Description
Book SynopsisExplores how a major change in the nature and forms of working-class power affected novels about U.S. industrial workers in the first half of the twentieth century.
Trade Review"Unfailingly provocative, this is an intelligent book noteworthy for its refusal to be mired in old approaches and its consequent ability to break new ground in the study of both working class fiction and the more general relationship of factory and artistic production." -- David Roediger * University of Illinois *
"
Troublemakers is an entirely commanding and engrossing study of the new forms of workers' control and representation that modern mass-industrial work made available—rich and strange in archive, theoretically fresh and creative, historically acute." -- Eric Lott * University of Virginia *
"
Troublemakers is an original take that provides eyeopening insights about different ways acts of resistance by the mass worker, including a refusal to work, may be represented. Scott has added a polished contribution to the list of essential interpretations in the field."
* American Literature *
"William Scott's
Troublemakers, though in part a work of literary criticism, in fact offers fascinating insight into the modes of resistance adopted by the mass industrial worker in America between the 1890s and the 1930s."
* Labor Studies Journal *
"
Troublemakers offers fascinating insight into the modes of resistance adopted by the mass industrial worker in America between the 1890s and the 1930s." * Labor Studies Journal *
"Unfailingly provocative, this is an intelligent book noteworthy for its refusal to be mired in old approaches and its consequent ability to break new ground in the study of both working class fiction and the more general relationship of factory and artistic production." -- David Roediger * University of Illinois *
"
Troublemakers is an entirely commanding and engrossing study of the new forms of workers' control and representation that modern mass-industrial work made available—rich and strange in archive, theoretically fresh and creative, historically acute." -- Eric Lott * University of Virginia *
"
Troublemakers is an original take that provides eyeopening insights about different ways acts of resistance by the mass worker, including a refusal to work, may be represented. Scott has added a polished contribution to the list of essential interpretations in the field."
* American Literature *
"William Scott's
Troublemakers, though in part a work of literary criticism, in fact offers fascinating insight into the modes of resistance adopted by the mass industrial worker in America between the 1890s and the 1930s."
* Labor Studies Journal *
"
Troublemakers offers fascinating insight into the modes of resistance adopted by the mass industrial worker in America between the 1890s and the 1930s." * Labor Studies Journal *
Table of ContentsIntroduction : power, representation, fiction
The making of the mass worker. The powerless worker and the failure of political representation : "the lowest and most degraded of human beasts" ; The empowered worker and the technological representation of capital : "out of this furnace, this metal"
Strategy and structure at the point of production. The disempowering worker and the aesthetic representation of industrial unionism : "I am the book that has no end!" ; The powerful worker and the demand for economic representation : "they planned to use their flesh, their bones, as a barricade"
Conclusion : Making trouble on a global scale
