[Discussion] CFP: Representation of Capital 1700-2000 (UK) (9/30/04; 9/14/05-9/17/05)

[sule tarakcioglu]

Call for Papers

Colloquium

The Representation of Capital 1700-2000: Speculation and Displacement


14 - 17 September, 2005
Institute for Commonwealth Studies, London
Institute for English Studies, London


An invitation is extended to colleagues working in literary,
art-historical or cultural studies, and in economic or social history,
to attend and present a paper at a specialist colloquium convened to
explore the representation of capital, particularly in relation to
themes of speculation and displacement (understood in both literal and
metaphorical senses).

We seek specialists in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, in the belief that the task of understanding current debates
about capital and its impact on people needs to be informed by an
understanding of the historical and social processes which find
expression in various forms of cultural representation.

Of central importance to us is how literature and the visual arts
represent, interact with, and produce ideas about, capital, whether in
its early phases (the growth of stock markets) or in its late phase
(global speculative capital). At this colloquium, work on the
representation of issues such as speculation, displacement,
exploitation, capital growth, the decline of the welfare state, and the
cultivation of surplus migrant populations, would be especially welcome.


Aims:
- to explore the disjunction between sign and reality in a wide range of
literature, with particular reference to fictional representations of
commerce, capitalism, and credit.
- to consider the broader cultural, economic, and political implications
of this disjunction, in the light of its interrogation/exploration in
literature and the visual arts.


Reflections on Method:
- We encourage contributions that, though located or spanning any area
of cultural production, and in any genre, serve nevertheless to explore
and make explicit the links between capitalism and power on the one
hand, and alienation and disenfranchisement on the other. We recognize
that discourses that critique capitalism are not always considered
legitimate or relevant within the hegemonic frameworks. This may be seen
in invocations of economic, moral and ethical issues which nevertheless
present fresh perspectives on free market economies; the exploitation of
labour; the marginalization of women and children, and other race groups.
- We also recognize that writing (whether popular or serious, and
irrespective of genre) has long challenged the excesses of unregulated
capital. This is most evident in the public debates concerning gambling,
the establishment of the first stock exchange in England and the
Netherlands, and that these issues find interpretation in the writing of
the period.
- Depending on the period references, these debates may be linked to
other topics e.g. the emergence of credit-based commercial practices,
gambling, insurance, colonial ventures, "bubbles" on stock markets, the
legal and cultural restrictions placed upon women and other race groups
in financial affairs/transactions.
- More broadly, we wish to consider the cultural comprehension of value,
how it can be manifested, designated, exchanged, possessed. A possible
goal for this event is to chart an ideological history of value in the
West, as it is conveyed/challenged/enacted in literature - asking
ourselves the questions, 'What is happening to value? How can it be
constituted? Is that changing?'


We hypothesize:
- That literature makes the first substantive engagement with capital
and capitalist ideas, and, by doing so, participates in the debate about
these issues, possibly constituting in fiction some cultural/ideological
responses to the idea of capital, credit, speculation, economic
expansion, and the exploitation of colonized or displaced peoples.

- That literature, especially the fiction produced by those who perceive
themselves to be critical of, or excluded from, from dominant trends (by
virtue of race and/or gender) interacts with ideas about the different
forms of capital irrespective on the period. Whilst not all writing (for
example, advertising) is critical of capital, most writing problematises
the concept, or at least points to the ambiguities attendant on the use
of capital.

- A kind of moral outrage, expressed in many forms of writing, about the
unreality of moral and economic value in the modern world.

- That the modern world is still subject to a persistent and growing
fear of this unreality, this disjunction between the real world as it is
experienced by the populace, and the "imaginary" realm of economic and
political power which exists - between texts, between states.

- That popular dissatisfaction with the fundamental disjunction between
the real world, and the economic forces that shape it are everywhere
evident in cultural products. The novel is a genre that, because of its
relative stability as a form over the last three centuries, offers an
opportunity to understand the variety of means used to negotiate the
disjunction between reality and systems of signs like language,
currency, class, gender, and race.

- The language used to sustain this fantasy is ever changing - the
discourses of credit, industrialization, colonialism, and now
globalization. Nevertheless, the effect is the same; that of a "reality"
created and sustained by systems of signs mobilized by the powerful few,
in a profitable fantasy that excludes, exploits, and damages people
peripheral to it.

- That this fantasy threatens to eclipse the real altogether by making
it discursively invisible by means of language, media, and ideology
which collude in a global fantasy until the particular sufferings (the
displacement, the deprivation, the disenfranchisement of individuals)
become linguistically, economically, ideologically invisible.

Disclaimer:
We do not wish to privilege discourses or perspectives in economics in
the colloquium. We recognize that the relationship between material life
and literature is tenuous but money, and speculative capital, is not
real either, and yet we hold onto cash with both hands. Fact is,
literature is just like money. The relationship between material life
and literature is complex and mutual, but to discount the latter as a
mere fictive reflection of the former is to ignore the power of
ideology. Literature has strong resemblances with money. It has real
power and yet is also preoccupied with representation and value.

For "postmodernists" there is no distinction between "fact" and
"fiction". "Fact", as a category, is exploded. It is just as likely to
be culturally produced and mediated, subject to ideological influence,
as an airport novel. You can't attribute "factual" status to some
documents and "fictional" to others. Both are referential to a reality
that no longer exists, both are subject only to the constraints of
language. Both make themselves intelligible to readers by that language,
and by reference to ideological and cultural assumptions shared by
readers. They are both subjective.

The flipside to the idea that no texts can purport to represent reality
absolutely, is the notion that reality itself is textually produced.
That our responses and comprehension of our experience is mediated,
thwarted, diverted and quashed by our ideological programming. This, we
think, is what makes the "unreality" merchants, the spin-doctors of
capital, so dangerous; they don't just steal pension funds, they
imprison consciousness in fictions of their own creating. More
importantly these fictions have real consequences for people not
regarded as part of the fiction, or who are not characters in the plot,
surplus populations who are cheap and disposable labour, whose
unemployment, and migrant status is a consequence and perhaps even
condition of free market capitalist practices.

Submissions:
We welcome submissions from colleagues who are interested in this
project. The maximum word length for a paper is 7000 words. We suggest
that presentations be limited to 3000 words.
Deadlines for Titles and Abstracts:
September 30, 2004

Contact Details:
Please send titles, abstracts, and any queries regarding the Colloquium to:
Dr Robert Balfour
Programme of Language Education
University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 4001
South Africa,

balfourr@ukzn.ac.za
rob_john54@yahoo.com

Tel: 0027 31 260 3480
OR:

Dr Matthew Beaumont
Pembroke College
Oxford
OX1 1DW

01865 276 406
matthew.beaumont@pembroke.oxford.ac.uk

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