CFP: M-C-M: Marx-Commodity-Modernism

Modernism/modernity Print+ Cluster

Editors: George Kovalenko (New York University) & Aleksandr Prigozhin (Utrecht University)

Abstracts due: 31 August 2025
Full papers due: 28 February 2026

We seek proposals for original essays that analyze the relationship between modernist artistic forms and the commodity form for a proposed peer-reviewed cluster on Modernism/modernity's Print+ platform. 

We are interested in exploring how commodity form and modernist artistic form function as figures/analogies, i.e. structures that offer an explanatory power in addressing the world. The relationship between these two kinds of form is complicated.

 On the one hand, in a view typified by György Lukács, the commodity form is the universal category of capitalist modernity, through which all social relations are objectified and made exchangeable. This reification includes the work of art, which—as a commodity, as a product of labor—is increasingly mediated by the logic of exchange. Modernist form, in particular, demonstrates the commodity form’s dominance over social reality. On the other hand, in a position expressed by Theodor W. Adorno, modernist artworks exhibit a double character that, in addition to its commodified social condition, dialectically intimates something beyond reified capitalist reality.

The push and pull between these positions are a longstanding feature of Marxian analyses of modernism. The task of theory, we would suggest, lies not in finally adjudicating between these two possibilities, but rather in conceptualizing the modern artwork’s historical relation to the commodity—in a way that resists collapsing into the reductive immediacy of sheer formalism or of pure economics.

This cluster will therefore consider a set of connections between modernist forms and the commodity form beyond the autonomy/reification binary. How, we want to ask, do modernist works and the commodity form relate to each other as analytical modes, ways of reading, or representational logics? Contributions will explore these conceptual coordinates and flesh out further ones. We do not expect the cluster to reduce this set of options to one or two correct solutions. Rather, we are looking to address how both forms mediate the world, structure it in practice, and make it thinkable in specific ways.

We expect the shape of the problem to vary across the arts and solicit contributions that focus on a range of media and artforms, including literature, film, visual art, music, and architecture. We likewise expect the shape of the problem to vary depending on geographical and sociopolitical location, and aim to represent works from different continents, economic systems, and colonial positionalities. We particularly welcome submissions that draw on the possibilities afforded by Modernism/modernity’s Print Plus platform. For recent examples of essay clusters, see https://modernismmodernity.org/about.

Abstracts of 250 words accompanied by short biographies are due by 31 August 2025. Completed essays of approximately 3,000 words will be due 28 February 2026. Once essays are submitted, the entire cluster will undergo peer review. Please submit abstracts and inquiries to grk229@nyu.edu.