Living Labor

Fiction, Film, and Precarious Work

Bibliographic Data

ID5840698
AuthorsJoseph Entin (Purdue University West Lafayette, corresponding author), Joseph B Entin (0000-0003-0699-1725)
Year2022
Publication date2022-08-05
Open AccessYes
TypeBOOK
VenueLiving Labor (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherUniversity of Michigan Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.3998/mpub.11738099
OpenAlexW4300517440
Open LibraryOL38405756M
ISBN9780472075195
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited46

For much of the twentieth century, the iconic figure of the U.S. working class was a white, male industrial worker. But in the contemporary age of capitalist globalization new stories about work and workers are emerging to refashion this image. Living Labor examines these narratives and, in the process, offers an innovative reading of American fiction and film through the lens of precarious work. It argues that since the 1980s, novelists and filmmakers-including Russell Banks, Helena Víramontes, Karen Tei Yamashita, Francisco Goldman, David Riker, Ramin Bahrani, Clint Eastwood, Courtney Hunt, and Ryan Coogler-have chronicled the demise of the industrial proletariat, and the tentative and unfinished emergence of a new, much more diverse and perilously positioned working class. In bringing together stories of work that are also stories of race, ethnicity, gender, and colonialism, Living Labor challenges the often-assumed division between class and identity politics. Through the concept of living labor and its discussion of solidarity, the book reframes traditional notions of class, helping us understand both the challenges working people face and the possibilities for collective consciousness and action in the global present

Aesthetics · Art · Class consciousness · Demise · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Proletariat · Sociology · Solidarity · White (mutation · Working class · Gender Studies · Law · Political Economy and Marxism

Tools

Open DOILibgenOpen Access