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>Processes of elimination: Waste and American fiction at the turn of the twentieth century (Theodore Dreiser, Edith Wharton, Frank Norris, Upton Sinclair).
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Processes of elimination: Waste and American fiction at the turn of the twentieth century (Theodore Dreiser, Edith Wharton, Frank Norris, Upton Sinclair).
Arising within a rubbish-generating culture of consumption, amid anxieties over the nature of economic and social value, and within crises over national identity spawned by heightened immigration, a fin de siècle cultural complex surrounding questions of waste conditions naturalist narratives by Theodore Dreiser, Edith Wharton, Frank Norris, and Upton Sinclair. In these novels, waste (cropping up frequently in allusions, metaphors, and direct references) suggests a topsy-turvy world in which the moment of elimination serves paradoxically as cultural, economic, and social organizing principle. These narratives are variously invested in waste and wasting, critiquing the culture of consumption, while sometimes also enacting some of the wasting procedures against which they seem to take a stand. In all cases, a central role is played by pollution, which is mobilized as a means of forcing an end to sometimes relentless systems of use. This project joins the critical debate on American naturalism with a materialist emphasis, suggesting new ways of engaging with naturalism's keen interest in the world of consumable objects and consumable people.; Section one reads Dreiser's Sister Carrie and Wharton's House of Mirth within the context of the rise of disposable products and new habits of object disposal. As the exigencies of the object world penetrate into social relations, characters are caught up as objects between rival forms of use. The second section sees in Norris's McTeague and Moran of the Lady Letty a conjoined rumination on the complex relations between castoff objects and value itself. Norris implicitly argues that waste and wasting are not external to the structure of value but instead are its founding condition. Section three focuses on Sinclair's The Jungle within the context of digestive health reform writing and anti-immigration discourse. For Sinclair, capitalist machinery has grotesquely become a body that digests and excretes workers, yet the novel also demonstrates a strong tendency toward the “elimination” of women and African Americans from the body politic. Sinclair's less-than-inclusive socialism nests within the operation of a larger discourse of national belonging that sees the nation as a digesting body that must, as Josiah Strong put it, “digest or die.”
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机译:在产生垃圾的消费文化中,对经济和社会价值的本质感到焦虑,在因移民增加而产生的民族认同危机中,围绕浪费条件问题的siècle italic>文化情结Theodore Dreiser,Edith Wharton,Frank Norris和Upton Sinclair的自然主义叙述。在这些小说中,浪费(经常在典故,隐喻和直接引述中大量出现)暗示了一个混乱的世界,消灭的时刻自相矛盾地充当了文化,经济和社会组织的原则。这些叙事在浪费和浪费上进行了各种投资,从而破坏了消费文化,同时有时还制定了一些他们似乎要反对的浪费程序。在所有情况下,污染都起着核心作用,而污染则被作为强制终止有时无情的使用系统的一种手段。该项目以唯物主义为重点,加入了对美国自然主义的批判性辩论,提出了与自然主义对消耗性物品和消费品世界充满兴趣的新方式。第一节是在一次性产品的兴起和物体处置的新习惯的背景下,读到德莱塞(Dreiser)的《嘉莉大姐姐》(italister)和沃顿(Wharton)的《喜乐屋》(italic of Mirth)。随着客体世界的迫切需求渗透到社会关系中,角色被作为敌对使用形式之间的客体被追赶。第二部分在诺里斯的 McTeague italic>和 Lady Letty的Moran italic>中看到了对抛弃对象与价值本身之间复杂关系的共同思考。诺里斯隐含地认为,浪费和浪费不是价值结构的外在因素,而是价值的创始条件。第三部分在消化健康改革的写作和反移民话语的背景下,着眼于辛克莱的《斜体》(The Jungle italic)。对于辛克莱而言,资本主义机器已经怪异地成为消化和排泄工人的机构,但该小说也显示出一种强烈的倾向,即将女性和非裔美国人从政治机构中“淘汰”。辛克莱(Sinclair)的包容性不强的社会主义嵌套在更大范围的民族归属话语的运作之中,该话语将国家视为一个消化机构,正如乔西亚·斯特朗(Josiah Strong)所说,它必须“消化或死亡”。
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