Alchemical production

Like lots of writers, I often turn to the word “produced” to describe the effects of relations. I used to write “constitute” every other sentence, but rid myself of the bad habit. But “produced” is bothering me these days. As a term, it is tremendously entangled with forms of making in capital formation. Moreover, the more I pay attention to the genealogy of the term “reproduction” the more uncomfortable I become using its relative “produce” so casually. While I don’t mind the implication that capital is part of the story of “making” in the contemporary world, at the same time I think there is another implication, unthought perhaps, at least unanalyzed, that capital precedes the capacity to be made or to act (rather than territorializing capacities in a co-emergent fashion) or that capital is at stake in “the last analysis.

So, I’ve been playing with the idea of drawing on terms for “making” from the days before industrial capitalism. Reproduction is preceded by terms like “generation” which in turn were accompanied by such actions as “fermenting” and “concocting.” I REALLY like “ferment” given its double meaning of making and insurgence.

I’m already very fond of “conjuring” and look forward to the day when I might use the term “miraculate.”

In a more chemical domain, “bind” and “affinity.”

Other possibilities: evoke and invoke, ripen, sympathies, amalgamation, circulation, coagulation, combustion, composition, concoction, corrosion, crystallization, dessication, detonation, digestion, disintegration, distillation, evaporation, extraction, fermentation, filtration, fixation, granulation, ignition, incineration, melting, precipitation, preparation, separation, sublimation, and vitrification.

Thoughts?