Against Accumulation: Moby-Dick, Mason & Dixon, and Atlantic Capitalism
This thesis examines the question of what it means to think about a text as Atlantic literature. I consider two novels, Melville’s Moby-Dick and Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon, in their relation to the Atlantic cycle of capital accumulation. I borrow this term from Ian Baucom, who, drawing on the w...
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ftconncollege:oai:digitalcommons.conncoll.edu:enghp-1004 2024-06-09T07:50:07+00:00 Against Accumulation: Moby-Dick, Mason & Dixon, and Atlantic Capitalism Borchert, Scott K. 2008-05-01T07:00:00Z application/pdf https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/enghp/5 https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/context/enghp/article/1004/viewcontent/Borchert___English.pdf unknown Digital Commons @ Connecticut College https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/enghp/5 https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/context/enghp/article/1004/viewcontent/Borchert___English.pdf http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ English Honors Papers Herman Melville Thomas Pyncheon American literature historical capitalism Ames prize text 2008 ftconncollege 2024-05-15T08:10:37Z This thesis examines the question of what it means to think about a text as Atlantic literature. I consider two novels, Melville’s Moby-Dick and Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon, in their relation to the Atlantic cycle of capital accumulation. I borrow this term from Ian Baucom, who, drawing on the work of Giovanni Arrighi, argues that the period extending from the late eighteenth century to the late twentieth century represents a definite epoch of historical capitalism: an Atlantic cycle of capital accumulation. To think about these texts as Atlantic literature, then, is to think about how they reproduce the logic of or understand themselves in relation to this Atlantic cycle, the dynamic engine of a circum-Atlantic world. I turn to two key theorists whose work I feel is best suited to each novel. Moby-Dick is primarily focused on capitalist production as represented by the whaling industry,and thus I employ Georg Lukács—particularly his model of realism and its emphasis on revealing the nature of production of a given social field—for my reading of that novel. Mason & Dixon, however, is less directly concerned with production and instead centers its narrative on the consumption of Atlantic commodities, which invites a reading that draws on Walter Benjamin, whose work focuses (primarily) on this stage of capitalist production. In my reading of Moby-Dick, I argue that the novel approaches the requirements of Lukácsian realism, but fails to meet them because of its compositionally eclectic nature. Because Moby-Dick is inherently contradictory, it does not contain what Lukács calls the moving center (the force that orients and directs the “totality of objects†of a given social field, in this case, capital)—or at least not conventionally. Instead, the moving center is displaced and reproduced figuratively in Ahab’s monomaniacal hunt for the white whale, leaving the empty shell of its rhetoric on Starbuck: Atlantic capitalism as contradiction. This, I argue, is not Lukácsian realism per se, but ... Text White whale Connecticut College: Digital Commons |
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Herman Melville Thomas Pyncheon American literature historical capitalism Ames prize |
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Herman Melville Thomas Pyncheon American literature historical capitalism Ames prize Borchert, Scott K. Against Accumulation: Moby-Dick, Mason & Dixon, and Atlantic Capitalism |
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Herman Melville Thomas Pyncheon American literature historical capitalism Ames prize |
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This thesis examines the question of what it means to think about a text as Atlantic literature. I consider two novels, Melville’s Moby-Dick and Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon, in their relation to the Atlantic cycle of capital accumulation. I borrow this term from Ian Baucom, who, drawing on the work of Giovanni Arrighi, argues that the period extending from the late eighteenth century to the late twentieth century represents a definite epoch of historical capitalism: an Atlantic cycle of capital accumulation. To think about these texts as Atlantic literature, then, is to think about how they reproduce the logic of or understand themselves in relation to this Atlantic cycle, the dynamic engine of a circum-Atlantic world. I turn to two key theorists whose work I feel is best suited to each novel. Moby-Dick is primarily focused on capitalist production as represented by the whaling industry,and thus I employ Georg Lukács—particularly his model of realism and its emphasis on revealing the nature of production of a given social field—for my reading of that novel. Mason & Dixon, however, is less directly concerned with production and instead centers its narrative on the consumption of Atlantic commodities, which invites a reading that draws on Walter Benjamin, whose work focuses (primarily) on this stage of capitalist production. In my reading of Moby-Dick, I argue that the novel approaches the requirements of Lukácsian realism, but fails to meet them because of its compositionally eclectic nature. Because Moby-Dick is inherently contradictory, it does not contain what Lukács calls the moving center (the force that orients and directs the “totality of objects†of a given social field, in this case, capital)—or at least not conventionally. Instead, the moving center is displaced and reproduced figuratively in Ahab’s monomaniacal hunt for the white whale, leaving the empty shell of its rhetoric on Starbuck: Atlantic capitalism as contradiction. This, I argue, is not Lukácsian realism per se, but ... |
format |
Text |
author |
Borchert, Scott K. |
author_facet |
Borchert, Scott K. |
author_sort |
Borchert, Scott K. |
title |
Against Accumulation: Moby-Dick, Mason & Dixon, and Atlantic Capitalism |
title_short |
Against Accumulation: Moby-Dick, Mason & Dixon, and Atlantic Capitalism |
title_full |
Against Accumulation: Moby-Dick, Mason & Dixon, and Atlantic Capitalism |
title_fullStr |
Against Accumulation: Moby-Dick, Mason & Dixon, and Atlantic Capitalism |
title_full_unstemmed |
Against Accumulation: Moby-Dick, Mason & Dixon, and Atlantic Capitalism |
title_sort |
against accumulation: moby-dick, mason & dixon, and atlantic capitalism |
publisher |
Digital Commons @ Connecticut College |
publishDate |
2008 |
url |
https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/enghp/5 https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/context/enghp/article/1004/viewcontent/Borchert___English.pdf |
genre |
White whale |
genre_facet |
White whale |
op_source |
English Honors Papers |
op_relation |
https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/enghp/5 https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/context/enghp/article/1004/viewcontent/Borchert___English.pdf |
op_rights |
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ |
_version_ |
1801383317881225216 |