Abstract
In this essay, Scott Ferguson re-imagines Western modernity’s exhausted dialectical opposition between money and aesthetics by rethinking the social character and value of abstraction in general. Ferguson challenges previous critical theorists, who focus on abstraction’s central role in ordering modern life but judge abstraction and, with it, money to essentially alienate ecosocial relations from materiality. Such presumptions have impaired critical aesthetics as well as capacities to envision radical social and ecological transformation. Instead, Ferguson takes his cue from labor organizer Sara Nelson’s adage: “Solidarity is a force stronger than gravity.” Nelson’s apothegm suggests that collective action is irreducible to the physics of flight. Political organization, that is, partakes of remote and hence abstract orchestrations in ways that at once subtend and exceed the physics of gravity. Abstractness, therefore, conditions not only the distribution of power across political economy and aesthetics, Ferguson contends, but also the difficulties and possibilities of care.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
Sara Nelson, “Solidarity Is a Force Stronger Than Gravity,” LGBTQ Nation, June 5, 2019, date accessed September 20, 2021, https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2019/06/solidarity-force-stronger-gravity/.
- 2.
Burkett, John P, “Marx's Concept of an Economic Law of Motion.” History of Political Economy 32, no. 2 (2000): 381–394, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/13208.
- 3.
Stephanie Kelton, The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People's Economy (New York Public Affairs, 2020), 182.
- 4.
Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, trans. Harry Queltch (New York: Cosimo Inc., 2008), 87.
- 5.
Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 184.
- 6.
Fredric Jameson, The Cultural Turn (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000), 162.
- 7.
T. J. Clark, Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 10.
- 8.
Lorenzo Valla, ed., and trans. Brendan Cook, Correspondence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 111. I am indebted to Brendan Cook for this alternative translation.
- 9.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (Chicago: Pluto Press, 1996), 54.
- 10.
Isaac Newton, Isaac Newton: Philosophical Writings, ed. A. Janiak (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 21.
- 11.
Michael Friedman, “Newton and Kant on Absolute Space: From Theology to Transcendental Philosophy,” in Constituting Objectivity: Transcendental Perspectives on Modern Physics, ed. Michel Bitbol, Pierre Kerszberg, and Jean Petito (New York: Springer, 2009), 49.
References
Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (London: Bloomsbury, 2013).
Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1912).
Michael Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition, 1350–1450 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971).
John P. Burkett, “Marx's Concept of an Economic Law of Motion.” History of Political Economy 32, no. 2 (2000): 381–394. muse.jhu.edu/article/13208.
Judith Butler, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015).
T. J. Clark, Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1999).
Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, c. 1450–c. 1580 (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1992).
Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1991).
Scott Ferguson, Declarations of Dependence: Money, Aesthetics & the Politics of Care (Omaha: University of Nebraska Press, 2018).
Michael Friedman, “Newton and Kant on Absolute Space: From Theology to Transcendental Philosophy,” in Constituting Objectivity: Transcendental Perspectives on Modern Physics, ed. Michel Bitbol, Pierre Kerszberg, and Jean Petito (New York: Springer, 2009).
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2008).
Fredric Jameson, The Cultural Turn (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000).
Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997).
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis, IND: Hackett Pub. Co, 1987).
Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).
Stephanie Kelton, The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People's Economy (New York Public Affairs, 2020).
Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, trans. Harry Queltch (New York: Cosimo Inc., 2008).
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (Chicago: Pluto Press, 1996).
Sara Nelson, “Solidarity Is a Force Stronger Than Gravity,” LGBTQ Nation, June 5, 2019, date accessed September 20, 2021. https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2019/06/solidarity-force-stronger-gravity/.
Isaac Newton, Isaac Newton: Philosophical Writings, ed. A. Janiak (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
Thomas H. Ogden, The Primitive Edge of Experience (London: Aronson, 1989).
Paul Vincent Spade, Five Texts on the Mediaeval Problem of Universals (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994).
Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform, 1250—1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1980).
Warrant T. Reich, Encyclopedia of Bioethics, revised edition, ed. Warren Thomas Reich, 5 vols. (New York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan, 1995).
Lorenzo Valla, Correspondence, trans. Brendan Cook (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).
L. Randall Wray. Understanding Modern Money: The Key to Full Employment and Price Stability (Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006).
D. W. Winnicott, “The Theory of the Parent-Infant Relation,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 41 (1960): 585–95, 590.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ferguson, S. (2022). “Solidarity Is a Force Stronger Than Gravity”: Money, Aesthetics, and the Abstractness of Care. In: Wilson, B.C. (eds) Care, Climate, and Debt. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96355-2_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96355-2_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-96354-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-96355-2
eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceEconomics and Finance (R0)