What does late capitalism’s mode of temporality reveal about the logic linked to its mode of production? This article establishes a dialogue between theoretical works concerned with this question and Jeff Noon’s speculative fiction novel Falling out of Cars. By drawing on Marxist criticism in the works of Fredric Jameson and Gilles Deleuzeand Felix Guattari, it argues that Falling out of Cars develops a catatonic mode of temporality that critically challenges these authors’ diagnosis of schizophrenia as the cultural logic of late capitalism. Noon’s novel offers a dystopian version of the future in which catatonic subjects function as the norm for the system’s optimal operation. The catatonic temporality of the novel emerges as the logic underlying this transformation, namely, as the passive assimilation of the individual to the system’s economic rationale, which no longer needs human agency in order to operate. Falling out of Cars does not only deploy these narrative techniques on a purely aesthetic basis, but explicitly links them to the objective conditions of the world they aim to represent. In this sense, Noon’s novel suggests catatonia as the dominant logic leading to capitalism’s terminal stage in which individuals no longer possess agency to take control of their lives.
{"title":"Catatonic Futures and Post-Apocalyptic Capital","authors":"Tomás Vergara","doi":"10.16995/c21.970","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/c21.970","url":null,"abstract":"What does late capitalism’s mode of temporality reveal about the logic linked to its mode of production? This article establishes a dialogue between theoretical works concerned with this question and Jeff Noon’s speculative fiction novel Falling out of Cars. By drawing on Marxist criticism in the works of Fredric Jameson and Gilles Deleuzeand Felix Guattari, it argues that Falling out of Cars develops a catatonic mode of temporality that critically challenges these authors’ diagnosis of schizophrenia as the cultural logic of late capitalism. Noon’s novel offers a dystopian version of the future in which catatonic subjects function as the norm for the system’s optimal operation. The catatonic temporality of the novel emerges as the logic underlying this transformation, namely, as the passive assimilation of the individual to the system’s economic rationale, which no longer needs human agency in order to operate. Falling out of Cars does not only deploy these narrative techniques on a purely aesthetic basis, but explicitly links them to the objective conditions of the world they aim to represent. In this sense, Noon’s novel suggests catatonia as the dominant logic leading to capitalism’s terminal stage in which individuals no longer possess agency to take control of their lives.","PeriodicalId":272809,"journal":{"name":"C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-Century Writings","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126919684","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“Is This the Promised End?” King Lear, Mandel’s Station Eleven, and the Shakespearian Apocalypse A Meditation on Pandemic and Postmodernism","authors":"James S. Baumlin","doi":"10.16995/c21.2923","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/c21.2923","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":272809,"journal":{"name":"C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-Century Writings","volume":"53 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127861882","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the twenty-first century, online platforms have become apparatuses for the automated monitoring and interpretation of bodies as user data to produce convincing predictive advertising products. The emergence of this ‘surveillance capitalist’ system is represented in Tony Tulathimutte’s 2016 novel Private Citizens. Vanya is a paraplegic Silicon Valley entrepreneur who launches an ill-fated online platform named ‘Sable’ to challenge ablest stereotypes with content that centres the experiences of people with impairments. However, Vanya’s desire for inclusion and visibility becomes transformed by the economic imperatives underpinning the platform into forms of surveillance directed at herself and her disabled audience. Despite its attention to the subtleties of ableism in surveillance capitalism, this article argues that structurally similar practices of disability surveillance exist within Private Citizens. The article proposes that this novel reproduces normative interpretations of the disabled body as source material for metaphors to elaborate themes of authenticity, work and self-presentation under surveillance capitalism.
{"title":"The Disabled Body Under Surveillance Capitalism Tony Tulathimutte’s Private Citizens","authors":"Richard Bingham","doi":"10.16995/c21.1770","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/c21.1770","url":null,"abstract":"In the twenty-first century, online platforms have become apparatuses for the automated monitoring and interpretation of bodies as user data to produce convincing predictive advertising products. The emergence of this ‘surveillance capitalist’ system is represented in Tony Tulathimutte’s 2016 novel Private Citizens. Vanya is a paraplegic Silicon Valley entrepreneur who launches an ill-fated online platform named ‘Sable’ to challenge ablest stereotypes with content that centres the experiences of people with impairments. However, Vanya’s desire for inclusion and visibility becomes transformed by the economic imperatives underpinning the platform into forms of surveillance directed at herself and her disabled audience. Despite its attention to the subtleties of ableism in surveillance capitalism, this article argues that structurally similar practices of disability surveillance exist within Private Citizens. The article proposes that this novel reproduces normative interpretations of the disabled body as source material for metaphors to elaborate themes of authenticity, work and self-presentation under surveillance capitalism.","PeriodicalId":272809,"journal":{"name":"C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-Century Writings","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130742951","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Novels that were written about or inspired by the Occupy movement in 2011 are often praised for their attempts at representing the collectivity of the movement. Using the framework of governance infrastructure as provided by Anna Feigenbaum, Fabian Frenzel, and Patrick McCurdy, this article examines what infrastructural practices facilitated collectivity in Occupy and theorizes how post-Occupy novels have formalized those practices. I look at two novels, Ben Lerner’s 2014 novel 10:04 and Rachel Kushner’s 2013 novel The Flamethrowers to demonstrate how post-Occupy novels embody the collective voice of the Occupy movement to varying degrees of success. This article closely reads both novels to illustrate how voice is informed by collective protest strategies and proposes that such use of voice is a development new to post-Occupy novels and signals an awareness of how structures of fiction imitate state infrastructure. Publisher's note: This article was originally published with the title 'An Eerie Cacaphony: Forms of the Collective in Occupy Novels'. This has now been corrected.
