States of Emergency: Essays on Culture and Politics [Paperback]

In his latest book, Patrick Brantlinger probes the state of contemporary America. Brantlinger takes aim at neoliberal economists, the Tea Party movement, gun culture, immigration, waste value, surplus people, the war on terror, technological determinism, and globalization. An invigorating return to classic cultural studies with its concern for social justice and challenges to economic orthodoxy,States of Emergencyis a delightful mix of journalism, satire, and theory that addresses many of the most pressing issues of our time.

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Keen-eyed commentary on contemporary culture

Patrick Brantlinger is James Rudy Professor of English (Emeritus) at Indiana University Bloomington. His books include The Reading Lesson: The Threat of Mass Literacy in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction (IUP, 1998); Bread and Circuses: Theories of Mass Culture as Social Decay; Crusoe's Footprints: Cultural Studies in Britain and America; Who Killed Shakespeare? What's Happened to English since the Radical Sixties; and Taming Cannibals: Race and the Victorians.

Deeply researched (with full footnotes and bibliography), carefully thought out, and eloquently argued, [States of Emergency] offer[s] a refreshing relief from the babble of mainstream social and political commentary, and a source of hopeful vision against the varied voices of apocalypse.

Patrick Brantlinger's close reasoning and luminously beautiful prose unite in a brilliant book on the cutting edge of contemporary scholarship that blends cultural studies and social justice. Starting with a detailed and incisive account of the British cultural studies movement as a counter-discourse to conventional capitalist economics, and closing with a hopeful investigation of the alter-globalization movement, Brantlinger presents a rich, interdlóZ