Description
Book SynopsisReckoning with one's role in perpetuating systematic inequality, Bruce Robbins examines the implications of a humanitarianism in which the prosperous are the both the cause and the beneficiaries of the abhorrent conditions they seek to remedy.
Trade Review"In
The Beneficiary, Bruce Robbins wants to make room for the note of guilt in our songs of gratitude. Who is a beneficiary? Robbins’s answer is that it is probably you. . . . Perhaps in the future tallying up the planetary cost of national happiness will become so painful we’ll give up that thought experiment altogether. But if Robbins has his way, we’ll not only still be thinking globally — we’ll live in a world that makes doing so tolerable." -- Christina Lupton * Los Angeles Review of Books *
"
The Beneficiary succeeds brilliantly in focusing its readers on the urgencies of our time." -- Michael Rothberg * Contemporary Literature *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. The Starving Child 15
2. You Acquiesce In It: George Orwell on the System 33
3. A Short History of Commodity Recognition 51
4. The Nation-State as Agent of Cosmopolitanism 75
5. Naomi Klein's Love Story 93
6. Life Will Win 117
Conclusion: You Can't Handle the Truth 139
Notes 155
Bibliography 169
Index 177
