« Racial settler colonialism: Ronit Lentin, ‘Notes on Racial Capitalism and Palestine: Land, Labour and Jewishness as Property’, Free Radikal, 05/08/23
Indigenous cities: Lindsey Claire Smith, Urban Homelands: Writing the Native City from Oklahoma, University of Nebraska Press, 2023 »

The settler colonial Robinsonade: Nicole Pepperell, ‘“To dream of a wildness distant from ourselves”: Capitalism, colonialism, and the Robinsonade’, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 2023

10Sep23

Abetract: Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe holds an iconic position, not solely as a work of literature, but also for its influence in economic and social theory. This article reflects on this influence by mobilizing Charles Mills’s concept of epistemologies of ignorance and Lorenzo Veracini’s work on psychological defence mechanisms in settler colonial societies. This theoretical framework motivates a close textual analysis of Robinson Crusoe that focuses particularly on four textual strategies: paired contrasts between Xury and Friday that frame enslavement as a sacrificial act; strategic use of “cosmopolitan” ideals; a theory of subjection as the foundation for legitimate power; and moral relativisms that rationalize Crusoe’s theft of Indigenous land. This analysis then provides the foundation for an original interpretation of Marx’s Capital as a critically inverted Robinsonade: one designed to demonstrate how global relations of colonial expropriation generate a crucible in which a particular imaginary of autonomous individuality is forged.


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