Restless Subjects in Rigid Systems

Risk and Speculation in Millennial Fictions of the North American Pacific Rim
1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-3-8376-2416-8
Verlag: transcript

Buch, Englisch, Band 7, 312 Seiten, Kt, Format (B × H): 148 mm x 225 mm, Gewicht: 489 g

Reihe: American Culture Studies

The anticipatory logic of speculation and preemptive politics of risk are increasingly gaining significance in a globalizing neoliberal world. This study traces risk and speculation as aesthetic and political-economic strategies in factual and fictional discourses emerging at the North American Pacific Rim within a decade around 2000. Its exemplary close readings in particular focus on three fictional texts (Kathryn Bigelow's Hollywood film 'Strange Days', 1995, Karen T. Yamashita's novel 'Tropic of Orange', 1997, and Larissa Lai's novel 'Salt Fish Girl', 2002) whose intricate aesthetics pass perceptive critique on concurrent political-economic discourses and their subtle reconfiguration of race, class, and gender. The speculative near-future scenarios projected by these artifacts expose the rise of risk as a new rationality of governance. At the same time they illustrate neoliberal speculation as a new paradigm of subject formation at a hyper-capitalist, millennial Pacific Rim.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wegener, Susanne

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literatursoziologie, Gender Studies
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur Amerikanische Literatur
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Stoffe, Motive und Themen

Über Autor(innen)

Wegener, Susanne
Susanne Wegener (Dr. phil.) works on a postdoc project on genre and theory construction in literary criticism. Her research interests are American Studies, Narrative Theory, Critical Theory, Political Philosophy, Theory of Science, and History of Ideas.