Liam Connell | University of Brighton (original) (raw)
Books by Liam Connell
Chapter abstracts. http://bit.ly/2wuj12B
Papers by Liam Connell
Women: a cultural review , Oct 1, 2024
This essay attempts to define the genre of the surrogacy thriller as a prominent form for recent ... more This essay attempts to define the genre of the surrogacy thriller as a prominent form for recent representations of commercial surrogacy. Placing this genre into a history of film representations of surrogacy and into a wider history of representing women’s work on film, it argues that the genre appears to intervene in debates about gestational labour. On the surface, these films appear to attack both mothers and surrogates alike for their participation in paid employment. However, along with other representations of surrogacy, these films also display a mingling of the language of care with the language of the economy in ways that trouble the easy separation of these two spheres. Potentially, this combination makes possible a critique of gestational labour which would make the nature of women’s work visible and available to resistance. In the form of the thriller this potential seems muted. However, through a reading of James Bridges 1970 film, The Baby Maker, this essay suggests that a space for this critique is possible in the depiction of surrogacy as work which combines both physical and affective labour.
Women: a cultural review, 2024
This essay attempts to define the genre of the surrogacy thriller as a prominent form for recent ... more This essay attempts to define the genre of the surrogacy thriller as a prominent form for recent representations of commercial surrogacy. Placing this genre into a history of film representations of surrogacy and into a wider history of representing women’s work on film, it argues that the genre appears to intervene in debates about gestational labour. On the surface, these films appear to attack both mothers and surrogates alike for their participation in paid employment. However, along with other representations of surrogacy, these films also display a mingling of the language of care with the language of the economy in ways that trouble the easy separation of these two spheres. Potentially, this combination makes possible a critique of gestational labour which would make the nature of women’s work visible and available to resistance. In the form of the thriller this potential seems muted. However, through a reading of James Bridges 1970 film, The Baby Maker, this essay suggests that a space for this critique is possible in the depiction of surrogacy as work which combines both physical and affective labour.
Parallax, 2021
Since the financial crisis of 2007-2008 it has been commonplace to argue that globalisation is in... more Since the financial crisis of 2007-2008 it has been commonplace to argue that globalisation is in retreat. The period following the Cold War saw decades of international integration of the world economy, represented by streamlined trade logistics, a growing financial and immaterial economy and the formation of trading blocs tailored to ease the free movement of goods, services and, in the right circumstances, of people. However, in the last decade, these twentieth-century verities have come under increasing tension. During a long period of economic stagnation, successive populist governments have turned to nationalist rhetoric in order to justify protectionist solutions to the problems of stalled growth. Alongside the noise of tariffs and trading wars the most visible signal of this development has been a substantial rhetorical investment in the power of the securitised border to cure the political ills of the nation state. This rhetoric is not wholly empty and has been accompanied ...
Media, Culture and Society, 2003
"This article considers the impact of new levels of competition and a changing political def... more "This article considers the impact of new levels of competition and a changing political definition of Scottishness upon the way that Scottish newspapers sought to construct their content as Scottish during the inter-war period. Through an analysis of their content this article considers the extent to which Scottish newspapers concentrated upon events in Scotland, the manner in which local Scottish events were represented as Scottish national events, and the techniques that they employed to brand themselves as Scottish products. It concludes that these combined to position Scottish papers as Scottish ‘nationals’ rather than as local papers. It further identifies the use of similar techniques by the London-based ‘nationals’ at that time, suggesting that the tendency to address their readership as a national community is the defining characteristic of national news media in general. "
The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Economics, 2022
This chapter considers the difficulty that economics has found in defining labour as a practice s... more This chapter considers the difficulty that economics has found in defining labour as a practice separate from its product. Looking first at Classical and Marxist economics, it uses feminist economics to highlight the omissions that conventional definitions of labour contain, especially concerning the work of women. By comparing feminist economics with recent novels by women, including Halle Butler’s The New Me, Alice Furse’s Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Heike Geissler’s Seasonal Associate, Hilary Leichter’s Temporary and Ling Ma’s Severance, it argues that contemporary fiction has been attentive to the same omissions. Through a reading of the techniques of literary fiction, including realism and a range of experimental narrative devices, this essay proposes that the contemporary novel offers kinds of writing that expand our conception of labour. Contemporary fiction contains narratives that highlight the work of social reproduction as central component of the economies of labour and that offer a wider critique of economic categories of value.
