Michael Niblett
Biographic Data
| ID | 105186 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michael Niblett |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michael |
| FAMILY NAME | Niblett |
| SIGNATURE | NIBLETT M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Warwick |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 39 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 25 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Commodities and Literature
Global commodities, from tea and sugar to coal and oil, have had an enduring presence in literary texts. Commodity cultures have also shaped literary ones, from the early influence of the literary coffeehouse to the serial novels facilitated by print's own emergence as a mass commodity. This book offers an accessible overview of the many intersections between literature and commodities. Tracing the stories of goods as diverse as coffee, rum, opiu…
Everyday Apocalypses
Writing in November 2010 in the aftermath of a series of devastating hurricanes, Norman Girvan admitted to “a growing sense that Caribbean states may be more and more facing a challenge of existential threats”. By this, he continues, “I mean systemic challenges to the viability of our states as functioning socio-economic-ecological-political systems” due to “the intersection of climatic, economic, social and political developments”. In this artic…
They have always burned us” femicide, finance, and neoextractivism in Latin America
World literature and commodity Frontiers
This introduction to a special issue on world literature and commodity frontiers elaborates on the methodological premise of the issue. The essays collected here all pursue a form of comparativism grounded in the life- and environment-making dynamics of commodity frontiers. Commodity frontiers are spaces of extraction or production that reorganize land and labour in such a way as to send vast reservoirs of food, energy, raw materials, and labour-…
The Cyborg Caribbean
The vision of these monstrous deformities”
The article debates the relationship between rurality, modernity, and the the dynamics of capital accumulation, with a particular focus on the Brazilian author Graciliano Ramosʼs novel São Bernardo. The main interest of this study is in exploring what happens when the narrative device of the voluble, domineering first-person narrator that various critics – such as Roberto Schwarz, Franco Moretti, or the members of the WReC – have identified as a …
Plotting the Future in Caribbean SF
This article examines the connection between Caribbean foodways and the varieties of speculative fiction that have emerged from the region. My contention is that Caribbean sf not only draws attention to the baleful impact of capitalist imperialism on agro-ecologies and food cultures, but can also have a special role in catalyzing opposition to it. I examine some of the ways in which Caribbean writers have used sf and, more particularly, Afrofutur…
“The coal beneath the flesh”
“The coal beneath the flesh”
Cet article montre que les fictions littéraires émanant des communautés de mineurs de charbon reflètent de manière frappante l’ontologie du capitalisme lié aux énergies fossiles. Il se concentre sur des textes de fiction écrits dans les années 1930 par des auteurs des marches du pays minier du nord-est de l’Angleterre et du Pays de Galles. Au Royaume-Uni, cette période fut celle d’une crise de l’industrie charbonnière, touchée non seulement par l…
Time’s carcase”
This article deploys the category of “waste” as an analytical optic through which to explore the connections between the degradation of labour, the contradictions of the value-form, the environment-making dynamics of commodity frontiers and the whirl of finance capital. This investigation forms the basis of a comparison between two very different literary texts: Thomas Hardy’s short-story “On the Western Circuit” (1891), set in England’s semi-per…
The long and the short of it
Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal includes scholarship on the work of visual artists, commentary on current issues in Caribbean studies and travelogues. Anthurium remains committed to bridging the digital divide by making peer reviewed, scholarly articles and creative writing available to teachers, students, scholars and persons interested in Caribbean literature and culture worldwide without fee based subscriptions. We would like to thank t…
It's the mass that counts
This article considers the way in which the political ecologies of coal and oil overdetermine the representation of labour struggles in Ellen Wilkinson’s Clash (1929) and Ralph de Boissière’s Crown Jewel (1952). The historical strikes around which these novels are organized were sparked by conflict over working conditions in, respectively, the coal industry in the UK and the oil industry in Trinidad. Analysing the relationship between the energie…
Caribbean globalizations, 1492 to the present day
The first effect of today’s globalization is to thrust the writer or artist into a totalitarian regime of a new kind”, argues Patrick Chamoiseau in the prologue to Caribbean Globalizations, 1492 t
Natural disasters and Victorian empire
In Natural Disasters and Victorian Empire, Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee begins his exploration of imperialist representations of disasters, such as famines and epidemic diseases, in 19th-century India
Caribbean Political Thought
Disturbers of the peace
Disturbers of the peace: representations of madness in anglophone Caribbean literature." Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 51(6), pp. 751–752
Specters in the Forest
Arguing for an understanding of the capitalist world-system as the interpretative horizon of world-literature, this essay considers how the formal and stylistic mannerisms of Edgar Mittelholzer's My Bones and My Flute (1955) register the contradictory inflection of capitalist modernity in Guyana. Specifically, it uses Mittelholzer's narrative as a means to approach these issues in environmental terms. The novel's amalgamation of Euro-American got…
