TY - JOUR

T1 - Building with Jelly, or, Concrete as the Concretion of the Abstract

AU - Alva, Alan Díaz

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2024 Diaz A. published by TU Delft OPEN.

PY - 2025/2/10

Y1 - 2025/2/10

N2 - In his recent book titled Béton: arme de construction massive du capitalisme, Marxist thinker Anselm Jappe presents a critique of reinforced concrete as an hegemonic building material. In this review, I examine Jappe’s book in conjunction with the questions of cosmotechnics and technodiversity raised by Yuk Hui. As this issue of Footprint rightly points out, the fields of architecture and urbanism have not yet properly addressed their implication in the process of the decline of technodiversity and the spread of Western technological monoculture throughout capitalist modernity. I argue that the homogenisation of building practices and the unanimous popularity of reinforced concrete is a major aspect of this process which ought to be examined. Expanding Jappe’s value-critical analysis of reinforced concrete with Moishe Postone’s account of how the peculiar social ‘self-mediating’ character of abstract labour in capitalism explains the transformation of labour into pure means and of its tools and products into mere objects, I intend to complement the question of cosmotechnics with an explanation of the decline of technodiversity grounded in the abstract logic of capital.

AB - In his recent book titled Béton: arme de construction massive du capitalisme, Marxist thinker Anselm Jappe presents a critique of reinforced concrete as an hegemonic building material. In this review, I examine Jappe’s book in conjunction with the questions of cosmotechnics and technodiversity raised by Yuk Hui. As this issue of Footprint rightly points out, the fields of architecture and urbanism have not yet properly addressed their implication in the process of the decline of technodiversity and the spread of Western technological monoculture throughout capitalist modernity. I argue that the homogenisation of building practices and the unanimous popularity of reinforced concrete is a major aspect of this process which ought to be examined. Expanding Jappe’s value-critical analysis of reinforced concrete with Moishe Postone’s account of how the peculiar social ‘self-mediating’ character of abstract labour in capitalism explains the transformation of labour into pure means and of its tools and products into mere objects, I intend to complement the question of cosmotechnics with an explanation of the decline of technodiversity grounded in the abstract logic of capital.

KW - Concrete

KW - Cosmotechnics

KW - Value-form

KW - Wertkritik

KW - Philosophy

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85219028551&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.59490/footprint.18.2.7186

DO - 10.59490/footprint.18.2.7186

M3 - Scientific review articles

AN - SCOPUS:85219028551

VL - 18

SP - 95

EP - 102

JO - Footprint

JF - Footprint

SN - 1875-1504

IS - 2

ER -