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“Ludicrous Anachronisms”Dreams, Enclosures, and Mary Robinson’s “The Maniac”

“Ludicrous Anachronisms”Dreams, Enclosures, and Mary Robinson’s “The Maniac” This article proposes that eighteenth-century and Romantic-era accounts of dreams offer a useful model for understanding the phenomenon of enclosure, or what Marx famously labeled “so-called primitive accumulation.” Rather than a historical event or a set of particular laws, enclosure can be understood as a process by which gendered labor and criminalized mobility, two forms of what Marxist critics call “non-work,” became integral features of capital accumulation over the course of the Romantic period. This article pursues an analogy between what John Hunter defined as the “ludicrous anachronisms” of dreams and such forms of “non-work” as they appear in Mary Robinson’s 1791 poem “The Maniac.” Framed as an opium-induced dream that enables Robinson to share a psycho-physiological state akin to the wanderer “mad Jemmy,” Robinson forges relations between the poet and Jemmy that complicate any straightforward or sympathetic identification. Instead, her use of rhetorical indirection and inversion establishes analogies between the two through the effects of enclosure, highlighting the ambivalent ways in which subjects came to be indirectly related to one another through an historical inversion of their means of subsistence into conditions of vulnerability. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Comparative Literature Duke University Press

“Ludicrous Anachronisms”Dreams, Enclosures, and Mary Robinson’s “The Maniac”

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Copyright
Copyright © 2020 by University of Oregon
ISSN
0010-4124
eISSN
1945-8517
DOI
10.1215/00104124-8127449
Publisher site
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Abstract

This article proposes that eighteenth-century and Romantic-era accounts of dreams offer a useful model for understanding the phenomenon of enclosure, or what Marx famously labeled “so-called primitive accumulation.” Rather than a historical event or a set of particular laws, enclosure can be understood as a process by which gendered labor and criminalized mobility, two forms of what Marxist critics call “non-work,” became integral features of capital accumulation over the course of the Romantic period. This article pursues an analogy between what John Hunter defined as the “ludicrous anachronisms” of dreams and such forms of “non-work” as they appear in Mary Robinson’s 1791 poem “The Maniac.” Framed as an opium-induced dream that enables Robinson to share a psycho-physiological state akin to the wanderer “mad Jemmy,” Robinson forges relations between the poet and Jemmy that complicate any straightforward or sympathetic identification. Instead, her use of rhetorical indirection and inversion establishes analogies between the two through the effects of enclosure, highlighting the ambivalent ways in which subjects came to be indirectly related to one another through an historical inversion of their means of subsistence into conditions of vulnerability.

Journal

Comparative Literature – Duke University Press

Published: Jun 1, 2020

References

  • The Nonperformativity of Antiracism
    Ahmed, Sara
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    Davis, Angela Y. James, Joy Sharpley-Whiting, Tracy
  • Reproduction
    De’Ath, Amy Diamanti, Jeff Szeman, Imre
  • Mary Robinson, Poetry
    Fay, Elizabeth Burwick, Frederick Goslee, Nancy Moore Hoeveler, Diane Long
  • Staying with the Trouble: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene
    Haraway, Donna J. Moore, Jason W.
  • The Person, Historical Time, and the Universalization of Capital
    Hartley, Daniel
  • The Anarchy of Colored Girls Assembled in a Riotous Manner
    Hartman, Saidiya V.
  • The Physiology of Walking
    Holmes, Oliver Wendell
  • Apostrophe, Animation, and Abortion
    Johnson, Barbara
  • Blake’s Metropolitan Radicalism
    Makdisi, Saree Chandler, James Gilmartin, Kevin
  • The Topicality of Prehistory: A New Reading of Marx’s Analysis of ‘So-Called Primitive Accumulation.’
    Mezzadra, Sandro
  • From ‘Mingled Measure’ to ‘Ecstatic Measures’: Mary Robinson’s Poetic Reading of ‘Kubla Khan.’
    Robinson, Daniel
  • Continuation. By a Friend
    Robinson, Maria
  • The Maniac
    Robinson, Mary Pascoe, Judith
  • The Molecularization of Sexuality: On Some Primitivisms of the Present
    Rosenberg, Jordy
  • Limited Analogies: Reading Relations in Wordsworth’s ‘The Borderers.’
    Schey, Taylor
  • The Nonperformativity of Antiracism
    Ahmed, Sara
  • Women and Capitalism: Dialectics of Oppression and Liberation
    Davis, Angela Y. James, Joy Sharpley-Whiting, Tracy
  • Reproduction
    De’Ath, Amy Diamanti, Jeff Szeman, Imre
  • Mary Robinson, Poetry
    Fay, Elizabeth Burwick, Frederick Goslee, Nancy Moore Hoeveler, Diane Long
  • Staying with the Trouble: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene
    Haraway, Donna J. Moore, Jason W.
  • The Person, Historical Time, and the Universalization of Capital
    Hartley, Daniel
  • The Anarchy of Colored Girls Assembled in a Riotous Manner
    Hartman, Saidiya V.
  • The Physiology of Walking
    Holmes, Oliver Wendell
  • Apostrophe, Animation, and Abortion
    Johnson, Barbara
  • Blake’s Metropolitan Radicalism
    Makdisi, Saree Chandler, James Gilmartin, Kevin
  • The Topicality of Prehistory: A New Reading of Marx’s Analysis of ‘So-Called Primitive Accumulation.’
    Mezzadra, Sandro
  • From ‘Mingled Measure’ to ‘Ecstatic Measures’: Mary Robinson’s Poetic Reading of ‘Kubla Khan.’
    Robinson, Daniel
  • Continuation. By a Friend
    Robinson, Maria
  • The Maniac
    Robinson, Mary Pascoe, Judith
  • The Molecularization of Sexuality: On Some Primitivisms of the Present
    Rosenberg, Jordy
  • Limited Analogies: Reading Relations in Wordsworth’s ‘The Borderers.’
    Schey, Taylor