Ariel's ecology
Contemporary Caribbean writing and Deleuze
"The "impossible quest for wholeness
This article explores how Wilson Harris’s aesthetic of the environment mediates both the specificity of Guyana’s topography and the dynamics of the capitalist world-ecology. Emphasizing Harris’s engagement with Amerindian cosmology, I suggest that his work seeks to drive beyond the specific form of the nature–society dialectic instantiated under capitalism. Arguing that literary forms are the abstract of specific socio-ecological relationships, t…
World-Economy, World-Ecology, World Literature
2012). World-Economy, World-Ecology, World Literature. Green Letters: Vol. 16, Global and Postcolonial Ecologies, pp. 15-30
Postcolonial studies and world literature
When you take thing out the earth and you en’t put nothing back”
This article examines Jan Carew’s 1958 novel Black Midas and its mediation of the environmental legacies of the colonial penetration of Guyana. I suggest that the ecological changes wrought by the forcible integration of the Caribbean into the capitalist world-system constitute a “trauma” that, like the traumas of slavery and the decimation of the indigenous peoples, haunts literary texts from the region. The article focuses in particular on the …
African Times and Orient Review
The Unfinished Body
This article examines Wilson Harris's The Infinite Rehearsal (1987) in light of its engagement with the transformations that occurred in the world economic system post‐1945, and the difficulties faced by Third World nations as they struggled to maintain their freedom in this context. Harris articulates a global, cross‐cultural historiography in which absolutist notions of tradition and identity are unstitched and refashioned upon a new scale. The…
World-Economy, World-Ecology, World Literature
2012). World-Economy, World-Ecology, World Literature. Green Letters: Vol. 16, Global and Postcolonial Ecologies, pp. 15-30
Postcolonial studies and world literature
Ariel's ecology
It's the mass that counts
This article considers the way in which the political ecologies of coal and oil overdetermine the representation of labour struggles in Ellen Wilkinson’s Clash (1929) and Ralph de Boissière’s Crown Jewel (1952). The historical strikes around which these novels are organized were sparked by conflict over working conditions in, respectively, the coal industry in the UK and the oil industry in Trinidad. Analysing the relationship between the energie…
"The "impossible quest for wholeness
This article explores how Wilson Harris’s aesthetic of the environment mediates both the specificity of Guyana’s topography and the dynamics of the capitalist world-ecology. Emphasizing Harris’s engagement with Amerindian cosmology, I suggest that his work seeks to drive beyond the specific form of the nature–society dialectic instantiated under capitalism. Arguing that literary forms are the abstract of specific socio-ecological relationships, t…
When you take thing out the earth and you en’t put nothing back”
This article examines Jan Carew’s 1958 novel Black Midas and its mediation of the environmental legacies of the colonial penetration of Guyana. I suggest that the ecological changes wrought by the forcible integration of the Caribbean into the capitalist world-system constitute a “trauma” that, like the traumas of slavery and the decimation of the indigenous peoples, haunts literary texts from the region. The article focuses in particular on the …
Time’s carcase”
This article deploys the category of “waste” as an analytical optic through which to explore the connections between the degradation of labour, the contradictions of the value-form, the environment-making dynamics of commodity frontiers and the whirl of finance capital. This investigation forms the basis of a comparison between two very different literary texts: Thomas Hardy’s short-story “On the Western Circuit” (1891), set in England’s semi-per…
African Times and Orient Review
The Unfinished Body
This article examines Wilson Harris's The Infinite Rehearsal (1987) in light of its engagement with the transformations that occurred in the world economic system post‐1945, and the difficulties faced by Third World nations as they struggled to maintain their freedom in this context. Harris articulates a global, cross‐cultural historiography in which absolutist notions of tradition and identity are unstitched and refashioned upon a new scale. The…
When you take thing out the earth and you en’t put nothing back”
This article examines Jan Carew’s 1958 novel Black Midas and its mediation of the environmental legacies of the colonial penetration of Guyana. I suggest that the ecological changes wrought by the forcible integration of the Caribbean into the capitalist world-system constitute a “trauma” that, like the traumas of slavery and the decimation of the indigenous peoples, haunts literary texts from the region. The article focuses in particular on the …
World-Economy, World-Ecology, World Literature
2012). World-Economy, World-Ecology, World Literature. Green Letters: Vol. 16, Global and Postcolonial Ecologies, pp. 15-30
Postcolonial studies and world literature
"The "impossible quest for wholeness
This article explores how Wilson Harris’s aesthetic of the environment mediates both the specificity of Guyana’s topography and the dynamics of the capitalist world-ecology. Emphasizing Harris’s engagement with Amerindian cosmology, I suggest that his work seeks to drive beyond the specific form of the nature–society dialectic instantiated under capitalism. Arguing that literary forms are the abstract of specific socio-ecological relationships, t…
Specters in the Forest
