Survivalism and Other Class Fantasies

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 850-859
Author(s):  
Alison Shonkwiler
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Knowledge Economy ◽  
Uneven Development ◽  
Blue Collar ◽  
Political Subject ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Cultural Persistence ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract The subjective demands of crisis capitalism are addressed by three books on the literature and culture of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. These texts shed light on the possibilities and limits of materialist critique in holding various forms of ruthless, abstracted, and injurious capitalism to account. Measuring the uneven development of neoliberal subjectivities across different groups and conditions invites readers to theorize the class dimensions embedded in aesthetic narratives. An analysis of the “microeconomic mode” of contemporary subjectivity, which redefines the traditional liberal political subject to a narrowly survivalist subject of “life-interest,” offers a way of understanding how populations become increasingly sortable into more- and less-disposable groups. A study of deindustrialization literature, focused on the working-class experience, considers the cultural persistence of the blue-collar figure in a service and knowledge economy. A study of finance fictions argues that contemporary capitalism fits a new, psychotic paradigm and requires theorizing a new financial ontology of the present.

Rough South, Rural South

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Cormac Mccarthy ◽  
First Century ◽  
Clear Understanding ◽  
Dorothy Allison ◽  
Southern Writers ◽  
Lee Smith ◽  
Erskine Caldwell ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Late Twentieth

This book describes and discusses the work of southern writers who began their careers in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. They fall into two categories. Some, born into the working class, strove to become writers and learned without benefit of higher education, such writers as Larry Brown and William Gay. Others came from lower- or middle-class backgrounds and became writers through practice and education: Dorothy Allison, Tom Franklin, Tim Gautreaux, Clyde Edgerton, Kaye Gibbons, Silas House, Jill McCorkle, Chris Offutt, Ron Rash, Lee Smith, Brad Watson, Daniel Woodrell, and Steve Yarbrough. Their twenty-first-century colleagues are Wiley Cash, Peter Farris, Skip Horack, Michael Farris Smith, Barb Johnson, and Jesmyn Ward. The book starts by distinguishing Rough South writers from such writers as William Faulkner and Erskine Caldwell. Younger writers who followed Harry Crews were born into and write about the Rough South. These writers undercut stereotypes, forcing readers to see the working poor differently. Other chapters begin with those on Crews and Cormac McCarthy, major influences on an entire generation. Later chapters address members of both groups—the self-educated and the college-educated. Both groups share a clear understanding of the value of working-class southerners.

Abdullah Quilliam

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Siddique Seddon
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Political Influences ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Conversion To Islam ◽  
Class Struggles ◽  
Legal Advisor ◽  
Shed Light

This chapter explores the religious and political influences that shaped Abdullah Quilliam’s Muslim missionary activities, philanthropic work and scholarly writings in an attempt to shed light on his particular political convictions as manifest through his unique religiopolitical endeavors. It focuses especially on Quilliam’s Methodist upbringing in Liverpool and his support of the working classes. It argues that Quilliam’s religious and political activism, although primarily inspired by his conversion to Islam, was also shaped and influenced by the then newly emerging proletariat, revolutionary socialism. Quilliam’s continued commitment to the burgeoning working-class trades union movement, both as a leading member representative and legal advisor, coupled with his reputation as the "poor man’s lawyer" because of his frequent fee-free representations for the impoverished, demonstrates his empathetic proximity to working-class struggles.

Exile, Diaspora, and Return

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis Roniger ◽  
Leonardo Senkman ◽  
Saúl Sosnowski ◽  
Mario Sznajder
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Scientific Disciplines ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Transnational Connections ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Institutional Impact ◽  
Global Arena ◽  
Education Science ◽  
The Impact

This book explores how Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay have been affected by postexilic relocations, transnational migrant displacements, and diasporas. It provides a systematic analysis of the formation of exile communities and diaspora politics, the politics of return, and the agenda of democratization in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, focusing on the impact of intellectuals, academics, activists, and public figures who had experienced exile on the reconstitution and transformation of their societies following democratization. Readers are offered a kaleidoscope of intellectual itineraries, debates, and contributions held in the public domain by individuals who confronted and fought authoritarian rule. The book covers their contributions to the restructuring and transformation of scientific disciplines and of the humanities and the arts, as well as their collective institutional impact on higher education, science and technology, and public institutions. Bringing together sociopolitical, cultural, and policy analysis with the testimonies of dozens of intellectuals, academics, political activists, and policymakers, the book addresses the impact of exile on people’s lives and on their fractured experiences, the debates and prospects of return, the challenges of dis-exile and postexilic trends, and, finally, the ways in which those who experienced exile impacted democratized institutions, public culture, and discourse. It also follows some crucial shifts in the frontiers of citizenship, moving analysis to transnational connections and permanent diasporas, including the diasporas of knowledge that increasingly changed the very meaning of being national and transnational, while connecting those countries to the global arena.

Financial Crises and the Public Discourse on Financial Elites

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Youssef Cassis ◽  
Giuseppe Telesca
Keyword(s):  
Great Depression ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Codes Of Conduct ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Late Twentieth

Why were elite bankers and financiers demoted from ‘masters’ to ‘servants’ of society after the Great Depression, a crisis to which they contributed only marginally? Why do they seem to have got away with the recent crisis, in spite of their palpable responsibilities in triggering the Great Recession? This chapter provides an analysis of the differences between the bankers of the Great Depression and their colleagues of the late twentieth/early twenty-first century—regarding their position within, and attitude towards the firm, work culture, mental models, and codes of conduct—complemented with a scrutiny of the public discourse on bankers and financiers before and after the two crises. The authors argue that the (relative) mildness of the Great Recession, compared to the Great Depression, has contributed to preserve elite bankers’ and financiers’ status, income, wealth, and influence. Yet, the long-term consequences of their loss of reputational capital are difficult to assess.

