Freedom as Fetish
Trafford, Tia (2025) Freedom as Fetish. Political Theology. ISSN 1462-317X
![[thumbnail of FreedomasFetish_RRFinal.docx]](https://research.uca.ac.uk/style/images/fileicons/application_msword.png "FreedomasFetish_RRFinal.docx")
Recent Marxist political theory has foregrounded freedom as normative commitment. This paper re-stages the break between slavery and capitalism through which slavery's natural bondage is supposedly superseded by the compulsions of market dependency. Capitalist social practices depend upon our freedom whilst inculcating a system in which domination and freedom are interdependent. But this interdependence leads to a double-bind: if freedom is reducible to social practices, we acquiesce to unfreedom; if not, we appeal to an ahistorical essence. I consider whether the double-bind can be diffused by exploring freedom's fetish character as a real phenomenon enacted in practice because we are implicated in the commodity as both free and passive object to be exchanged. But I suggest that slavery is not then excisable but remains as fetish character internal to the freedom of the worker as presupposition: freedom for the worker is guaranteed by the practical enaction of slavery's impossible negation.
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Political Theology on 8th September 2025, available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/1462317X.2025.2555107
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6762-2918
Actions (login required)
 |
Edit View |