The logic of humanization of capital : legitimization of oppression and devaluation of the function of political power

Tatlić, Šefik. (2014). The logic of humanization of capital : legitimization of oppression and devaluation of the function of political power. PhD Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of Sociology. [mentor Gržinić, Marina].

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Abstract

The Logic of Humanization of Capital is a work that, by utilizing an (inter)disciplinary instrumentarium found in the field of political sociology, political philosophy, decolonial theory and in general sociological theory, aims to subsume a number a political, ideological and epistemological principles capitalist order utilizes in its reproduction, into a form of discursive coherent logic from which these principles are being derived from. Therefore, this work is an analysis of institutional, epistemological and ideological principles of structuring of power and of relationship between power and society. This articulation is located in a time frame that spans from post – ancien regime toward modern forms of structuring of society and the state, i.e. it articulates the principles that were (are) invested into the reproduction of the relation between the society and the power. This work produces therefore an analysis of devaluation of the function of political power and an analysis of the meaning of the legitimization of oppression in a context in which dominant forms of reorganization of the same power and oppression are seen as being based on the process of normalization of the state of exception – being kind of state which is organized as specific non–differentiation between formal and informal dimensions of the order that are invested into the reproduction of power. Furthermore, this work articulates ideological pillars of contemporary capitalism as those pillars that were constructed on the basis of modernization of epistemological logics contained within dominant (historical and contemporary) humanist projects and colonial epistemologies. As we've postulated, the epistemological logics contained in both historical and contemporary humanist projects (democracy) are at the same time epistemological logics that are being put in structural relation with the logics of reproduction of capitalism. An analysis of today's capitalism as a structure of power that organizes relations of dominance which contain / sustain the centrality of the First World in global capitalism is, in this context, also an analysis of the principles of production of social differentiation that function as a diversion (and suppression) of class prefixed social conflicts into the field of race, ethnicity, religion etc. In this context, this work articulates humanist projects and/or humanist super narratives – spanning from Renaissance through Enlightenment toward liberal democracy – in the context of wider analysis of ideological functions these projects have in reproduction and sustainment of material and abstract dimensions of capitalist order. In this capacity, we employ an articulation of the role these projects had in reproduction of the dominance of (Eurocentric) imperial epistemologies and the role these projects have in sustainment of First world of capital's epistemological monopoly on defining of the meaning of modernity, i.e. modernist progress. Consequently, this work connects the process of devaluation of political power – which we find to result in production of a dichotomy between politics and ideology – with the processes of normalizing of the state of exception where this interrelation results in that kind of ideological logic that puts an increase in oppression in direct proportion to the increase, ideological dramatizing of the rhetoric of liberally prefixed processes of liberation of democratic society from the yoke of authoritarian dimensions of the state. The work deals with the analysis of discursive, institutional, epistemological and ideological logics that are invested into specific forms of pacification and/or depoliticization of social antagonism(s). Building upon the postulates laid out in articulation of devaluation of the function of political power, this work located necropolitics (as paradigmatic form of organization of politics by the First World) and racialization (as a contemporary form of imperial racism) as major forms of organizing of politics and matrices of social differentiation. This work found that these paradigmatic forms of organization of power and society were put in such a structural relation that not only allowed to capitalism to depoliticize social conflict, but that it allowed to capitalism to derive its ideological substantiality on the basis of perpetual reduction of the distance between the power and society. Further interpretative progression of this work was based on an analysis of constitutive paradoxes within capitalism that allow it to sustain both a homogeneous and a heterogeneous dimension. While homogenous dimension of an order organizes the sustainment of global disbalances in distribution of wealth and the sustainment of centralities and epistemological privileges in relation to defining of the processes of modernist progression and while heterogeneous dimension diversifies the plethora of possibilities for subjective positioning within the hierarchies of exploitation, they both constitute the space in which social conflict, the relation between the subject and power is being configured. As a result, not only that the social conflict was and/or is perpetually being depoliticized, deantagonized in its fundamental capacity, but also an ideological logic is being created and normalized in a form of an ideological implication that the politicization of society could only lead to the rediscovery of societies political contingencies as located in a pre-political, metaphysical register and that sustainment, reproduction and expansion of capital is the only motor of history that could organize societies search for a most optimal order. Epistemological synchronization of naturocentric logics contained in humanist projects with the logics of capital therefore, as we postulated, was designed by capitalism to provide its dominant logics with humanist, subjective prefixes on basis of which reproduction of capitalism as the most optimal historical program and humanist super narrative could be organized. The logic of humanization of capital, as a logic that is being applied, located in the space between the heterogeneous and homogeneous dimensions of capitalism, is therefore being articulated as the discursive logic under which and/or by which the process of deantagonizing of the relation between the society and power is being put into a proportional relation with defining of the politically subjective traits of society as if they belonged to a pre-political register. The logic of humanization of capital is therefore an epistemological and ideological discursive logic which deantagonizes the relation between society and power, between society and interests of capital and that organizes modernist progress on the basis of epistemological and ideological equalizing of teleology of the humanist projects (and their definitions of society as predestined contingency) and of teleology of capital. i.e. those relations of dominance, expansionist and reproduction potentials that were organized by its logics.

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