
Capital, Class & Technology in Contemporary American Culture
Projecting Post-Fordism
- 256 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
In the tradition of Mike Davis and Fredric Jameson, Nick Heffernan engages in a series of meditations on capital, class and technology in contemporary America. He turns to the stories we generate and tell ourselves - via fiction, film journalism, theory - to see how change is registered. By investigating a variety of texts, he observes how structural change affects the way people organise their lives economically, socially and culturally. Case studies include Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, William Gibson's cyberspace trilogy, Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, and Wim Wenders's Until the End of the World. Using the links between narrative cultural forms and the process of historical understanding, he brings together debates that have so far been conducted largely within the separate domains of political economy, social theory and cultural criticism to provide a compelling analysis of contemporary cultural change. By relocating postmodernism in the context of changing modes of capitalism, Heffernan puts the question of class and class agency back at the centre of the critical agenda.
Frequently asked questions
- Essential is ideal for learners and professionals who enjoy exploring a wide range of subjects. Access the Essential Library with 800,000+ trusted titles and best-sellers across business, personal growth, and the humanities. Includes unlimited reading time and Standard Read Aloud voice.
- Complete: Perfect for advanced learners and researchers needing full, unrestricted access. Unlock 1.4M+ books across hundreds of subjects, including academic and specialized titles. The Complete Plan also includes advanced features like Premium Read Aloud and Research Assistant.
Please note we cannot support devices running on iOS 13 and Android 7 or earlier. Learn more about using the app.
Information
Table of contents
- Contents
- Introduction
- Part 1. Late Capitalism, Fordism, Post- Fordism
- 1. Postmodernism and Late Capitalism
- 2. Class and Consensus, Ideology and Technology
- Part 2. Putting 'IT' to Work: : Post- Fordism, Information Technology and the Eclipse of Production
- 3. Making 'IT': The Soul of a New Machine
- 4. Faking 'IT': True Stories
- 5. Playing With 'IT': Microserfs
- Part 3. Impotence and Omnipotence: The Cybernetic Discourse of Capitalism
- 6. Cybernetics, Systems Theory and the End of Ideology
- 7. Imaginary Resolutions: William Gibson's Cyberspace Trilogy
- 8. Artificial Intelligence and Class Consciousness: Blade Runner
- Part 4. Capital, Class, Cosmopolitanism
- 9. Fordism, Post-Fordism and the Production of World Space
- 10. National Allegory and the Romance of Underdevelopment: The Names
- 11. Blindness and Insight in the World System: Until the End of the World
- Conclusion Questioning Fordism and Post-Fordism
- Notes
- Index