Summer School as School 2023
The Public Program
August 12, 2023, 20:00

Undead Labour: Marx, Benjamin and the Drive of Capital
Presentation by Sami Khatib

Venue: Boxing Club, Mark Isaku 8, 10000 Prishtina, Republic of Kosovo

Abstract

If all economies are eventually an economy of time (Marx), time becomes a social relation. Time as “socially necessary labor time” expresses the antagonism of capital and labor, value and life. With the introduction of the wage-system of labor, life gets caught between the impossible exchange of time against money and labor against capital. Living labor is mortal, capital, however, is undead. This intrinsic mismatch is both productive and doomed to fail: it stretches life beyond death, turns living labor into dead labor, and proceeds as an undead history of violence. In my talk I will outline possible consequences that arise from this uncanny drive of capital.

Biography

Sami Khatib is a substituting professor at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (HfG) and a founding member of the Beirut Institute for Critical Analysis and Research (BICAR). His publications include a co-editorship of the volume “Critique: The Stakes of Form” (2020) and authorship of the book “‘Teleologie ohne Endzweck’: Walter Benjamins Ent-stellung des Messianischen” (2013). A selection of recent articles and papers can be found online at https://fu-berlin.academia.edu/SamiKhatib