Oeconomics in the Early Modern English Imagination: Global Consequences
Two thrilling workshops have been organised by Anne Enderwitz (Humboldt) and Lorna Hutson (Oxford)
Foundational critical work on early modern European literature has explored the interrelationships between an accelerating 'economy' (in the modern sense) and imaginative transformations of the affective, instrumental and sexual relations of the household or 'oeconomy'. More recently, however, these critical questions have given way to more pressing issues of decolonisation, the racialisation of slavery and environmental exploitation.
These two workshops take as their starting point the idea that the notion of 'oeconomy' is also racialised and environmentally significant. That is, thinking about representations of the early modern English household and its generation of credit, honour, kinship and wealth is related to the racialisation of transatlantic slavery and the legitimisation of the exploitation of the sea.