Elsie Unsworth has had an article published in Alluvium, a journal of contemporary writing allied to C21 and the British Association of Contemporary Literary Studies. This was based on their work on our MA in Literature and Culture and we are looking forward to welcoming them as a PhD student this Autumn.
Elsie’s abstract is as follows:
Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism suggests that post-Fordist capitalism is characterised by an ideological expansion, which poses significant questions for the construction and impact of anti-capitalist discourses in the early twenty-first century. An analysis of some foremost anti-capitalist texts published following the 2008 financial crash, with specific interest in their political impact and perspective, will provide crucial insight into the presence and function of discourse in this era. This analysis compares the use of genre in two texts – Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake and Susan Collins’ Catching Fire – and considers how framing and perspective influences political impact. It compares British social realism with genres of speculative fiction (sci-fi / fantasy / dystopia) to conclude that speculation has an important role in imagining beyond capitalism, advocating more vividly for revolution, and thus occupies an important space in contemporary anti-capitalist discourse.