Browsing by Subject "capitalism"

This thesis discusses the links between consumer capitalism and the body in literature. The primary material for this thesis is Bret Easton Ellis’s 1991 novel American Psycho, which details the daily life of its main character and narrator Patrick Bateman, which mostly consists of him sitting in his office, going to restaurants and clubs, shopping, and getting various beauty treatments. What break the monotonous routine of Patrick’s daily life are at first the very detailed sex scenes between him and various women, including sex workers, and later in the novel, the equally detailed gruesome murders committed by Patrick. Set in the 1980s, the novel criticizes the consumerist lifestyle of yuppies (“young upwardly mobile professionals”) and the intense need to conform that causes it. The theoretical background of this thesis consists of a brief cultural-historical background of the setting of the novel, an introduction into the field of body studies, and how bodies are viewed within consumer culture. Additionally, I also discuss objectification. Through the close reading of American Psycho and with the help of the theoretical background and other secondary material, this thesis argues that Ellis is criticizing the objectification of people prevalent in our consumer culture by creating a satirized character who takes this objectification to the extremes as he murders women and creates objects out of his victims in an attempt to find satisfaction. It is the combination of the unsatisfactory nature of consumer capitalism, as well as the misrepresentation of women in the media that Patrick consumes, which lead him to torture and murder women.

My thesis examines Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick as an anti-capitalist text. I mainly utilize the theory of capitalism as defined by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the nineteenth century, focusing on class relations and the idea of class struggle; that is, the unrest that results from the inherent inequality of classes under capitalism. The aim of the thesis is to demonstrate the plausibility of an anti-capitalist reading of Moby-Dick and show how such a reading sheds light on the famously enigmatic character of Captain Ahab and on his motivations. To achieve this, I rely on social and historioeconomic analysis of the whaling industry to illustrate the usual working conditions on board whaling ships, and then apply my findings to a close reading of the novel. As Ishmael, the narrator, is generally the reader’s point of access, I first analyze his position vis–à–vis the industry he is about to enter, highlighting his inexperience. Then, I demonstrate how any struggle he may have undergone as a result of that inexperience is suppressed in favor of highlighting Ahab, ostensibly supplanting the struggle of the lower–ranking crewmembers with that of their superior. Ultimately, however, I argue that Moby-Dick illustrates the immutability of class dynamics under capitalism, and that it does so mainly through its portrayal of Ahab who, despite being at the top of the Pequod’s social hierarchy, suffers within the larger system that exploits him just as it does his inferiors. Furthermore, the perpetuity of these dynamics is illustrated by the fact that Ahab, despite becoming aware of his condition under capitalism, is unable to transcend the confines of that condition. Though he wants revenge against the whale, the insular nature of his position that arises from capitalist social hierarchies, combined with his self-involved mental struggle, results in an attempt at resistance that is ineffective precisely because of its solitary nature. In Moby-Dick, we then find just one representation of a ubiquitous capitalist system designed to crush individual resistance.

Caryl Churchill is a renowned playwright whose plays concern a wide range of social and political issues. In her plays Far Away (2000) and Escaped Alone (2016) Churchill brings forth depictions of ecological disaster which complexify the relationship between humans and their nonhuman environment. In this thesis, I argue that the plays in question offer a new perspective on the division between humanity and the nonhuman environment, which prompts the reader to question their own anthropocentric view of human exceptionalism. The plays’ bizarre events and absurdist form criticise the arbitrary division between human and nonhuman animals, underlining the intrinsic value of all beings and the nonanimated environment. It is evident that the plays are part of the Theatre of the Absurd, in their deviation from traditional conventions for narration and plot, as well as in the untraditional depiction of humans and the nonhuman environment. Utilising the typology of animal representation by Greg Garrard (2012) it becomes clear that nonhuman animals are increasingly depicted as anthropomorphic and certain groups of humans as increasingly zoomorphic in Far Away. Furthermore, the importance of the effects of the capitalist economic system in the climate crisis is prevalent in both plays. In Far Away, the characters work under a capitalist government which does not value human wellbeing. Escaped Alone, on the other hand, depicts ecological catastrophes as instigated by entities strongly connected with the capitalist system. Thus, both plays reveal the significance of capitalism as a driving force in ecological destruction, as well as its negative impact on individuals. Escaped Alone emphasises the individual perspective on the climate crisis by offering a female perspective and showing the characters as resilient despite the looming catastrophes. By depicting the ecological crisis as a complex and multifaceted issue, Churchill establishes her plays as works of deep ecology.

