Sohn-Rethel in Naples. On plebeian creativity

Abstract

This article explores German philosopher Alfred Sohn-Rethel’s little-known reflections on Naples, to begin developing the notion of a plebeian creativity. Unlike capitalist notions of innovation that reinforce the division between intellectual and manual labour, Sohn-Rethel suggested that the Neapolitan approach to technology consisted in reclaiming mostly broken technological artefacts within the context of an lived economy of use values. We suggest that the particular historical structure of Naples makes the city a privileged observatory of a similar baroque approach to technology and innovation as bazaar economies are expanding across the world. We propose that this takes part in an expanding neo-plebeian provisioning system: catering to the needs and desires of those who have been sucked in by industrial modernity to, subsequently, find themselves spat out into precarity, and in so doing ignoring the normative framework and sumptuary laws of mainstream consumer capitalism