Racial capitalism is, among other things, a “technology of antirelationality”, one that reduces collective life to a set of relations that benefits neoliberal capitalism (Melamed, 2015). Colonial capitalism, undergirded by racialization, similarly thrived on the annihilation of collective life. In the context of British plantation colonies in the Caribbean this took the form of instituting plans and structures of governance that created friction among racialized labour populations. Turning a critical eye on the colonial production of antirelationality between Indians and Africans on post-Emancipation Caribbean sugar plantations, this essay asks how we might learn about its effects on these racialized groups. In contrast to the official record, literary fiction can serve as a productive site that engages with the quotidian manifestations of colonial policy, especially from the perspective of those who rarely find a voice in such records. Further, it has the freedom to imagine alternative ways of being in the colony that chafe against the colonial blueprint for racial management. This essay argues David Dabydeen’s The Counting House (1996), set in nineteenth-century British Guiana, does both of these effectively. It explores the consequences of British colonial plans for racial separation in terms of the conflict it generated between Indians and Africans. More importantly, it tracks moments of empathy and intimacy among these communities. To this end, the novel speculates about the affective and potentially political solidarities they may have cultivated under shared historical conditions. Reading the novel appositionally with nineteenth-century accounts of plantation life and archival documents, this essay centres a narrative of intimacy and potential solidarity between Indians and Africans that has been rendered invisible not only by the colonial archive, but also by later cultural theory, which has tended to study these diasporic groups as separate, insulated units.

除其他外，种族资本主义是一种“反关系技术”，将集体生活简化为一系列有利于新自由主义资本主义的关系（Melamed，2015 年）。以种族化为基础的殖民资本主义同样在集体生活的毁灭中蓬勃发展。在加勒比地区的英国种植园殖民地的背景下，这采取了制定计划和治理结构的形式，这在种族化的劳动力人口之间造成了摩擦。这篇文章以批判的眼光审视印度人和非洲人在解放后的加勒比糖种植园中反关系的殖民生产，询问我们如何了解它对这些种族化群体的影响。与官方记录相比，文学小说可以作为与殖民政策的日常表现进行互动的生产场所，特别是从那些很少在此类记录中找到发言权的人的角度来看。此外，它可以自由想象在殖民地中与种族管理的殖民蓝图相冲突的其他方式。本文认为大卫·达比丁 (David Dabydeen) 的 The Counting House (1996) 以 19 世纪的英属圭亚那为背景，有效地做到了这两点。它探讨了英国殖民计划对种族分离的影响，它在印度人和非洲人之间产生了冲突。更重要的是，它追踪了这些社区之间的同理心和亲密感。为此，这部小说推测了他们在共同的历史条件下可能培养的情感和潜在的政治团结。将小说与 19 世纪对种植园生活和档案文件的描述并列地阅读，这篇文章的中心是关于印度人和非洲人之间的亲密关系和潜在团结的叙述，这种叙述不仅被殖民档案，而且被后来的文化理论所掩盖。倾向于将这些离散群体作为独立的、绝缘的单位进行研究。