Arguing for an understanding of the capitalist world-system as the interpretative horizon of world-literature, this essay considers how the formal and stylistic mannerisms of Edgar Mittelholzer's My Bones and My Flute (1955) register the contradictory inflection of capitalist modernity in Guyana. Specifically, it uses Mittelholzer's narrative as a means to approach these issues in environmental terms. The novel's amalgamation of Euro-American got…
Ariel's ecology
Contemporary Caribbean writing and Deleuze
Natural disasters and Victorian empire
In Natural Disasters and Victorian Empire, Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee begins his exploration of imperialist representations of disasters, such as famines and epidemic diseases, in 19th-century India
Caribbean Political Thought
Disturbers of the peace
Disturbers of the peace: representations of madness in anglophone Caribbean literature." Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 51(6), pp. 751–752
Caribbean globalizations, 1492 to the present day
The first effect of today’s globalization is to thrust the writer or artist into a totalitarian regime of a new kind”, argues Patrick Chamoiseau in the prologue to Caribbean Globalizations, 1492 t
It's the mass that counts
This article considers the way in which the political ecologies of coal and oil overdetermine the representation of labour struggles in Ellen Wilkinson’s Clash (1929) and Ralph de Boissière’s Crown Jewel (1952). The historical strikes around which these novels are organized were sparked by conflict over working conditions in, respectively, the coal industry in the UK and the oil industry in Trinidad. Analysing the relationship between the energie…
The long and the short of it
Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal includes scholarship on the work of visual artists, commentary on current issues in Caribbean studies and travelogues. Anthurium remains committed to bridging the digital divide by making peer reviewed, scholarly articles and creative writing available to teachers, students, scholars and persons interested in Caribbean literature and culture worldwide without fee based subscriptions. We would like to thank t…
Time’s carcase”
This article deploys the category of “waste” as an analytical optic through which to explore the connections between the degradation of labour, the contradictions of the value-form, the environment-making dynamics of commodity frontiers and the whirl of finance capital. This investigation forms the basis of a comparison between two very different literary texts: Thomas Hardy’s short-story “On the Western Circuit” (1891), set in England’s semi-per…
“The coal beneath the flesh”
“The coal beneath the flesh”
Cet article montre que les fictions littéraires émanant des communautés de mineurs de charbon reflètent de manière frappante l’ontologie du capitalisme lié aux énergies fossiles. Il se concentre sur des textes de fiction écrits dans les années 1930 par des auteurs des marches du pays minier du nord-est de l’Angleterre et du Pays de Galles. Au Royaume-Uni, cette période fut celle d’une crise de l’industrie charbonnière, touchée non seulement par l…
The vision of these monstrous deformities”
The article debates the relationship between rurality, modernity, and the the dynamics of capital accumulation, with a particular focus on the Brazilian author Graciliano Ramosʼs novel São Bernardo. The main interest of this study is in exploring what happens when the narrative device of the voluble, domineering first-person narrator that various critics – such as Roberto Schwarz, Franco Moretti, or the members of the WReC – have identified as a …
Plotting the Future in Caribbean SF
This article examines the connection between Caribbean foodways and the varieties of speculative fiction that have emerged from the region. My contention is that Caribbean sf not only draws attention to the baleful impact of capitalist imperialism on agro-ecologies and food cultures, but can also have a special role in catalyzing opposition to it. I examine some of the ways in which Caribbean writers have used sf and, more particularly, Afrofutur…
The Cyborg Caribbean
Commodities and Literature
Global commodities, from tea and sugar to coal and oil, have had an enduring presence in literary texts. Commodity cultures have also shaped literary ones, from the early influence of the literary coffeehouse to the serial novels facilitated by print's own emergence as a mass commodity. This book offers an accessible overview of the many intersections between literature and commodities. Tracing the stories of goods as diverse as coffee, rum, opiu…
Everyday Apocalypses
Writing in November 2010 in the aftermath of a series of devastating hurricanes, Norman Girvan admitted to “a growing sense that Caribbean states may be more and more facing a challenge of existential threats”. By this, he continues, “I mean systemic challenges to the viability of our states as functioning socio-economic-ecological-political systems” due to “the intersection of climatic, economic, social and political developments”. In this artic…
They have always burned us” femicide, finance, and neoextractivism in Latin America
World literature and commodity Frontiers
This introduction to a special issue on world literature and commodity frontiers elaborates on the methodological premise of the issue. The essays collected here all pursue a form of comparativism grounded in the life- and environment-making dynamics of commodity frontiers. Commodity frontiers are spaces of extraction or production that reorganize land and labour in such a way as to send vast reservoirs of food, energy, raw materials, and labour-…
Sociology (14 works) · History (12 works) · Political science (12 works) · Caribbean history, culture, and politics (10 works) · Archaeology (9 works) · Art (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature (7 works)