Material

Upcoming

Book Launch

Abolishing Capitalist Totality

What Is To be Done under Real Subsumption?

w. Neil Gray, Anthony Iles (ed.), Sacha Kahir, Mattin (ed.)

Broadside11.04.2026 3–5pm

Join us to celebrate the launch of the new book Abolishing Capitalist Totality: What Is To be Done under Real Subsumption? published by Minor Compositions. The book brings together texts and interventions from a wide range of theorists, artists and poets critically intervening on questions of subsumption and totality in capitalism. We will be joined by editors Anthony Iles and Mattin alongside contributors Neil Gray and Sacha Kahir for a discussion on the process of making the book and the ideas it engages chaired by Shona Macnaughton. The book will be available for purchase for the special launch price of £15.

The concept of subsumption informs an account of how capital seizes hold of social forms and shapes them to its ends. Subsumption can also help us describe what is shaped by capital and what is used as found, therefore how we might meaningfully begin to distinguish between thought processes and social processes, between capital as a seemingly self-perfecting system and the contradictory realities and inequalities of capitalist society. This anthology combines new translations of seminal communist theory from the archives, poetic interventions and recent critical exchanges which each contribute to a radical reconstruction of the concepts of subsumption and totality.

Contributions by: Sean Bonney, Nadia Bou Ali, Anne Boyer, Ray Brassier, Federico Corriente, Andrei Chitu, Loss Choi, Luisa Lorenza Corna, Bolívar Echeverría, Endnotes, Neil Gray, Danny Hayward, Em Hedditch, Anthony Iles, Lisa Jeschke, Sacha Kahir, Jessika Khazrik, Dimitra Kotouza, Rob Lucas, Mattin, Négation, Andrés Saenz de Sicilia, Roland Simon, Théorie Communiste, Marina Vishmidt.

About Material

Material is an independent cultural publishing project based in Glasgow, Scotland. We produce a magazine and public events. Some of us worked with Variant previously. We provide space for artwork and incisive, pugnacious and in-depth articles on political and cultural matters—in recognition of their deep imbrication. We publish work that is non-academic but scholarly and probing; in conditions of cultural and educational degradation we validate intellectuality in its broadest sense.

Material is regionally rooted but non-parochial. We examine and critique contemporary conditions of existence, and affirm processes of radical transformation, but crucially in an open and reflexive manner.

A typical Material article is investigative: we want to discover something we don’t know and highlight hitherto unknown or under-acknowledged practices and trajectories. We publish thorough, challenging and untimely work. By untimely, we mean that we are less concerned with current trends or reactive interpretations of contemporary phenomena, rather we are concerned with situating events within a broader historical material framework of analysis. The work we publish is against-the grain and often provides a synoptic overview of contemporary issues.

Primarily, the work we publish is commissioned, however we are always open to proposals for submissions. We are particularly keen to encourage new writers, especially working-class writers or those from otherwise marginalised backgrounds.

Editorial Collective

Benjamin Fallon
Ruth Gilbert
Neil Gray
Paul Pieroni
Hannah Proctor
Joey Simons
Joel White