58. Blood Meridian

As we reckon with the violent settler-colonial basis of our cities, Dallas talks with Adam Morton about a recent literary economy analysis of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. Adam published this reflection recently in the journal Political Geography. It is titled A Geography of Blood Meridian: Primitive accumulation on the frontier of space (see: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0962629821001463) There is a factual husk to Cormac McCarthy’s novel Blood Meridian; or The Evening Redness of the West, based on the real spaces and historical occurrences of a group of filibusterers, or mercenaries, based in the United States that engage in racialised acts of scalping Native Americans licensed by the state in Mexico between the 1840s and 1850s. How are these conditions of settler-colonialism to be approached in the novel and what meaning do they convey about past and present experiences of violent dispossession of land, life and territory? By advancing an approach to world literature covering literary studies, geographical studies and political economy, Adam Morton argues that Blood Meridian should be considered a quintessential novel of the racial and historical geography of the frontier economy and its spatial expansion within the uneven conditions of capitalist development. Blood Meridian can therefore be understood as both a novel about the constitution of the frontier economy and Indigenous defiance, resistance and survival. Join us for a series of fascinating conversations about some of the most interesting books about cities and urban life. Reader Bio Adam David Morton is Professor of Political Economy at the University of Sydney. Host Fenella Kernebone, Head of Programming, Sydney Ideas at the University of Sydney Interviewed by Dallas Rogers, Senior Lecturer, School of Architecture, Design and Planning, University of Sydney.