Abstract
This chapter evaluates the matrix of capital and of class in selected works by Balzac and Henry James, as well as in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, in order to think of new egalitarian ways of thinking through this problematic. The piece enlists critical theory from Giorgio Agamben, Karl Marx, Jacques Rancière, Bernard Stiegler, and Slavoj Žižek to throw light on this double pronged cultural and material phenomenon.