{"title":"An Eerie Cacaphony: Forms of the Collective in Occupy Novels","authors":"Steven Watts","doi":"10.16995/c21.1438","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/c21.1438","url":null,"abstract":"Novels that were written about or inspired by the Occupy movement in 2011 are often praised for their attempts at representing the collectivity of the movement. Using the framework of governance infrastructure as provided by Anna Feigenbaum, Fabian Frenzel, and Patrick McCurdy, this article examines what infrastructural practices facilitated collectivity in Occupy and theorizes how post-Occupy novels have formalized those practices. I look at two novels, Ben Lerner’s 2014 novel 10:04 and Rachel Kushner’s 2013 novel The Flamethrowers to demonstrate how post-Occupy novels embody the collective voice of the Occupy movement to varying degrees of success. This article closely reads both novels to illustrate how voice is informed by collective protest strategies and proposes that such use of voice is a development new to post-Occupy novels and signals an awareness of how structures of fiction imitate state infrastructure. Publisher's note: This article was originally published with the title 'An Eerie Cacaphony: Forms of the Collective in Occupy Novels'. This has now been corrected.","PeriodicalId":272809,"journal":{"name":"C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-Century Writings","volume":"90 5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128012034","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Contemporary Fictions of Attention: Reading and Distraction in the Twenty-First Century by Alice Bennett (London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2018)","authors":"Julie Tanner","doi":"10.16995/C21.1783","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/C21.1783","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":272809,"journal":{"name":"C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-Century Writings","volume":"87 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115112347","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Archived Bards The Double Life of Performance Poetry on YouTube","authors":"George Cox","doi":"10.16995/c21.1402","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/c21.1402","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":272809,"journal":{"name":"C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-Century Writings","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126546144","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"David Mitchell’s Post-Secular World: Buddhism, Belief and the Urgency of Compassion by Rose Harris-Birtill (London, Bloomsbury, 2019)","authors":"J. Greenaway","doi":"10.16995/C21.1333","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/C21.1333","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":272809,"journal":{"name":"C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-Century Writings","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123777514","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
William Gibson's Pattern Recognition contains extensive descriptions of consumer objects that reference the horrors of the past while eliding their reality. This extensive motif in the novel seems an echo of Francis Fukuyama's argument that the end of the Cold War had seen the triumph of political democracy combined with consumer capitalism in an end-point for history itself. Such illusions were profoundly destabilised by the 9/11 terror attacks, a central event in Gibson's novel, and Pattern Recognition is one of several 9/11 novels that seek to understand that day's events through a concern with history. Here, Cayce's dual search for the mysterious footage and her missing father leads her to both an engagement with the realities of historical trauma and a fulfilment of her own desire to mourn.
{"title":"William Gibson's Pattern Recognition and the Return of History","authors":"Conor Mccarthy","doi":"10.16995/c21.1343","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/c21.1343","url":null,"abstract":"William Gibson's Pattern Recognition contains extensive descriptions of consumer objects that reference the horrors of the past while eliding their reality. This extensive motif in the novel seems an echo of Francis Fukuyama's argument that the end of the Cold War had seen the triumph of political democracy combined with consumer capitalism in an end-point for history itself. Such illusions were profoundly destabilised by the 9/11 terror attacks, a central event in Gibson's novel, and Pattern Recognition is one of several 9/11 novels that seek to understand that day's events through a concern with history. Here, Cayce's dual search for the mysterious footage and her missing father leads her to both an engagement with the realities of historical trauma and a fulfilment of her own desire to mourn.","PeriodicalId":272809,"journal":{"name":"C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-Century Writings","volume":"59 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132197181","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A review of Susan Flynn and Antonia Mackay’s (Eds) Surveillance, Architecture and Control (2019).Susan Flynn and Antonia Mackay, Surveillance, Architecture and Control: Discourses on Spatial Culture, London: Palgrave Macmillan, £89.99, 2019, ISBN: 978-3-030-00370-8.
{"title":"Review of Susan Flynn and Antonia Mackay, Surveillance, Architecture and Control: Discourses on Spatial Culture","authors":"Jade Hinchliffe","doi":"10.16995/C21.1334","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/C21.1334","url":null,"abstract":"A review of Susan Flynn and Antonia Mackay’s (Eds) Surveillance, Architecture and Control (2019).Susan Flynn and Antonia Mackay, Surveillance, Architecture and Control: Discourses on Spatial Culture, London: Palgrave Macmillan, £89.99, 2019, ISBN: 978-3-030-00370-8.","PeriodicalId":272809,"journal":{"name":"C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-Century Writings","volume":"37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131424391","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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