Skip to content Skip to navigation
University of Warwick
  • Study
  • |
  • Research
  • |
  • Business
  • |
  • Alumni
  • |
  • News
  • |
  • About

University of Warwick
Publications service & WRAP

Highlight your research

  • WRAP
    • Home
    • Search WRAP
    • Browse by Warwick Author
    • Browse WRAP by Year
    • Browse WRAP by Subject
    • Browse WRAP by Department
    • Browse WRAP by Funder
    • Browse Theses by Department
  • Publications Service
    • Home
    • Search Publications Service
    • Browse by Warwick Author
    • Browse Publications service by Year
    • Browse Publications service by Subject
    • Browse Publications service by Department
    • Browse Publications service by Funder
  • Help & Advice
University of Warwick

The Library

  • Login
  • Admin

Architectures of the invisible hand : envisioning capital in Joseph Conrad’s Singapore

Tools
- Tools
+ Tools

Vandertop, Caitlin (2020) Architectures of the invisible hand : envisioning capital in Joseph Conrad’s Singapore. Textual Practice, 34 (1). pp. 127-145. doi:10.1080/0950236X.2018.1504818

[img]
Preview
PDF
WRAP-Architectures-invisible-envisioning-Singapore-Vandertop-2018.pdf - Accepted Version - Requires a PDF viewer.

Download (791Kb) | Preview
Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2018.1504818

Request Changes to record.

Abstract

In recent years, critical attention has shifted away from the subject of Conrad’s imperial politics and towards his representation of late nineteenth-century global capitalism, which extends panoramically from the business houses of London, Brussels and San Francisco to commodity frontiers as diverse as Malay tobacco plantations, African ivory lands and Latin American silver mines. This paper explores Conrad’s engagement with capitalism and its representability within his portrait of late nineteenth-century Singapore in the wake of a financial crisis. Drawing on Susan Buck-Morss’s ‘Envisioning Capital’, as well as Fredric Jameson’s essay on architecture and finance, ‘The Brick and the Balloon’, the paper reads Conrad’s proto-postmodern urban landscape and porous, ethereal architecture as evidence of the visual and representational difficulties generated within a major colonial ‘laboratory’ of liberal economics. Yet, by shifting in focus from the city to its outlying plantations, Conrad is seen to confront abstract capital with territory, ether with matter, and free-market narratives of the ‘invisible hand’ with the absent cause of racialized and indentured plantation labour.

Item Type: Journal Article
Subjects: D History General and Old World > DS Asia
P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0080 Criticism
P Language and Literature > PR English literature
Divisions: Faculty of Arts > English and Comparative Literary Studies
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): Conrad, Joseph, 1857-1924 -- Criticism and interpretation, Globalization in literature, Singapore -- In literature, Modernism (Literature), Capitalism in literature
Journal or Publication Title: Textual Practice
Publisher: Routledge Journals
ISSN: 0950-236X
Official Date: 2020
Dates:
DateEvent
2020Published
2 August 2018Available
10 November 2017Accepted
Volume: 34
Number: 1
Page Range: pp. 127-145
DOI: 10.1080/0950236X.2018.1504818
Status: Peer Reviewed
Publication Status: Published
Publisher Statement: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Textual Practice on 02/08/2019, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/0950236X.2018.1504818
Access rights to Published version: Restricted or Subscription Access

Request changes or add full text files to a record

Repository staff actions (login required)

View Item View Item

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

View more statistics

twitter

Email us: wrap@warwick.ac.uk
Contact Details
About Us