Affect and American Literature in the Age of Neoliberalism

Rachel Greenwald Smith's Affect and American Literature in the Age of Neoliberalism examines the relationship between American literature and politics in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. Smith contends that the representation of emotions in contemporary fiction emphasizes the personal lives of characters at a time when there is an unprecedented, and often damaging, focus on the individual in American life. Through readings of works by Paul Auster, Karen Tei Yamashita, Ben Marcus, Lydia Millet, and others who stage experiments in the relationship between feeling and form, Smith argues for the centrality of a counter-tradition in contemporary literature concerned with impersonal feelings: feelings that challenge the neoliberal notion that emotions are the property of the self.

List of contents

1. Personal and impersonal: two forms of the neoliberal novel; 2. Affect and aesthetics in 9/11 fiction; 3. Reading like an entrepreneur: neoliberal agency and textual systems; 4. Ecology, feeling, and form in neoliberal literature.

About the author

Rachel Greenwald Smith is Assistant Professor of English at Saint Louis University. Her work has appeared in such journals as American Literature, Twentieth-Century Literature, Mediations, and Modern Fiction Studies.

Summary

Rachel Greenwald Smith's Affect and American Literature in the Age of Neoliberalism examines the relationship between contemporary American literature and politics. Through readings of works by Paul Auster, Karen Tei Yamashita and others, Smith challenges the neoliberal notion that emotions are the property of the self.

Product details

• Authors: Rachel Greenwald Smith, Rachel Greenwald Smith, Rachel Greenwald (Saint Louis University Smith
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 20.04.2015
• EAN: 9781107095229
• ISBN: 978-1-107-09522-9
• No. of pages: 194
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; English, 20th Century, North America, LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General, 21st Century, 20th century, c 1900 to c 1999, Politics & government, United States of America, USA, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, History of the Americas, Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000