Earticle

초록

영어

David Milch’s Deadwood features a 19th century mining camp of the same name, focusing on the interactions between the historic notables of the camp, such as Al Swearengen, Seth Bullock, and George Hearst. Deadwood is an illegal camp established in the Indian Territory as a result of the Black Hill Gold Rush (1874-77). The White men’s ventures in the Indian Territory outside the state turned Deadwood into a burgeoning town in need of law and order for its further development. And the camp’s notables desperately need the region’s annexation to the US in order to stabilize and legalize their expropriated property. In this paper, while taking a cue from Giorgio Agamben’s idea of state of exception—the suspension of laws by the sovereign becomes a dominant paradigm of government—I argue David Milch’s Deadwood reveals that the suspension of laws is an integral part of capitalist expansion and accumulation. In arguing about Deadwood’s resurrection of the 19th century mining camp in our 21st century, I propose that this TV show depicts a reiteration of a certain past that has become dominant again in our present: the resurrection and repetition of Marx’s primitive accumulation in the contemporary form of capitalism, whether it is dubbed neoliberalism, unfettered capitalism, or disaster capitalism. By exploring the main characters’ motives and struggles over the Deadwood camp’s annexation to which a drastic capitalist reform of the camp leads, this paper reveals that the same sovereign logic of exception is innate in primitive accumulation.

목차

I. Introduction
 II. The Historical Materiality of the Deadwood Camp
 III. The Deadwood Camp and the State of Exception
 IV. George Hearst and the Capitalist State of Exception
 V. Conclusion
 Works Cited
 Abstract

키워드

저자

• Kim Younghoon [ 김영훈 | University of Alberta ]

참고문헌

발행기관

간행물

표지보기 관심저널 등록

• 간행물명

  영어영문학연구 [The Jungang Journal of English Language and Literature]

• 간기

  계간

• pISSN

  1598-3293

• 수록기간

  1968~2026

• 등재여부

  KCI 등재

• 십진분류

  KDC 840 DDC 810