Unhappy Beginnings

Name: Unhappy Beginnings | Narratives of Precarity, Failure, and Resistance in North American Texts
Brand: Routledge
Price: 50.99 EUR
Availability: OnlineOnly

Narratives of Precarity, Failure, and Resistance in North American Texts

Isabel Gonzalez-Diaz Fabian Oran-Llarena(Herausgeber*in)

Routledge (Verlag)

1. Auflage

Erschienen am 22. Dezember 2023

206 Seiten

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Beschreibung

This book offers the analysis of a selection of North American texts that dismantle and resist normative frames through the resignification of concepts such as unhappiness, precarity, failure, and vulnerability. The chapters bring to the fore how those potentially negative elements can be refigured as ambivalent sites of resistance and social bonding. Following Sara Ahmed's rereading of happiness, other authors such as Judith Butler, Wendy Brown, Jack Halberstam, Lauren Berlant, or Henry Giroux are mobilized to interrogate films, memoirs, and novels that deal with precarity, alienation, and inequality. The monograph contributes to enlarging the archives of unhappiness by changing the focus from prescribed norms and happy endings to unruly practices and unhappy beginnings. As the different contributors show, unhappiness, precarity, vulnerability, or failure can be harnessed to illuminate ways of navigating the world and framing society that do not necessarily conform to the script of happiness-whatever that means.

Rezensionen / Stimmen

This book has enormous potential to contribute to deconstructing racial, gender, class, and physical disabilities biases through literary and cultural studies criticism. It shows a unique perspective in approaching themes of unhappiness and failure. As the contributions in the monograph stress, reading stories of "failure" and "unhappiness" as characters' rebellion against the harshness and elitism of all sorts of normative frames is more than a way to unmask the unjust social practices: it can also open constructive debates necessary for redefining such social practices.

Nadira Puskar Mustafic, Assistant Professor, International University of Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina

This monograph offers an important contribution to contemporary theories within the field of affect studies as it proposes an innovative methodology for the analysis of North American texts that challenge the normative concept of happiness. By focusing on a heterogeneous set of narratives of unhappiness, the monograph aims at questioning forms of oppression in North America, which enriches the field of affect theory.

Rocio Carrasco Carrasco, Dr Philol at the Department of English, University of Huelva, Spain

Unhappy Beginnings

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