I know this post is far overdue; it was meant to be discussed long before this is posted now. But here goes.

In the past 300 years or so, there have been major shifts in plenty of aspects in the sciences and humanities – namely economic thought, art theory/history, and literature. The first shift coincidentally occurred around the 19th century. Art began to break away from painters simply trying to recapture the image of some rich noble or royalty to painters starting to become more expressionist and bold (i.e. Vincent Van Gogh). In economics, this period is when present-time theories are starting to be developed – especially when Keynes starts entering the picture. In literature, writers start to break away from traditional writing forms and genres.

Then another shift occurs – postmodernism. This occurred mostly within the 20th century all the way to today. Artists again broke away from modernist patterns of painting and started to introduce further meanings & themes into their art. This is when abstract paintings that resemble a beautiful colourful mess are passed off as art. Writers start to introduce postmodern aspects, such as fragmentation and the unreliable narrator. In economics, theorists have started to assess and analyze different strains of economics, bringing with them entirely new modes of economic thought and process.

So now I suppose we wait for the next shift? The speed of technological progression, global interdependence, and the internet  should be a key catalyst in this. Anyways, what should the next shift look like? Or how have other topics (i.e. architecture) progressed through the modern and postmodern shifts?

Hi Everyone,

I suppose we can now open the floor to discuss what our main thesises were or any major themes/ideas we were focused on throughout the term.

What I found is a recurring pattern in most of the novels throughout the term. The economic well-being of most major characters seem to get better or worsen depending on their actions and habits. We can take Roxana and Tom Tulliver for example. There are literary critics who have analyzed either characters’ actions and explained how these characters made their economic gains. Roxana made her gains not only by catering to the various men she was with, but by making sure she kept her distance from anyone that would expose her past or who she really is. Tom Tulliver made his gains by making and managing his money and capital extremely well – to the point where he manages to pay off his father’s debts and reclaim the mill as well.

How about you guys?

Hello hello everybody!

I was just thinking about the different kinds of economic problems/questions we’ve learned throughout the term, and their respective “answers”. And then I wondered whether there were more schools of thought to consider…and obviously the answer is yes, because the world super complicated!

Other than the potlatch practice, I was curious as to whether there were other normative, cultural systems that could add to our economic topic. One that I thought of pertains to Islamic economics, due to a brief discussion I had with a friend a year ago. She mentioned the concept of ‘Riba’, which refers to interest. From what I understood from her explanation, it is illegal in Islam to take or receive it, due to its nature of fabrication. It is not “produced”, like salaries are. As a result, taking/receiving interest is morally wrong. It is unjust, and considered to be exploitative gains made from trade or business. She spoke about this in reference to her taking out loans, and actively seeking an Islamic lender in order to forego added interest.
Since Islam is a way of life, it has its own guide to an economic system. I definitely can’t say I fully understand “Islamic economics” because it is a super complex subject, but I thought Riba was especially interesting because it’s an economic concept which stems from a belief, but one which unlike faith in credit or currency. It instead comes from a different abstraction, and reflects morally on the parties who engage/do not engage with Riba. However, I also do believe that there are ways to “go around” the moral/economic restriction of Riba by essentially paying an upfront fee for a loan, instead of interest. As a result, it seems that the system of borrowing and lending just finds a different way to compensate the lender. Money always finds a way!

Just thought that might be interesting to think about. And of course, if anyone wants to add to this/explain the concept of Riba or “Islamic Economics” further, please do! Good luck with finals!

Stemming from the below discussion regarding our favourite book of the semester, it was definitely Money for me. I found that I could not put the book down, and it included many of the topics of the course that we have covered (much like Capital). For Money, I found the lecture on Thatcherism, and that tension between John Self’s relationship with Britain and New York, very interesting. For a European history course, I wrote my term paper on Thatcherism and the influence Thatcher had not just in Britain, but in Europe and North America. Her economic policies were VERY hard-nosed and she was not one of compromise. Scholars differ on whether her government and policies were beneficial or destructive for England, but regardless she drastically changed the economic landscape of Britain in the 1980’s.

As we discussed, John Self is the uttermost consumer of everything – porn, prostitutes, fast food, drugs, alcohol, etc. He is constantly on the hunt, and has an insatiable appetite, for instant gratification. He lives like a he has the finances of a celebrity, until of course, it all comes crashing down at the end. In the 1980’s, Britain was recovering from her plunge following World War II – a plunge from one of the world’s strongest economies to rampant unemployment, inflation and societal breakdown. It seems so fitting that John Self’s world takes a final fall, regarding the relationship with his “father”, when he is back in England. Here, John is beyond broke, and he has to start rebuilding his life, block by block.

