Oral Presentation by Jonas Oßwald¹
¹ University of Vienna, Austria
TIME: Tuesday, 14 July, 14:30 – 16:00
LOCATION: Room 1
Session: 5
Abstract
Coming from a background in social philosophy and poststructuralism, I would like to propose the concept of “accumulation by subjectivation” in my contribution, which allows us to understand the different but historically interconnected forms of subjectivation as a power-theoretical precondition of capitalist accumulation. The starting point here is the observation that Foucault recognizes the central importance of Marx for a historical and materialist conception of power that pays particular attention to effects of subjectivation, as is particularly apparent in the early analytics of power. Marx’s reflections on so-called primitive accumulation are crucial here, especially the “protosubjectivational” aspects (such as the “blood legislation” in the last chapter of Capital I). This Marxian influence is especially evident in lectures at the Collège de France, where Foucault outlines disciplinary power as a kind of “pre-production system” that accomplishes the synthesis of life into labor-power through disciplinary normalization and subjectivation in the first place. From this perspective, primitive accumulation is not only understood as the historical process of the separation of direct producers from the means of production, but also as a cut regarding the history of subjectivity that is related to the establishment of new technologies of power. Adopting this approach to the genesis of capitalism allows us to perceive primitive accumulation as both a historical act of violent expropriation and a subjectivation-theoretical turning point. This allows us to consider the ways in which power in modernity produces different types of subjectivity, not only in relation to class (disciplinary normalization as proletarianization), but also in relation to gender and “race” (e.g. gendered and racialized divisions of labor and their corresponding types of subjectivation), which continue to be the basis for capitalist production. The notion of “accumulation by subjectivation” thus complements the analyses of Foucault and Marx by providing a conceptual framework for thinking different forms of domination and exploitation together against the backdrop of their common genesis and contemporary persistence in capitalist modernity.