“The suburbanization of the soul”: Psychopolitical Violence and Ethnographic Fiction in J.G. Ballard’s Super-Cannes
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This thesis examines the nature of violence as it exists within the late J.G. Ballard’s novel Super-Cannes. Its methodology is hybrid, synthesizing analytic techniques of both literary criticism and anthropological observation and assessment. Drawing on insights from a range of disciplines including philosophy, social theory, psychoanalysis, and political economy, it argues that Super-Cannes is fundamentally an ethnographic novel, one that depicts an explicitly political critique of capitalist violence not only as it operates within the fictional world of the text, but as it continues to thrive in the world external to the text, the world from which the text comes. It develops new theoretical language with which to discuss violence that is not only physical but psychological, invisible, and inherently dialectic in its functioning. In the end, this thesis outlines the possibility of new interdisciplinary methodologies and vocabularies that allow for an analysis and critique of violence that, though structurally informed, nevertheless neglects to ignore the necessarily narrative form in which the embodied human experience of violence always unfolds.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | May 2019 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Ripple, Joshua |
|---|---|
| Degree granting institution | Stanford University, Department of English |
| Primary advisor | Ruttenburg, Nancy |
| Advisor | McGurl, Mark |
Subjects
| Subject | Department of English |
|---|---|
| Subject | psychopolitical violence |
| Subject | ethnographic novel |
| Subject | business park |
| Subject | dialectic violence |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
Access conditions
- Use and reproduction
- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Ripple, Joshua. (2019). “The suburbanization of the soul”: Psychopolitical Violence and Ethnographic Fiction in J.G. Ballard’s Super-Cannes. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/kf098jt0397
Collection
Stanford University, Department of English, Undergraduate Honors Theses
View other items in this collection in SearchWorksContact information
- Contact
- jripple@stanford.edu
Also listed in
Loading usage metrics...