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1. Past tense, present perfect, future even better : positive thinking in contemporary American literature

Author

Lower, Evan and Kelly, Adam

Subjects
810.9
Abstract

This thesis explores American literature of the last 25 years that has staged a debate with positive thinking—a century-old American self-help discipline—and the symbiotic relationship it has formed with neoliberal capitalism. I will connect positive thinking, along with its contemporary institutionalized form within positive psychology, to theories of neoliberal governmentality. I will be using the various short stories, novels, and poetry in this thesis to discover the multivalent implications, connotations, and applications of positive thinking as a term and a practice.

Published
2020

2. "One way of looking at it": Positive Thinking and Precarious Labor in Helen DeWitt's Lightning Rods.

Author

Lower, Evan

Subjects
*OPTIMISM, *NEOLIBERALISM, *CAPITALISM
Abstract

In Helen DeWitt's novel Lightning Rods , the free-indirect discourse that narrativizes protagonist Joe and two of his more successful employees is characterized primarily by markers of the American self-help technique positive thinking. Positive thinking, I argue, has entered into an interrelationship with the neoliberal form of capitalism and is key to understanding political subjectivity in the 21st century. This essay examines the layers of complicity that positive thinking allows and encourages in DeWitt's so-far critically neglected workplace satire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Published
2024
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