We live in a time of great social, political and economic crisis that many date to the collapse of the global banking system in 2008. Many are finding it difficult to contextualise the hardships that have taken place in the years following on from those events. It is difficult to find the answers in our present media landscape, or in a political and intellectual climate that continues to laud capitalism as the winning economic system coming out of both World War II and the end of the Cold War, which has become over the last century synonymous with democracy itself. The irony is that in our times the majority of the world's people feel disenfranchised by both capitalism and democracy. How did we come to this historical juncture? What can we learn not just from history, but from our cultural artefacts that might tell us how we first came to conduct ourselves within a system of global finance capitalism? This volume proposes that we reinterpret the writings of Charles Dickens to find the antecedents of our present situation with regards to capital, empire and subjectivity.

By Stephanie Polsky