{"product_id":"specters-of-the-atlantic-9780822335962","title":"Specters of the Atlantic","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eIn September 1781, the captain of the British slave ship \u003ci\u003eZong\u003c\/i\u003e ordered 133 slaves thrown overboard, enabling the ship’s owners to file an insurance claim for their lost “cargo.” Accounts of this horrific event quickly became a staple of abolitionist discourse on both sides of the Atlantic. Ian Baucom revisits, in unprecedented detail, the \u003ci\u003eZong\u003c\/i\u003e atrocity, the ensuing court cases, reactions to the event and trials, and the business and social dealings of the Liverpool merchants who owned the ship. Drawing on the work of an astonishing array of literary and social theorists, including Walter Benjamin, Giovanni Arrighi, Jacques Derrida, and many others, he argues that the tragedy is central not only to the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the political and cultural archives of the black Atlantic but also to the history of modern capital and ethics. To apprehend the \u003ci\u003eZong \u003c\/i\u003etragedy, Baucom suggests, is not to come to terms with an isolated atrocity but t\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eSpecters of the Atlantic \u003c\/i\u003eis quite possibly the most provocative scholarly work I have read in a decade. I really cannot praise this book enough.”—Mary Poovey, author of \u003ci\u003eA History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A fantastically stimulating read, \u003ci\u003eSpecters of the Atlantic\u003c\/i\u003e will be an extremely significant book. Its core strength is that it deals in such detail and in such an imaginative way with the primary texts associated with the case of the \u003ci\u003eZong\u003c\/i\u003e. Nobody has read those texts in such a careful and stimulating way before, and nobody has used the case to construct such an ambitious historical schema.”—Peter Hulme, author of \u003ci\u003eRemnants of Conquest: The Island Caribs and Their Visitors, 1877–1998\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“This work is a compelling study of the roles of slavery and abolition in the origins of finance capital in the British Atlantic empire. The work is an interdisciplinary tour de force, with superb scholarship on slavery, modernity, the Enlightenment, postmodernism and contemporary literary theory. It is one of the finest comparative studies of the philosophy of history and liberation struggles that I have read.” -- Charles C. Verharen * Interventions *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments ix\u003cbr\u003e Part One: “Now Being”: Slavery, Speculation, and the Measure of our Time \u003cbr\u003e 1. Liverpool, a Capital of the Long Twentieth Century 3\u003cbr\u003e 2. “Subject $”; or, the “Type” of the Modern 35\u003cbr\u003e 3. “Madam Death! Madam Death!”:Credit, Insurance, and the Atlantic Cycle of Capital Accumulation 80\u003cbr\u003e 4.”\u003ci\u003eSignum Rememorativum, Demonstrativum, Prognostikon\u003c\/i\u003e”: Modernity and the Truth Event 113\u003cbr\u003e 5.”Please decide”: The Singular and the Speculative 141\u003cbr\u003e Part Two: Specters of the Atlantic: Slavery and the Witness \u003cbr\u003e 6. Frontispiece: Testimony, Rights, and the State of Exception 173\u003cbr\u003e 7. The View from the Window: Sympathy, Melancholy, and the Problem of “Humanity” 195\u003cbr\u003e 8. The Fact of History: On Cosmopolitan Interestedness 213\u003cbr\u003e 9. The Imaginary Resentment of the Dead: A Theory of Melancholy Sentiment 242\u003cbr\u003e 10. “To Tumble into It, and Gasp for Breath as We Go Down”: The Idea of Suffering and the Case of Liberal Cosmopolitanism 265\u003cbr\u003e 11. This\/Such, for Instance: The Witness against “History” 297\u003cbr\u003e Part Three: “The Sea is History” \u003cbr\u003e 12. “The Sea is History”: On Temporal Accumulation 309\u003cbr\u003e Notes 335\u003cbr\u003e Index 377\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Duke University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49406039064919,"sku":"9780822335962","price":22.79,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780822335962.jpg?v=1730494332","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/specters-of-the-atlantic-9780822335962","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}