Rough Theory

Theory In The Rough

Monthly Archives: February 2008

Europe in May/June – Suggestions?

8 Comments Posted by on February 29, 2008

I’ll be presenting to a conference in Rome in late May, and am hoping to be able to stay in Europe for at least a few weeks after. I hadn’t initially been certain this trip would happen – otherwise, I would have liked to put in proposals for other events. I’ll be at a point [...]

Events, Procrastination, Professional Life

Science of Logic Reading Group: Not Adding Up

13 Comments Posted by on February 28, 2008

So somehow, in spite of feeling I’ve been doing very little other than writing and talking about Hegel off the blog recently, I’ve nevertheless fallen hopelessly behind in blogging Hegel’s Science of Logic. The in-person reading group has continued to meet, with a brief break around the Hegel conference a couple weeks back, which all [...]

Logic, Reading Group

Capital, Volume 1, Chapter 1: A Way of Visualising Abstract Labour and Value

4 Comments Posted by on February 25, 2008

For anyone who doesn’t have the stamina to trawl all the way through the 11,000 words I somehow wrote on Diane Elson’s “Value Theory of Labour” (here and here), there is one bit of my argument that I wanted to reproduce in its own post, partially because it seems to me to belong in the [...]

Abstraction, Critical Theory, Fetish, Metatheory, Political Economy, Self-Reflexivity

Reflections on Elson’s “Value Theory of Labour”, part 2

4 Comments Posted by on February 25, 2008

Okay, so I went a bit crazy with this… I hadn’t intended to write a whole article-length response to Elson’s work – which, between yesterday’s post and today’s, is effectively what I’ve done. This post is so long that, while I would normally post it to the front page, it just exceeds all reasonable length [...]

Abstraction, Critical Theory, Fetish, Marxes, Materialism, Metatheory, Philosophy of History, Political Economy, Self-Reflexivity

Reflections on Elson’s “Value Theory of Labour”, part 1

6 Comments Posted by on February 25, 2008

So, by popular demand, a follow up to the book-meme post, where I responded to Nate’s tag with a few sentences from Diane Elson’s “The Value Theory of Labour” from her edited volume (1979) Value: The Representation of Labour in Capitalism. This post wasn’t the first time someone has asked me to talk about my [...]

Abstraction, Blogging, Contradiction, Marxes, Materialism, Metatheory, Philosophy of History, Political Economy

The Difference Between “Being” and “Appearing to Be” an “Objective Social Relation”

Leave a Comment Posted by on February 23, 2008

So I submitted the following abstract for a conference, and have had the abstract accepted: When Georg Lukács situates Marx’s argument about commodity fetishism, on the terrain of a theory of reification and rationalisation, he introduces a small, but pivotal, shift in emphasis from Marx’s original concept. Lukács characterises the commodity-form, and its connection to [...]

Critical Theory, Drafts, Events, Fetish, Political Economy

Uneventful Conversations

Leave a Comment Posted by on February 22, 2008

Random comments made to me today in and around the seminar on Badiou’s Being and Event: Someone: “I liked your comments yesterday. Are you a mathematician?” Me: “No, no – not at all.” Someone: “Huh… Well… You sound like a mathematician.” Someone #2 (in a separate interaction): “So… what do you teach?” Me: “Research methods [...]

Overheard

Thesis Problem of the Day

Leave a Comment Posted by on February 22, 2008

I have this section of my thesis that is effectively homeless. Or at least peripatetic. I keep moving it around from place to place. Internally, it’s fine. It does its job. It reads okay. But it’s like a picture hanging on a wall that is always just slightly out of kilter – everywhere I try [...]

Political Economy, Thesis, Writing

Now That’s Gotta Hurt

Leave a Comment Posted by on February 22, 2008

So Nate’s book meme pointed me back to a work Mike Beggs had recommended to me ages ago – the volume Value: The Representation of Labour in Capitalism, edited by Diane Elson (1979). As often happens in the midst of PhD research, I had gone through the book really quickly, decided I wanted to go [...]

Reading

Sound Argument

Leave a Comment Posted by on February 22, 2008

The talk I gave to the HSS08 conference was recorded, and an mp3 version (WARNING: 35MB) is now online. To be honest, given that I took up almost the entirety of my allotted hour, and that the file is therefore not exactly a quick download, you’re probably better off just reading the text version posted [...]

Drafts, Events

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