Marx, method, and the power of abstraction: The aesthetics of political economy

This dissertation is an investigation of Marx's method in his analysis of the capitalist social formation and of his critique of the discourse of political economy.The second part of the study opens up to a broader analysis of contemporary visual cultural production---the visual arts, advertising, the Hollywood film industry---including the situation which I refer to as "the aestheticization of consumption." I illustrate the continuing adequacy of Marx's method of analysis of, and in, the contemporary globalizing market economy wherein cultural production, and particularly "image production," takes centre stage.The study is in two parts. The first part is a close textual analysis of Marx's method focusing on his works, Capital and Grundrisse. I argue that Marxian political economy is defined equally by a method of dialectical analysis and exposition, enunciating a specific theory and practice of representation which negotiates and harnesses the force of what I call the function of abstraction. The pivotal place of this particular theory and practice of representation in Marx's work is the grounds for my suggestion that Marx's method shares commonalities with, and is structured around the same problematics as, aesthetic discourses. For example, both are fundamentally occupied with the relationship between form and content, and between subject and object, with the creation of thematic imaginaries, with the critical and representational strategy of defamiliarization, with the production of affect, and with the potentially transformative interrelationship which representations have with the reader, viewer, audience or subject.