USP Electronic Research Repository

"The earth seemed unearthly": capital, world-ecology, and enchanted nature in Conrad's Heart of Darkness

Vandertop, Caitlin (2018) "The earth seemed unearthly": capital, world-ecology, and enchanted nature in Conrad's Heart of Darkness. MFS Modern Fiction Studies, 64 (4). pp. 680-700. ISSN 0026-7724

Full text not available from this repository. (Request a copy)

Abstract

This essay reads Heart of Darkness as a world-ecological text, examining themes of socioecological violence, waste, and exhaustion as theorized by the world-ecology paradigm. Specifically, it argues that the novella’s “unearthly” landscape speaks to the transformative interactions of capital and nature at the commodity frontier, linking the novella’s language of enchantment to the subjective, irrational, and racialized devaluations necessary to world-ecological accumulation. Offering a historical reading of the gothic and antirealist elements of the text’s landscape descriptions, the essay finds theoretical relevance in its refusal to separate nature from the historical categories of colonialism, capital, and the commodity form.

Item Type: Journal Article
Subjects: P Language and Literature > PR English literature
Divisions: Faculty of Arts, Law and Education (FALE) > School of Language, Arts and Media
Depositing User: Caitlin Vandertop
Date Deposited: 19 Feb 2019 02:41
Last Modified: 19 Feb 2019 19:46
URI: https://repository.usp.ac.fj/id/eprint/10957

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item