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Sean X. Goudie, Racial Capitalism and American Literary Studies in the Web of Life, American Literary History, Volume 29, Issue 3, Fall 2017, Pages 546–564, https://doi.org/10.1093/alh/ajx024
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Abstract
Much compelling scholarship being conducted in US literary studies today is preoccupied with combining lessons learned from scholarly critiques of racial capitalism produced in fields like postcolonialism, with more recent critical insights gleaned from research in fields and subfields like postsecular studies, the environmental humanities, science studies, and critical aesthetics. Consistent with such an approach, what unites the five works (markedly different in topic, method, and scope) under examination in this essay review is their shared pursuit of a dynamic, relational way of conducting critique in nineteenth-century American literary studies. As sociologist Jason W. Moore suggests, such a relational mode is critical to efficacious assessments of capitalism-in-nature, or what he terms the “web of life.” Yet what Moore admonishes against is the ironic tendency to reproduce old dualisms of humanity versus nature that capitalism depends upon for its endless cycles of accumulation. Accordingly, scholars from distinct topical and methodological vantage points and in more and less conscious ways are showing us how US literature and culture across the long nineteenth century mediates while being mediated by racial capitalism in the web of life in order to set forth relational and revolutionary ideas about race, religion, freedom, personhood, genre, and futurity.
