Disturbing calculations
Subtitle: the economics of identity in postcolonial Southern literature, 1912-2002
By: Melanie R. Benson.
Series: The new southern studies
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Athens, Ga
Language: eng
Number of pages: 263
ISBN-13: 9780820329727; 9780820331126
Subjects: American literature -- Southern States -- History and criticism; American literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism; Value in literature; Value -- Psychological aspects; Numbers in literature; Fetishism in literature; Narcissism in literature; Ego (Psychology) in literature; Identity (Psychology) in literature; Southern States -- In literature
Description: In fiction by a large, diverse group of authors, including William Faulkner, Anita Loos, William Attaway, Dorothy Allison and Lan Cao, Benson identifies a calculation-obsessed, anxiety-ridden discourse in which numbers are employed to determine social and racial hierarchies and establish individual worth and identity.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 233-251) and index.
Table of contents: title: The fetish of number : narcissism, economics, and the twentieth century Southern ego; title: The fetish of surplus value : reconstructing the white elite in Allen Tate, William Alexander Percy, William Faulkner, and Thomas Wolfe; title: Stealing themselves out of slavery : African American Southerners in Richard Wright, William Attaway, James Weldon Johnson, and Zora Neale Hurston; title: The measures of love : Southern belles and working girls in Frances Newman, Anita Loos, and Katherine Anne Porter; title: Contemporary crises of value : white trash, black paralysis, and elite amnesia in Dorothy Allison, Alice Walker, and Walker Percy; title: Remembering the missing : Native Americans, immigrants, and Atlanta's murdered children in Louis Owens, Marilou Awiakta, Lan Cao, James Baldwin, Toni Cade Bambara, and Tayari Jones.