Culture of Soft Work: Labor, Gender, and Race in Postmodern American Narrative [NOOK Book]

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Overview

American workers over the past half-century have found themselves steeped in management discourses promoting teamwork, synergy, vision, and a host of other concepts meant to inspire an ever deeper commitment to work. The Culture of Soft Work offers an original examination of American writers' responses to these motivational techniques through readings of postmodern novels and a diverse range of other canonical and popular texts. Building on the work of scholars who have investigated the cultural impact of ...
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Culture of Soft Work: Labor, Gender, and Race in Postmodern American Narrative

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Overview

American workers over the past half-century have found themselves steeped in management discourses promoting teamwork, synergy, vision, and a host of other concepts meant to inspire an ever deeper commitment to work. The Culture of Soft Work offers an original examination of American writers' responses to these motivational techniques through readings of postmodern novels and a diverse range of other canonical and popular texts. Building on the work of scholars who have investigated the cultural impact of Frederick W. Taylor's management theory, this study is the first to examine how post-Taylorist management has shaped Americans' subjectivity and their art. Hicks ably demonstrates that while Taylor hardened work by stamping it with the masculine imprimatur of science, subsequent management theorists reconceived work as soft, emphasizing its emotional, spiritual, and irrational aspects-a transformation that has redefined work as postmodern and retooled the gendered subjectivity of American workers.
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Product Details

Meet the Author

Heather J. Hicks is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Graduate Program in English at Villanova University. She has published articles in Arizona Quarterly, Contemporary Literature, Postmodern Culture, Camera Obscura, Critique, African-American Review, and other journals and essay collections concerned with contemporary literature and film.

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Table of Contents

List of Figures

Introduction: "Soft Is Hard" 1

1 "No Good to Anybody": Player Piano, General Electric, and the Consumption of Work 15

2 Soft Soap, Snow Jobs, and Apartment Keys: Human Relations Management in Mid-Century Literature and Film 45

3 Automating Feminism: Self-Actualization versus the Post-Work Society in Joanna Russ's The Female Man 89

4 A Cyborg's Work Is Never Done: Programming Cyborgs, Workaholics, and Feminists in Marge Piercy's He, She, and It 113

5 "Sleeping Beauty": Corporate Culture, Race, and Reality in Michael Crichton's Rising Sun and Tom Clancy's Debt of Honor 139

6 Hoodoo Economics: On Management Gurus and Magical Black Men in Postmodern American Culture 165

Conclusion 201

Notes 207

Bibliography 241

Index 251

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