Event overview
Distinguished professor, Richard Godden, visiting from the University of California, Irvine, will be talking about the work of American novelist Jayne Anne Phillips
Distinguished professor, Richard Godden, visiting from the University of California, Irvine, will be talking about the work of American novelist Jayne Anne Phillips.
This talk will be of particular interest to anyone working in the field of American fiction, at whatever level, and is open to all
Abstract of talk:
Departing from the work of Randy Martin on “derivative wars,” or wars designed to maximize profitable risk (and taking their form, therefore, from the financial turn), allied to that of Michael Hudson on deficit-based empire, I shall argue that “globalization” depends upon a particular kind of fiat money (from the Latin, 'fiat': “let it be done,” ”it shall be”) – fiat credit. The questionable credibility of dollar denominated global monies depends, in turn, on sustained U.S. military spending, as that which puts the fist in the fiat of neoliberal currency. From the “new wars” (Iraq, Afghanistan) grows a new money, whose precious risk, rendered hoardable by the prospect of “permanent war,” not only puts metal in the “paper gold” of the deficit dollar as global liquidity, but stamps the golden postulate with a U.S. military insignia. Monetized war derives its ultimate substantiation from the military labor of the American working class, a labor immanent with the pain of the opened body of the dead G.I.
Since Machine Dreams (1984) and “Bess” (Fast Lanes [1988]), Jayne Anne Phillips has been preoccupied with the more and less unreturnable body of dead labor. Lark and Termite (2009) revisits that preoccupation by way of Termite, a physically and mentally impaired child, whose impairment replicates the fatal wound of his father, killed by 'friendly fire' in Korea at the exact moment of his son's birth. Telepathic connection (in the form of vibration) links father to child, and Korea (1950) to West Virginia (1959) to post Crunch America (2009). Since Termite's condition is characterized both as 'water on the brain' and 'an unpayable loan,' and since that condition extends the temporality of the hidden wound through five decades (even as the father's long dying extends throughout the novel), I seek to trace Phillips' immersion in the perceptual mechanisms of Termite to their source, a deficit funded liquidity inseparable from that which it occludes, the wounded body of the military worker. Close reading of the novel tracks the emergence of a poetics apt to a generative contradiction crucial to the neoliberal turn.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 10 Dec 2015 | 6:15pm - 7:30pm |
Accessibility
If you are attending an event and need the College to help with any mobility requirements you may have, please contact the event organiser in advance to ensure we can accommodate your needs.
