FRINK Linked Data Fragments server

Matches in SemOpenAlex for { <https://semopenalex.org/work/W4229699531> ?p ?o ?g. }

• W4229699531 endingPage "250" @default.
• W4229699531 startingPage "241" @default.
• W4229699531 abstract "Introduction ]oel Woller Contemporary scholarship on US culture in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s has addressed several social movements, political parties and programs, labor organizations, and cultural forms which are, if not dead, no longer quite with us. Thus, in recent years, topics including the Popular Front, the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO), the New Deal, the Communist Party, and proletarian fiction have all been reconsidered. This work is extremely valuable, especially for the insight it provides into the dramatic differences, as well as submerged continuities, between that era and our own.1 However, the period's key figure for the presence or absence of social agency—the masses—has been neglected in recent research on the forms and contexts of the literary and cultural production of those decades. To be sure, the phrases the mass and the masses have today, a naive, quaint ring. Among others, we who read journals such as the Journal of Narrative Theory don't really believe in the masses anymore, do we? We do, of course, speak of mass media, mass production, mass movements , or even mass culture—but the masses? The people, possibly; the public, more likely: but very seldom the mass or the masses. Or rather, when we do speak of the masses we virtually always mention the concept rather than use it. Within the fields of literary and cultural studies, the masses is almost never encountered outside of scare quotes: it is someone else's term, from another time. JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory 29.3 (Fall 1999): 241-250. Copyright © 1999 by JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory. 242 JNT During the period extending from the arrival of the Great Depression through the mid-1950s, however, the masses was practically everybody 's idea. In this era, which saw the consolidation of consumer culture and a fordist regime of capital accumulation, the masses was a highlycharged , multivalent signifier. Indeed, at this time, the figure of the masses was hegemonic: one needed to use the term to make sense, to even enter the political fray. As a very cursory review of some of the period 's most characteristic conceptions of the masses will show, no single meaning of the figure predominated; rather, the masses was at the center of the very field on which ideological struggle was engaged. Representing the tendency which was then coming to prevail in the US, retailer Edward Filene conceptualizes the masses so as to limit mass agency to the spheres of consumption and scientifically managed highwage labor. The masses of America have elected Henry Ford, he proclaimed . Business, Filene suggests in 1934, must see to it that the masses have more and more buying power. There might be an equitable distribution of wealth which would still leave everybody poor, but business can achieve no lasting prosperity now unless the masses enjoy a standard of living which has scarcely yet been thought possible. Only such a standard of living can absorb the products of machine industry , and only such a standard, therefore, can keep the masses employed. The masses, I know, do not and will not object to that, however much they may have objected to business programs before. (65) The administered masses represented by Filene are not much like the menacing mob which pursues the more sympathetic—but of course massive and deadly—monster of Universal's 1931 movie Frankenstein. These masses of Hollywood's gothic nightmare are perhaps closer to the homegrown fascists (and their antagonists) in Sinclair Lewis's 1935 Popular Front novel It Can't Happen Here.2 At times, Lewis's ironic vision even approaches, but never quite joins, the reaction to the perceived threats of Philistinism and conformism expressed by philosopher Jose Ortega Y Gasset in 1932: The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, individual , qualified and select (11-19), he fears. Introduction 243 The competing visions of Filene, Hollywood, Lewis, and Ortega Y Gasset differ markedly from the position of the Third Period Communist Party-USA, which, in its 1934 Manifesto, uses the term masses repeatedly —usually modified by adjectives such as working, suffering, exploited, and (most often) toiling.3 The position of the CP-USA at this time was..." @default.
• W4229699531 created "2022-05-11" @default.
• W4229699531 creator A5027419170 @default.
• W4229699531 date "1999-01-01" @default.
• W4229699531 modified "2023-10-17" @default.
• W4229699531 title "Introduction" @default.
• W4229699531 doi "https://doi.org/10.1353/jnt.2011.0056" @default.
• W4229699531 hasPublicationYear "1999" @default.
• W4229699531 type Work @default.
• W4229699531 citedByCount "0" @default.
• W4229699531 crossrefType "journal-article" @default.
• W4229699531 hasAuthorship W4229699531A5027419170 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConcept C107038049 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConcept C108170787 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConcept C124952713 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConcept C138885662 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConcept C142362112 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConcept C144024400 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConcept C15553842 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConcept C17744445 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConcept C199033989 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConcept C199539241 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConcept C2778061430 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConcept C2780324008 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConcept C2781291010 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConcept C29595303 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConcept C36289849 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConcept C542948173 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConcept C558299567 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConcept C94625758 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConcept C95457728 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConceptScore W4229699531C107038049 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConceptScore W4229699531C108170787 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConceptScore W4229699531C124952713 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConceptScore W4229699531C138885662 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConceptScore W4229699531C142362112 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConceptScore W4229699531C144024400 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConceptScore W4229699531C15553842 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConceptScore W4229699531C17744445 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConceptScore W4229699531C199033989 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConceptScore W4229699531C199539241 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConceptScore W4229699531C2778061430 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConceptScore W4229699531C2780324008 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConceptScore W4229699531C2781291010 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConceptScore W4229699531C29595303 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConceptScore W4229699531C36289849 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConceptScore W4229699531C542948173 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConceptScore W4229699531C558299567 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConceptScore W4229699531C94625758 @default.
• W4229699531 hasConceptScore W4229699531C95457728 @default.
• W4229699531 hasIssue "3" @default.
• W4229699531 hasLocation W42296995311 @default.
• W4229699531 hasOpenAccess W4229699531 @default.
• W4229699531 hasPrimaryLocation W42296995311 @default.
• W4229699531 hasRelatedWork W1842061732 @default.
• W4229699531 hasRelatedWork W2039584333 @default.
• W4229699531 hasRelatedWork W2352766810 @default.
• W4229699531 hasRelatedWork W2368506991 @default.
• W4229699531 hasRelatedWork W2378029871 @default.
• W4229699531 hasRelatedWork W2388694785 @default.
• W4229699531 hasRelatedWork W2588467430 @default.
• W4229699531 hasRelatedWork W2748952813 @default.
• W4229699531 hasRelatedWork W2933608806 @default.
• W4229699531 hasRelatedWork W3134382238 @default.
• W4229699531 hasVolume "29" @default.
• W4229699531 isParatext "false" @default.
• W4229699531 isRetracted "false" @default.
• W4229699531 workType "article" @default.