商品簡介
Willmott (English, Queen's U.) presents a fascinating study of Modernist and post-modernist representations of abundance and scarcity. He approaches both text-fiction and comics as a literary and art critic, but hones in on how the economic and the ecological interpenetrate in the various ways they register the biophysical limits of productive activity. In this way, Willmott offers a kaleidoscope rather than a lens on human productivity. Drawing on environmental economist Paul Elkins, he considers ends of production that fall outside of capital and its accumulation: habitat production, welfare production, natural production. He argues that many modernists were both skeptical of capitalist productivity and hopeful of the material and otherwise abundance possible with modern industrial techniques. This hopefulness often expresses itself in terms of re-imagining the distribution of social product more than production as such, while postmodernist comic book artists "offer the commodity as a habitat that defies anthropocenic mastery." This is sure to be relevant those studying the promise and fantasy of industrial society. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
