Book Talk: Promissory Notes Part II
Channel: Lever Press
Date: 2021-01-13

Episode II. The Economy through a Literary Lens: Debt in Literature and Society. Author Robin Truth Goodman and graduate student Emily Childers discuss Professor Goodman’s book _Promissory Notes: On the Literary Conditions of Debt_.

Here Goodman provides a fascinating glimpse of how 20th and early 21st century literature has both reinforced and critiqued the historical linkage of geopolitical inequalities and with the perceived negative value of indebtedness. 

References include: 

1. Graeber, David. Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2011, 2012, 2014.
2. González, Juan. “Juan González on How Puerto Rico’s Economic ‘Death Spiral’ Is Tied to Legacy of Colonialism.” Democracy Now! (26 Nov. 2015): https://​www.democracynow.org/​2015/​11/​26/​juan_​gonzalez_​on_​how_​puerto_​ricos?utm_​source=Democracy+Now!&utm_​campaign=8e049bc5cf-Daily_​Digest&utm_​medium=email&utm_​term=0_​fa2346a853-8e049bc5cf-190579529. Accessed 19 Apr. 2017.
3. Poovey, Mary. Genres of the Credit Economy: Mediating Value in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth Century-Britain. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008
4. Lewis, Michael. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, 2011 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Short
5. Trollope, Anthony. The Eustace Diamonds. Rev. ed. New York: Penguin Classics, 2004
6. Lazzarato, Maurizio. Governing by Debt. Trans. Joshua David Jordan. South Pasadena, CA: Semiotext(e), 2015.

Read the book for free here: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10209707