TY  - CHAP
AB  - Abstract Drawing upon Alfred Sohn-Rethel's work, we argue that, just as capitalism produces abstract labor, it coproduces both abstract mind and abstract life. Abstract mind is the split between mind and nature and between subject/observer and observed object that characterizes scientific epistemology. Abstract mind reflects an abstracted objectified world of nature as a means to be exploited. Biological life is rendered as abstract life by capitalist exploitation and by the reification and technologization of organisms by contemporary technoscience. What Alberto Toscano has called “the culture of abstraction” imposes market rationality onto nature and the living world, disrupting biotic communities and transforming organisms into what Finn Bowring calls “functional bio-machines.”
VL  - 35
SN  - 978-1-83982-681-8, 978-1-83982-680-1/0161-7230
DO  - 10.1108/S0161-723020200000035004
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1108/S0161-723020200000035004
AU  - Thorpe Charles
AU  - Jacobson Brynna
ED  - Brett Clark
ED  - Tamar Diana Wilson
PY  - 2020
Y1  - 2020/01/01
TI  - Abstract Life, Abstract Labor, Abstract Mind
T2  - The Capitalist Commodification of Animals
T3  - Research in Political Economy
PB  - Emerald Publishing Limited
SP  - 59
EP  - 105
Y2  - 2024/09/19
ER  -