Overview
- Investigates the historical development of precarity through the study of literary media and genres
- Questions the role of aesthetics in the production and critique of precarious work
- Incorporates social and political theory to explore the economic imaginary of literature
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Culture and Economics (PSLCE)
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Table of contents (18 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Figurations of Precarious Work: Prehistories
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Front Matter
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Precarity, Materiality and Authorship
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Front Matter
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Figurations of Precarious Work in Contemporary Literature
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Front Matter
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Keywords
About this book
Literary Representations of Precarious Work, 1840 to the Present sheds new light on literary representations of precarious labor from 1840 until the present. With contributions by experts in American, British, French, German and Swedish culture, this book examines how literature has shaped the understanding of socio-economic precarity, a concept that is mostly used to describe living and working conditions in our contemporary neoliberal and platform economy. This volume shows that authors tried to develop new poetic tools and literary techniques to translate the experience of social regression and insecurity to readers. While some authors critically engage with normative models of work by zooming in on the physical and affective backlash of being a precarious worker, others even find inspiration in their own situations as writers trying to survive. Furthermore, this volume shows that precarity is not an exclusively contemporary phenomenon and that literature has always been acentral medium to (critically) register forms of social insecurity. By retrieving parts of that archive, this volume paves the way to a historically nuanced view on contemporary regimes of precarious work.
Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
Michiel Rys is Postdoctoral Researcher of the FWO Flanders at the University of Leuven, Belgium. While his doctoral project unearthed figurations of Maximilien Robespierre in German literature, his current research project focuses on literary representations of precarity, activist literature and the memory culture of the German labor movement (1848-1914).
Bart Philipsen is Full Professor of German literature and theater studies at the University of Leuven, Belgium. His research is situated at the crossroads of literature, politics and philosophy, and is especially focused on the afterlife of idealism and Romanticism. He has published extensively on German literature, politics and theater.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Literary Representations of Precarious Work, 1840 to the Present
Editors: Michiel Rys, Bart Philipsen
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Culture and Economics
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88174-0
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-88173-3Published: 04 January 2022
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-88176-4Published: 05 January 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-88174-0Published: 03 January 2022
Series ISSN: 2946-5397
Series E-ISSN: 2946-5400
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XV, 324
Topics: Contemporary Literature, Nineteenth-Century Literature, Literary History, Literary Theory, Economic History, Political Philosophy