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Structure, Agency, and Space-Time: Contributions to an Ontological Critique of Interpretations of Social Space from the Perspectives of Critical Realism and Value-Critical Theory

Richard Lins Nogueira

Supervisor: Carlos Antônio Brandão (PPGPUR)

The question “How can social space be known?” presupposes an ontology—that is, a conception of the nature of the being to be known. Drawing upon Roy Bhaskar’s critical realism and György Lukács’s ontology of social being, this dissertation argues that the nature of the object determines the possibilities of its cognition. Understanding social space under capitalism therefore requires understanding capital itself, which, in turn, demands an ontological critique of its social forms.

The study is developed in three stages. The first establishes the ontological foundations for the knowledge of social being, demonstrating that society constitutes an open, stratified, and emergent system whose categories are, in Marx’s words, “forms of being, determinations of existence.” The second reconstructs the historical specificity of capitalism through Moishe Postone’s reinterpretation of Marx’s critical theory, arguing that the core of this social formation lies in the dual character of labor—concrete labor and abstract labor—from which emerges an impersonal form of social domination mediated by objectified and autonomized structures. The third stage subjects David Harvey’s spatial theory to an ontological critique, demonstrating that, although highly influential, his approach remains within the horizon of traditional Marxism and amounts to a political economy of space rather than a critique of the political economy of space.

The dissertation’s principal contribution is the formulation of the category of abstract space, understood as the necessary spatial form of abstract labor and value valorization. Like abstract time, abstract space is homogeneous, continuous, and quantifiable, rendering all places equivalent under the logic of value, in contradiction with the concrete space of lived experience, difference, and social practice. The dissertation argues that this contradiction lies at the core of contemporary socio-spatial phenomena and points to the necessity of overcoming the social relations that produce space as a commodity and as a condition for capitalist accumulation.

Keywords: Abstract space; Ontological critique; Abstract labor; Value critique; David Harvey; Moishe Postone; Roy Bhaskar; György Lukács.