Parallax, 2021
In a context in which the idea of globalisation is now routinely condemned in the name of a natio... more In a context in which the idea of globalisation is now routinely condemned in the name of a nationhood that should once again assert its sovereign preeminence, to question the purpose or place of this idea is both politically and intellectually risky. If the era of globalisation is coming to an end, it is often posited, then it is because the idea of the nation – as a territory and a population with a defined social and cultural character – is again in the ascendant. Any critical or intellectual challenge to globalisation today risks being perceived either as enabling neo-nationalist anti-globalism or as seeking to preserve neoliberalism’s crumbling narrative of open movement and free exchange. If we are to avoid these risks then one option is to look to Peter Sloterdijk’s observation that a structural shift is under way not because of the nation-state’s resurgence but because ‘we are today living through a dramatic crisis of reformatting’. In this drama, the disavowal of the foreig...
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this p... more The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
Open Arts Journal, 2013
Following Ronen Palan's The Offshore World (2003) Connell understands the central feature of the ... more Following Ronen Palan's The Offshore World (2003) Connell understands the central feature of the offshore as the 'bifurcation of the nation state': the state splits itself in two by continuing to govern those areas that remain easy to legislate while surrendering to the international realm those which do not. Connell considers how the offshore can be understood as a form of cosmopolitanism, with a particular emphasis on the way that the obligations of the state are stretched to accommodate foreign businesses, foreign capital and even foreign citizens. Yet, as Connell demonstrates, the cosmopolitan promise of the offshore conceals the double nature of the nation-state which functions both as a node for discursive community formation and, simultaneously, as cover for the evasion of any communal responsibilities that this might imply.
Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 2010
Interventions, 2004
This essay examines the recent use of postcolonial theory in relation to Scottish literature in o... more This essay examines the recent use of postcolonial theory in relation to Scottish literature in order to scrutinize a tendency to designate Scotland as an English colony. It suggests that the basis for this analysis lies in the supposed cultural effects of the British union rather than in its materialist history, which raises questions about the suitability of a colonial model. In tracing the contours of such an analysis, this essay identifies strong similarities between the explanations offered by modern literary criticism and those proposed by early twentieth-century nationalists in their effort to elaborate Scotland as a culturally discrete political entity. On the basis of these similarities, this paper concludes that the attempt to identify Scotland as a colony serves to reproduce the essentialist models of nationality which the early nationalist readings of Scotland contained. In a recent issue of Interventions , Ellen-Raïssa Jackson and Willy Maley argue for a comparative approach to Scottish and Irish writing on the basis of a common history of English colonization (Jackson and Maley 2002). While a comparative approach is amply justified by the profound similarities between Scottish and Irish modernists, the Irish precedents for Scottish linguistic colonialism Gaelic culture
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 2003
A recent attempt to characterize the Scottish press identified its major features as comprising p... more A recent attempt to characterize the Scottish press identified its major features as comprising primarily local papers which, by comparison with the London ‘nationals’, command small budgets and, consequently, contain a high concentration of Scottish news at the expense of UK coverage, foreign news and features. Strikingly, despite an initial enthusiasm for the fledgling Scottish Parliament, public indifference had led to a general neglect of Edinburgh politics in imitation of the ‘London broadsheets and blue tops – particularly the Daily Mail ’ (Luckhurst, 2000). The implication of this neglect of Scottish-wide political institutions, combined with the concentration on Scottish news, is that the content of the Scottish press is principally composed of local rather than national events (either Scottish or British), and what news coverage they provide is dominated by human interest or breaking news. Importantly, while newspaper readers in Scotland still prefer locally produced titles...
