The Novel & The Empire
Robinson Crusoe And The White Male Phantasy
· white male individuality is constructed through the ideology of white ingenuity and resourcefulness that places Blackness as the other that props up relations of power. How this is closely connected to the rise of the novel as a genre and how this genre is parallel to the rise of the middle-classes in Britain and its dependency on the Empire and its exploitative practices
· Linked to a bigger issue any reading is equally valid, personal experience of the individual, the individual is not a category but one that emerges from inclusions from blockages
· Daniel Defoe constructs Crusoe as the very definition of the white British individual conquering adversaries.
- Crusoe’s original sin is really the dynamic tendency of capitalism itself, whose aim is never merely to maintain the status quo but to transform it incessantly’. Capitalism is a dynamic system, never enough to have what you have, you have to produce more innovation is constant, Crusoe his constantly innovating and changing things
- Exploitation of resources included the development of slave trade, in which Crusoe himself become an active participant – the key to the plot of the novel. Reason Crusoe
ends up on the island is due to the pursuit of gaining slaves.