Representing Social Precarity in German Literature and Film

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Sophie Duvernoy (Independent Scholar, Yale University, USA) Dr. Karsten Olson (Lecturer of German Studies, North Carolina Asheville, USA)

Representing Social Precarity in German Literature and Film

Sophie Duvernoy (Independent Scholar, Yale University, USA), Dr. Karsten Olson (Lecturer of German Studies, North Carolina Asheville, USA), Ulrich Plass (Professor, German Studies, Wesleyan University, USA)

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English

Bloomsbury Academic USA
26 June 2025

Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers; Social classes; Sociology: work & labour

Series: New Directions in German Studies

Using Germany as a national case study, this volume examines 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.

“Precarity is everywhere now,” sociologist Pierre Bourdieu declared almost thirty years ago. Not only declining middle-class standards of living, but also debt, drug addiction, housing and food insecurity, depression, and “deaths of despair” are now being recognized as symptoms of the downward pull of social precarity. Although these and similar ills have been attributed to neoliberal policies of deregulation, privatization, and willful neglect of the common good, precarization has accompanied the booms and busts of industrial modernity from its beginnings.

Representing Social Precarity in German Literature and Film explores how German and Austrian literature, film, and social history have engaged with social precarity, from the period of Romanticism and early industrialization to the present. The chapters in this volume deal with precarity as both an objective phenomenon reflected in literary and filmic representations and as a subjective phenomenon that gives these representations their particular shape. Representing Social Precarity in German Literature and Film opens new critical perspectives on diverse forms of lived precarity and their creative manifestations by reflecting on the history of capitalist modernity from the vantage points of weakness, vulnerability, marginality, impoverishment, and otherness.

Edited by: Sophie Duvernoy (Independent Scholar Yale University USA), Dr. Karsten Olson (Lecturer of German Studies, North Carolina Asheville, USA), Ulrich Plass (Professor, German Studies, Wesleyan University, USA)
Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic USA
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 140mm, Spine: 25mm
Weight: 454g
ISBN: 9781501391514
ISBN 10: 1501391518
Series: New Directions in German Studies
Pages: 352
Publication Date: 26 June 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

List of FIgures List of Tables Notes on Contributors Introduction (Ulrich Plass, Wesleyan University, USA) 1. Literature and the History of Precarity: Interview with Patrick Eiden-Offe (ZfL Berlin) (Karsten Olson, University of North Carolina, Asheville, USA) 2. Precarious Property: Adam Müller’s Theory of Poetic Possession (Jörg Kreienbrock, Northwestern University, USA) 3. Die Judenbuche and the Rights of the Poor (Karsten Olson, University of North Carolina, Asheville, USA) 4. We Poor People: The Personal Experience of Precariousness in Dantons Tod and Woyzeck (Michael Swellander, University of Iowa, USA) 5. Hilfe von Mensch zu Mensch: Social Precarity and the Elberfeld System (Rebekah O. McMillan, Angelo State University, USA) 6. Precarity and Form: Lu Märten’s Intervention in the Worker’s Autobiography (Mari Jarris, Princeton University, USA) 7. In Search of a Divine Calling, or Lunch: Unproductive Labor in Emmy Hennings’ Das Brandmal (Sophie Duvernoy, Yale University, USA) 8. Typists as ‘billige Ware’: White-Collar Women’s Work in Weimar Literature (Mary Hennessy, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA) 9. Unemployment, Organization, and Reproductive Self-Determination in Kuhle Wampe (Ulrich Plass, Wesleyan University, USA) 10. ""Hidden Stockpiles of Words and Images"": An Interview with Thomas Heise (Matthias Rothe, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA) 11. Biopolitics and Superstition in Barbara Albert’s Böse Zellen (Lena Trüper, UCLA, USA) 12. Precarious Lives and Social Decline in Marlene Streeruwitz’ Jessica, 30. and Kristine Bilkaus Die Glücklichen (Lisa Wille, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany) 13. Linguistic Precarity in Contemporary German Film (Lindsay Preseau, University of Cincinnati, USA) Index

Sophie Duvernoy holds a PhD in German from Yale University, USA, and is a translator in Berlin, Germany. Karsten Olson is Lecturer of German Studies at the University of North Carolina Asheville, USA. Ulrich Plass is Professor of Letters and German Studies at Wesleyan University, USA.

Reviews for Representing Social Precarity in German Literature and Film

In this groundbreaking interdisciplinary volume, the editors and contributors shed new light on contemporary precarity by tracing its evolution from the beginning of industrialization. The book stands out for its focus on theories and aesthetic practices of resistance, from Romantic anti-capitalism through Weimar-era queer autobiography up to East German documentaries and contemporary literature and film, and it makes significant contributions to our understanding of precarity and its representations. * Patrick Greaney, Professor of German and Humanities, University of Colorado Boulder., USA * 'Precarity' has become a term of art in social and cultural criticism, but the angle it brings to the discussion hasn’t always been clear. Duvernoy, Olson, and Plass’s volume fills readers in on that angle, making a case for attending to representations of the downtrodden more ecumenical than those of only industrial immiseration. Without polemicizing against a Marxist tradition, the volume’s essays demonstrate the value of the subjectively and descriptively attuned term 'precarity' for uncovering depictions of personal, contingent, and emotional vulnerabilities often overlooked by normative or teleological approaches. The volume casts new light on canonical as well as neglected works from romanticism and modernism to contemporary film and literature. * Benjamin Robinson, Associate Professor of Germanic Studies and Chair, Indiana University, USA * In this timely and sorely needed volume, rich historical depth is added to the often all-too-presentist application of 'precarity' to recent works of art, laying bare the deep connection between precarity and discourses on and representations of 'the poor' since 1800. Within a rigorous theoretical framework of critical theory, Marxism, gender theory, and the history of work and labor, these essays explore – via precarity – ongoing dispossessions, forms of subjectivation, and forms of social (non-)relations, bringing agency and utopian desires to the fore. * Elke Siegel, Associate Professor of German Studies and Chair, Cornell University, USA *