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Toward a Theory of Work: Personal Responsibility, Self-Regulation, and Identity in the Age of America’S Work Crisis Katrina Newsom Wayne State University

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Toward a Theory of Work: Personal Responsibility, Self-Regulation, and Identity in the Age of America’S Work Crisis Katrina Newsom Wayne State University Wayne State University Wayne State University Dissertations 1-1-2018 Toward A Theory Of Work: Personal Responsibility, Self-Regulation, And Identity In The Age Of America’s Work Crisis Katrina Newsom Wayne State University, Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_dissertations Part of the American Literature Commons Recommended Citation Newsom, Katrina, "Toward A Theory Of Work: Personal Responsibility, Self-Regulation, And Identity In The Age Of America’s Work Crisis" (2018). Wayne State University Dissertations. 2054. https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_dissertations/2054 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@WayneState. It has been accepted for inclusion in Wayne State University Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@WayneState. TOWARD A THEORY OF WORK: PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY, SELF-REGULATION, AND IDENTITY IN THE AGE OF AMERICA’S WORK CRISIS by KATRINA NEWSOM DISSERTATION Submitted to the Graduate School of Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 2018 MAJOR: ENGLISH Approved By: _______________________________________ Advisor Date _______________________________________ _______________________________________ _______________________________________ _______________________________________ © COPYRIGHT BY KATRINA NEWSOM 2018 All Rights Reserved DEDICATION to Tylah and Ephraim ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The completion of this dissertation was only possible due to the encouragement, support, and patience of several people to whom I am forever grateful. First and foremost, I thank my committee chair and mentor, Dr. Sarika Chandra. Her generous support and guidance, sharp insight, and refreshing wisdom have helped me to develop not only professionally and intellectually; but also, personally. Truly, she has taught me more than I can ever give her credit for. I also thank my dissertation committee: Dr. Lisa Ze Winters, Dr. Robert Diaz, and Dr. John Patrick Leary. Without their flexibility, guidance, and patience I would not have gotten this far. I also contribute the completion of this dissertation to the financial support I received as a King-Chavez-Park Fellow. Additionally, I am grateful to my former co-workers and friends of the Graduate School. A special thank you goes to Dr. Hilary Ratner, Krista English, Caroline Barduca, Tricia Koufes, Cindy Sokol, Dr. Steven Salley, Kristy Case, Charlotte Winston, Dr. Joseph Dunbar, Dr. Timothy Stemmler, Dr. Heather Dillaway, and Dr. Annmarie Cano. To the staff of Walter P. Reuther Library, and more directly, to Dr. Louis Jones, I appreciate the time and effort put into helping me sort through numerous boxes to locate information about the 1967 Detroit Riots. Also, I acknowledge the support of professors and mentors, who at various points in my academic experience have motivated and/or aided me in growing professionally. Specifically, I acknowledge Dr. Todd Duncan, who has become a close friend; Dr. Dennis Childs, who has supported me through much of the dissertation process; Dr. Frank Rashid, who encouraged me to pursue the professoriate with the warning, “Just know, you will encounter students who are just like you;” and Dr. Kenneth Jackson, whose counsel in the most uncertain times of my graduate studies has been so crucial to my success. No one has been more important to my pursuit of the doctorate degree than my family and friends. I am especially grateful to Stephanie Johnson Cobb, Eric Newsom, Dr. Michael W. Williams, Dr. Theodore Pride, Danyse Bean, Monica Williams, and Jameshia Granberry. You have all, at various points in my dissertation writing process encouraged, endured, and inspired me. Most of all, I am indebted to my children, Tylah and Ephraim, whose commitment to my success is evident in the spiritual, emotional, and financial support they have shown me time and time again. A mother could not ask for two more loving children. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication………………………………………………………………………………………...……………..... ii Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………...……………….. iii Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………………...... 1 The Matter of Work……………………………………………………………………………………… 1 Work Post 1970s and Affective Labor Theory….………….…………………………………….…… 3 Responsibility, the Ideological Curtain of Work………………………………………………………. 5 Self-Regulation as a Strategy to Analyze American Literature and Culture………………….…… 8 Gender, Race, and Sexuality………………………………………………………………………..…. 9 Self-Regulation: Its Own Brand of Crisis…….………………………………………………….