Defoe II

Abstract

Crusoe’s wealth circulates. So does Singleton’s. They themselves do not. Crusoe will never be content to slide smoothly through the world. Singleton might be, but is prevented by his past. An economy of trade sets the limit to the kind of lives they can lead; it does not make them what they are. It does not supply an identity. Indeed, what interests us about them is their uneconomic energy: their excess, their drivenness. We might perhaps say that the economy of trade sets a limit to material achievement, but not to the wilful ingenuity of the soul. By following their instincts, by knowing their own minds, they prove that there is more to life than sliding smoothly through the world. And yet Singleton’s repentance forms part of his attempt to exchange one identity for another, and so work his way back into circulation; it reinforeces, rather than transcends, the economy of trade. Repentance, in any case, does not simply assert the freedom of the soul from worldly habit and regulation. We recognise it by its patterns and its rules. In Chapter 3, I shall consider the ways in which an economy of trade might presume to regulate the inner as well as the outer life. Here, I want to investigate the discipline of repentance, and the authority it has exercised over narratives of the inner life. Does it, in short, constitute a rival economy? These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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