The Novel and Economic Justice

Global capitalism inspired novelists to explore the ways in which money, or the lack of it, forms or deforms our characters.    It also inspired the writings of Karl Marx, the great theorist of economic justice.  In this seminar we will read three early novels – Behn’s Orinooko, Godwin’s  Caleb Williams, Austen’s Persuasion alongside Marxist theory, and then examine a cluster of twentieth century global novels in English.   We will pay special attention to Marxist notions of materialism; alienation and human flourishing; capital and labor; classes; and ideology.  Special emphasis will also be given to the Marxist approach in the study of culture, the role of intellectuals (such as ourselves) and the relationship between capitalism and culture – through theorists like Gramsci, the Frankfurt School, and Raymond Williams.     

The course tracks how key Marxist concepts such as capital and class consciousness, reification, commodification, totality, and alienation have been developed across these traditions and considers how these concepts have been used to rethink literary and mass cultural forms and their ongoing transformation in a changing world system. Writers discussed may include Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Georg Lukács, Mikhail Bakhtin, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, C.L.R. James, Frantz Fanon, Amílcar Cabral, Edward Said, Antonio Gramsci, Raymond Williams, Giovanni Arrighi, Pascale Casanova, David Harvey, and Melinda Cooper.