Logical circuitry—perverse circuitry

Abstract

This essay argues that the figure of the circuit that recurs across Denise Ferreira da Silva’s Unpayable Debt, which might be too easily treated as a passing metaphor, illuminates the book's most significant concerns: the problem of unity; relationships among the economic, the ethical, and the juridical; and the reticulated dynamics of ‘free’ labor and racialized slavery in the circulation of value. Building on Ferreira da Silva's references to circuitry, the essay posits the emergent, recursive circuits of cybernetic social theory and ecology as unintentional yet strikingly revealing diagrams of the capital-race dynamic.