From Treasure To Trash Island Colonialist Fantasies Of Island Wealth Reworked In Satin Island By Tom Mccarthy And Crazy Rich Asians By Kevin Kwan

Abstract

Neoliberal practices of speculation and fabulation are increasingly compromising established notions of truth on the one hand and fiction on the other. As presaged by Fredric Jameson at the end of last century when he defined globalization as the demoralizing and depressing “‘moment of truth’ of postmodernism,” contemporary writers are currently facing a foreclosure upon “imaginable alternatives” to neoliberal capitalism. Fiction, one might argue, is being superseded by the dazzling reality of the phantasmagorical journeys on which today’s financiers send their fictitious capital, by the positively surreal profits made on these journeys, and by the fantastically intricate schemes ensuring that these profits end up as safely hidden treasures in highly exclusive offshore locations. At the same time as writers and critics are grappling with this entrapment, a different notion of beyondness is regaining currency outside the literary field – a notion, once central to those iconic western fantasies of island wealth, which for centuries helped promote European expansionism and popularize an ideology that favoured the competitive acquisition and exclusive ownership of wealth over the collective creation and possession of what would have been seen as “common” wealth. To convey just how varied contemporary reactivations of the colonialist island discourse can be, this essay juxtaposes two radically dissimilar novels: Satin Island by the British writer Tom McCarthy and Crazy Rich Asians by the American writer of Singaporean descent, Kevin Kwan.