Accumulation, Dispossession, and Debt: The Racial Logic of Global Capitalism—An Introduction

Abstract

Accumulation, Dispossession, and Debt:The Racial Logic of Global Capitalism—An Introduction Paula Chakravartty (bio) and Denise Ferreira da Silva (bio) I could feel the knife in my hand, still slippery with perspiration. A Slave was a slave. Anything could be done to her. And Rufus was Rufus—erratic, alternately generous and vicious. I could accept him as my ancestor, my younger brother, my friend, but not as my master, and not as my lover . . . . . . I pulled the knife free of him somehow, raised it, and brought it down again into his back. This time he only grunted. He collapsed across me, somehow still alive, still holding my arm. . . . Something harder and stronger than Rufus's hand clamped down on my arm, squeezing it, stiffening it, pressing into it—painlessly, at first—melting into it, meshing with it as though somehow my arm were being absorbed into something. Something cold and nonliving. Something . . . paint, plaster, wood—a wall. The wall of my living room. I was back home—in my own house, in my own time. But I was still caught somehow, joined to the wall as though my arm were growing out of it—or growing into it. . . . I looked at the spot where flesh joined with plaster, stared at it uncomprehending. I was the exact spot Rufus's finger had grasped. I pulled my arm toward me, pulled hard. And suddenly, there was an avalanche of pain, red impossible agony! And I screamed and screamed. —Octavia Butler, Kindred [End Page 361] Houses are unsettling hybrid structures.…