Romanticism in the Iron Cage of Commodity-based Meanings

Abstract

Romanticism is not just a passive observer of the formation of the commodity-based society. There is a deep discomfort in romanticism about the tendency of an independent economic domain. This orientation can be followed in the case of such phenomena like money, measure, fiction, vitalism, or nature. These issues are now involved in the transformed context of economization, and there is a deep disturbance on this occasion in romanticism that appears to be a paradigmatic case of crisis-ridden subjectivity. Based on this, we can discuss the involvement of romanticism in relation to the phenomenon we designate the commodity-loop that includes the set of objective and subjective determinations related to the commodification.
Some interpreters state that the novel of the 19th century (and romanticism, as well) “naturalized” the economy. The „naturalization“, however, here does not imply the connection to nature, but transforming the economy into a “natural fact” in the sense of an ideological normalization. The term “facts” comes together with the modern economy. “Naturalization” is actually a process that separates modern man from “nature”, that is, this term does not imply the inexhaustible creativity of nature. We believe that the position of literature and romanticism is much more ambivalent in relation to this figure: the mentioned commodity loop contains different responses of the emerging modern subjectivity in relation to objective determinations. Literature in romanticism stands in profound ambivalence: it cannot be indifferent to an autonomized economy but is far from being a pure reflection of it. We argue that romanticism, in fact, denaturalizes the commodity-mediated economy and reveals the historical determinateness of capitalism.