Emily Johansen – författare

The novel form has long been connected to modern capitalism and is, arguably, the literary genre most prominently enmeshed in contemporary global markets. Yet, as many critics have suggested about capital, something has changed in the last forty years. With the rise of neoliberalism as the dominant global economic rationality and mode of governance, the experience of capital has produced new ways of seeing and relating to the world, leading, as David Harvey observes, to "the financialization of everything". The novel, indexed to capital in myriad ways, then, must similarly have been transformed.Neoliberalism and the Novel investigates both those changes wrought to the novel form by changing arrangements of capital, and the novel’s broader engagement with neoliberalism itself. The chapters in this book consider these questions from a variety of angles, attending to the way in which the neoliberal novel deploys familiar generic patterns as a site from which to offer critique; examining the changing operation of labour and time under neoliberalism and its effect on novel form; and offering a broader call for new reading and interpretative practices to respond to changing socio-economic realities. This book was originally published as a special issue of Textual Practice.

The novel form has long been connected to modern capitalism and is, arguably, the literary genre most prominently enmeshed in contemporary global markets. Yet, as many critics have suggested about capital, something has changed in the last forty years. With the rise of neoliberalism as the dominant global economic rationality and mode of governance, the experience of capital has produced new ways of seeing and relating to the world, leading, as David Harvey observes, to "the financialization of everything". The novel, indexed to capital in myriad ways, then, must similarly have been transformed.Neoliberalism and the Novel investigates both those changes wrought to the novel form by changing arrangements of capital, and the novel’s broader engagement with neoliberalism itself. The chapters in this book consider these questions from a variety of angles, attending to the way in which the neoliberal novel deploys familiar generic patterns as a site from which to offer critique; examining the changing operation of labour and time under neoliberalism and its effect on novel form; and offering a broader call for new reading and interpretative practices to respond to changing socio-economic realities. This book was originally published as a special issue of Textual Practice.

Over the last few decades and from across a spectrum of centrist political thought, a variety of academic disciplines, and numerous public intellectuals, the claim has been that we need to empathize more with marginalized people as a way to alleviate social inequalities. If we all had more skill with empathy, so the claim goes, we would all be better citizens. But what does it mean to empathize with others? How do we develop this skill? And what does it offer that older models of solidarity don’t? Why empathy—and why now?Rereading Empathy takes up these questions, examining the uses to which calls for empathy are put in the face of ever expanding economic and social precarity. The contributors draw on a variety of historical and contemporary literary and cultural archives to illustrate the work that empathy is supposed to enable—and to query alternative models of building collective futures.

Over the last few decades and from across a spectrum of centrist political thought, a variety of academic disciplines, and numerous public intellectuals, the claim has been that we need to empathize more with marginalized people as a way to alleviate social inequalities. If we all had more skill with empathy, so the claim goes, we would all be better citizens. But what does it mean to empathize with others? How do we develop this skill? And what does it offer that older models of solidarity don’t? Why empathy—and why now?Rereading Empathy takes up these questions, examining the uses to which calls for empathy are put in the face of ever expanding economic and social precarity. The contributors draw on a variety of historical and contemporary literary and cultural archives to illustrate the work that empathy is supposed to enable—and to query alternative models of building collective futures.

Beyond Safety argues that concerns about the ethical impossibility of individual safety in the face of risks with increasingly obvious global consequences alters representations of neoliberal contemporary life. As the climate crises in the Caribbean and Australia, ongoing European refugee and American border crises, and, most recently, anxieties about Coronavirus illustrate, contemporary life is characterized by global connections that produce and reflect precarious outcomes and dangers. The ability to ignore risk or shift it to others underscores the fact that it is mitigable for particular segments of society while inescapable for others. Emily Johansen investigates depictions of global danger and safety in contemporary transnational fictional and popular texts—those characterized by a narrative or representational emphasis on border crossing and global interdependences. She demonstrates how these texts use risk to question and re-imagine the norms and practices of contemporary global citizenship. Beyond Safety thus brings together three of the central keywords of contemporary literary criticism of the last ten years (cosmopolitanism, precarity, neoliberalism) and shows how their intersection allows for a fuller conception of contemporary life and imagines a new global future.