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https://doi.org/10.22210/ur.2024.068.2/01
Literary Response to the Great Recession. (Mis)uses of Language in the Capitalist “Now”
Maša Kolanović
; Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu
Sažetak
The text examines literary responses to the Great Recession, the last major global economic crisis of 2007–08, by employing new interdisciplinary approaches to the study of the relationship between economics and literature. Specifically, it engages with perspectives that highlight the fictional quality of contemporary economic processes (Berardi 2012; Grgas 2014; Hitchcock 2014, etc). The analysis narrows in on specific language strategies used in literary reflections on the crisis, by focusing on two examples: one from American and the other from Croatian literature. "The Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology" (Boyer and Marinovich, eds., 2011) and the poetic drama "It’s Not Us, It’s Just Glass" by Ivana Sajko (2011) emerge from the global “structure of feelings” of the affective mapping of the crisis. They critically highlight the fractures in the contemporary economy through the lens of specific social knowledge literary texts about economy provide. "The Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology" serves as a poetic map of the effects of indebtedness, the pursuit of “poetic justice” (Nussbaum 2005) and the sears for a possible way out within the constraints of the dominant economic system and the dominant imaginative paradigm. Ivana Sajko’s poetic drama is one of the rare examples of an immediate and direct literary response to the Great Recession in Croatian context, where the precarious state of indebtedness and the question of the future perspective of the new generation are central themes. A poetic intervention in the language of economics characterizes both texts. Drawing on theoretician and philosopher Franco “Biffo” Berardi’s reflections, it could be concluded that both works employ strategies aimed at liberating language from its confinement to economic meanings, striving to restore its creative, affective, social and political potential. Both texts, each within its own genre, reject the use of language “in the capitalist sign cycle of production that effectively freezes the affective potential of language” (Berardi 2012); instead, they restore the potential of faith in language that expresses the “emotional body” and “social solidarity” within the community.
Ključne riječi
Economic crisis, Great Recession, Literature, Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology, Ivana Sajko
Hrčak ID:
325428
URI
Datum izdavanja:
27.12.2024.
Posjeta: 57 *