“All business as usual”: Richard Powers’ Gain and the Complicities of (Re-)Incorporation
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José Liste Noya
Abstract
Renowned for his thoroughly researched ‘discursive narratives’ that trace in near-encyclopedic mode the complex interconnectivity of life in our (post-)postmodern period, Richard Powers’ Gain ambivalently raises the stakes of politics in the novel of late capitalism by asserting the imaginative agency of fiction itself. But how does one employ fiction to redress the simulacral hollowing out of everyday life in a corporate culture that fabricates reality by molding consumer desire to its own ends, specifically the end of financial profit? Can the ethical acknowledgement of complicity do away with its inevitability and even willingness within the unmappable totality which is our late capitalist moment? Gain confronts this problematic in ways that both resist and embrace it. The novel’s seemingly intentional ambivalence that mimics, yet strives to invert, the unashamed cynicism of late capitalist ideology finds a point of obdurate insistence in the ‘corpo-reality’ of the human body itself. At the same time, it imagines a vehicle of transcendence in the re-incorporation of that body or, more specifically, that body’s agential possibilities in a sphere beyond mere economic interest. Yet the asymmetry patent between the body’s death and the deathless corporation, despite the narrative parallelisms that the novel damningly establishes, returns us to the ambivalence of fictional ambivalence itself and the ethical dilemma of imagining ourselves beyond the currently unimaginable real.1
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Tennessee Williams’s Misunderstood ‘memory play’: Re-Imagining Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie
- Old Age as Horror Vision or Comfort Zone in the Late Fiction of Contemporary British Novelists
- The First (and Second) Coming of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest
- “All business as usual”: Richard Powers’ Gain and the Complicities of (Re-)Incorporation
- Ian McEwan’s Aesthetic Stakes in Adaptation as Political Rewriting: A Study of Nutshell (2016) and The Cockroach (2019)
- Reviews
- Lilo Moessner. 2020. The History of the Present English Subjunctive: A Corpus-Based Study of Mood and Modality. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, xx + 271 pp., 123 tables, 8 figures, £ 85.00.
- Dustin M. Frazier Wood. 2020. Anglo-Saxonism and the Idea of Englishness in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Medievalism 18. Woodbridge: Boydell. xv + 237 pp., 22 illustr., £ 60.00.
- Emily Kesling. 2020. Medical Texts in Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture. Anglo-Saxon Studies 38. Cambridge: Brewer, xii + 233 pp., 3 tables, £ 60.00/$ 99.00.
- Scott DeGregorio and Paul Kershaw (eds.). 2020. Cities, Saints, and Communities in Early Medieval Europe: Essays in Honour of Alan Thacker. Studies in the Early Middle Ages 46. Turnhout: Brepols, 408 pp., 8 figures, 9 tables, 1 map, € 100.00.
- Andrew Kraebel. 2020. Biblical Commentary and Translation in Later Medieval England: Experiments in Interpretation. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, xiv + 322 pp., 17 figures, £ 75.00.
- Edurne Garrido-Anes (ed.). 2020. A Middle English Version of the Circa Instans. Edited from Cambridge, CUL, MS Ee.1.13. Middle English Texts 59. Heidelberg: Winter, lvi + 212 pp., 2 illustr., € 70.00.
- Wieland Schwanebeck. 2020. Literary Twinship from Shakespeare to the Age of Cloning. Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory. New York/London: Routledge, xiv + 245 pp., 23 figures, £ 120.00.
- Michael A. Chaney (ed.). 2018. Where Is All My Relation? The Poetics of Dave the Potter. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 236 pp., 28 illustr., £ 53.00/$ 78.00.
- Rebecca Brückmann. 2021. Massive Resistance and Southern Womanhood: White Women, Class, and Segregation. Politics and Culture in the Twentieth-Century South. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, x + 271 pp., 6 figures, $ 114.95.
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Tennessee Williams’s Misunderstood ‘memory play’: Re-Imagining Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie
- Old Age as Horror Vision or Comfort Zone in the Late Fiction of Contemporary British Novelists
- The First (and Second) Coming of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest
- “All business as usual”: Richard Powers’ Gain and the Complicities of (Re-)Incorporation
- Ian McEwan’s Aesthetic Stakes in Adaptation as Political Rewriting: A Study of Nutshell (2016) and The Cockroach (2019)
- Reviews
- Lilo Moessner. 2020. The History of the Present English Subjunctive: A Corpus-Based Study of Mood and Modality. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, xx + 271 pp., 123 tables, 8 figures, £ 85.00.
- Dustin M. Frazier Wood. 2020. Anglo-Saxonism and the Idea of Englishness in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Medievalism 18. Woodbridge: Boydell. xv + 237 pp., 22 illustr., £ 60.00.
- Emily Kesling. 2020. Medical Texts in Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture. Anglo-Saxon Studies 38. Cambridge: Brewer, xii + 233 pp., 3 tables, £ 60.00/$ 99.00.
- Scott DeGregorio and Paul Kershaw (eds.). 2020. Cities, Saints, and Communities in Early Medieval Europe: Essays in Honour of Alan Thacker. Studies in the Early Middle Ages 46. Turnhout: Brepols, 408 pp., 8 figures, 9 tables, 1 map, € 100.00.
- Andrew Kraebel. 2020. Biblical Commentary and Translation in Later Medieval England: Experiments in Interpretation. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, xiv + 322 pp., 17 figures, £ 75.00.
- Edurne Garrido-Anes (ed.). 2020. A Middle English Version of the Circa Instans. Edited from Cambridge, CUL, MS Ee.1.13. Middle English Texts 59. Heidelberg: Winter, lvi + 212 pp., 2 illustr., € 70.00.
- Wieland Schwanebeck. 2020. Literary Twinship from Shakespeare to the Age of Cloning. Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory. New York/London: Routledge, xiv + 245 pp., 23 figures, £ 120.00.
- Michael A. Chaney (ed.). 2018. Where Is All My Relation? The Poetics of Dave the Potter. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 236 pp., 28 illustr., £ 53.00/$ 78.00.
- Rebecca Brückmann. 2021. Massive Resistance and Southern Womanhood: White Women, Class, and Segregation. Politics and Culture in the Twentieth-Century South. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, x + 271 pp., 6 figures, $ 114.95.
