Criticism, Crisis, and Contemporary Narrative by Crosthwaite, Paul;

Short description:

This landmark collection of essays demonstrates the capacity of literary and cultural criticism, working in dialogue with contemporary narrative texts, to provide penetrating insights into a public sphere defined by a succession of overlapping global crises, ranging from finance and economics to the environment, geopolitics, terrorism, and public health.

Long description:

The etymological affinity between ‘criticism’ and ‘crisis’ has never been more resonant than it is today, when social life is increasingly understood as defined by a succession of overlapping global crises: financial and economic crises; environmental crises; geopolitical crises; terrorist crises; public health crises. But what is the role of literary and cultural criticism in conceptualizing this atmosphere of perpetual crisis? If, as Paul de Man maintained, criticism necessarily exists in a state of crisis, in what ways is this condition intensified at a time when the social formations within which criticism operates and the cultural artefacts that it takes as its objects are themselves pervaded by actual and imagined states of emergency? This book, the first sustained response to these questions, demonstrates the capacity of critical thought, working in dialogue with key narrative texts, to provide penetrating insights into a contemporary landscape of global, manufactured risk. Written by an international team of specialist scholars, the essays in the collection draw on a wide variety of contemporary theoretical, fictional, and cinematic sources, ranging from Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Derrida, and Fredric Jameson to Cormac McCarthy, Ian McEwan, and Lauren Beukes to Ghost and the James Bond and National Treasure series. Appearing in the midst of a phase of extraordinary turbulence in the fabric of our interconnected and interdependent world, the book makes a landmark intervention in debates concerning the cultural ramifications of globalization.

"An excellent collection of highly readable work." –Paul Wake, Modern Language Review

'... the works within serve to inspire hope in the discourse of critical writing through vigorous analyses of crisis narratives... This work carves out a solid purpose for critical thought to analyse crises at a time when criticism's own obituary is being written.' - The Kelvingrove Review

Table of Contents:

Introduction.  Part I. Critical Thought/Critical Times  1. Will the Apocalypse Have Been Now? Literary Criticism in an Age of Global Risk. Molly Wallace  2. The Future of the Future. Nick Mansfield  3. The Incredible Shrinking Human. Charlie Gere  4. The Risks of Sustainability. Karen Pinkus  Part II. Critical Perspectives on Crisis Narratives  5. Narrating the Coming Pandemic: Pandemic Influenza, Anticipatory Anxiety, and Neurotic Citizenship. Penelope Ironstone-Catterall  6. Global Capitalism and a Dystopian South Africa: Trencherman by Eben Venter and Moxyland by Lauren Beukes. Andries Visagie  7. Gray Goo and You: The Ecophagy of Global Capital. Robin Stoate  8. Risk and Morality in Ian McEwan’s Saturday. Lidia De Michelis  9. The Corporation of Terror: Risk and the Fictions of the "Financial War". Nicky Marsh  10. Waiting for Crisis: Casino Royale, Financial Aesthetics, and National Narrative Form. Alissa G. Karl  11. Phantasmagoric Finance: Crisis and the Supernatural in Contemporary Finance Culture. Paul Crosthwaite  12. The Green Afterword: Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and the Ecological Uncanny. Rebecca Giggs