Paula Martín-Salván & Sascha Pöhlmann 
The Politics of Transparency in Modern American Fiction 
Fear, Secrecy, and Exposure

Explores modern and contemporary American literature’s contribution to and critique of the newly emerging field of transparency studies


In the twenty-first century, transparency has become an ambiguous buzzword both in the public and the private realms (e.g., Wikileaks and the Snowden affair; social media). This volume takes its cue from the emerging field of transparency studies, recent scholarly work in sociology, political theory, and cultural studies that identifies a hegemonic rhetoric of transparency in public and political life. While scholars in this new field routinely gesture toward literature as the realm where secrecy may be productive, they rarely engage with literature directly, and literary studies itself remains notably absent from their debates. This collection of essays seeks to redress that state of affairs by focusing on literary texts written in an American cultural tradition steeped in the interplay between transparency and exposure, fear and secrecy, security and surveillance, and information and disinformation.

The essays draw on authors ranging from Whitman, James, and Ellison to Pynchon, Morrison, and Eggers to argue that American literature complicates theoretical assumptions about transparency made in other disciplines. They question the field’s strong theoretical emphasis on present-day technopolitical practices and discourses as the location of hegemonic discourse on transparency, and instead historicize such phenomena and extend them to discursive spheres that have so far been neglected (such as issues of sexuality and race).


Edited by Paula Martín-Salván and Sascha Pöhlmann. Contributors: Tomasz Basiuk, Jesús Blanco Hidalga, Cristina Chevereșan, Julia Faisst, Michel Feith, Julián Jiménez Heffernan, Tiina Käkelä, Juan L. Pérez-de-Luque, Umberto Rossi, Jelena Šesnić, Toon Staes, Julia Straub, Alice Sundman.

Table of Content

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Politics of Transparency –
Paula Martín-Salván

1. Walt Whitman’s Poetry of Intimacy –
Sascha Pöhlmann

2. The Lives and Times of Henry James and F.O. Matthiessen: The Neoliberal Transparent Society and Its Liberal Enemies –
Julián Jiménez Heffernan

3. The Intelligibility of Coming Out as Gay –
Tomasz Basiuk

4. Invisibility and Exposure in Ralph Ellison’s
Invisible Man (1952) and George Schuyler’s
Black No More (1931) –
Michel Feith

5. The Transparency of the Scanner, The Opacity of the Simulacra: The Politics of Vision in Philip K. Dick’s Oeuvre –
Umberto Rossi

6. ‘Angrier than thou’: Secrecy vs. Exposure in Philip Roth’s
I Married a Communist –
Cristina
Chevereșan

7. Political Secrets in William Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy –
Juan L. Pérez-de-Luque

8. Secrecy and Exposure in Toni Morrison’s
Paradise –
Alice Sundman

9. Something Big and Invisible: Thomas Pynchon’s
Bleeding Edge and the Limits of Transparency –
Tiina Käkelä

10. Narrating the Community in Karen Tei Yamashita’s
I Hotel: Story, History, System –
Toon Staes

11. Literary Imagination at the Digital Frontier: Dave Eggers’s Recent Technological Dystopian Novels –
Jelena Šesnić

12. ‘The Joy of Confession’: Narratives of Disclosure in Jonathan Franzen’s
Crossroads –
Jesús Blanco Hidalga

13. Celebrity 2.0: Female Influencer Figures in Contemporary American Fiction –
Julia Straub

Notes on Contributors

Index

About the author

SASCHA PÖHLMANN is Professor of North American Literature and Culture at the Technische Universitat Dortmund, in Dortmund, Germany.