Abstract
This chapter draws on the concept of ‘immaterial labour’ to explore two key questions: ‘What is the work of literature?’ and ‘How might literary writing best be theorized as “work”?’ The activity of literary writing has proved peculiarly resistant to many theoretical and historical framings of and approaches to labour. The chapter thus proposes that the concept of ‘immaterial labour’ offers a new theoretical and historical framing that generates significant insights into the nature of literary work. Through readings of a range of modernist works, it argues that examining them in relation to ‘immaterial labour’ can enable a fresh approach to some of the ‘difficulties’ in theorising literary writing as a form of work.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
This term was derived from William James, but first used to characterize distinctive aspects of modernist prose by May Sinclair in a 1918 review of a volume of Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage.
- 2.
Roland Barthes notes in a 1979 interview, ‘Dare to be Lazy’ that Proust’s involuntary memory ‘involves a kind of idleness’, though also observes that ‘for Proust, writing was not a lazy activity.’ See The Grain of the Voice: Interviews 1962–1980 (1985). London: Cape.
Works Cited
Armstrong, Tim. (2005) Modernism: A Cultural History. Cambridge: Polity.
Beckett, Samuel. (1969) Proust and Three Dialogue with Georges Duthuit. London: Calder Books.
Bourdieu, Pierre. (1979) La Distinction: Critique sociale du jugement. Paris: Minuit.
Conrad, Joseph. (1896) ‘Letter to T. Fisher Unwin’, in The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad, ed. F. Karl and L. Davies, vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 314.
——— (1897a) Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
——— (1897b) ‘Letter to A. Krieger’, in The Collected Letters, ed. Karl and Davies, vol. 1, 363.
Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri. (2004) Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. London: Penguin Books.
——— (2009). Commonwealth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
——— (2000) Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Jaffe, Aaron. (2010) ‘Publication, Patronage, Censorship: Literary Production and the Fortunes of Modernist Value’, in The Oxford Handbook of Modernisms, ed. Peter Brooker et al. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 315–34.
James, William. (1890) ‘The Stream of Thought’, in The Principles of Psychology Vol. I, ed. F. Bowers et al. London: Harvard University Press, 233.
Kime Scott, Bonnie. (1990). The Gender of Modernism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Lawrence, D. H. (1910). ‘Letter to Helen Corke’, in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, ed. J. T. Boulton, vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 161.
——— (1911). ‘Letter to L. Burrows’, in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 254.
Lazzarato, Maurizio. (1996) ‘Immaterial Labour’, in Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics, ed. P. Virno and M. Hardt. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 133–47.
——— (2014) Marcel Duchamp et le refus du travail. Paris: Les Prairies Ordinaires.
North, Michael. (2001) Reading 1922: A Return to the Scene of the Modern. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ohmann, Richard. (1996) Selling Culture: Magazines, Markets and Class at the Turn of the Century. London: Verso.
Peters, John G. (2001) Conrad and Impressionism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Proust, Marcel. (2003) In Search of Lost Time, trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff and R. Howard. London: Modern Library.
Rainey, Lawrence. (2009) Institutions of Modernism: Literary Elites and Public Culture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Richardson, Dorothy. (1979) ‘March Moonlight’, in Pilgrimage, vol. 4. London: Virago.
Sinclair, May. (1918) ‘The Novels of Dorothy Richardson’, The Egoist, 5 (4): 57.
Weiss, Jeffrey. (1994) The Popular Culture of Modern Art: Picasso, Duchamp and Avant-gardism, 1909–17. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Yeats, W. B. (1990) A Vision and Related Writings, ed. A. N. Jeffares. London: Arena.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Shiach, M. (2018). Coda: Immaterial Labour and the Modernist Work of Literature. In: Waithe, M., White, C. (eds) The Labour of Literature in Britain and France, 1830-1910. Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55253-2_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55253-2_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-55252-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-55253-2
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)