The Romantic Rhetoric of Accumulation

The Romantic Rhetoric of Accumulation explores how dispossession has shaped rhetorical language and how non-capitalist forms of life have survived within capitalism. It argues that rhetorical figure is entwined in ambivalent ways with the process of dispossession and reveals the survival of non-capitalist forms of life within capitalism.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 302 pages
Publication date: 22 November 2022
Publisher: Stanford University Press

The Romantic Rhetoric of Accumulation delves into a comprehensive examination of the protracted process of dispossession that has spanned from the British Romantic era to the present day. Lenora Hanson offers a fresh perspective by viewing subsistence histories, including reproductive labor, vagrancy, and criminality, as figurative modes of existence that are both surplus and insufficient for capitalism. Through her analysis of works by renowned authors such as S.T. Coleridge, Edmund Burke, Mary Robinson, William Wordsworth, Benjamin Moseley, Joseph Priestley, and Alexander von Humboldt, as well as contemporary film and critical theory, Hanson explores how rhetorical language serves as an archive of capital's accumulation through dispossession.

Hanson employs a range of interpretive strategies, such as reading riots through apostrophe, enclosure through anachronism, superstition and witchcraft through tautology, and the paradoxical coexistence of subsistence living with industrialization, to demonstrate the figural as a tangible record of the survival of non-capitalist forms of life within capitalism. However, she cautions that this survival is not always inherently resistant to capitalism, and the origins of capital accumulation extend beyond the Romantic period.

Hanson's study reveals the intricate and ambivalent relationship between rhetorical figure and the ongoing process of dispossession. She argues that rhetorical language not only records histories of dispossession but also documents the racialized and gendered distribution of the labor of subsistence. Romanticism, in Hanson's view, remains remarkably contemporary, as its themes and concerns resonate deeply in the present day.

Through her meticulous scholarship and insightful analysis, The Romantic Rhetoric of Accumulation offers a valuable contribution to the study of rhetoric, history, and capitalism. It sheds light on the complex dynamics between dispossession, survival, and the power of language to shape our understanding of the world.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781503633940