View this link:

http://www.roughtheory.org/content/marx-philosophy-society-talk/

Criticism is something I’m very interested in. It was essentially what my undergrad thesis was on. That’s why I’m linking to this terrific talk, given to the Marx & Philosophy Society, by N. Pepperell of Rough Theory. Here’s an excerpt:

Capital’s reflection on critical standpoint, I suggest, takes the form of a sustained analysis of all the conditions that we have not chosen, of materials – in the form of practices, institutions, beliefs, affects, forms of perception and embodiment, habits of thought, technologies, forms of interaction, and other subjective and objective moments that feed into the reproduction of capital – that have been thrown up from the detritus of history and are currently suspended into a determinate form that reproduces the capital relation. Marx’s analysis examines these materials as they currently are – looking at the properties these materials exhibit while suspended within this distinctive relation. It also, however, examines what other properties these materials might exhibit, if they were to be suspended within new relations. It is through this contrast – examining what we currently create with the historical materials that lie ready to hand, and contrasting this to what we potentially could create with these materials – that Marx establishes his standpoint of critique.