Abstract
This essay argues that under contemporary capitalism, all literary production is, at first approximation, commodity production. This has consequences for our understanding of the work of literary studies. We are no longer able to easily recur to preformed theories of the ‘literary’ as a category at least in some way exempt from extrinsic pressures. Attention to the ‘literary market’ remains superficial when it insists on paying attention chiefly to so-called literary fiction on the understanding that it has prima facie higher claims to our attention than popular genre fiction—it does not. In fact, as this essay argues, appreciation of the thorough commodification of art under capitalism asks us to take seriously the need to break with our categories; to insist on the primacy of interpretative attention in determining what kinds of fiction we study.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Articles
- How to Read the Literary Market: An Introduction
- How to Read the ‘Literary’ in the Literary Market
- A Twice-Told Tale? Nathaniel Hawthorne, Genre, Sponsorship
- How Useful is Bourdieu’s Notion of Cultural Capital for Describing Literary Markets?
- From Product Placement to Boundary Work: Further Steps towards an Integrated Sociology of Literary Communication
- Greatness and the Convertibility of Literary Capital: W. D. Howells and Black Writers
- “No more little boxes” – Poetic Positionings in the Literary Field
- Books Received
- Books Received
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Articles
- How to Read the Literary Market: An Introduction
- How to Read the ‘Literary’ in the Literary Market
- A Twice-Told Tale? Nathaniel Hawthorne, Genre, Sponsorship
- How Useful is Bourdieu’s Notion of Cultural Capital for Describing Literary Markets?
- From Product Placement to Boundary Work: Further Steps towards an Integrated Sociology of Literary Communication
- Greatness and the Convertibility of Literary Capital: W. D. Howells and Black Writers
- “No more little boxes” – Poetic Positionings in the Literary Field
- Books Received
- Books Received