Slum Simulacra

Jack Kerouac, Oscar Lewis, and Cultures of Poverty

Datos Bibliográficos

ID5812596
AutoresAaron Chandler (autor de correspondencia)
Año2022
Volumen68
Número3
Páginas243-272
Fecha de publicación2022-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaTwentieth Century Literature (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0041-462X • E-ISSN: 2325-8101
EditorialDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/0041462x-10028057
OpenAlexW4306638442
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas28

Placing Jack Kerouac's representations of poverty in dialogue with the work of anthropologist Oscar Lewis, originator of the "culture of poverty" thesis, this essay demonstrates that their disparate modes of allegiance with the poor share roots in the same unstable poverty ontology. Unable to fix the meaning of poverty as either as a natural condition or as a cultural product, Lewis and Kerouac each present poverty both as an abject expression of social disorder and as a point of vital social exteriority. Tracing this poverty ontology to Rousseau, the essay reveals how its instabilities spur aesthetic innovations-and political contradictions-in both writers

Allegiance · Culture of poverty · Slum · French Literature and Poetry · Music History and Culture · Poetry Analysis and Criticism