On the Convergence of Innis's International Political Economy and Sebald's Novels

In his paper "On the Convergence of Innis's International Political Economy and Sebald's Novels" Joseph S. Pinter contributes to the development of an area of scholarship on Harold A. Innis and Canadian political economy which deals with issues of representation, landscape, and memory. Pinter draws attention to a specific aspect of Innis's approach to political economy and focuses on ways in which Innis was able to represent fundamental aspects of the settlement process in Canada. Pinter argues that Innis focussed on landscape as a basic element in the European experience of North America (US and Canada) that, in turn, enabled Innis to trace the elements of Canadian economic development in a specific manner, in a way receptive to the influences of landscapes as an autonomous factor in evolution, i.e., not necessarily and always tied to staples of production and transport. The purpose is to argue for an inherent plasticity within the context of International Political Economy (IPE) that enables one to look at landscape as an independent element in economic development. It is this plasticity that makes IPE capable of appropriating aspects of the work of the novelist W.G. Sebald: in looking for convergences between the work of Innis and Sebald, Pinter seeks to bring out the centrality of landscapes in Innis's work and thought. Joseph S. Pinter, "On the Convergence of Innis's International Political Economy and Sebald's Novels" page 2 of 10 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 10.1 (2008):