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9781946684240 Academic Inspection Copy

The Argument About Things in the 1980s

Goods and Garbage in an Age of Neoliberalism
  • ISBN-13: 9781946684240
  • Publisher: WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
    Imprint: WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
  • By Tim Jelfs
  • Price: AUD $69.99
  • Stock: 0 in stock
  • Availability: This book is temporarily out of stock, order will be despatched as soon as fresh stock is received.
  • Local release date: 14/07/2018
  • Format: Paperback (226.00mm X 149.00mm) 216 pages Weight: 315g
  • Categories: Popular culture [JFCA]
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In the late 1970s, a Jeff Koons art exhibit featured mounted vacuum cleaners lit by fluorescent tube lighting and identified by their product names: New Hoover Quik Broom, New Hoover Celebrity IV. Raymond Carver published short stories such as "Are These Actual Miles?" that cataloged the furniture, portable air conditioners, and children's bicycles in a family home. Some years later the garbage barge Mobro 4000 turned into an international scandal as it spent months at sea, unable to dump its trash as it was refused by port after port. Tim Jelfs's The Argument about Things in the 1980s considers all this and more in a broad study of the literature and culture of the "long 1980s." It contributes to of-the-moment scholarly debate about material culture, high finance, and ecological degradation, shedding new light on the complex relationship between neoliberalism and cultural life.
Tim Jelfs is assistant professor of American studies at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. He has previously published work on American literature and culture in the Journal of American Studies and Comparative American Studies.
This is a superb book-sharply argued, theoretically astute, richly researched, and beautifully written. I think it will make a real contribution to the study of American literature and culture, contemporary fiction, and potentially to emergent fields that are challenging entrenched ways of understanding materiality. I can easily imagine this book being taught in graduate seminars and think it will gain a readership among students and scholars of US culture."" - Stephanie Foote, editor of Histories of the Dustheap: Waste, Material Cultures, Social Justice
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