TY - CHAP
T1 - Crisis, Labour, and the Contemporary
AU - Connell, Liam
PY - 2022/7/28
Y1 - 2022/7/28
N2 - This chapter considers the difficulty that economics has found in defining labour as a practice separate from its product. Looking first at Classical and Marxist economics, it uses feminist economics to highlight the omissions that conventional definitions of labour contain, especially concerning the work of women. By comparing feminist economics with recent novels by women, including Halle Butler’s The New Me, Alice Furse’s Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Heike Geissler’s Seasonal Associate, Hilary Leichter’s Temporary and Ling Ma’s Severance, it argues that contemporary fiction has been attentive to the same omissions. Through a reading of the techniques of literary fiction, including realism and a range of experimental narrative devices, this essay proposes that the contemporary novel offers kinds of writing that expand our conception of labour. Contemporary fiction contains narratives that highlight the work of social reproduction as central component of the economies of labour and that offer a wider critique of economic categories of value.
AB - This chapter considers the difficulty that economics has found in defining labour as a practice separate from its product. Looking first at Classical and Marxist economics, it uses feminist economics to highlight the omissions that conventional definitions of labour contain, especially concerning the work of women. By comparing feminist economics with recent novels by women, including Halle Butler’s The New Me, Alice Furse’s Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Heike Geissler’s Seasonal Associate, Hilary Leichter’s Temporary and Ling Ma’s Severance, it argues that contemporary fiction has been attentive to the same omissions. Through a reading of the techniques of literary fiction, including realism and a range of experimental narrative devices, this essay proposes that the contemporary novel offers kinds of writing that expand our conception of labour. Contemporary fiction contains narratives that highlight the work of social reproduction as central component of the economies of labour and that offer a wider critique of economic categories of value.
UR - https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009026550
U2 - 10.1017/9781009026550.016
DO - 10.1017/9781009026550.016
M3 - Chapter
SN - 9781009026550
SN - 9781009012997
T3 - Cambridge Companion to Literature
SP - 212
EP - 226
BT - The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Economics
A2 - Crosthwaite, Paul
A2 - Knight, Peter
A2 - Marsh, Nicky
PB - Cambridge University Press (CUP)
CY - Cambridge
ER -