Representing Capital in 21st-Century Literature and Theory - Einzelansicht

Since the breakup of the former socialist bloc in the last decade of the 20^th century, capitalism seems to be the only possible way (“there is no alternative !”) of producing value and distributing wealth. From every crisis, however devastating, ‘the system’ appears to re-emerge more robust than before: “It seems to be easier for us today,” writes cultural critic Fredric Jameson, “to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism”, and he adds: “perhaps that is due to some weakness in our imaginations”.

In this seminar, we are going to look into some of the ways in which culture responds to this strange and estranging situation. We are not economists and probably only very vaguely familiar with the major theories of capital, whether Marxist or not. What we will do, however, is try to make some sense of the various ways in which novelists, filmmakers, visual artists, playwrights and cultural theorists try to make sense of this historical moment in which capital reigns supreme and appears simultaneously triumphant and moribund. In short, we will address adn work through the 'weakness in our own imagination'.

Our material will include Don DeLillo’s 2003 novel Cosmopolis, Lucy Prebble’s 2009 stage play Enron, John Carpenter’s low budget classic They Live! (1988) and a range of essays, polemics, short stories, documentary films and pieces of investigative journalism.

Please buy and read:

• Don DeLillo, Cosmopolis (2003)
• Lucy Prebble, Enron (2009)
• Arundhati Roy, Capialism: A Ghost Story (2014)

More material will be made available on moodle at the beginning of the semester.

One in-class presentation and a response paper after the last meeting.