While eco-fiction has found a vast audience in contemporary literature reception, it is oftentimes ‘sidelined’ as a genre that is not taken seriously due to its dystopian world depictions and ‘improbable’ happenings (Ghosh 11). Nonetheless, I argue that ‘improbability’ is not an issue for Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140 (2017) as it represents the perpetuation of twenty-first-century patterns of behavior over the years, magnified by the year 2140 by menacing rising waters that submerge downtown Manhattan. Further, it is my contention that this novel represents a reformation of the capitalist system rather than its eradication since it portrays a diverse cast of characters slowly realizing that the elitist capitalist system is threatening their lives as it only sustains profit, and it depicts the transformation of such a capitalist system into a capitalism that resembles a welfare state with progressive taxation and active citizen involvement. This thesis analyses more specifically the role of community engagement, finance restructuration, and eco-sensitivity awareness as aspects that Robinson deems essential for a reformation of a capitalist system. Moreover, I ground my claim that this shift towards a reformed capitalism follows Merchant’s concept ‘radical ecology:’ “the cutting edge of social ecology [since] it pushes social and ecological systems towards new patterns of production, reproduction and consciousness that will improve the quality of human life and the natural environment” (Radical 9). In terms of methodology, this thesis lies at the intersection of three movements – ecocriticism, blue humanities, and social ecology– as they all are part of the narrative world of New York 2140. In the analysis here provided, the subthemes of place-connectedness, community resilience, financial objectives, commodification of causes, and even gender roles in capitalism are addressed as forming part of Robinson’s envisioned changes for the capitalist system. By analyzing Robinson’s novel, readers can not only visualize the shortcomings of the ongoing capitalist system, but also they can identify key factors that are needed to swirl the direction of that economy into one that benefits more people, perhaps even before arriving at such drastically-altered world (i.e., before the year 2140).

This thesis investigates the history and consequences of the post-WWII naturalisation of capitalism. It draws centrally on social history of political thought, an approach to intellectual history developed by Ellen Meiksins Wood and Neal Wood, and situates the transformations that turned economic history into neoclassically-oriented historical economics ‒ the most fundamental example of naturalisation in the period under investigation ‒ in their wider socio-political context. The aim is to understand the politics of concept-formation and discipline reconstruction. The thesis presents the commercialisation model, the central naturalising account of the origins of capitalism. It equates capitalism with trade, markets, and towns, and explains its emergence circularly by capitalist phenomena and dynamics. Capitalism becomes universal, a naturalised and expected development that is only impeded by political or cultural fetters. In contrast, the thesis claims that capitalism is a historically specific arrangement of social relations, norms, and practices. The characteristics that are both specific and have been historically central to it are account for by a brief history of their unintended emergence as a result of class conflicts in the medieval English countryside. The thesis then considers the absence of capitalism as an analytical and historical concept in the specialised discipline of the economy. Thereafter, it presents the building blocks of historical economics: an abstract concept of the market as an information processor, reified notions of information and choice, and mathematics. All emanate from post-WWII economics, and the origins of the first three are traced to the twentieth-century struggle against collectivism and Marxism. Next, the thesis situates the construction of historical economics, a universalising and increasingly ahistoricist field, in the socio-historical context from 1950s onwards, emphasising important similarities with neoliberal thought and Friedrich Hayek. Two disciplinary developments are shown to be crucial. The first, cliometrics, is constituted by the direct use of neoclassical economics to study history. The second, new institutional economics (NIE) is a product of the 1970s. NIE claims to be more realistic and historical than neoclassical economics, but shares its naturalising impulses with the former. It is actually a more powerful tool of naturalisation because its framework allows the explanation of the social in terms of the economic. The transformations had profound implications for the understanding of capitalism. The theoretico-methodological framework ensures that historical economics projects aspects that are historically specific to capitalism onto non-capitalist historical contexts. Consequently, the latter is portrayed as qualitatively similar to the former in a way that re-embraces and refines the older commercialisation thesis: markets and private property are naturalised; relative price changes become the motor of history; and capitalism ‒ or a variant of its conceptual ‘place-holders’ ‒ is argued to only have alternatives that end in tragedy. Finally, the policy implications of naturalisation are assessed.