Economic Imperception; or, Reading Capital on the Beach with Thoreau

This essay argues that throughout his oeuvre, Henry David Thoreau develops a theory of sensory perception that comes to its literary culmination in Cape Cod (1865). I argue that Thoreau’s thinking on the senses demonstrates that the senses are a product of historical development. In Cape Cod, Thoreau is particularly interested in how economic interest has trained the senses to become structurally incapable of sensing the death that is a necessary part of the commodity form and social life in general—similar to what Karl Marx in Capital (1867) would describe as “dead labor.” This essay explores how in Cape Cod, Thoreau offers his reader a method of reading that seeks to make legible through literary form—specifically through puns, metaphor, and juxtaposition—the point at which the senses fail. Thoreau’s method in Cape Cod therefore differs from his more well-known works such as Walden (1854), where he only explicitly tells his readers about that to which they are blind. Ultimately, I claim that Thoreau’s political message throughout his career remains much the same, but the way in which he mobilizes literary form to convey that message marks an important change in how we might make sense of—and make sensible—political economy.