The Living Indebted: Visual Economies of Debt in Contemporary Culture

Overview

Photo credit Caitlin Esch.

Debt is one of the most pressing issues of our time. From the allegory of the current recession in Todd Haynes's mini-series Mildred Pierce to the Occupy movement, from the bioeconomics of Steven Soderbergh's Magic Mike to houses abandoned to foreclosure since 2008, debt has produced a visual economy in contemporary culture that is impossible to miss. In The Living Indebted, Annie McClanahan explores that visual economy in three presentations intended for a range of audiences, opening an interdisciplinary dialogue between cultural studies and political economy that should be of interest to humanists as much as social scientists, and faculty as much
as students.