March, 5th, 2026, at 3pm (WET)
Tamara Caraus,
Universidade de Lisboa
Title: Totality and Alienation in Marx’s Grundrisse".
Abstract: Marx’s depiction of capital as a totality in the Grundrisse has often been overlooked, largely due to poststructuralism, which associated totality with a grand narrative
of Western modernity. Social science similarly treated totality as theoretically trivial and irrelevant, regarding it as a mere sum of all realities (a critique most famously formulated by Karl Popper in The Poverty of Historicism). This presentation, however,
starts from the premise that an adequate theoretical understanding of contemporary social reality and global problems requires returning to Marx’s insight on the totality of capital. The first part defines the key features of totality in the Grundrisse: it
is an organic whole constituted through contradictory moments, an open totality, historically formed, and continuously transforming, with a more focused examination on how totality emerges alongside a new form of social connection that simultaneously produce
disconnection and alienation. The insight that totality is not a positive or harmonious entity but is constituted through discontinuities and alienation determines the appropriate method of approaching it: critique. The second part examines Marx’s method for
grasping totality through the constitution of the critique of political economy, ‘the method of rising from the abstract to the concrete’ and the method of inquiry by tracking the ‘inner connections’. The third part argues that Marx’s concept of totality should
underlie a theoretical renewal in contemporary social science. The conclusion summarizes how totality as alienation, as depicted in the Grundrisse, allows us to understand and conceptualize the globalized world as a historically contingent and highly ambivalent
product of capitalist society.
Biography: Tamara Caraus is a Principal Investigator at the Centre of Philosophy, University of Lisbon, within the framework of the Stimulus of Scientific Employment – Individual
Support Grant of the Portuguese Agency for Science, Research and Technology (FCT). Previously, Tamara Caraus conducted research projects in political philosophy at New Europe College, Vienna Institut fur die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, Polish Academy of Science,
University of Bucharest, Oxford University, University of Uppsala, University of Olomouc, University of Groningen, University of Rijeka, and other institutions. She contributed with articles to various academic journals and edited volumes, published six books
and co-edited five volumes. Her current area of research includes continental political philosophy, Marx and Critical Theory.
The seminar will be held in person at the CEPS room (Universidade do Minho, Braga) and online.
If you are interested in attending online, please send an email to
gair...@elach.uminho.pt and
we will share the zoom link before the event.
Regards,
Giorgio Airoldi, Ph.D.
Full Time Researcher
CEPS - Centre for Ethics, Politics and Society
Universidade do Minho
https://ceps.elach.uminho.pt/cpt_team/giorgio-airoldi/
ORCID-ID: 0000-0003-1535-674X
CIÊNCIAVITAE-ID: C91A-73E8-03E8
