I wrote my book, 9.5 Theses on Art and Class, in the spirit of renewing a discussion about the relationship between leftist politics, culture, and the economic order we live under. That’s a spirit that I think the editors of Jacobin share. For that reason, I was disappointed by Rachel Wetzler’s review of my book.

Not because she disagrees with me – as she notes, there are lots of ideas in the book, and not everyone is going to connect with every single one of them. But while charging me with engaging in “lazy caricatures” of theorists I disagree with, what Wetzler has really produced is a lazy caricature of my own theoretical position.

In fixating on textual and rhetorical issues, her review obscures a vital discussion about politics and the visual arts that might actually interest readers of Jacobin. The book itself stands as a refutation of most of Wetzler’s complaints, but I would like to set the record straight on one particular point, then spell out the political stakes of our disagreement in a way that she does not.