Continuing Visions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Freedman
Keyword(s):  
Social Activism ◽  
William Blake ◽  
First Century ◽  
Ridley Scott ◽  
American Novel ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Protest Group ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Dead Man

The questions that drove Blake’s American reception, from its earliest moments in the nineteenth century through to the explosion of Blakeanism in the mid-twentieth century, did not disappear. Visions of America continued to be part of Blake’s late twentieth- and early twenty-first century American legacy. This chapter begins with the 1982 film Blade Runner, which was directed by the British Ridley Scott but had an American-authored screenplay and was based on a 1968 American novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? It moves to Jim Jarmusch’s 1995 film, Dead Man and Paul Chan’s twenty-first century social activism as part of a protest group called The Friends of William Blake, exploring common themes of democracy, freedom, limit, nationhood, and poetic shape.

American Obscurantism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Lurie
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
William Faulkner ◽  
Herman Melville ◽  
Edgar Allan Poe ◽  
Hart Crane ◽  
Stanley Kubrick ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Racial History ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Ongoing Development

American Obscurantism argues for a salutary indirection in U.S. culture. From its earliest canonical literary works through films of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the most compelling manifestations of America’s troubled history have articulated this content through a unique formal and tonal obscurity. Envisioning the formidable darkness attending racial history at nearly every stage of the republic’s founding and ongoing development, writers such as William Faulkner and Hart Crane, and directors like the Coen brothers and Stanley Kubrick, present a powerful critique of American conquest, southern plantation culture, and western frontier ideology. American Obscurantism engages the basis of these explorations in Edgar Allan Poe and Herman Melville, each of whom present notable occlusions in their characters’ racial understanding, an obtuseness or naivety that is expressed by a corresponding formal opacity. Such oblique historicity as the book describes allows a method at odds with—and implicitly critical of—the historicizing trend that marked literary studies in the wake of the theoretical turn. The book thus restores an emphasis on aesthetic and medium-specific features to argue for a formalist historicity. Working through challenges to an implicitly white, bourgeois, heteronormative polity, American Obscurantism posits an insistent, vital racial otherness at the heart of American literature and cinema. It examines this pattern across a canon that shows more self-doubt than assuredness, arguing for the value of openness and questioning in place of epistemological or critical certainty.

Dewey and Pragmatist Feminist Philosophy

2017 ◽  
pp. 270-290
Author(s):  
Lisa Heldke
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Philosophy Of Education ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Value Theory ◽  
Feminist Epistemology ◽  
First Century ◽  
Feminist Philosophy ◽  
Small Field ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Late Twentieth

John Dewey’s record as a feminist and an advocate of women is mixed. He valued women intellectual associates whose influences he acknowledged, but did not develop theoretical articulations of the reasons for women’s subordination and marginalization. Given his mixed record, this chapter asks, how useful is Dewey’s work as a resource for feminist philosophy? It begins with a survey of the intellectual influences that connect Dewey with a set of women family members, colleagues, and students. It then discusses Dewey’s influence on the work of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century pragmatist feminist philosophers. Dewey’s influence has been strongest in the fields of feminist epistemology, philosophy of education, and social and political philosophy. Although pragmatist feminist philosophy remains a small field within feminist philosophy, this chapter argues that its conceptual resources could be put to further good use, particularly in feminist metaphysics, epistemology, and value theory.

History, the Hindu Right, and Subversion of Brahmanical-Hindu Political Thought

2019 ◽  
pp. 239-260
Author(s):  
Stuart Gray
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Positive Answer ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Caste System ◽  
Hindu Tradition ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Indian Nationalism ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Locus Classicus

How can scholars critically engage premodern Indic traditions without falling prey to Hindu conservatism or Brahmanical-Hindu apologism? This question is pressing for Indic political theory and contemporary Indian democracy because of ethnically exclusivist, Hindu nationalist movements that have emerged in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This chapter argues that a positive answer to the question must begin by taking seriously the tremendous pluralism in India’s political and philosophical history, which requires systematically engaging with premodern source material and uncovering the internal pluralism within a longer and larger Brahmanical-Hindu tradition of political thought. The author explains how it is both possible and politically necessary to internally subvert Brahmanical-Hindu political thought, which can help diffuse essentialist and exclusivist arguments coming from the Hindu right. Locating such plurality and engaging in internal subversion can help challenge historical justifications for Indian nationalism and contribute to decolonization, thus contesting the Hindu right on its own conceptual and genealogical turf. To advance this argument, the author provides a critical reinterpretation of the infamous “Puruṣa Sūkta,” which is often viewed as the locus classicus of the modern caste system, providing a novel interpretation that challenges caste hierarchy and supplies new resources for democratic thought and practice in India.

Remembering the Past/Anticipating the Future: A Professor From the White Working Class Talks With a Survivor of the Holocaust About Our Troubled World

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 323-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn Ellis ◽  
Jerry Rawicki
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Collaborative Writing ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Future ◽  
White Working Class ◽  
Shed Light

This article extends the research of Jerry Rawicki and Carolyn Ellis who have collaborated for more than eight years on memories and consequences of the Holocaust. Focusing on Jerry’s memories of his experience during the Holocaust, they present dialogues that took place during five recorded interviews and follow-up conversations that reflect on the similarity of Hitler’s seizing of power in the 1930s to the meteoric rise of Donald Trump. Noting how issues of class and race were taking an increasingly prominent role in their conversations and collaborative writing, they also begin to examine discontent in the rural, White working class and Carolyn’s socialization within that community. These dialogues and reflections seek to shed light on the current political climate in America as Carolyn and Jerry struggle to cope with their fears and envision a hopeful path forward for their country.

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