The anticipatory logic of speculation and pre-emptive politics of risk are increasingly gaining significance in a globalising neoliberal world. This study traces risk and speculation as aesthetic and political-economic strategies in factual and fictional discourses emerging at the North American Pacific Rim within a decade around 2000. Its exemplary close readings in particular focus on three fictional texts (Kathryn Bigelow's Hollywood film "Strange Days", 1995, Karen T Yamashita's novel "Tropic of Orange", 1997, and Larissa Lai's novel "Salt Fish Girl", 2002) whose intricate aesthetics pass perceptive critique on concurrent political-economic discourses and their subtle reconfiguration of race, class, and gender. The speculative near-future scenarios projected by these artefacts expose the rise of risk as a new rationality of governance. At the same time they illustrate neoliberal speculation as a new paradigm of subject formation at a hyper-capitalist, millennial Pacific Rim.

Book Information
ISBN 9783837624168
Author Susanne Wegener
Format Paperback
Page Count 312
Imprint Transcript Verlag
Publisher Transcript Verlag
Weight(grams) 488g