Capitalist Formations of Enclosure: Space and the Extinction of the Commons

Despite their theoretical and political potential, recent debates on enclosure usually lack an effective consideration of how space is mobilized in the process of dispossession. This article connects the analysis of enclosure's general spatial rationality to a range of illustrations of its particular formations and procedures. Enclosure is understood as one of capitalism's “universal territorial equivalents”, a polymorphous technique with variegated expressions in time but also with a consistent logic that uses the spatial erosion of the commons to subsume non-commodified, self-managed social spaces. In response to the ever-changing nature of commoning, successive regimes of enclosure reshape the morphologies of deprivation and their articulation to other state and market apparatuses in order to meet shifting strategies of capital accumulation and social reproduction. Through a spatially nuanced account of these phenomena, I outline a tentative genealogy of enclosure formations that allows tracking diverse geographies of dispossession across different scales and regulatory contexts in various historical stages of capitalist development

Capitalist Formations of Enclosure: Space and the Extinction of the Commons

Despite their theoretical and political potential, recent debates on enclosure usually lack an effective consideration of how space is mobilized in the process of dispossession. This article connects the analysis of enclosure's general spatial rationality to a range of illustrations of its particular formations and procedures. Enclosure is understood as one of capitalism's “universal territorial equivalents”, a polymorphous technique with variegated expressions in time but also with a consistent logic that uses the spatial erosion of the commons to subsume non-commodified, self-managed social spaces. In response to the ever-changing nature of commoning, successive regimes of enclosure reshape the morphologies of deprivation and their articulation to other state and market apparatuses in order to meet shifting strategies of capital accumulation and social reproduction. Through a spatially nuanced account of these phenomena, I outline a tentative genealogy of enclosure formations that allows tracking diverse geographies of dispossession across different scales and regulatory contexts in various historical stages of capitalist development

Feminine Identities

The first four essays in this volume all focus on issues of gender in the works of different English authors and thinkers. Shorter versions of each of these essays were formerly presented as papers in an autonomous section of the Research and Educational Programme on Studies of Identity at the XXth Meeting of the Portuguese Association of Anglo-American Studies (Póvoa de Varzim, 1999) and published in the proceedings of the conference. The second cluster of essays in this volume — two of which (Jennie Wang’s and Teresa Cid’s) were first presented, in shorter versions, at the joint ASA/CAAS Conference (Montréal, 1999) — addresses the work of American women variously engaged in contexts of cultural diversity and grappling with the ideas of what it means to be an American and a woman, particularly in the twentieth century. These essays approach, from different angles, the definitional quandaries and semantic difficulties encountered when speaking about the self and the United States and provide, in one way or another, a sort of feminine rewriting of American myths and history.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologi

Connecting Women

Women’s networks proliferated during the long nineteenth century in the Atlantic World and began spreading globally. Connecting Women features presentations from the second conference of the Intercontinental Cross-Currents Network, “The Dynamics of Power: Inclusion and Exclusion in Women’s Networks during the Long Nineteenth Century,” held in 2016 at the University of Minho in Braga, Portugal. Intercontinental Cross-Currents provides a cooperative platform for researchers from all scholarly disciplines interested in the literal and metaphorical networks created and navigated by women from the European and American continents from 1776 to 1939—the so-called long nineteenth century. Organized by the University’s Institute of Arts and Humanities’ Centre for Humanistic Studies and the Department of English and North American Studies, the conference brought together international participants who investigated mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion within women’s networks forged in Britain, France, Italy, the Philippines, Portugal, and the United States. Connecting Women delves into both literary networks and those with social and political agendas that centered around temperance associations, anti-slavery societies, crime syndicates, suffragism, political organizations, and war relief.Publishe

Connecting women: national and international networks during the long nineteenth century

Women’s networks proliferated during the long nineteenth century in the Atlantic World and began spreading globally. Connecting Women features presentations from the second conference of the Intercontinental Cross-Currents Network, “The Dynamics of Power: Inclusion and Exclusion in Women’s Networks during the Long Nineteenth Century,” held in 2016 at the University of Minho in Braga, Portugal. Intercontinental Cross-Currents provides a cooperative platform for researchers from all scholarly disciplines interested in the literal and metaphorical networks created and navigated by women from the European and American continents from 1776 to 1939—the so-called long nineteenth century. Organized by the University’s Institute of Arts and Humanities’ Centre for Humanistic Studies and the Department of English and North American Studies, the conference brought together international participants who investigated mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion within women’s networks forged in Britain, France, Italy, the Philippines, Portugal, and the United States. Connecting Women delves into both literary networks and those with social and political agendas that centered around temperance associations, anti-slavery societies, crime syndicates, suffragism, political organizations, and war relief

Entangled Archives: Reparative Critical Practices in Situations "Beyond Repair"

In this essay, I explore the founding violence that the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts can be said to rest on. I propose to view the building of Charlottenborg Castle which houses the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts as a “material witness” (Schuppli) to colonial history. I suggest that the building forms part of a material “cultural archive” (Wekker) of colonialism that can be seen as an entangled archive, that is simultaneously an entanglement of overlapping histories, and an instrument that disentangled and disconnected communities affected by colonialism by producing a radical cut between the colonized communities and their creative expression. By juxtaposing paintings from the colonial era with contemporary art works the essay explores the following questions: What does it mean to conduct art education on such contested grounds? What are the ramifications of colonial-modernity within the art institutions today? And how does it continue (indirectly or directly) to distribute and determine what counts as a work of art and who counts as a subject

Fatal Attraction: The Fetishized Image of the Fatal Woman as Gothic Double

The Gothic heroine is often doubled by an image – a painting, statue, costume, drawing, projection, or mental image – that is preternaturally powerful and endowed with an antagonistic sexual presence. This image of the fatal woman, unlike portraits of the heroine, is a representation without a referent: a fetish object, both for fictional characters and critics. I argue that the simulacrum of dangerous femininity is a shifting signifier rather than a one-dimensional representation of – as previous critics have argued – ‘male fears and desires’ or female empowerment. Following the work of sociologist Bruno Latour and narratologist Mieke Bal, I read this figure as a polyvalent fetish. Rather than a representation of an intrinsic, decodable significance, this image reveals her fetishists – including critics – instead of herself or a cultural, social, or biological truth lurking behind her. I also argue that criticism of this image is as productive of cultural values as the fiction it critiques. The introduction lays out my methodology and theoretical direction, which is primarily Actor-Network-Theory, as outlined by Bruno Latour, and Narratology, particularly as it is employed by Mieke Bal. Chapter two surveys Romantic era Gothic (or the ‘golden age’ of Gothic), and compares visual culture and portraiture of the period with literary and dramatic representations of the fatal women, particularly as it pertains to the Gothic theme of ‘the unspeakable.’ In this chapter, I also compare Romantic and Gothic aesthetics. Chapter three considers Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s cult classic, Carmilla, as a serial published in the textual context of The Dark Blue journal and the eponymous vampire as a simulacral entity. The fourth chapter examines the discourse of late nineteenth-century degeneration theory in terms of artistic reproduction, with special attention to Oscar Wilde’s description of Dorian Gray’s maternal inheritance in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Looking at the ways that Victorian visual and literary tropes continue into the Twentieth Century, chapter six offers a reading of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca as an ironic camp novel in which identity is a charade and the central figure, Rebecca, is in fact a fetish image