Abstract
In Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland (2008), cricket is the dominant thematic mechanism, and anchoring allegorical device, through which the novel encodes the capitalist world-system, including the ways in which structural continuity and “riskless risk” are glorified as the neo-liberal conditions for a cosmopolitan class of white international workers, in the face of, and directly at the expense of, their racialized, economic and cricketing “Other”. This encoding renders visible the “systemic cycles of accumulation” that characterize the history of capitalism. Yet the novel goes to extreme lengths to hold off, seemingly as perpetual delay, the failure-filled future consequences of its own leaked revelations. Hence, it is only by resituating Netherland in a world-systemic frame that critical sense can be made of Hans’s feigned cricketing bildung and the novel’s Dutch-English-American journey of cyclical continuity.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 287-300 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | Journal of Postcolonial Writing |
| Volume | 52 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 20 Jul 2016 |
Bibliographical note
This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details.Keywords
- Joseph O’Neill
- Netherland
- New York
- continuity
- cricket
- risk
- the British Empire
- the Caribbean
- the Dutch Republic
- world-system
