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Abstract

This essay seeks to contribute to theorizing the (anti) politics of refusal of the material and abstract limitations imposed by the non-existence of life under capitalism, with special reference to the work of John Holloway, and his recent concept of ‘the crack’, the radical confluence of resistant subjectivity and a radically different mode-of-doing. The essay seeks to conceptualize a negative ontology, the standpoint of critique and resistant subjectivity, negativity toward the given, the existent and ‘that which is’. The essay attempts to show that in this active ‘doing’ – what Marx identified as ‘species-being’ (Gattungswesen) or creative human essence – human beings choose to do other than what is demanded by money and power, which is itself the re-appropriation of doing. The essay seeks to be one such contribution in that direction.

Keywords

negative ontology re-appropriation of doing resistant subjectivity revolution social rebellion

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Refusing the terms of non-existence,breaking their constraints: John Holloway,cracking capitalism and the meaning of revolution today

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