…… 12 Chapter 1 Self-regulating Sexuality: Reading Gender Anxiety in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao...….……………………………...…………………..... 15 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………... 15 Reading Self-Regulation………………………………………………………………………….…… 17 “…Then You Don’t Know the Dominican Male”: Yunior’s Hyper/sexual Responsibility…...…… 20 The Responsible Witness and the Privilege Proximity………………………….…………………. 24 Abelard, Belicia, and Oscar: Thrice Told Tale of Yunior’s Gender Anxieties……...………….… 28 The Tragedy of Abelard Luis Cabral, or the First Tale of Yunior’s Gender Anxiety……….……. 30 Belicia Unashamed, or the Second Tale of Yunior’s Gender Anxiety……………………….…… 35 Love and the Accursed Oscar Wao, or the Third Tale of Ynior’s Gender Anxiety…..…….……. 42 The Self-Regulated Dominican Male Hypersexuality…………………………………….………… 45 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………..…………………….. 47 Chapter 2 Reading Self-Regulation: Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed, Confession, and the Low-Wage Living Narrative.……………........................................…… 49 Low-Wages: Blame It on Feelings of Unworthiness……………………………………………….. 49 Wage Demands and Gender: Feminist Critique Revisited..………………………………………. 52 Nickel and Dimed and the Problem with Work…………..…………………………………………. 55 Self-regulation and the Rhetoric of Confession…………………………………………………….. 58 iv Uncovering the Confessor..…………………………………………………………………………….. 60 The Problem with Wages: Confessing the Feeling of It All.……………………………..…………. 63 Regarding Barb: Self-regulating Authenticity.…………………………………………...…………... 66 What about the Matter of Race?.................................................................................................. 69 Conclusion..……………………………………………………………………………………………… 72 Chapter 3 The Question of Gender Equality and the Self-regulation of Femininity in the Films, Working Girls and the Devil Wears Prada...…………………………………..…... 75 Gender Equality: A Personal Matter…………………………………………………………...…….. 75 Reading Self-Regulation in Woman in the Workplace Imaginaries.………………………………. 77 Femininity or What Advances the Question of Gender Equality.…………………………..……… 79 Femininity, Gender, and Work…………………………………………………………………...…… 82 Matriarchal Rites Initiation Myth and the Women in the Workplace Stories..……………..……… 84 The Hollywood Narrative: Femininity and Women in the Workplace.…………………..………… 87 Working Girl and the Hollywood Narrative.……………………………………………………...…… 88 The Devil Wears Prada: The Hollywood Narrative Two Decades Later………………...……….. 97 Conclusion...…………………………………………………………………………………………….. 104 Chapter 4 White Man’s Burden, Black Man’s Blame: Middlesex, Self-regulation, and Race….…………………………………………………………………………………...…… 106 What about the Matter of Race Revisited………………………………………………..…………... 106 Self-regulation and White Anxiety...……………………………………………………...…………… 107 Middlesex and White (Male) Anxiety………………………………………………………………….. 108 Blame it on the Blacks: Retracing the Contradiction of Self-Regulation and Race...………..….. 111 White Anxiety and the Black Presence..………………………………………………………...…... 115 We Almost Lost Detroit: Writing the 1967 Detroit Riot…...………………………………….……… 119 Middlesex: An Aesthetic Failure or a Novel that Plays in the Dark?............................................ 128 Conclusion...…………………………………………………………………………………….………. 130 Chapter 5 Closing Thoughts....…………………………………………………………………………….….... 132 References...…………………………………………………………………………...……………………...…. 134 Abstract...……………………………………………………………………………...………………………….. 140 v Autobiographical Statement..….....…...…………………………………………………………….………… 141 vi 1 INTRODUCTION That the hygienic factory and everything pertaining to it, Volkswagen* and the sports palace, are obtusely liquidating metaphysics does not matter in itself, but that these things are themselves becoming metaphysics, an ideological curtain, * within the social whole, behind which real doom is gather, does matter. -Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectics of Enlightenment But deep down you come to suspect that you’re yourself to blame, and you stand naked and shivering before the millions of eyes who look through you unseeingly. – Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man The Matter of Work What makes work such a complex topic in contemporary American culture, Nicholas K. Bromell observes, “is not that work is absent from culture, but that it is relatively invisible there” (4). To address any skepticism that might arise from his observation, especially when considering the numerous forms of representations of work in American culture, Bromell explains in his book, By the Sweat of the Brow: Its invisibility is not a natural condition but a precarious achievement. Again, and again, attempts will be made within the culture to indicate and represent work, to claim that work is one thing and not another, but the culture as a whole will allow these indications and representations only a provisional reality. (4-5) Thus, what is at stake here, according
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