History 2 or 2 B? Capital Narratives for Asia and Asian Narratives for Capital

Abstract

Naturalizing a global ‘world of capitalist totality’ serves as a modality for normalizing global processes of capital accumulation. However ‘global’ remains a project evinced in specific forms of cultural action and practices. This preliminary article juxtaposes two vastly separated spheres of global economy and society that are rarely considered together. The haute sphere of a crisis ridden global financial system increasingly sees its salvation in mobilizing and disposing of the ‘surpluses of the Orient’ in a manner that speeds up global capital accumulation. In this light the financial crisis and the enhanced global role and aspirations of Asian states, in particular China and India, may lead to compromises in the ways both states have articulated local, national and global accumulation processes to one another, and mediated their impact on marginalized domestic social groups. Historians have traditionally misrecognized struggles of subordinated social groups to resist surrendering their claims to capital or resist proletarianization. It has now become more important than ever to revisit these struggles and their redoubts to uncover cultural and political actions for grounding the ‘global’, and the practices, idioms and relationships of resistance to them.