Individuality and Alienation in Capital: Intimate Life as the Production of the Free Subjectivity

In this article, we address the specific form that intimate life takes in capitalist societies. Based on a critical review of the existing literature and the unitary approach proposed by the Critique of Political Economy, we propose that intimate life assumes a social form that results from producing us as individuals who personify reified social relations. Various studies have shown that the capitalist family is a sphere of labor force reproduction and that intimate life has a social character. However, these approaches tend to present intimacy as a space of individual freedom divorced from its historical determination. In contrast, we argue that the apparent contradiction between social life and intimate life is the result of a mode of organization in which personal ties carry social potencies that we do not control. To develop this argument, in the first part of the article, we analyze the general form of human individuation as a result of the social metabolism. In the second part, we show how the relationship with oneself entails acting as a personification of commodities. Finally, we argue that intimate life emerges from a historically specific form of individuality production, marked by the separation between personal bonds and social potencies. We conclude our work with a series of questions that outline possible directions for future research.