Exit Capitalism: Literary Culture, Theory, and Post-Secular Modernity

Exit Capitalism explores a new path for cultural studies and re-examines key moments of British cultural and literary history. Simon During argues that the long and liberating journey towards democratic state capitalism has led to an unhappy dead-end from which there is no imaginable exit.

Simon During teaches at the English Department of Johns Hopkins University. He is also a Professoral Fellow at the School of Culture and Communications at the University of Melbourne. His most recent books are Modern Enchantments: the cultural power of secular magic (2002) and Cultural Studies: a critical introduction (2005). He is also the editor of the three editions of the Cultural Studies Reader.

Introduction Part 1: Modernizing the English Literary Field 1. Church, State and Modernization: Literature as Gentlemanly Knowledge after 1688 2. Quackery, Selfhood and the Emergence of the Modern Cultural Marketplace 3. Interesting: the Politics of the Sympathetic Imagination Part 2: Towards Endgame Capitalism: Literature, Theory, Culture 4. World Literature, Stalinism and the Nation: Christina Stead as Lost Object 5. Socialist Ends: the Emergence of Academic Theory in Postwar Britain 6. Completing Secularism: the Mundane in the Neo-Liberal Era 7. Refusing Capitalism? Theory and Cultural Studies after 1968