This is a draft of the the unpublished Ph.D. dissertation which reads Cormac McCarthy and Stephen King synoptically through the lens of Christian hermeneutics.

Jen Hedler Hammond reviews Kevin Floyd’s The Reification of Desire: Toward a Queer Marxism. Floyd’s book succeeds in producing a dialogue between Judith Butler and Fredric Jameson that will no doubt have far-reaching consequences for both queer and Marxist theory. But what insight does this dialogue provide into the undertheorized position of women in Marxism and Queer Studies alike?

Sarah Brouillette suggests that literary studies can help de-naturalize contemporary capitalism by accounting for the rise of the pervasive vocabulary that imagines work as a form of self-exploration, self-expression, and self-realization. She discusses two manifestations of this vocabulary. One is the notion of a “creative class” branded by Richard Florida, management professor and guru consultant to government and industry. The other is the theory of “immaterial labor” assembled within autonomist Marxism. Despite their obvious differences, Brouillette demonstrates that both conceptions are (...) more symptoms than diagnoses of a now dominant tendency to fathom creativity both ahistorically — as the essence of experimentation emanating from an internal natural source — and contradictorily — as newly valuable to capitalism but romantically honorable and free. (shrink)

Is there such a thing as a Marxist literary criticism? Imre Szeman argues that, despite the fact that Marxism has long privileged literature as an object of analysis and critique, there is no unitary methodology or set of considerations that distinguish a “Marxist” approach to literature from others. Here, Szeman provides a historicization and structural analysis of what he identifies as the three primary modes of Marxist literary criticism. At the same time, this essay also points to a fourth, as (...) yet unnamed, possibility for Marxist literary critique that seeks to sublate the assumed “impasse” created by the limiting choice between “ideological” and “anti-ideological” culture, an impasse that, according to Szeman, bears witness to a profound historical shift. (shrink)

This thesis explores the definition of ideology in the pontificate of Gregory VII and in the reform movement which bears his name. The indeterminacy of historiographical notions of ‘Gregorian ideology’ is problematic. As a concept theorised in political science, ideology harbours a variety of connotations and meanings such that its generic use leaves important theoretical questions unanswered. Yet, in seeking to apply a theoretical definition, it is quickly apparent that the diversity of conceptual formulations grouped under the umbrella of ideology (...) precludes any single, universally accepted definition of the term. Testing Gregorian reform for a concept of ideology therefore necessitates the prior definition of the concept itself. As a result, this thesis is as much an exercise in modelling a concept of ideology as seeking to address a historiographical ambiguity. The state of the question is this: can a definition of ideology be construed to theoretically prove or disprove a concept of ‘Gregorian ideology’? When coupled with the nature of Gregorian reform as one of the most complex aspects of Church history, defining ideology becomes an especially ambitious undertaking. The following analysis offers a discussion of how a theoretical concept can be applied to the sources. (shrink)