This essay re-reads Scott's three letters from Malachi Malagrowther in the context of the 182... more This essay re-reads Scott's three letters from Malachi Malagrowther in the context of the 1825 banking crisis. It suggests that these letters have a complex relationship to British imperialism as it was consituted at that time. First, it shows how far Scottish capital was connected to finanical speculation in the Americas as part of British expansionist ambitions in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars. Second, it indicates how Scott's letters contains a curious series of images of Amerindians that positions Scots as a colonised nation. It tries to read this imagery back into Scott's novels to consider how far this allows his letters to disguise class interests beneath a veneer of nationalism.
The formal characteristics of a literature described as Magic Realist are hard to distinguish fro... more The formal characteristics of a literature described as Magic Realist are hard to distinguish from the formal characteristics of early-twentieth-century Modernism; to that end, attempts to keep these movements distinct through the categorization of one sort of literature as modern and another as magical, as well the various attempts to define the genre through a series of extra-literary criteria, merely serve to codify a set of prejudices about Western European and non-Western societies and their respective modes of thinking. That is to say that non-Western societies are persistently characterized through a series of indicators which are categorized as primitive—one of which is a residual belief in myth, magic, and the use of ritual. Western nations by contrast are characterized as progressive, developing, modern. They then are allowed literary forms called Modernism, where their non-Western counterparts can only write Magic Realism.
Chapter abstracts. http://bit.ly/2wuj12B
Women: a cultural review , Oct 1, 2024
This essay attempts to define the genre of the surrogacy thriller as a prominent form for recent ... more This essay attempts to define the genre of the surrogacy thriller as a prominent form for recent representations of commercial surrogacy. Placing this genre into a history of film representations of surrogacy and into a wider history of representing women’s work on film, it argues that the genre appears to intervene in debates about gestational labour. On the surface, these films appear to attack both mothers and surrogates alike for their participation in paid employment. However, along with other representations of surrogacy, these films also display a mingling of the language of care with the language of the economy in ways that trouble the easy separation of these two spheres. Potentially, this combination makes possible a critique of gestational labour which would make the nature of women’s work visible and available to resistance. In the form of the thriller this potential seems muted. However, through a reading of James Bridges 1970 film, The Baby Maker, this essay suggests that a space for this critique is possible in the depiction of surrogacy as work which combines both physical and affective labour.
Women: a cultural review, 2024
This essay attempts to define the genre of the surrogacy thriller as a prominent form for recent ... more This essay attempts to define the genre of the surrogacy thriller as a prominent form for recent representations of commercial surrogacy. Placing this genre into a history of film representations of surrogacy and into a wider history of representing women’s work on film, it argues that the genre appears to intervene in debates about gestational labour. On the surface, these films appear to attack both mothers and surrogates alike for their participation in paid employment. However, along with other representations of surrogacy, these films also display a mingling of the language of care with the language of the economy in ways that trouble the easy separation of these two spheres. Potentially, this combination makes possible a critique of gestational labour which would make the nature of women’s work visible and available to resistance. In the form of the thriller this potential seems muted. However, through a reading of James Bridges 1970 film, The Baby Maker, this essay suggests that a space for this critique is possible in the depiction of surrogacy as work which combines both physical and affective labour.