From my research, Thatcher stepped into the political spotlight in Britain at a very tumultuous time, and also had to begin re-building the economy and culture, block by block. At the start of Thatcher’s rule, Britain was said to be suffering from “degringolade”, or falling down sickness. The West German Ambassador at the time said Britain “had the economy of East Germany, and of the 22 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) Britain ranked 19^th  Essentially, Britain was the sick man of Europe.

I see a lot of similarities between descriptions of John Self and Thatcher – scholars discuss Thatcher’s ability to bully, browbeat, and (most importantly in this context), seduce the British electorate. John Self bullies, beats (literally and figuratively) and seduces almost everyone he enters into a relationship with in Money. Furthermore, Thatcher fought hard for Britain to be included in the European Economic Community (EEC, now the EU), as the six original countries were very skeptical of Britain’s place in Europe and what her involvement in the EEC would look like. Britain was the odd one out, looked at with scepticism and critique, and John Self is very much the odd man out in Money – he becomes the joke of the entire novel.

One of Thatcher’s achievements while in office, cited to be one of her greatest, is the British Rebate she negotiated and obtained at the Fontainebleau Summit in June of 1984. This negotiation saved British payment into the Cultural Agricultural Policy (which benefited Britain very little), and put the burden of payment onto other countries, primarily France. Thatcher wanted to keep British money as British money, and was willing to spend that money on the British people and economy, but was not willing to pay into something that did not benefit them directly. This seems fitting into he context of Money because, of course, John Self spends endless amounts of money one his sources of gratification – drugs, alcohol, sex, and fast food. We can easily call Self selfish, and Thatcher was viewed in much the same light following her fight for negotiation.

I argue that the effect of Thatcherism on the global economy is very present in Amis’ Money, and there can be some very interesting parallels drawn into the novel.

Sorry for the long post!

Green, E. H. H.. “Thatcherism: An Historical Perspective”. Transactions of the Royal Historical

Society 9 (1999): 17–42. Web.

Moravcsik, Andrew. “Negotiating the Single European Act: national interests and conventional

statecraft in the European Community”. International Organization. 45.1 (1991). 19-56. Web.

My apologies in advance for my timing of this post. It’s quite overdue but I still wanted to touch on a few things about the novel.

Emma, one of my favorite novels from this course, made me want to dig deeper about human nature when motives are tied in with the economy. When we introduce ourselves in present day we hardly ever announce our familial background, level of wealth, or how much land we hold. However, in Austen’s time, paying recognition to these factors was the standard, perhaps even mandatory, before conversing with the individual. So when Emma gathers sufficient information about Mr. Martin’s birth, nature, occupation and education before truly interacting with the tenant farmer, her superficiality underestimates his worthiness, sincerity and compatibility for Harriet. This makes her a slave to her manipulative imagination that prohibits her from engaging in matters perceptively. This becomes increasingly dangerous to those around her, for she often fails to understand the causes and effects of her thoughts once delivered through action.

Emma’s obsessive control over relationships and positional goods cripples her development in moral conviction, and in turn causes her to have a fall out with Mr. Knightley. In fact, her psychological and behavioural processes are tainted by her superiority, which acts as a device to justify her self-interested beliefs about other people. I don’t think Emma is incapable of understanding human relations in a perceptive and compassionate way, but rather it is her manipulative imagination and egocentric desires that impede her from developing empathy for those below her class and status.

I was wondering if anyone thought anything similar or different? I’d love to hear what you can add on!

Hi all,

Now that the term is wrapping up and quite a handful of novels are finished, I suppose it’s time to open the floor and, in retrospect, discuss which novels were your favourites and why.

I’ll start first. My first pick would be Money: A Suicide Note. For a novel within an academic curriculum, its content and subject matter were surprisingly quite refreshing. I’m not advocating indulging in vices altogether, but it’s just not every semester that everyone get a chance to explore content and topics deemed risque in today’s society. The novel seems akin to all those ‘sex drugs and rock n roll’ tales portrayed by celebrities and rock stars. The progression towards the novel’s ending also suggests a fresh outlook in life for the reader; sometimes we can find happiness in even a simple and humble life. And I have to admit; there were quite a handful of times I find myself chuckling whilst reading the novel.

I personally liked Mill on the Floss as well. Right on the first few pages and chapters of the book, the novel gives the reader a chance to feel sense of heartwarming childhood nostalgia. The lengthy passage of elapsed time (within the novel) to see how characters develop is always an enjoyable experience. Abrupt deaths are always a shock in fictionary tales; but almost often, every great and popular story always has an element of abrupt death (i.e. Game of Thrones…).

