Commodity-fetish and the awkward artificial other

Abstract

The artificial other can raise anxiety, especially in terms of intimacy, as it highlights the tenuous nature of takenfor-granted relations in general. In Marxism, commodity-fetish arises when economic actors perceive one another solely in terms of the capital and commodity relationships they enter into. It is a form of reduced recognition that supplants genuine interpersonal interaction. Artificial others, in being themselves commodities, can have an awkward effect in bringing out this commodity fetish through real or perceived calls for recognition in some form. Anxiety results from thinking about artificial others as their potential dual nature as commodity and as other capable of recognition throws into question the problematic relations already in place among organic, natural humans. Thinking about how to treat and understand the awkwrd artificial other forces one to reconsider many taken-for-granted relations that are nonetheless tenuous. The artificial other can disrupt these taken-for-granteds by highlighting the arbitrariness with which some reductions of recognition are accepted while others prompt controversy. One potential way out of this situation might come in an approach to social meaning that treats concepts as skills, and so social learning as a discursive 'game' of public rational accountability.