Building with Jelly, or, Concrete as the Concretion of the Abstract

Abstract

In his recent book titled *Béton: arme de construction massive du capitalisme*, Marxist thinker Anselm Jappe presents a critique of the emergence and ongoing centrality of reinforced concrete as a hegemonic building material. In this slim volume, Jappe traces its historical trajectory, analysing the economic pressures propelling its hegemonic consolidation, examining the central role it played in political projects of various stripes, and critiquing the social, cultural, and environmental consequences of the latter. What is interesting and novel about his contribution, however, is the conceptual framework deployed for this purpose. Unlike most Marxist critiques of architecture which usually focus on questions of class or ideology, Jappe focuses on matter and abstraction. Value-form theory (and the tradition of German *Wertkritik* which Jappe is part of), reads Marx’s theory of value as a theory of the abstract domination of human life and social practice by the abstract forms set in motion by the capitalist mode of production.

What I propose is to write a review of Jappe’s book which attempts to read it in conjunction with the question of cosmotechnics. One of Yuk Hui’s central concerns is the decline of technodiversity as a result of the globalisation of Western technological monoculture throughout capitalist modernity. As the call for contributions rightly points out, the fields of architecture and urbanism have not yet properly addressed their implication in this process. I argue that the homogenization of building practices and the unanimous popularity of reinforced concrete is a major aspect of this process which ought to be examined more closely.

While Hui’s project provides us with conceptual tools useful to critique this foreclosing of alternative cosmotechnics and to imagine how modern technologies could be rechannelled towards future divergent trajectories, he does not delve into the precise mechanisms through which this monoculture has been established in the first place. To explain this, I argue, Marxist theory is crucial. Expanding Jappe’s value-critical analysis of reinforced concrete with Moishe Postone’s account of how the peculiar social ‘self-mediating’ character of abstract labour in capitalism explains the transformation of labour into pure means and of its tools and products in mere objects, I intend to complement the question of cosmotechnics with an explanation of the decline of technodiversity grounded on the abstract logic of capital.