Literary Materialisms

Literary Materialisms addresses what has become a fundamental concern in the last decade: how do we today define literary studies as an academic discipline and literature as a relevant object of study? Avoiding unproductive proclamations, this volume unites new materialist critical thinking with a commitment to fundamental principles.

Introduction: Materialism and Literature Revisited; Mathias Nilges and Emilio Sauri PART I: READING AND INTERPRETATION 1. Reading Dialectically; Carolyn Lesjak 2. Marxist Criticism, Then and Now; Imre Szeman 3. Literature, Immanent Critique and the Problem of Standpoint; Neil Larsen 4. The Bio-Political Unconscious: Toward an Eco-Marxist Literary Theory; Leerom Medovoi PART II: THE ONTOLOGY AND FUNCTION OF LITERATURE 5. Work as Art and Art as Life; Sarah Brouillette 6. How to Subsume Difference, or World Reduction in Delany; Kevin Floyd 7. Defining the World; Peter Hitchcock 8. Close Reading and the Market; Nicholas Brown PART III: FORM AND GENRE 9. Form(alism's) Now; Mathias Nilges 10. Objective Form: Reflections on the Dialectic of Roguery; Roberto Schwarz 11. Marxism and Melodrama; Bruno Bosteels 12. Creativity, Character and the Making of the American Middle-Class; Jason Potts 13. The Ends of Culture; or, Late Modernism, Redux; Phillip E. Wegner