commodity

1) Linebaugh writes about the concepts of commonwealth and commodity in the mid-sixteenth century. The shift from commons to enclosures signals a system of commodification and brings the loss of a communal, cooperative, and convivial way of life (not to mention the commodification and de-valuation of women, and links to slavery). I wonder if we can talk about this a little in class. I think I understand what he means by "commodity" but I would really benefit from some discussions around the larger significance - a mapping of some sort to our concerns with everyday living and rights.

Linebaugh writes:

 The double nature of the commodity conceals its social hieroglyphics in which "a definite social relationship between people assumes in their eyes the fantastic form of a relationship between things." This is what gives to the commodity its opacity....The Bastard makes social relations of the commodity transparent. The bawd, the pimp, the broker, and the usurer act in the name of the commodity. Rape is the reality the commodity conceals. (67)

The "reality" that enclosures conceals is perhaps a way to think about the interpretations of individual and human. Or am I going off track?

(I had not read the poetry of that period to the changing roles of commoners: the criminalization and gradual demonization of commoners.) But I'm wandering...

In "Neoliberalism on Trial" David Harvey writes on the accumulation by dispossession and I'm trying to keep that in view (160). He also elaborates on commodification (165).

2) The Magna Carta as a metaphor and its changing icons in art is interesting. For one, it seems to points to what we have been discussing in part: the one who is the chronicler/the narrator. Perhaps this is also in part a discussion on the commodification of the human, of human labor, in particular. 

I am sorry these are not questions, they seem to be half-thoughts. 

See you tomorrow,

Tsering