ABSTRACT
Because ours is a commodified culture, we do not have access to social relationships and historical processes except by way of the commodity form. This does not mean, as some would argue, that history no longer exists; that because we cannot get in touch with the referent, we live in history’s simulated afterglow. Nor does it mean that the social has been wholly negated, leaving us to savor the hollow pleasures of alienated relationships and fetishized desires. Rather, the contending social forces that shape history come together for us in daily life. Varied, but wholly routinized, random, but programmed, daily life appears to be of little consequence, so close that we live it as if by second nature. Nevertheless, if we are to grasp history, we must begin to recognize its presence in the mundane. Dismissed as trivial, fragmented, and fetishized by its assimilation to the commodity form, daily life is our site of convergence with the historical. Thinking critically about daily life can provide a means of grasping contradiction. Such insight gives impetus to the transformation of capitalist culture.
