with Søren Mau, celebrating the French Translation of Mute Compulsion: Contrainte Muette, co-organized with the Centre Marc Bloch,
Topic
Despite insoluble contradictions, intense volatility and fierce resistance, the crisis-ridden capitalism of the 21st century lingers on. To understand capital’s paradoxical expansion and entrenchment amidst crisis and unrest, Mute Compulsion offers a novel theory of the historically unique forms of abstract and impersonal power set in motion by the subjection of social life to the profit imperative. Building on a critical reconstruction of Karl Marx’s unfinished critique of political economy and a wide range of contemporary Marxist theory, philosopher Søren Mau sets out to explain how the logic of capital tightens its stranglehold on the life of society by constantly remoulding the material conditions of social reproduction. In the course of doing so, Mau intervenes in classical and contemporary debates about the value form, crisis theory, biopolitics, social reproduction, humanism, logistics, agriculture, metabolism, the body, competition, technology and relative surplus populations.
Søren Mau
Søren Mau is a political philosopher and the author of Mute Compulsion (Verso Books, 2023). His work centers on critical theories of capitalism, power, ecology, the body, technology, human nature, and utopian thought, with the central theme of freedom: its nature and sources, the political and economic barriers to its realization under contemporary capitalism, and its potential forms in a post-capitalist world.
