Living Labor
Fiction, Film, and Precarious Work
Published on 13. February 2023
Book
Hardback
214 pages
978-0-472-07519-5 (ISBN)
Description
For much of the twentieth century, the iconic figure of the U.S. working class was a white, male industrial worker. But in the contemporary age of capitalist globalization new stories about work and workers are emerging to refashion this image. Living Labor examines these narratives and, in the process, offers an innovative reading of American fiction and film through the lens of precarious work. It argues that since the 1980s, novelists and filmmakers-including Russell Banks, Helena Viramontes, Karen Tei Yamashita, Francisco Goldman, David Riker, Ramin Bahrani, Clint Eastwood, Courtney Hunt, and Ryan Coogler-have chronicled the demise of the industrial proletariat, and the tentative and unfinished emergence of a new, much more diverse and perilously positioned working class. In bringing together stories of work that are also stories of race, ethnicity, gender, and colonialism, Living Labor challenges the often-assumed division between class and identity politics. Through the concept of living labor and its discussion of solidarity, the book reframes traditional notions of class, helping us understand both the challenges working people face and the possibilities for collective consciousness and action in the global present.
Cover attribution: Allan Sekula, Shipwreck and worker, Istanbul,fromTITANIC's wake, 1998/2000. Courtesy of the Allan Sekula Studio.
Cover attribution: Allan Sekula, Shipwreck and worker, Istanbul,fromTITANIC's wake, 1998/2000. Courtesy of the Allan Sekula Studio.
Reviews / Votes
"Living Labor aims to update the critical discussion of contemporary American working-class literature to reflect the complex and contested realities of the current era, in which class itself has become increasingly contingent. The book is clear, persuasive, informative, and thought-provoking." -- Sherry Linkon, Georgetown University "Living Labor offers a vocabulary for a global, post-Fordist working class, through a number of important, sometimes well-known, sometimes obscure novels and films that document working-class characters in the U.S. from the 1980s to the present. The book is lucid, precise, and engaging, and helps us to understand how 'class' and its many representations are made and remade through the contradictions of capitalism. Entin has written a necessary and provocative intervention into the field." -- Benjamin Balthaser, Indiana University South Bend "Living Labor brings lesser-known or forgotten narratives to the forefront and demonstrates effectively how they build upon proletarian narratives of the past and contribute to a nascent, working-class narrative mode--one we should all keep our eyes on as it continues to evolve in an age of enduring precarity." * Journal of Working-Class Studies * "This is an outstanding study that is faithful to both its texts and the signal social transformations that they index. It's important work that orients its readers toward ongoing struggles that it does not pretend to solve. Solidarity is "not a solution," writes Entin, in conclusion that is as clear-eyed and yet hopeful as the rest of his book, "but a challenge, a frame for thinking about the ongoing and unfinished project of creating a sense of collectivity." * American Literary History *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Ann Arbor
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-472-07519-5 (9780472075195)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Joseph B. Entin is Professor of English and American Studies at Brooklyn College, City University of New York.
Content
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Narratives of Living Labor
Chapter 1. "We are the Planet": Impossible Solidarities in Russell Banks's Continental Drift
Chapter 2. "Maps of Labor": Globalization, Migration, and Contemporary Working-Class Literature
Chapter 3. Living Labor, Dead Labor: Cinema, Solidarity, and Necrocapitalism
Chapter 4. "The Uprooted Worker at the Center of the World": Labor, Migration, and Precarity on the Urban Underside of Independent Cinema
Coda: Forms of Solidarity in Precarious Times
Index
Introduction: Narratives of Living Labor
Chapter 1. "We are the Planet": Impossible Solidarities in Russell Banks's Continental Drift
Chapter 2. "Maps of Labor": Globalization, Migration, and Contemporary Working-Class Literature
Chapter 3. Living Labor, Dead Labor: Cinema, Solidarity, and Necrocapitalism
Chapter 4. "The Uprooted Worker at the Center of the World": Labor, Migration, and Precarity on the Urban Underside of Independent Cinema
Coda: Forms of Solidarity in Precarious Times
Index