ABSTRACT American literary naturalism is well known for its formal engagement with determination and abstraction and its thematic preoccupation with Anglo-Saxon degeneration. Yet the central importance of the U.S.-Asian border to the literature's elaboration of the imperial contradictions of monopoly finance capitalism has been largely overlooked. Taking up the question of U.S. anti-Asian anticapitalism, a political movement with which American naturalism was historically coincident, this essay explores the powerful early twentieth-century consensus that permitted the conflation of trust-busting and coolie-fighting.
The «Morbid Fear of the Subjective». Privateness and Objectivity in Mid-twentieth Century American Naturalism