MARKS OF CAPITAL - COLONIALISM AND THE SWEEPERS OF DELHI

In a sub-field of Marxism, A.G. Frank and E. Laclau debated the intric ate details of Frank's critique of the ''dualist thesis''. That thesis argued that capitalism failed to overcome feudalism in its colonial a dventure; Frank argued that to posit the duality between capital and f eudal forms does violence to the structural integration of feudal form s into the logic of capital. Frank's critique, however, remained wedde d to a level of abstraction which was unable to reveal the full implic ations of his suggestions. In this essay, I attempt to show that the l ogic of capital during colonial rule produced a municipal sanitation r egime which relied upon the control over the labor of manual sweepers mediated through jobbers, overseers and contractors. Far from being th e embodiment of ''tradition'', the sweepers since colonial India bear on their bodies the marks of capital. This essay reveals those marks a s well as demonstrating the integral relation between the logic of cap ital and barbaric colonial rule.