I Feedback Exhaust: Money and the Novel at the End of The

Feedback Exhaust: Money and the Novel at the End of the Contemporary by Nicholas Huber Graduate Program in Literature Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Michael Hardt, Supervisor ___________________________ Fredric Jameson ___________________________ Wahneema Lubiano ___________________________ Kathi Weeks Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate Program in Literature in the Graduate School of Duke University 2019 i v ABSTRACT Feedback Exhaust: Money and the Novel at the End of the Contemporary by Nicholas Huber Graduate Program in Literature Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Michael Hardt, Supervisor ___________________________ Fredric Jameson ___________________________ Wahneema Lubiano ___________________________ Kathi Weeks An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate Program in Literature in the Graduate School of Duke University 2019 Copyright by Nicholas Alan Huber 2019 Abstract In the contemporary context of global financialization, the distance between the categories of money and fiction has been theorized as narrowing. This dissertation uses a Marxist analytic to argue that financialized money and fiction, as two modes of accounting, should be approached as competing forms of what Marx and Engels described as “world literature” and, therefore, as sites of ideological and material contestations understood as a manifestation of class struggle. Financial and monetary accounting functions are found to be used by contemporary novels to reconstitute the form’s traditional modes of expression in accordance with the historical changes in global economic structures. At the same time, contemporary approaches to money, debt, and accounting are found to exploit tropes and functions familiar to scholars of literary fiction. This dissertation attempts to sketch the stakes of a contest over narrative possibility in a period in which historical narratives tend toward the catastrophic, apocalyptic, and dystopian. iv For Jeannine. v Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................................... ix 1. Introduction: The Book to Come ............................................................................................. 1 1.1 Overview ........................................................................................................................... 2 1.2 Money and Fiction .......................................................................................................... 10 1.3 Critique During Financialization ................................................................................. 25 1.4 What is the Contemporary and How Can it End? ..................................................... 33 2. Loop & Pool: Remainder and the Money on the Books ...................................................... 44 2.1 Set-l-ment ......................................................................................................................... 48 2.2 Bad Money ....................................................................................................................... 53 2.3 Fuckuptive Feedback Loops ......................................................................................... 56 2.4 Surplus; Value ................................................................................................................. 59 2.5 Bits of History ................................................................................................................. 63 2.6 Bits of History Repeating ............................................................................................... 71 2.7 Money and its Forms ..................................................................................................... 79 2.8 Loyalty Cards, Banks, and Book-keeping ................................................................... 89 2.9 In the Pool ........................................................................................................................ 97 3. Model Fiction: Imaginary Money in Headless ................................................................... 107 3.1 Headless Murder Mystery .......................................................................................... 114 3.2 Money or Nothing? ...................................................................................................... 126 3.3 Goldin+Senneby: A Financial Portfolio ..................................................................... 132 vi 3.4 Xeno-money .................................................................................................................. 140 3.5 Bits of Angus Cameron ................................................................................................ 143 3.6 Bits of Angus Cameron Repeating ............................................................................. 149 3.7 Xeno-economy .............................................................................................................. 153 3.8 Form Failure at the Power Plant ................................................................................. 159 3.9 The Pirate of Prague ..................................................................................................... 163 3.10 Up In Smoke ................................................................................................................ 167 3.11 Reflux Redux ............................................................................................................... 170 3.12 Space Filled Up with Time ........................................................................................ 173 3.13 Alexander Provan and the Secret of Literature ...................................................... 177 3.14 The Exquisite Corpse ................................................................................................. 185 3.15 Abstract Possible ......................................................................................................... 188 3.16 Control & Fiction ........................................................................................................ 193 4. The Balance Sheet: Darin Bradley’s Chimpanzee ............................................................... 202 4.1 Static Misery & the Repossessed ................................................................................ 206 4.2 Can This One Weird Trick Put Your Mode of Production Back on Track? ......... 209 4.3 A Bildung for the Reproduction of the Indebted ..................................................... 221 4.4 Make Work .................................................................................................................... 233 4.5 Reproduction or Revolution? ...................................................................................... 237 4.6 The Balance Sheet ......................................................................................................... 244 4.7 The New Accountants .................................................................................................. 254 5. Conclusion: Breakdown and Opportunity ........................................................................ 257 vii 5.1 Manuela Solara in the Red .......................................................................................... 261 5.2 World literature ............................................................................................................ 269 References ................................................................................................................................... 273 Biography ................................................................................................................................... 284 viii Acknowledgements That this dissertation, which had its start as a general inquiry into the concept of debt, should open here in the text with an acknowledgement of a few debts of my own, intellectual and otherwise, feels both appropriate and inevitable. Ultimately, I moved from debt to considering money as such and, in a society such as ours, money—as will become one refrain of this document—allows labor to be done. With that in mind, I am grateful to the Graduate Program in Literature, the Bass Family Endowment, the Thompson Writing Program, and The Writing Center Journal for supporting my research and writing in various ways over the past seven years. A dissertation cannot come into existence without advisors. It was thanks to Michael Hardt that I first had time to engage deeply with Marx and with the long traditions of those who have tried to make good on the promise of another, better world. Michael has been both a careful teacher and a cunning dissertation chair, often anticipating intellectual problems and necessary changes of course months in advance of my own discoveries. The voice of Fredric Jameson now lives in my head, posing questions I cannot answer. His early tolerance of my anxious and confused ramblings gave me the confidence to explore material I felt I had no right to explore. Wahneema Lubiano’s pedagogy and acute critical sensibility

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