s just proving it ‘solves’ Marx in more elaborate ways.

The theory on surplus value in industrial capital was easy to understand but a bit dissatisfying because of it. It still seems to be about the coercion and undervaluing of labor power, it just shifts that from the fight over the wage to the ‘creation of a lag between labor exchange and product exchange.’ Feels like much of a muchness.

Bro is exactly like Althusser but came to the conclusions independently in Japan is kinda crazy. Almost like Jameson since he’s lit crit but didn’t need the Althusserian help

An informative xxvii-page introduction by the editor situating Karatani in his post-post-war twentieth-century Japanese intellectual history and interpretation/appropriation of Marxian theory of Capital, related to be very important in early twentieth-century economics and social structuring. Inspired to begin from a discussion of a Singaporean skyscraper. Very well suited to late night, urban garden sprawl reading.