Being Human in the Microeconomic Mode

Session 771

Seattle, WA Sheraton - Issaquah Room

Description: Scholars across literature, film, performance, and media gather to examine the microeconomic mode, a predominant contemporary American aesthetic formation that combines formal abstraction with a focus on individual choice and extreme threats to life. Panelists consider the new conception of human being that emerges from this mode and discuss its role in relation to their respective archives, current research, and theoretical concerns.

Speakers: Madhu Dubey, U of Illinois, Chicago, Merve Emre, Oxford U, Summer Kim Lee, Dartmouth College, Kate Marshall, U of Notre Dame, Alys Weinbaum, Professor U of Washington, Seattle

Presider: Gillian H. Harkins, U of Washington, Seattle

Respondent: Jane Elliott, King’s College London

The Centre for Contemporary Literature at Birkbeck is delighted to host Dr Jane Elliott (KCL), who will be delivering a guest lecture based on research developed in her recent monograph, The Microeconomic Mode: Political Subjectivity in Contemporary Popular Aesthetics (Columbia University Press, 2018).

"The Perverse Universals of the Microeconomic Mode"

From pop phenomena such as Game of Thrones and The Hunger Games to the literary triumph of Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones, the microeconomic mode redefines human being as the intersection of inescapable embodiment, threats to survival, and what Elliott has called binary life, or the conviction that humans always choose to exist at the expense of other life. In this talk Elliott will consider the consequences of binary life for longstanding debates regarding the role of suffering, spectatorship and compassion in the recognition of universal personhood, via readings of recent films such as Wind River (2017), and Avengers: Infinity War (2018). In contrast to the dramas of inclusion and exclusion that structure narratives regarding the extension of personhood to formerly excluded forms of life, binary life produces a perversely universal version of humanity equality, in which every single conscious human being must choose whether to stay alive at someone else’s expense. Elliott argues that this radically absolute definition of human equality interrupts the hierarchical transactions of the sentimental imagination in ways that are restructuring the imagination of material injustice in the present.

Jane Elliott is senior lecturer in English at King's College London. She is author of Popular Feminist Fiction as American Allegory: Representing National Time (2008) and coeditor of Theory After "Theory" (2011).

The Microeconomic Mode: Political Subjectivity in Contemporary Popular Aesthetics: https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-microeconomic-mode/9780231174749

This event is held in conjunction with the MA Summer Programme at Birkbeck, and with the MA Contemporary Literature and Culture.

Thursday, June 20th, 6-8pm. Room TBC. For details and updates visit the event page on Facebook.

Sponsored by the Department of English

2028 UH

Chicago, IL 60612

From pop phenomena such as Game of Thrones and The Hunger Games to the literary triumph of Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones, the microeconomic mode redefines human being as the intersection of inescapable embodiment, threat to survival, and what Elliott has called “binary life,” or the conviction that humans always choose to exist at the expense of other life. In this talk Elliott will consider the consequences of binary life for longstanding debates regarding the role of suffering, spectatorship and identification in the recognition of universal personhood, via readings of the recent films including Wind River (2017) and Avengers: Infinity War (2018).

Sponsored by the 20th and 21st Century Cultures Workshop and The Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory

Wilder House

5811 S. Kenwood Avenue

From pop phenomena such as Game of Thrones and The Hunger Games to the literary triumph of Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones, the microeconomic mode redefines human being as the intersection of inescapable embodiment, threat to survival, and what Elliott has called “binary life,” or the conviction that humans always choose to exist at the expense of other life. In this talk Elliott will consider the consequences of binary life for longstanding debates regarding the role of suffering, spectatorship and identification in the recognition of universal personhood, via readings of the recent films including Wind River (2017) and Avengers: Infinity War (2018). Sponsored by the 20th and 21st Century Cultures Workshop and The Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory

Fordham Lincoln Center -- Lowenstein 309

April 10, 5:30-7:00

From pop phenomena such as Game of Thrones and The Hunger Games to the literary triumph of Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones, the microeconomic mode redefines human being as the intersection of inescapable embodiment, threats to survival, and what Elliott has called binary life, or the conviction that humans always choose to exist at the expense of other life. In this talk Elliott will consider the consequences of binary life for longstanding debates regarding the role of suffering, spectatorship and compassion in the recognition of universal personhood, via readings of recent films such as Wind River (2017), and Avengers: Infinity War (2018). In contrast to the dramas of inclusion and exclusion that structure narratives regarding the extension of personhood to formerly excluded forms of life, binary life produces a perversely universal version of humanity equality, in which every single conscious human being must choose whether to stay alive at someone else’s expense. This radically absolute definition of human equality interrupts the hierarchical transactions of the sentimental imagination at the same time and for the same reason that it enables a new, powerful justification for profoundly asymmetrical access to thriving. The presumptions of binary life might be seen to shape narratives framing the border policies of the Trump regime.

Monday, April 8 2019
Time: 3:30 P.M.
Lindsay Young Auditorium – UT Hodges Library

"The Horror of Choice”

From Game of Thrones to The Revenant to Avengers Infinity War, recent American popular culture is brimming with visions of choice as a horror—a nightmarish negotiation of either/or options that characters are forced to endure in the name of survival. Across film, TV and literature, characters seem to have no choice but to choose who will survive, whose life they will trade for their own, or what they will lose to stay alive. In this talk, based on her recent academic monograph, Dr. Elliott offers an overview of and explanation for this fixation on the horror of choice and raises questions about the ways in which it is shaping American political discourse outside the realm of fiction and film.

Jane Elliott is Reader in Contemporary Literature, Culture and Theory at King’s College London. Her publications include The Microeconomic Mode: Political Subjectivity in Contemporary Popular Aesthetics (2018), the edited collection Theory after ‘Theory’ (2011) and Popular Feminist Fiction as American Allegory: Representing National Time (2008).

Jane Elliott was invited to the University of Tennessee by Amy Elias (Department of English/UTHC).