Since 2000, much attention has been paid to the increase in social
precarity in Europe and the US. Phenomena of precarization (such as
underemployment, indebtedness, deaths of despair) tend to be causally
linked to the rise of neoliberalism as a strategy of governance that
redistributes risk to the already vulnerable. Representing Social
Precarity in German Literature and Film broadens the scope beyond this
narrow definition of precarity, using Germany as a national case study,
to examine the historical genesis of precarity, its evolution from
19th-century industrial modernity to the present, and its reflections
and reconfigurations in artistic production, in particular with relation
to work, gender, and sexuality.
Representing Social Precarity in German Literature and Film probes the
concept of "representation" in its full two senses, in the sense of
"artistic depiction" and in the sense of "political proxy and advocacy."
In linking economic discourses to cultural production, this volume shows
how culture can reveal the gap between a society's narrative about
itself and the ways in which precarity shapes experience and
consciousness.