ISBN : 9780190876555
Surveyors of Customs explores literature's insights into how America--its soft capitalism, its democratized inequality, its Americanization of power--ticks. Joel Pfister argues that writers from Benjamin Franklin to Louise Erdrich can be read as critical surveyors of customs, culture, hegemony, capitalism's emotional logic, and much else.
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Critical Work and Critical Pleasure of American Literature
1. Inner-Self Industries: Soft Capitalism's Reproductive Logic
2. How America Works: Getting Personal to Get Personnel
3. Dress-Down Conquest: Americanizing Top-Down as Bottom-Up
Afterword: Payoffs
Notes
Works Consulted
Index