Muraca, BarbaraKnowlton Jr, Kenneth2024-12-192024-12-192024-12-19https://hdl.handle.net/1794/30304This dissertation develops a theory of appropriation through an account of dialectical materialism as a relational ontology. Appropriation is argued as creative-aesthetic activity definitive of the human species-essence through which sociality metabolically transforms. In turn, the universality of appropriation becomes an analytic for designating historical change through the mode of appropriation, where the transhistorical and ontological dimension of appropriation take on a historically specific character. I begin with a critical reconstruction of German Idealism through an account of FWJ Schelling’s critique of GWF Hegel’s Science of Logic. Schelling’s criticism initiates a tendency to misrepresent Hegel’s dialectical logic that extends into 20th century philosophy, a misrepresentation which also transposed itself onto the works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. I trace this lineage in Part I, critically responding to it. Part II provides a materialist interpretation of Hegel’s Science of Logic, focusing on essence, necessity, universality, telos, and reason. I demonstrate the relational and anti-representational character of Hegelian dialectics through a systematic account of these categories. Consequently, I draw on Hegel to provide the logico-theoretical structure of the concept of appropriation as constitutive of a dialectical relational ontology. Part III develops appropriation and the mode of appropriation through an engagement with the works of Marx and Engels. I argue that their work is predicated on a dialectical relational ontology fundamental to their political, economic, and historical analysis. I show that the mode of appropriation is constituted by a triadic structure of changing labor-forms, property-forms, and belonging-forms that together elucidate socio-historical transformation.en-USAll Rights Reserved.AppropriationDialecticsHegelMarxMaterialismOntologyElectronic Thesis or Dissertation