Failure and Ethics in Contemporary American Literature Daniel Dufournaud.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dufournaud, Daniel, Author.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (226 p.)

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press, [2026]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Offers a compelling new study of failure and neoliberalism in contemporary American literature Breaks new critical ground in studies of failure and neoliberalismReveals connective avenues between continental philosophy and contemporary American literatureProvides fresh readings of such critically acclaimed writers as Don DeLillo, Tony Kushner, Rachel Kushner, Karen Tei Yamashita, Claudia Rankine, and Quiara Alegria HudesMakes a series of polemical claims about the importance of deconstructive method and of literature as resources for contesting neoliberalismFailure and Ethics in Contemporary American Literature contends that failure is both a response to the social and economic conditions of neoliberalism and a site of ethical imagining where alternative modes of being and being together are proposed. Daniel Dufournaud capaciously construes failure to include performing badly, unhappiness and dysphoria, family dysfunction, and formal discontinuity. He contends that the function of failure in contemporary American literature resonates with the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. For Levinas, the self emerges as a conscious subject only through the imposition of the Other, a preconscious sequence that installs responsibility for others at the heart of selfhood. Levinas frames the suspension of egoism and the selfs concomitant awareness of its constitutive responsibility as an interruption. Similarly, this studys primary texts treat failure as an interruption that forces the self to acknowledge its foundational sociality, an acknowledgement that contests neoliberalisms individualist protocols.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: What Is an Interruption?

Chapter 1 Otherwise than Entrepreneurial Subjectivity: Performing Badly in Don DeLillos Cosmopolis and Quiara Alegria Hudess Water by the Spoonful

Chapter 2 Optimism and Infinity: Emotional Negativity and Gestural Alterity in Claudia Rankines Poetry

Chapter 3 Dwelling with(out) Others: Family Dysfunction in Joseph ONeills Netherland and Tony Kushners Angels in America

Chapter 4 The Knots of Realism: Formal Discontinuity and Parataxis in Karen Tei Yamashitas Tropic of Orange and Rachel Kushners The Flamethrowers

Conclusion: Failure as Praxis; or, Agency Interruption

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed March 17 2026)

ISBN:

1-3995-5448-4