Narrating Poverty and Precarity in Britain

Barbara Korte, Frédéric Regard, Barbara Korte, Frédéric Regard

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9783110391367
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: Literature

Poverty and precarity have gained a new societal and political presence in the twenty-first century's advanced economies. This is reflected in cultural production, which this book discusses for a wide range of media and genres from the novel to reality television. With a focus on Britain, its chapters divide their attention between current representations of poverty and important earlier narratives that have retained significant relevance today.
The book's contributions discuss the representation of social suffering with attention to agencies of enunciation, ethical implications of 'voice' and 'listening', limits of narratability, the pitfalls of sensationalism, voyeurism and sentimentalism, potentials and restrictions inherent in specific representational techniques, modes and genres; cultural markets for poverty and precarity. Overall, the book suggests that analysis of poverty narratives requires an intersection of theoretical reflection and a close reading of texts.

Index

abject, abjection 1,2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

abuse 1, 2, 3, 4

adversity 1

affect, affective 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 – 8

Agamben, Giorgio 1

agency 1, 2 – 3, 4, 5 – 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 – 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21

animal 1, 2, 3, 4– 5

anxiety 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

appropriation 1, 2, 3 – 4, 5

asylum seekers 1, 2 – 3, 4

Attack the Block (film) 1

audibility 1, 2, 3

audience 1, 2–3, 4–5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 – 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 – 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23

authentic, authenticity 1, 2, 3, 4 – 5, 6, 7, 8

author 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7–8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27

autobiography 1, 2, 3, 4,5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Bakhtin, Mikhail 1

bare life 1–2, 3, 4

Barthes, Roland 1, 2

beggar, begging 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

benefits 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Berger, John (King: A Street Story) 1, 2– 3

Betensky, Carolyn 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Bildungsroman 1, 2

Biopolitics 1, 2

Blair, Tony 1

Blake, William („The Chimney Sweeper“) 1

Booth, Charles (Life and Labour of the People in London) 1

Booth, Michael 1, 2

Boucicault, Dion (The Poor of New York) 1, 2 – 3, 4, 5

Bourdieu, Pierre 1, 2, 3, 4– 5

bourgeois, bourgeoisie 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Bowen, James (A Street Cat Named Bob) 1, 2

Brontë, Charlotte (Shirley) 1

Butler, Judith 1, 2–3, 4–5, 6, 7, 8 – 9, 10 – 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17

– Frames of War 1, 2, 3

– Giving an Account of Oneself 1

– Precarious Life 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

– Undoing Gender 1

– „Violence, Mourning, Politics“ 1

Call the Midwife 1

capitalism, capitalist 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 – 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

caricature 1

carnivalesque 1, 2

Catholic Church 1, 2

Celtic Tiger 1

charity, charities (see also philanthropy) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

chav 1, 2, 3 –4

childhood 1, 2

Clanchy, Kate (Antigona and Me) 1, 2, 3– 4

class 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 – 6, 7, 8,9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 – 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26

– c. conflict 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

– c. consciousness 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

– c. passing 1, 2

– c. warfare 1–2, 3, 4, 5

– lower c. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

– middle c. 1–2, 3, 4–5, 6, 7 – 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 – 18, 19 – 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25

– upper c. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

– working c. 1, 2, 3 – 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19

cliché 1, 2, 3, 4– 5

colonial, colonialization (see also postcolonialism...

Table of contents

• Culture & Conflict
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Narrating Poverty and Precarity in Britain: An Introduction
• Envying the Poor: Contemporary and Nineteenth-Century Fantasies of Vulnerability
• Managing the Unmanageable: Paradoxes of Poverty in Harriet Martineau’s Illustrations of Political Economy(1832 – 1834)
• “We have learned the value of poverty”: (Re-)Presentations of the Poor in Nineteenth-Century Melodramas
• The Sexual Exploitation of the Poor in W. T. Stead’s ‘New Journalism’: Humanity, Democracy and the Tabloid Press
• “The Amateur Casuals”: Immersion among the Poor from James Greenwood to George Orwell
• Flann O’Brien’s The Poor Mouth and the Deconstruction of Stereotypes about Irish Poverty
• Frames of Recognition under Global Capitalism: Eastern European Migrants in British Fiction
• “The Last Voice of Democracy”: Precarity, Community and Fiction in Alan Warner’s Morvern Callar (1995)
• Life on the Streets: Parallactic Ways of Seeing Homelessness in John Berger’s King: A Street Story (1999)
• Poverty on the Market: Precarious Lives in Popular Fiction
• Weaponizing Prurience
• Biographies of the Contributors
• Index