The Poetics of Emancipation

This book presents a study of oppression and resistance in twentieth-century Anglo-American literature. Examining characters’ notions of identity, epistemology, and ontology under the capitalist ideology in novels by George Orwell, Doug Coupland, Chuck Palahniuk and James G. Ballard, this study proposes the construction of a new countercultural critical paradigm from existing Marxist, pedagogic, and dissonant authoritative positions. Specifically, it identifies in these novels an innovative reappraisal of cognitive dissonance through a new critical paradigm which I label pedagogic Marxist aesthetics. In a provocative response to a tradition of Marxist thought that works to define the subjugation of the individual in consumer culture, this research proposes an affirmative critical pedagogic aesthetic of the contemporary counterculture. This book posits an account of literature as being a pedagogical space where anti-capitalist protest and cognitive dissonance can survive as well as flourish in contemporary capitalist culture.