The Ruins of Capitalism and Possibilism: Beyond Homo Faber (1) (Critiques and Alternatives to Capitalism)

By: Vando Borghi

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Synopsis: This book explores two themes in connection with contemporary capitalism: infrastructural capitalism as the most advanced phase of a modernity, of which the “workman” or homo faber is the embodiment, who exists within an infrastructure whose logic of connectivity is aimed at value extraction; and a landscape of ruins – in the form of symbolic misery, the Anthropocene and a process of refeudalisation – that the homo faber has been piling up around himself as a result. In response to this dynamic, the author elaborates a social, cultural and political project – a “design hope” of both material and immaterial dimensions – that adopts the perspective of possibilism: an outlook that eschews ever greater social and environmental costs in the name of future “development” but seeks a logic of reproduction based on a real politics of care in the form of generalised social action. The Ruins of Capitalism and Possibilism will therefore appeal to scholars of social and political theory with interests in critiques of capitalism and alternative futures.