ABSTRACT
As Marx notes here, a commodity is a “mysterious thing.” While it seems to have an “objective character,” detached from its producers and emanating out of its relationship to other commodities, it is conditioned by the perceptions of its producers. The social quality of a commodity, thus, is on the one side “perceptible” and, on the other, “imperceptible by the senses” if we disregard the affective relationships from which this product emerges. When the question of how products are also related to our “subjective” side, to our “senses,” to the circulation of affects, is disregarded, we cease to understand the cultural and social fabric of capital production. For Marx, production is linked to our “senses” and cannot be reduced merely to a thing, “the commodity.” Behind the commodity is hidden not only its productive force and labor time, but also its living labor. This latter is intrinsically connected to the productive and creative character of workers, to their senses and affects. Further, the perception of a commodity as something useful or value generating is not merely a social outcome. It also results from the object’s potential to affect and to be affective, emerging from or resulting in a “subjective excitation” of its producers and consumers. It is through this sensation that the relationship between commodity and producer/consumer is forged. Through “subjective excitation,” the relationship between producer/consumer and commodity becomes affective. What lies behind the commodity is not only a complex web of social relations or a cultural script of codifi cation of value. Rather, there are a range of sensual experiences related to the labor force and its ability to feel.
