{"title":"“你甚至不知道自己是怎么知道的”:双重赔偿作为反办公室言论","authors":"Mike Docherty","doi":"10.1386/EJAC_00036_1","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This article argues that the criminal plot at the heart of James M. Cain’s 1936 novel Double Indemnity is primarily one targeted against the structures of the modern corporation, embodied in the space of the office. Such an argument situates Cain’s novel as a striking intervention in a long tradition of anti-office discourse, a discourse in which clerical work and its spaces have persistently been framed as exemplifying urban modernity’s deleterious impact upon and occlusion of the supposed ‘frontier values’ of masculinity, individualism and risk. Walter Huff, the novel’s protagonist, is figured as an agent of those values, a ‘frontiersman’ whose assault upon his insurance firm employer constitutes an attempt to reinvest a regulated, systematized world with a sense of the unpredictable wilderness.","PeriodicalId":35235,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of American Culture","volume":"40 1","pages":"27-43"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"‘You don’t even know how you know’: Double Indemnity as anti-office discourse\",\"authors\":\"Mike Docherty\",\"doi\":\"10.1386/EJAC_00036_1\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"This article argues that the criminal plot at the heart of James M. Cain’s 1936 novel Double Indemnity is primarily one targeted against the structures of the modern corporation, embodied in the space of the office. Such an argument situates Cain’s novel as a striking intervention in a long tradition of anti-office discourse, a discourse in which clerical work and its spaces have persistently been framed as exemplifying urban modernity’s deleterious impact upon and occlusion of the supposed ‘frontier values’ of masculinity, individualism and risk. Walter Huff, the novel’s protagonist, is figured as an agent of those values, a ‘frontiersman’ whose assault upon his insurance firm employer constitutes an attempt to reinvest a regulated, systematized world with a sense of the unpredictable wilderness.\",\"PeriodicalId\":35235,\"journal\":{\"name\":\"European Journal of American Culture\",\"volume\":\"40 1\",\"pages\":\"27-43\"},\"PeriodicalIF\":0.0000,\"publicationDate\":\"2021-03-01\",\"publicationTypes\":\"Journal Article\",\"fieldsOfStudy\":null,\"isOpenAccess\":false,\"openAccessPdf\":\"\",\"citationCount\":\"0\",\"resultStr\":null,\"platform\":\"Semanticscholar\",\"paperid\":null,\"PeriodicalName\":\"European Journal of American Culture\",\"FirstCategoryId\":\"1085\",\"ListUrlMain\":\"https://doi.org/10.1386/EJAC_00036_1\",\"RegionNum\":0,\"RegionCategory\":null,\"ArticlePicture\":[],\"TitleCN\":null,\"AbstractTextCN\":null,\"PMCID\":null,\"EPubDate\":\"\",\"PubModel\":\"\",\"JCR\":\"Q2\",\"JCRName\":\"Arts and Humanities\",\"Score\":null,\"Total\":0}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"European Journal of American Culture","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1386/EJAC_00036_1","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"Arts and Humanities","Score":null,"Total":0}
‘You don’t even know how you know’: Double Indemnity as anti-office discourse
This article argues that the criminal plot at the heart of James M. Cain’s 1936 novel Double Indemnity is primarily one targeted against the structures of the modern corporation, embodied in the space of the office. Such an argument situates Cain’s novel as a striking intervention in a long tradition of anti-office discourse, a discourse in which clerical work and its spaces have persistently been framed as exemplifying urban modernity’s deleterious impact upon and occlusion of the supposed ‘frontier values’ of masculinity, individualism and risk. Walter Huff, the novel’s protagonist, is figured as an agent of those values, a ‘frontiersman’ whose assault upon his insurance firm employer constitutes an attempt to reinvest a regulated, systematized world with a sense of the unpredictable wilderness.