Epistemontology in Spinoza-Marx-Freud-Lacan: The (Bio)Power of Structure

A. Kiarina Kordela steps beyond extant commentaries on Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism―from A. Sohn-Rethel to L. Althusser, É. Balibar, Slavoj Žižek, and others―to show that in capitalism value is the manifestation of the homology between thought and being, while their other aspect―power―is foreclosed and becomes the object of biopower.
Using monistic Marxian/Lacanian structuralism as an alternative to dominant models from Plato and Kant to phenomenological accounts, deconstruction, and other contemporary approaches, Kordela expertly argues that Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism is a reformulation of the Spinozian thesis that thought (mind) and things (bodies or extension) are manifestations of one and the same being or substance. Kordela’s link between Spinoza and Marx shows that being consists of two aspects, value and power, the former leading to structuralist thought, the latter becoming the object of contemporary biopower.
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