György Lukács’s infl uential interpretation of commodity fetishism as “reifi cation” shapes many contemporary critiques of the apparently objective and impersonal form taken by capitalist social relations. Such critiques seek to debunk the false veil of objectivity that results from fetishism, revealing the real character of the social relations underneath. Th is line of criticism, however, often attributes totalising power to capitalism, which undermines its own critical standpoint. I argue that the solution to this dilemma lies in understanding the fetish not as an ideological veil that needs to be debunked, but instead as a novel form of social interdependence that is genuinely – not illusorily – impersonal. Th is impersonal form is generated by a diverse array of disparate social practices whose interaction yields this unanticipated and unintended result. Within this framework, the diversity of the underlying social practices off ers a practical potential basis for constituting new forms of social interdependence that lack not only the semblance, but also the reality of capitalism’s oppressive objectivity.
In this paper, I propose a programme for future critical responses to naturalism. The paper is divided into two principal parts. In Part I, after providing a topography of contemporary critical approaches to the Placement Problem, which is the operational logic of naturalism, I provide an overview of a burgeoning critical response to naturalism, which, to date, may be predominantly individuated by hostility towards the Placement Problem in two interconnected manners: an epistemic concern and a political concern. Part II of the paper focuses on four areas of future research on critical responses to naturalism arising from themes identified in Part I: the first is a challenge set by Antonio Nunziante concerning the historical and political aspects of American humanism and naturalism; the second involves centring and combining decolonial and queer theoretic discursive formations to enhance critical theoretic responses to naturalism; the third emphasises the need to put Hegel and Otto Neurath in direct conversation about anti-foundationalism, pragmatism, and the (dis)unity of science, in part to dismantle the long-standing hostility between Hegelians and logical empiricists; the fourth is on the subject of developing a critique of sexology’s scientific naturalist framework for making sense of sexual arousal.