futurity

Long has it been known that the future is cancelled. This doomed fate claimed by Fisher, and indeed others, has only solidified amidst climate crises, right-wing political control, and post-pandemic uncertainty. More and more, it seems that both metaphorically and literally there is no future to come, at least not in the dominant imagination of western politics and culture.1 This is troubling, of course, but not simply because the future has been stolen. It is troubling because something ‘out there’ in the abyss of reality has the agency to steal our futurity. Someone, something, an it, is a thief of time. Temporality has been infected, seized upon and warped; only a monstrous being could do such a thing.

‘New Research on American Literature and Neoliberalism’ (organised by Arin Keeble) was held at Edinburgh Napier University on the 9th December 2019. This symposium included eight papers over two panels, and launched six new books focused around American literature in the neoliberal age: Diletta De Cristofaro’s The Contemporary Post-Apocalyptic Novel: Critical Temporalities and the End Times (2020); Paul Crosthwaite’s The Market Logics of Contemporary Fiction (2019); Myka Tucker-Abramson’s Novel Shocks: Urban Renewal and the Origins of Neoliberalism (2019); Arin Keeble’s Narratives of Hurricane Katrina in Context: Literature, Film and Television (2019); Liam Kennedy and Stephen Shapiro’s Neoliberalism and American Literature (2019); and Sharae Deckard and Stephen Shapiro’s World Literature, Neoliberalism, and the Culture of Discontent (2019).

Tag: futurity

Education, a Monstrous Thief of the Future

Conference Review: New Research on American Literature and Neoliberalism