Would love to see everyone’s thoughts

Hi all,

Now that we’re finished with the novel-based portion of the course, I thought I would share a couple of passages I found interesting in a book I’ve been reading for another class. The book is about American modernist poet Hart Crane, and this particular section of the book is concerned with Crane’s elaborate use of descriptive language. While these passages are concerned with verse, I’m wondering if there are any comments we can make on the ‘economy of language’ in any of the novels we’ve read, or novels in general.

“A case can be made, however, on behalf of such an ‘immature’ way of writing. In ‘Writing as a General Economy,’ the Canadian poet-critic Steve McCaffery vigorously defends wasteful expenditure as a defining characteristic of good poetry. He builds upon Georges Bataille’s distinction between a ‘restricted economy,’ one whose ‘operation is based upon valorized notions of restraint, conservation, investment, profit, accumulation and cautious procedularities in risk taking,’ and a ‘general economy,’ which includes ‘all non-utilitarian activities of excess, unavoidable waste and non-productive consumption’ such as ‘orgasm, sacrifice, meditation, The Last Supper, and dreams’. […] McCaffery takes a stand on behalf of that rare poetry that exhibits ‘deployment without use, without aim and without a will to referential or propositional lordship’. Drawing upon Marcel Mauss and Bronislaw Malinowski, he argues that such special poetry operates not according to the restrictive economy of capitalism but according to the logic of the ‘gift exchange,’ in which ‘the object is exhausted, consumed in the very staging’ of the gift and no return or reward is expected. As in a potlatch, a perspicacious poet displays and exhausts the abundance of his or her most prized possession, language. ‘TO WASTE,’ McCaffery writes, ‘IS TO LIVE THE EXPERIENCE OF WEALTH’.” (Reed 84-85, McCaffery and Bataille qtd. in Reed 84-84).

I’d love to know what you guys think!

Reed, Brent. Hart Crane: After his Lights. University of Alabama Press (2006). Print.

Acquiring a large sum of money is, at the outset of the novel, presented as a good thing, and when Roger Yount doesn’t acquire that money, his million pound bonus, he and his family begin to slide just a little faster towards the red. Where for Roger that sum amounts to more or less “maintenance money” for the Younts, when similar sums encroach upon the narratives of Freddy, Zbigniew, and Mary, they are sums that stilt or potentially reverse, rather than maintain, the flow of their individual economic narratives.

Freddy’s payout is reliant upon the agreement and the belief that he will never play again, Mary’s inheritance of her mother’s house ends up taking a large chunk out of her savings to pay for the inheritance tax and preparing the house for sale (Mary and Alan however refuse to take a loan out to cover these expenses for the sheer ridiculousness of the situation), and the case of money much worried over by Zbigniew is, once revealed to Mary, deemed useless not only for the legal trouble it would bring, but for its inability to function as legal tender and the likelihood of its depreciation or taxation.

Receiving a large amount of money, it seems, goes hand in hand with either losing a large amount of money concurrently, or forfeiting a larger influx of money that may be obtained over a longer amount of time – see Freddy’s situation and Albert’s refusal to invest his suitcase full of tenners.

I’d love to hear other thoughts on the uselessness of money, or of legal tender in Capital, as there were so many variations on the theme throughout the novel that I couldn’t quite wrap my head around a coherent way of framing it!

Hey everyone!

In light of us beginning Lanchester’s “Capital”, I thought I’d share this 2015 BBC documentary “Millionaire Basement Wars” I saw about a year ago.

I thought it was especially relevant to the prologue of “Capital” because it’s about the maximization of property value in the heart of London, one of the most expensive places to live in the world. Mega-basements are being built, much like along Pepys Road in the novel, for houses already valued for millions of pounds. The excavation additions, of course, only add more value. The areas covered by the documentary include Kensington and Chelsea, and covers the rapid growth of subterranean building along its streets. Much like how the houses in “Capital” are described to have had “become central actors in their own right” (12), “as if they had come alive, and had wishes and needs of their own” (13), the houses along Kensington and Chelsea are trophy asset purchases, and are significant enough to justify a documentary! They are definitely the main actors, here. While there is an attempt to regulate the number of excavations, there are, in short, constant trucks and construction along the narrows roads, and never-ending complaints from residents about the noise and disturbances. Applications for excavations are absolutely backed up. Though the main motive for the excavations is to further the property value (often doubling the original value) by adding things like cinemas, gyms, and waterfalls, it nevertheless seems ridiculous how peace and quiet in a residential neighbourhood has been exchanged for never-ending and excessive commodification! It really does seem like houses are the ones living on the streets, and not the residents.

Anyway, just thought this would be interesting to share! I would love to hear any further thoughts!