Moments of Capital

Eli Jelly-Schapiro is Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina. He is the author of Security and Terror: American Culture and the Long History of Colonial Modernity (2018).

• Introduction: Moments of Capital1. Primitive Accumulation2. Expanded Reproduction3. Synthetic Dispossession4. InterrelationsConclusion: World Theory, World Literature

"This book offers an exceptionally lucid synthesis of Marxist theory and postcolonial theory. Its informative, careful presentation should be transformative for critics of the contemporary—and make an effective primer for the Marx-curious and world-systems-wary. Wonderfully intelligent."—Anna Kornbluh, University of Illinois Chicago "Jelly-Schapiro's thoughtful, rigorous scholarship gives us new ways of thinking about (seemingly) vastly different texts in relation to the global life of capitalism. A formidable achievement."—Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee, Oxford University "With compelling force... Jelly-Schapiro sets out to establish the theoretical, historical, and political grounds for connecting disparate works of fiction in a single critical approach or methodology, thus correcting the Eurocentric bent of world literature in much the same way as 'world theory' sets out to correct the Eurocentrism of certain strands of historical materialism."—Jacob Soule, Novel "With a lively precision.... Jelly-Schapiro provides a wide-ranging account of the development of the [three moments of capital]. The treatment of each of them... amounts to a more thoroughgoing world theory: they articulate the vicissitudes of capital on the world stage and force us to think through the unequal yet interrelated dynamics of our own world-system and its evolution."—Joel Evans, American Literary History "Cogently written, intuitively structured and consistently argued, Moments of Capital pushes the discussion about world literature onto new conceptual terrain, and it does so while clarifying the political stakes of such scholarly endeavour in a moment of widespread and deepening crisis across the capitalist world-system."—Sean O'Brien, Comparative Critical Studies