Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: How are we to construe the relationship between language and economy? The work of Walter Benjamin offers a particularly helpful resource for thinking this question through. Capitalism for him is defined by a rent between the word and the worker; from the nineteenth century onwards, language will be incessantly alienated from economy. The task of philosophy – and the cosmic society it endeavours to bring about – is to reunite language with economy in a manner that does not simply collapse them into each other. Dwelling on an age-old debate between Benjamin and Gershom Scholem concerning metaphysics and materialism, this article proceeds to evaluate more contemporary writings on language and economy before concluding that only a philosophy strong enough to join the two together will be adequate to the binds of our times.
Source: Angelaki
Author: Kieran Brown
Institution: University of Oxford
Language: Malay
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7083836592