{"product_id":"the-microeconomic-mode-jane-elliott-9780231174756","title":"The Microeconomic Mode: Political Subjectivity in Contemporary Popular Aesthetics","description":"\u003cp\u003eFrom \u003ci\u003eThe Road\u003c\/i\u003e to \u003ci\u003eGame of Thrones\u003c\/i\u003e, across works as seemingly different as \u003ci\u003eGone Girl\u003c\/i\u003e and\u003ci\u003e Saw, \u003c\/i\u003eliterature, film, and television have become obsessed with the intersection of survival and choice. When the trapped rock-climber hero of \u003ci\u003e127 Hours\u003c\/i\u003e is confronted with self-amputation or death, it is only a particularly blunt example of an omnipresent set-up. In real-life settings or fantastical games, protagonists find themselves confronting extreme scenarios with life-or-death consequences, forced to make torturous either-or choices in stripped-down, brutally stark environments. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eJane Elliott identifies and analyzes this new and distinctive aesthetic phenomenon, which she calls \"the microeconomic mode.\" Through close readings of its narratives, tropes, and concepts, she traces the implicit theoretical and political claims conveyed by this combination of abstraction and extremity. In the microeconomic mode, humans isolated from any forms of social organization operate within a mini-economy of costs and benefits, gains and losses, measured in the currency of life. Elliott reads the key concepts that emerge from this aesthetic--life-interest, sovereign capture, and binary life--in relation to biopolitics and natural law theory, becoming and the control society, and primitive accumulation in racial capitalism. The microeconomic mode interrogates the destruction of the liberal political subject, but what it leaves in its place is as disturbing as it is radically new. Going beyond the question of neoliberalism in literature, \u003ci\u003eThe Microeconomic Mode\u003c\/i\u003e combines revelatory close readings of key literary and popular texts with significant theoretical interventions to identify how an aesthetics of choice has reshaped our contemporary understanding of what it means to be human.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Jane Elliott\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0231174756\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780231174756\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Columbia University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 01\/19\/2021\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 248\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.70lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.70h x 5.60w x 0.70d","brand":"Jane Elliott","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":43942685245695,"sku":"9780231174756","price":26.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/products\/img_915247a5-d154-4d7f-9551-924025a67e10.jpg?v=1681493764","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/the-microeconomic-mode-jane-elliott-9780231174756","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}