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Introduction

Neoliberalism, Financialization, and the Contemporary Literary Marketplace

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2019

Paul Crosthwaite
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
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Summary

The introduction begins by highlighting the novelist Tao Lin's attempt to sell shares in an unwritten novel - an especially striking manifestation of the market logics examined throughout the book. The introduction then maps the historical and conceptual ground of the project. Successive sections trace how the interlocking developments of neoliberalism and financialization since the 1970s have extended what Pierre Bourdieu calls a “pure market logic” to ever-widening domains of social life; how Fredric Jameson’s paradigm-defining theorizations of the contemporary nonetheless go too far in positing postmodernist culture as a straightforward expression of this logic; how the power of market forces in the present elicits a condition of ambivalence among contemporary writers that is neither simply critical nor “postcritical,” but combines the intense affective states of both positions; and, finally, how the publishing industry and book retail business have undergone their own neoliberal and financial revolutions over recent decades, with profound consequences for novelistic practice. The remaining section of the introduction summarizes the arguments of the book’s chapters and Coda.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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  • Introduction
  • Paul Crosthwaite, University of Edinburgh
  • Book: The Market Logics of Contemporary Fiction
  • Online publication: 04 July 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108583787.001
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  • Introduction
  • Paul Crosthwaite, University of Edinburgh
  • Book: The Market Logics of Contemporary Fiction
  • Online publication: 04 July 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108583787.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Paul Crosthwaite, University of Edinburgh
  • Book: The Market Logics of Contemporary Fiction
  • Online publication: 04 July 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108583787.001
Available formats
×