cfp.english.upenn.edu

Modernist Affective Labor and Biopolitics

In _Multitude_, Hardt and Negri write, “A worker with a good attitude and social skills is another way of saying a worker adept at affective labor” (108). This panel invites papers that deal with some aspect of affective labor, knowledge work, service economies, the “feminization” of labor, creativity and innovation, cultural capital, the multitude, or biopolitics. If we understand the period of high modernism (between the World Wars) as transitional between a regime of industrial capitalism founded on colonial empires and postindustrial capitalism founded on globalization, how can we trace the emergence of the “creative class” in modernist culture? Are the famous protagonists (e.g., Stephen Dedalus or Jacob Flanders) of modernist literature predecessors of postindustrial cubicle workers? How did film and popular culture address transformations of the consumer society and the culture industry as they pertain to new forms of labor and capital?

Please send 300 word abstract and short bio to Enda Duffy, msa2009biopolitics@gmail.com.

Conference Location: Montreal, Canada
Conference Starts: November 05, 2009
Conference Ends: November 07, 2009

CFP Submission Deadline: May 08, 2009

For more information, contact: Enda Duffy