Abstract
With characteristic verve, equal parts incisive as nuanced, Morrison illuminates the costs of whiteness as an ideology for both white and Black Americans. Melville was engaged in some simple and simple-minded black/white didacticism, or that he was satanizing white people. Morrison’s depiction of the crew gains its meaning not through the more political, if affective, language of community but rather through the economic, and particularly Marxist, lexicon of “proletariat, " “commodity, " and “labor.” From Morrison’s understanding of the racial economies of chattel slavery to Eric Williams’s earlier claims about the interconnections between capitalism and slavery. This chapter examines Melville’s representations of factories to evince how the vicissitudes of racial formation always animate, if not underwrite, the imperatives of capitalism.
Original language | English (US) |
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Title of host publication | A New Companion to Herman Melville |
Publisher | wiley |
Pages | 436-444 |
Number of pages | 9 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9781119668565 |
ISBN (Print) | 9781119668503 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jan 1 2022 |
Keywords
- Melville’s representations
- Morrison
- capitalism
- racial economies
- slavery
- white didacticism
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Arts and Humanities