{"title":"Rural Revolt: The Scale Problem in Houellebecq and Norris","authors":"Roderick Cooke","doi":"10.1353/cul.2024.a915447","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article discusses the implications of farmers' insurrections suppressed by state power in Michel Houellebecq's Sérotonine (2019) and Frank Norris's The Octopus (1901). In both cases, the disparity in scale between the farmers' organization and the larger forces set against them (the European Union and the French police, for Houellebecq; the railroad trust and U.S. marshals, for Norris) not only dictates the narrative outcome but also animates a set of questions around globalization, masculinity, the sociological meaning of place, and the relationship between the natural and mechanized worlds. Both novels' conclusions can be read as a surrender to scale, although the two authors' perspectives treat that surrender with ostensibly opposed reactions.","PeriodicalId":46410,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Critique","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Cultural Critique","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2024.a915447","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"CULTURAL STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract:This article discusses the implications of farmers' insurrections suppressed by state power in Michel Houellebecq's Sérotonine (2019) and Frank Norris's The Octopus (1901). In both cases, the disparity in scale between the farmers' organization and the larger forces set against them (the European Union and the French police, for Houellebecq; the railroad trust and U.S. marshals, for Norris) not only dictates the narrative outcome but also animates a set of questions around globalization, masculinity, the sociological meaning of place, and the relationship between the natural and mechanized worlds. Both novels' conclusions can be read as a surrender to scale, although the two authors' perspectives treat that surrender with ostensibly opposed reactions.
期刊介绍：
Cultural Critique provides a forum for international and interdisciplinary explorations of intellectual controversies, trends, and issues in culture, theory, and politics. Emphasizing critique rather than criticism, the journal draws on the diverse and conflictual approaches of Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis, semiotics, political economy, and hermeneutics to offer readings in society and its transformation.
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