The Intimacies of Four Continents Précis
Lowe, Lisa. The Intimacies of Four Continents. Duke University Press, 2015. In The Intimacies of Four Continents, Lowe examines the often obfuscated links between “European liberalism, settler colonialism in the Americas, the transatlantic African slave trade, and the East Indies and China trades in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,”(Lowe 1) via the archive, autobiographies, literature, and philosophy. Lowe argues that slavery, colonialism, and trades of bodies and goods from China and India allow for liberalism to flourish in Europe. By reading “across” archives and applying interdisciplinary (literary, historical, philosophical, and historiographical) methods, brings to light relationships …show more content…
Autobiography is liberalism’s penultimate way of expressing “individual achievement of liberty through ethical education and civilization.” (Lowe 46) Lowe argues that “liberal genres, like the autobiography, reiterate a colonial division of humanity through this formalism of affirmation and forgetting, however much race is the remainder that continues to mark the limits of freedom for the subject of colonial slavery” (70) Equiano’s autobiography may detail his transitions from slavery to freedom, but this freedom is always s threatened by the potential for recapture.
In Lowe’s analysis of Vanity Fair, or rather C.L.R. James’ reaction to it, she argues that the novel’s presents “an analogy between operations of metaphor and the processes of exchange,” (Lowe 97) specifically in regards to colonial goods. Using literary analysis Lowe examines the patterns of trade between India, China, the US, and Britain. Specifically, these representations allude to the commodification of Indian textiles led to the industrialized manufacturing of them in Britain, using either Indian or US cotton, and Asian …show more content…
The East India Trading Company’s position as colonial government
She then delves into archival and philosophical connections between the four continents via John Stewarts Mill’s liberalism and writings of free trade and their influence on British interest in China. British occupation of China demonstrates a lessened desire for land, but an increased interest in “a new imperial governmentality, more involved in achieving and managing the biopolitical circulation of goods and peoples in an expanded international market,” (Lowe 132). British occupation of China also lead to a number of new methods of subjection such as controlling colonized bodies via opium and hard labor. Lowe’s final chapter compares Hegelian and Marxist historical philosophy to W.E.B Du Bois and C.L.R. James’s configurations of these philosophies. Du Bois and James think “in terms of Black struggles for emancipation.” (Lowe 171). These two scholars argue that the Black worker, which was ignored or deemed irrelevant by both Hegel and Marx, is central to world history. James does so through his Marxist analysis of the Haitian revolution while Du Bois does so via his conception of “racialized class struggle” (Lowe 171) in the
Lowe, Lisa. The Intimacies of Four Continents. Duke University Press, 2015. In The Intimacies of Four Continents, Lowe examines the often obfuscated links between “European liberalism, settler colonialism in the Americas, the transatlantic African slave trade, and the East Indies and China trades in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,”(Lowe 1) via the archive, autobiographies, literature, and philosophy. Lowe argues that slavery, colonialism, and trades of bodies and goods from China and India allow for liberalism to flourish in Europe. By reading “across” archives and applying interdisciplinary (literary, historical, philosophical, and historiographical) methods, brings to light relationships …show more content…
Autobiography is liberalism’s penultimate way of expressing “individual achievement of liberty through ethical education and civilization.” (Lowe 46) Lowe argues that “liberal genres, like the autobiography, reiterate a colonial division of humanity through this formalism of affirmation and forgetting, however much race is the remainder that continues to mark the limits of freedom for the subject of colonial slavery” (70) Equiano’s autobiography may detail his transitions from slavery to freedom, but this freedom is always s threatened by the potential for recapture.
In Lowe’s analysis of Vanity Fair, or rather C.L.R. James’ reaction to it, she argues that the novel’s presents “an analogy between operations of metaphor and the processes of exchange,” (Lowe 97) specifically in regards to colonial goods. Using literary analysis Lowe examines the patterns of trade between India, China, the US, and Britain. Specifically, these representations allude to the commodification of Indian textiles led to the industrialized manufacturing of them in Britain, using either Indian or US cotton, and Asian …show more content…
The East India Trading Company’s position as colonial government
She then delves into archival and philosophical connections between the four continents via John Stewarts Mill’s liberalism and writings of free trade and their influence on British interest in China. British occupation of China demonstrates a lessened desire for land, but an increased interest in “a new imperial governmentality, more involved in achieving and managing the biopolitical circulation of goods and peoples in an expanded international market,” (Lowe 132). British occupation of China also lead to a number of new methods of subjection such as controlling colonized bodies via opium and hard labor. Lowe’s final chapter compares Hegelian and Marxist historical philosophy to W.E.B Du Bois and C.L.R. James’s configurations of these philosophies. Du Bois and James think “in terms of Black struggles for emancipation.” (Lowe 171). These two scholars argue that the Black worker, which was ignored or deemed irrelevant by both Hegel and Marx, is central to world history. James does so through his Marxist analysis of the Haitian revolution while Du Bois does so via his conception of “racialized class struggle” (Lowe 171) in the