Capital, Class and Technology in Contemporary American Culture FROM THE PUBLISHER
In the tradition of Mike Davis and Fredric Jameson, Nick Heffernan engages in a series of meditations on capital, class and technology in contemporary America. He turns to the stories we generate to tell ourselves - via fiction, film journalism, theory - to see how change is registered. By investigating a variety of texts, he observes how structural change affects the way people organize their lives economically, socially and culturally. Case studies include Ridley Scott's " Blade Runner", William Gibson's cyberspace trilogy, Thomas Pynchon's " The Crying of Lot 49", and Wim Wender's " Until the End of the World".Using the links between narrative cultural forms and the process of historical understanding, he brings together debates that have so far been conducted largely within the separate domains of political economy, social theory and cultural criticism to provide a compelling analysis of contemporary cultural change. By relocating postmodernism in the context of changing modes of capitalism, Heffernan puts the question of class and class agency back as the center of the critical agenda.
SYNOPSIS
In the tradition of Mike Davis and Fredric Jameson, Nick Heffernan engages in a series of meditations on capital, class and technology in contemporary America. He turns to the stories we generate to tell ourselves - via fiction, film journalism, theory - to see how change is registered. By investigating a variety of texts, he observes how structural change affects the way people organize their lives economically, socially and culturally. Case studies include Ridley Scott's " Blade Runner", William Gibson's cyberspace trilogy, Thomas Pynchon's " The Crying of Lot 49", and Wim Wender's " Until the End of the World".Using the links between narrative cultural forms and the process of historical understanding, he brings together debates that have so far been conducted largely within the separate domains of political economy, social theory and cultural criticism to provide a compelling analysis of contemporary cultural change. By relocating postmodernism in the context of changing modes of capitalism, Heffernan puts the question of class and class agency back as the center of the critical agenda.
FROM THE CRITICS
CHOICE
Heffernan explores the ways in which narratives generated through literary fiction, film, journalism, and social and cultural theory register and represent contemporary social and cultural shape. He draws on and impressive breadth of texts. This compelling and thought-provoking book is highly recommended for graduate students and above with interests in postmodernism and contemporary cultural, class, and technology studies.
Art & Photography
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