Postcolonial Theories of Capitalism

Kristin Plys, University of Toronto

The capitalist world-economy arose around 1500 with the European voyages across the Atlantic in search of fungible metals and other consumable products of value that could be converted into surplus value in Europe, West and East. Though capitalism sponsored its own often sly brands of violence it did so under formally rational rules governing its mode of production that allowed for the logic of endless capital accumulation. If there is a sub-rosa structural violence to the system it is modern capitalism’s early and continuing reliance on colonizing the resource rich regions of the world that also were a source of exploitable labor. In other words, Colonialism has always been central to historical capitalism. This talk, based on my recent book with Charles Lemert, Capitalism and its Certain Future (Routledge 2022), draws on postcolonial perspectives to offer new ways of thinking about capitalism and its future. Postcolonialism’s necessary opposition to global capitalism, we contend, reveals a tension that down to the present time remains acute and world shaking.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 55. Presidential Session: New Perspectives in Postcolonial Social Theory