BUCH
Corporeal Battlegrounds
Laboring Bodies and Capitalist Realism
American Studies – A Monograph Series, Bd. 321
2023
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Abstract
‘Corporeal Battlegrounds’ explores the depiction and critical potential of the entanglement of work and embodiment in contemporary realist U.S.-American novels. It argues that manifesting the elusive effects of contemporary capitalism in the figure of the laboring body allows for a critique of capitalism. The laboring body thus provides a gateway to understanding how power relations are perpetuated by the work we engage in and to revealing the inherent logic of capitalism. To provide a comprehensive view, each larger section examines one aspect of contemporary capitalism in conversation with a novel: social acceleration, digitalization, financialization, and 24/7 capitalism. These sections question how the novels approach the representability of economic relations and how the depiction of the laboring body functions to open up an area of tension to criticize the link between the laboring body, economic participation, and the perception of failure and success.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
| Zwischenüberschrift | Seite | Aktion | Preis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cover | Cover | ||
| Title | 3 | ||
| Imprint | 4 | ||
| Citation | 5 | ||
| Contents | 7 | ||
| 1 Introduction | 11 | ||
| 1.1 Reading Laboring Bodies | 18 | ||
| 1.2 The Dialectics of Laboring Bodies | 24 | ||
| 1.3 Reading and Writing Capitalist Realism | 45 | ||
| 2 Disabling Mobility | 59 | ||
| 2.1 Disability Narratives and the Antinormative Novel of Embodiment | 61 | ||
| 2.2 Ableism and Normative Encounters in Joshua Ferris’ ‚The Unnamed‘ | 67 | ||
| 2.3 Of Empires and Pathologies of Speed: The Experience of Acceleration in ‚The Unnamed‘ | 90 | ||
| 2.3.1 “He had wandered off the path of greatest efficiency” – Of Empires of Speed and the Experience of Acceleration in ‚The Unnamed‘ | 92 | ||
| 2.3.2 “The brakes are gone, the steering wheel has locked” – Pathologies of Speed in ‚The Unnamed‘ | 109 | ||
| 2.3.3 Intracorporeal Dissonance in ‚The Unnamed‘ | 115 | ||
| 3 The Digitalized Workplace and the Quantified Laborer | 131 | ||
| 3.1 The Digital (R)Evolution and Immaterial Labor | 132 | ||
| 3.2 Digital Labor and the Rematerialization of Laboring Bodies in Dave Eggers’ ‚The Circle‘ | 142 | ||
| 3.2.1 Quantified Selves and Their Incorporation | 146 | ||
| 3.2.2 Incorporation in ‚The Circle‘ | 158 | ||
| 4 The Making of Indebted Women: Motherhood, Precarity, and the Logic of Financialization | 183 | ||
| 4.1 Narrating Financialization | 184 | ||
| 4.2 The Financialization of a Mother’s Daily Life in Lydia Kiesling’s ‚The Golden State‘ | 191 | ||
| 5 Revolt Qua Passivity? Resting Bodies in Ottessa Moshfegh’s ‚My Year of Rest and Relaxation‘ | 209 | ||
| 5.1 An Absent Presence: Passivity as Subversion in Melville’s “Bartleby, The Scrivener” | 211 | ||
| 5.2 Passive Resistance and Silent Suffering in ‚My Year of Rest and Relaxation‘ | 223 | ||
| 5.2.1 “Good strong American sleep” – Sleep and the Politics of Overconformity in ‚My Year of Rest and Relaxation‘ | 225 | ||
| 5.2.2 Sleep as Rebellion and Unconscious Resistance in ‚My Year of Rest and Relaxation‘ | 234 | ||
| 5.2.3 Affect, Neoliberalism, and the Critical Potential of Uncomfortable Readings | 248 | ||
| 6 Coda: An Absent Presence – A Present Absence | 271 | ||
| Works Cited | 285 | ||
| Backcover | Backcover |
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