Techno-Prosthetic Romantic FuturismCommodifuckationMarx says they're Fetishes. They occlude the social relations that make them possible. [1] But wait minute: don't commodities also offer an opportunity for agency? Blake fills the margins of his books with spleen, invective, even occasional praise. Equiano samples and scratches his, remixing them to make something new. For both books are commodities, but they hardly occluded social relations. In fact they become means of challenging those relations. By refusing simply to read and consume, Blake and Equiano fuck the Fetish. The logic of commodification proves incomplete. [2] Consumption has a poetics known best to the oppressed: mixology! Notes1. Karl Marx, "Commodities," The Portable Marx, ed. and trans., Eugene Kamenka (New York: Vintage), 437-60. 2. See Michel DeCerteau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: U of California P, 1990). Might there not be an effective politics of consumption? Navigation |