Raji S Soni
Book Colloquium Editor, Sikh Formations (Taylor & Francis). Articles published in LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory, Socialism & Democracy, Aktief, Sikh Formations, Australian Humanities Review, Religion and the Arts, Culture and Religion, JCRT, TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies.
Recent teaching: Literatures of South Asia, Caribbean Literature, Literatures of Immigration and Exile, Intro to American Literature, Contemporary World Literatures, Ethnic Traditions in American Literature, Toronto's Multicultural Literatures, Transnational Literature.
Areas: modern & contemporary literatures; theory in practice; state violence, impunity & postcolonial jurisprudence; globalization; queer studies & the subject of religion; critique of political economy from a humanities perspective.
Ph.D. (Queen's), M.A. (Queen's), HBA (Toronto)
Recent teaching: Literatures of South Asia, Caribbean Literature, Literatures of Immigration and Exile, Intro to American Literature, Contemporary World Literatures, Ethnic Traditions in American Literature, Toronto's Multicultural Literatures, Transnational Literature.
Areas: modern & contemporary literatures; theory in practice; state violence, impunity & postcolonial jurisprudence; globalization; queer studies & the subject of religion; critique of political economy from a humanities perspective.
Ph.D. (Queen's), M.A. (Queen's), HBA (Toronto)
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Articles by Raji S Soni
First, we pursue Value in Marx as an abstraction beyond use-value. This abstraction is the social, which the humanities are predisposed to finesse. Tracing the social-as-Value through the use of tables in Marx’s Capital and Kant’s Anthropology, we suggest that production and use-value are always-already material and abstract. If use-value is an abstract materiality, then its precondition and effect are the social, a material abstraction beyond even the woodenness of the table. A transcendental pure intuition, à la Kant, the social for the humanities is irreducible to exchange- or even use-value.
As the abstract-material condition of possibility for both society and community, the social-as-Value outpaces fundamentalisms of exchange-value. Predicated on reflective judgment, the social-as-Value is beholden to the Kantian or ‘social sublime.’ The social sublime, as subjective universality that cannot be marketed, is irreducible to exchange-value and therefore radically useless to neoliberal political economy. The humanities’ grasp of the social sublime as radically useless is their unexchangeable Value; their uselessness represents a final frontier of opposition to neoliberal reasoning.
First, we pursue Value in Marx as an abstraction beyond use-value. This abstraction is the social, which the humanities are predisposed to finesse. Tracing the social-as-Value through the use of tables in Marx’s Capital and Kant’s Anthropology, we suggest that production and use-value are always-already material and abstract. If use-value is an abstract materiality, then its precondition and effect are the social, a material abstraction beyond even the woodenness of the table. A transcendental pure intuition, à la Kant, the social for the humanities is irreducible to exchange- or even use-value.
As the abstract-material condition of possibility for both society and community, the social-as-Value outpaces fundamentalisms of exchange-value. Predicated on reflective judgment, the social-as-Value is beholden to the Kantian or ‘social sublime.’ The social sublime, as subjective universality that cannot be marketed, is irreducible to exchange-value and therefore radically useless to neoliberal political economy. The humanities’ grasp of the social sublime as radically useless is their unexchangeable Value; their uselessness represents a final frontier of opposition to neoliberal reasoning.