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2 “Travailing” Theory: Global Flows of Labor and the Enclosure of the Subject
Crystal Bartolovich
Preface 2021: A lot can change in a decade. If I wrote this essay today, I would still maintain that “the ‘common’ had to be suppressed on a worldwide scale for capitalism to emerge” as I argue here; in that respect, I think the essay holds up well. But returning to it now, I would put far more emphasis on the ecological aspects of this suppression of the common and address the ecocritical turn in early modern studies (for a helpful overview, see Hiltner) as well as the inflection of theories of primitive accumulation with the ecological in the work of Jason Moore. In this way, I would all the more strongly argue for the superiority of a Marxist perspective over the so-called new materialism that characterizes most strains of premodern ecocriticism. As even some geologists recognize, the colonization of the Americas was an ecodisaster of massive consequence (e.g., Lewis and Maslin). Moore’s view of the history of capitalism as an ecological as well as social catastrophe from the late fifteenth century onward must be underscored. By denying totality – and therefore this history – I would suggest that the new materialism renders impossible confronting the fundamental changes in property relations on a global scale that would need to occur to produce a healthy planet for humans and nonhumans alike, as I have argued in more recent work, such as “Learning from Crab” (2020).
Although the “England first” position continues to have considerable purchase in debates about the emergence of capitalism, problems remain when we attempt to determine an absolute distinction (much less priority) of “domestic” over what we might call the “oceanic” – or global – aspects of this process.1 Certainly “internal” and “external” forces were already imagined in the period as fluid and interconnected. Take, for