Marks of Capital: Colonialism and the Sweepers of Delhi

Abstract

Summary: In a sub-field of Marxism, A.G. Frank and E. Laclau debated the intricate details of Frank's critique of the "dualist thesis". That thesis argued that capitalism failed to overcome feudalism in its colonial adventure; Frank argued that to posit the duality between capital and feudal forms does violence to the structural integration of feudal forms into the logic of capital. Frank's critique, however, remained wedded to a level of abstraction which was unable to reveal the full implications of his suggestions. In this essay, I attempt to show that the logic of capital during colonial rule produced a municipal sanitation regime which relied upon the control over the labor of manual sweepers mediated through jobbers, overseers and contractors. Far from being the embodiment of "tradition", the sweepers since colonial India bear on their bodies the marks of capital. This essay reveals those marks as well as demonstrating the integral relation between the logic of capital and barbaric colonial rule.Liberty, equality, fraternity, love, honor, patriotism and what have you. All this did not prevent us from making anti-racial speeches about dirty niggers, dirty Jews and dirty Arabs. High-minded people, liberal or just soft-hearted, protest that they were shocked by such inconsistency; but they were either mistaken or dishonest, for with us there is nothing more consistent than a racist humanism since the European has only been able to become a man through creating slaves and monsters (Jean-Paul Sartre, 1961). 2Contemporary social history of colonialism takes as its object of critique a colonial epistemology which sought to render the "East" as something immutable and, therefore, condemned to its own authoritarian logic. This colonial understanding of the "East" was constructed after a prolonged relationship with the peoples of Asia and after a series of bitter debates within the camp of colonialism. By the time the conquering Europeans began to erect a regime on the dustheap of the previous polities, they had adopted the viewpoint that the vanquished natives had no title to the 1 Elisabeth B. Armstrong and Gyan Pandcy read through the essay and gave me very thoughtful suggestions.

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