SHADOWS OF THE CAPITALIST DREAM: POST-MARXIST MEDITATIONS ON REIFIED CONSCIOUSNESS IN SIX OF CROWS

Abstract

This article interrogates the mechanisms of reification within a fictional capitalist order, emphasizing the repression of consciousness and proletarian resistance under the regime of commodity fetishism. Mediated by exchange, the value of labor displaces the social basis of production, rendering human relations as objectified connections subjected to the logic of market forces. In Lukácsian terms, rationalization emerges as the corollary of commodification, transforming workers into fungible elements within a mechanized apparatus. As sociality is displaced by rationalized forms, reification proliferates, foreclosing the possibility of critical cognition. The Six of Crows narrative complicates this dynamic, as its characters both inhabit and dialectically exceed reification. Kaz epitomizes reified subjectivity, reducing relationality to commodified calculation and thereby objectifying both others and himself. Thompson’s theorization of degraded social consciousness situates this condition within the matrix of normative values, exemplified by Mattias’s entrapment in Fjerdan ideology. His eventual estrangement, however, instantiates a transformative rupture. The analysis synthesizes Lukács and Thompson to demonstrate that commodity fetishism and normative values entrench reification, while crises open the possibility for its dialectical undoing.