Abjection and Formlessness: Value, Digitality, and the Differential Allocation of Form

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Authors

  • Alan Díaz Alva

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.

Original languageEnglish
JournalQui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences
Volume34
Issue number1
Pages (from-to)205-242
Number of pages38
ISSN1041-8385
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 06.2025

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2025 Editorial Board, Qui Parle.

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