Preface I. Class Conflicts 1. Cultural Studies and Class War 2. "It's the Economy, Stupid!" 3. Tea Party Brewhaha 4. Shooters 5. What's the Matter with Mexico? 6. Waste and Value: Thorstein Veblen and H. G. Wells II. Postmodern Conditions 7. Shopping on Red Alert: The Rhetorical Normalization of Terror 8. The State of Iraq 9. On the Postmodernity of Being Aboriginal—and Australian 10. McLuhan, Crash Theory, and the Invasion of the Nanobots 11. Army Surplus: Notes on "Exterminism" 12. World Social Forum: Multitude versus Empire? Notes Works Cited Index
Keen-eyed commentary on contemporary culture
In his latest book, Patrick Brantlinger probes the state of contemporary America. Brantlinger takes aim at neoliberal economists, the Tea Party movement, gun culture, immigration, waste value, surplus people, the war on terror, technological determinism, and globalization. An invigorating return to classic cultural studies with its concern for social justice and challenges to economic orthodoxy, States of Emergency is a delightful mix of journalism, satire, and theory that addresses many of the most pressing issues of our time.
Patrick Brantlinger is James Rudy Professor of English (Emeritus) at Indiana University Bloomington. His books include The Reading Lesson: The Threat of Mass Literacy in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction (IUP, 1998); Bread and Circuses: Theories of Mass Culture as Social Decay; Crusoe's Footprints: Cultural Studies in Britain and America; Who Killed Shakespeare? What's Happened to English since the Radical Sixties; and Taming Cannibals: Race and the Victorians.
