Insistence of the Material: Literature in the Age of Biopolitics
(Paperback)
Publishing Details
Insistence of the Material: Literature in the Age of Biopolitics
By (Author) Christopher Breu
University of Minnesota Press
University of Minnesota Press
2nd January 2015
United States
Classifications
General
Non Fiction
Social and cultural anthropology
Literature: history and criticism
810.9005
Physical Properties
Paperback
264
Width 140mm, Height 216mm, Spine 38mm
Description
Insistence of the Material engages with theories of materiality and biopolitics to provide a radical reinterpretation of experimental fiction in the second half of the twentieth century. It examines this literature's focus on the material conditions of everyday life and rethinks contemporary understandings of biopolitics, affirming the importance of forms of materiality that refuse full socialization and resist symbolic manipulation.
Reviews
"Insistence of the Material offers powerful readings of the most important experimental writers since 1950, readings that demonstrate how much subversive political potential remains in literature as it emerges from the bewildering metafictional labyrinths of postmodernism. Christopher Breu takes readers on a sometimes dangerous, often disturbing but always bracing trip along the parallel cutting edges of contemporary literature and theory." Timothy S. Murphy, author of Antonio Negri: Modernity and the Multitude
"Breus illuminating engagement with late 20th- and 21st-century literature and theory will leave readers understanding of both altered and refreshed."CHOICE
"Important work."Modern Fiction Studies
Author Bio
Christopher Breu is associate professor of English at Illinois State University. He is the author of Hard-Boiled Masculinities (Minnesota, 2005).