Parallax, 2021
Since the financial crisis of 2007-2008 it has been commonplace to argue that globalisation is in... more Since the financial crisis of 2007-2008 it has been commonplace to argue that globalisation is in retreat. The period following the Cold War saw decades of international integration of the world economy, represented by streamlined trade logistics, a growing financial and immaterial economy and the formation of trading blocs tailored to ease the free movement of goods, services and, in the right circumstances, of people. However, in the last decade, these twentieth-century verities have come under increasing tension. During a long period of economic stagnation, successive populist governments have turned to nationalist rhetoric in order to justify protectionist solutions to the problems of stalled growth. Alongside the noise of tariffs and trading wars the most visible signal of this development has been a substantial rhetorical investment in the power of the securitised border to cure the political ills of the nation state. This rhetoric is not wholly empty and has been accompanied ...
Media, Culture and Society, 2003
"This article considers the impact of new levels of competition and a changing political def... more "This article considers the impact of new levels of competition and a changing political definition of Scottishness upon the way that Scottish newspapers sought to construct their content as Scottish during the inter-war period. Through an analysis of their content this article considers the extent to which Scottish newspapers concentrated upon events in Scotland, the manner in which local Scottish events were represented as Scottish national events, and the techniques that they employed to brand themselves as Scottish products. It concludes that these combined to position Scottish papers as Scottish ‘nationals’ rather than as local papers. It further identifies the use of similar techniques by the London-based ‘nationals’ at that time, suggesting that the tendency to address their readership as a national community is the defining characteristic of national news media in general. "
The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Economics, 2022
This chapter considers the difficulty that economics has found in defining labour as a practice s... more This chapter considers the difficulty that economics has found in defining labour as a practice separate from its product. Looking first at Classical and Marxist economics, it uses feminist economics to highlight the omissions that conventional definitions of labour contain, especially concerning the work of women. By comparing feminist economics with recent novels by women, including Halle Butler’s The New Me, Alice Furse’s Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Heike Geissler’s Seasonal Associate, Hilary Leichter’s Temporary and Ling Ma’s Severance, it argues that contemporary fiction has been attentive to the same omissions. Through a reading of the techniques of literary fiction, including realism and a range of experimental narrative devices, this essay proposes that the contemporary novel offers kinds of writing that expand our conception of labour. Contemporary fiction contains narratives that highlight the work of social reproduction as central component of the economies of labour and that offer a wider critique of economic categories of value.
Parallax, 2021
In a context in which the idea of globalisation is now routinely condemned in the name of a natio... more In a context in which the idea of globalisation is now routinely condemned in the name of a nationhood that should once again assert its sovereign preeminence, to question the purpose or place of this idea is both politically and intellectually risky. If the era of globalisation is coming to an end, it is often posited, then it is because the idea of the nation – as a territory and a population with a defined social and cultural character – is again in the ascendant. Any critical or intellectual challenge to globalisation today risks being perceived either as enabling neo-nationalist anti-globalism or as seeking to preserve neoliberalism’s crumbling narrative of open movement and free exchange. If we are to avoid these risks then one option is to look to Peter Sloterdijk’s observation that a structural shift is under way not because of the nation-state’s resurgence but because ‘we are today living through a dramatic crisis of reformatting’. In this drama, the disavowal of the foreig...
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this p... more The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
Open Arts Journal, 2013
Following Ronen Palan's The Offshore World (2003) Connell understands the central feature of the ... more Following Ronen Palan's The Offshore World (2003) Connell understands the central feature of the offshore as the 'bifurcation of the nation state': the state splits itself in two by continuing to govern those areas that remain easy to legislate while surrendering to the international realm those which do not. Connell considers how the offshore can be understood as a form of cosmopolitanism, with a particular emphasis on the way that the obligations of the state are stretched to accommodate foreign businesses, foreign capital and even foreign citizens. Yet, as Connell demonstrates, the cosmopolitan promise of the offshore conceals the double nature of the nation-state which functions both as a node for discursive community formation and, simultaneously, as cover for the evasion of any communal responsibilities that this might imply.
Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 2010
Interventions, 2004
This essay examines the recent use of postcolonial theory in relation to Scottish literature in o... more This essay examines the recent use of postcolonial theory in relation to Scottish literature in order to scrutinize a tendency to designate Scotland as an English colony. It suggests that the basis for this analysis lies in the supposed cultural effects of the British union rather than in its materialist history, which raises questions about the suitability of a colonial model. In tracing the contours of such an analysis, this essay identifies strong similarities between the explanations offered by modern literary criticism and those proposed by early twentieth-century nationalists in their effort to elaborate Scotland as a culturally discrete political entity. On the basis of these similarities, this paper concludes that the attempt to identify Scotland as a colony serves to reproduce the essentialist models of nationality which the early nationalist readings of Scotland contained. In a recent issue of Interventions , Ellen-Raïssa Jackson and Willy Maley argue for a comparative approach to Scottish and Irish writing on the basis of a common history of English colonization (Jackson and Maley 2002). While a comparative approach is amply justified by the profound similarities between Scottish and Irish modernists, the Irish precedents for Scottish linguistic colonialism Gaelic culture
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 2003
A recent attempt to characterize the Scottish press identified its major features as comprising p... more A recent attempt to characterize the Scottish press identified its major features as comprising primarily local papers which, by comparison with the London ‘nationals’, command small budgets and, consequently, contain a high concentration of Scottish news at the expense of UK coverage, foreign news and features. Strikingly, despite an initial enthusiasm for the fledgling Scottish Parliament, public indifference had led to a general neglect of Edinburgh politics in imitation of the ‘London broadsheets and blue tops – particularly the Daily Mail ’ (Luckhurst, 2000). The implication of this neglect of Scottish-wide political institutions, combined with the concentration on Scottish news, is that the content of the Scottish press is principally composed of local rather than national events (either Scottish or British), and what news coverage they provide is dominated by human interest or breaking news. Importantly, while newspaper readers in Scotland still prefer locally produced titles...
This essay re-reads Scott's three letters from Malachi Malagrowther in the context of the 182... more This essay re-reads Scott's three letters from Malachi Malagrowther in the context of the 1825 banking crisis. It suggests that these letters have a complex relationship to British imperialism as it was consituted at that time. First, it shows how far Scottish capital was connected to finanical speculation in the Americas as part of British expansionist ambitions in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars. Second, it indicates how Scott's letters contains a curious series of images of Amerindians that positions Scots as a colonised nation. It tries to read this imagery back into Scott's novels to consider how far this allows his letters to disguise class interests beneath a veneer of nationalism.
The formal characteristics of a literature described as Magic Realist are hard to distinguish fro... more The formal characteristics of a literature described as Magic Realist are hard to distinguish from the formal characteristics of early-twentieth-century Modernism; to that end, attempts to keep these movements distinct through the categorization of one sort of literature as modern and another as magical, as well the various attempts to define the genre through a series of extra-literary criteria, merely serve to codify a set of prejudices about Western European and non-Western societies and their respective modes of thinking. That is to say that non-Western societies are persistently characterized through a series of indicators which are categorized as primitive—one of which is a residual belief in myth, magic, and the use of ritual. Western nations by contrast are characterized as progressive, developing, modern. They then are allowed literary forms called Modernism, where their non-Western counterparts can only write Magic Realism.
This chapter reads Douglas Coupland’s Generation X (1991), Microserfs (2004) and JPod (2006) and ... more This chapter reads Douglas Coupland’s Generation X (1991), Microserfs (2004) and JPod (2006) and examines how Coupland’s generational narrative of declining worker compensation from the Baby-Boomer generation to the present day comes under pressure when his three novels are read together as a novel-cycle. Although, individually, each novel is organised by nostalgia for the presumed security of earlier conditions of work, across the three novels Coupland depicts continuities between generations that undermine this narrative structure. Using theories of debt from Maurizio Lazzarato, accumulation from David Harvey, socialized work from Antonio Negri and fractalization from Franco Beradi, it suggests that Coupland’s novels offer a picture of presentism in which workers of successive generations are trapped in repeated iterations of the precarious present.