Marx e a obra de arte literária em O capital

Abstract

From Adorno’s reflection on the irrevocable character of the expressive element in the theoretical activity, one inquiries about the presence the artistic-literary mentions in Karl Marx's Capital, the roles they play and to what extent this presence in the context of the Marxian argument contributes to fostering non-hierarchical links between conceptual and literary text. The presence of the figurative-artistic discourse in Capital manifests a contradictory movement: the conceptual text uses these mentions to subject them to the explanatory function; however, when it does so, conceptual prose finds itself unable to tell the world in a crystalline and immediate way. In that instant, the literary imagination takes the lead in the face of the impossibility of conceptual clarity. The climax of this situation occurs when Marx approaches the personification of capital and uses diverse literary figures, especially ghostly, demonic and vampire images. Thus, to materialize the criticism of the object in an equally critical presentation, Marx elaborates associations of concepts that move in different directions and depths in order to open a fissure in the reified representation of a world that imposes itself systematically. Inside these conceptual constellations, some literary figures are introduced. On the one hand, they testify against conceptual hypostasis; on the other hand, they stimulate the conceptual movement, offering non-conceptual alliance to associative thinking. These cuts and connections between the connotative and the denotative, the conceptual and the non-conceptual represent an experimentation of the dialectical logic which witnesses what Adorno calls truth and non-truth of the conceptual exercise and to its tense and complementary relationship with the expressive. Marx's textual composition and the presence of artistic-literary figures can be placed on this horizon: when Art helps to think what social reality in its irrationality prohibits from being understood. Therefore, there is a literary thinking in Marx which calls to your aid the figurative to think what is not allowed to think. This position carries with it the utopia of renewed knowledge that does not submit to the force of identity. It bets on and commits to a humanity that frees itself from the principle of value.