TY - JOUR

T1 - Abjection and Formlessness

T2 - Value, Digitality, and the Differential Allocation of Form

AU - Alva, Alan Díaz

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2025 Editorial Board, Qui Parle.

PY - 2025/6

Y1 - 2025/6

N2 - This article seeks to construct historical and conceptual bridges between digitality, value, and categories of social difference, understanding them as distinct yet interconnected forms of abstraction. To do so, it elaborates on Seb Franklin’s idea that the formalizing logic of capital operates through the differential allocation of form and formlessness. It argues that value-mediated sociality operates through a logic that allocates form while producing a gendered or racialized formlessness as its disavowed or abject precondition, articulating capital’s abstract domination with other forms of extra-economical dispossession and violence. The first section outlines a Marxian conceptual framework grounded on the notions of real abstraction, social form, and subsumptive form-determination. The following section explores the relation between form and formlessness, translating this dynamic into political economic terms. The third section analyzes the role of digitality, interpreting digital abstraction, in a Sohn-Rethelian key, as logically and historically linked to a form of social synthesis grounded in the exchange relation. The conclusion briefly suggests how this analysis can serve as the foundation for a critique of digital technologies that continues the Marxian critique of technological neutrality while sharply contrasting with commonly held views of digital abstraction as detached from its sociopolitical context of emergence.

AB - This article seeks to construct historical and conceptual bridges between digitality, value, and categories of social difference, understanding them as distinct yet interconnected forms of abstraction. To do so, it elaborates on Seb Franklin’s idea that the formalizing logic of capital operates through the differential allocation of form and formlessness. It argues that value-mediated sociality operates through a logic that allocates form while producing a gendered or racialized formlessness as its disavowed or abject precondition, articulating capital’s abstract domination with other forms of extra-economical dispossession and violence. The first section outlines a Marxian conceptual framework grounded on the notions of real abstraction, social form, and subsumptive form-determination. The following section explores the relation between form and formlessness, translating this dynamic into political economic terms. The third section analyzes the role of digitality, interpreting digital abstraction, in a Sohn-Rethelian key, as logically and historically linked to a form of social synthesis grounded in the exchange relation. The conclusion briefly suggests how this analysis can serve as the foundation for a critique of digital technologies that continues the Marxian critique of technological neutrality while sharply contrasting with commonly held views of digital abstraction as detached from its sociopolitical context of emergence.

KW - abstraction

KW - digitality

KW - formlessness

KW - racial capitalism

KW - value-form

KW - Philosophy

KW - Cultural studies

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=105009386970&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1215/10418385-11700998

DO - 10.1215/10418385-11700998

M3 - Journal articles

AN - SCOPUS:105009386970

VL - 34

SP - 205

EP - 242

JO - Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences

JF - Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences

SN - 1041-8385

IS - 1

ER -