Out of Sync and Out of Work: History and the Obsolescence of Labor in Contemporary Culture PDF
Preview Out of Sync and Out of Work: History and the Obsolescence of Labor in Contemporary Culture
Out of Sync and Out of Work Out of Sync and Out of Work History and the Obsolescence of Labor in Contemporary Culture JOEL BURGES Rutgers University Press New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey, and London Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Burges, Joel author. Title: Out of sync & out of work : history and the obsolescence of labor in contemporary culture / Joel Burges. Other titles: Out of sync and out of work Description: New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical refer- ences and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017055193 | ISBN 9780813597119 (paperback) | ISBN 9780813597126 (paperback) Subjects: LCSH: Working class in motion pictures. | Working class in literature. | Unem- ployed in literature. | Motion pictures— Social aspects— United States. | American fiction— 20th century— History and criticism. | English fiction— 20th century— History and criticism. | BISAC: PERFORMING ARTS / Film & Video / History & Criticism. | BUSI- NESS & ECONOMICS / Labor. | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Media Studies. | SOCIAL SCI- ENCE / Social Classes. Classification: LCC PN1995.9.L28 B97 2018 | DDC 791.43/6520623— dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017055193 A British Cataloging- in- Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. Copyright © 2018 by Joel Burges All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permis- sion from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48- 1992. www .rutgersuniversitypress .org Manufactured in the United States of America Contents Introduction: Falling into History 1 1 Culture by Outmoded Means 12 2 Reading by Residual Means 38 3 Narrative by Obstinate Means 78 4 Cinema by Dated Means 115 5 Politics by Obsolete Means 151 Acknowledgments 175 Notes 177 Index 199 v Out of Sync and Out of Work Introduction Falling into History Across the history of capitalism, the obsolescence of labor has left ever- increasing numbers of people out of sync and out of work. Fueled by the unforgiving dialectics of technological change that automation, mechaniza- tion, and computerization have propelled, the obsolescence of labor is a pro- cess that leaves the unemployed behind the times. As machinery displaces and replaces workers, however, obsolete laborers discover themselves falling not out of history but into it. This fall is at the center of Out of Sync and Out of Work, which looks to contemporary culture to push back against the elitist idea that the technologically unemployed have no feeling for or currency with history. That currency is far more than, as some imagine it to be, a simple mat- ter of just updating your skill set to find new work in a new economy. Instead, such historical currency is a collective experience of class, in which technologi- cal change brings obsolete workers up against the very limits of reproducing themselves, their families, and their communities in an era in which diminish- ing work and falling wages have made such reproduction harder and harder. Out of Sync and Out of Work is about the temporal horizon that contem- porary culture opens up in response to this indelibly historical experience. This book focuses on early twenty- first- century films and novels that call forth historical time, the feeling of being “out of sync,” by exploring the obsolescence of labor, the fact of being “out of work.” These novels and films come from both the United States and the United Kingdom and range across mediums and genres: Brian Selznick’s children’s novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret (2007) and Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of it, Hugo (2011); Rich Moore’s digitally animated film Wreck- It Ralph (2012); Wes Anderson’s stop- motion film Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009); and China Miéville’s political novel Iron Coun- cil (2004). Low, popular, and at times pulpy, noncanonical (not to mention unlikely ever to achieve canonicity), and shot through with childlike modes of irrealist perception, all of them spur— unexpectedly given the qualities just enumerated— an active experience of historical time in responding to the fact that the obsolescence of labor has acutely intensified since the end of the twen- tieth century. 1
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