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Overwhelmed and Underworked: Inherent Vice, Aproductivity, and Narrative

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Overwhelmed and Underworked: Inherent Vice, Aproductivity, and Narrative

Taylor, Miles (2020) Overwhelmed and Underworked: Inherent Vice, Aproductivity, and Narrative. Masters thesis, Concordia University.

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Abstract

This thesis proposes an artistic mode called aproductivity, which arises with the secular crisis of capitalism in the early 1970’s. It reads aproductivity as the aesthetic reification of Theodor Adorno’s negative dialectics, a peculiar form of philosophy that refuses to move forward, instead producing dialectics without synthesis. The first chapter examines the economic history aproductivity grows out of, as well as its relation to Francis Fukuyama’s concept of “The End of History.” After doing so, the chapter explores negative dialectics and aproductivity in relation to Adam Phillips’ concept of the transformational object. In the second chapter, the thesis looks at the Thomas Pynchon novel Inherent Vice (2009), as well as the 2014 Paul Thomas Anderson adaptation of the same name. It offers a reading of the two as allegories for life under late capitalism, with particular focus on the breakdown of narrative and the search for something that will make sense of a world where the logics of capitalism no longer function correctly.

Divisions:Concordia University > Faculty of Fine Arts > Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema
Item Type:Thesis (Masters)
Authors:Taylor, Miles
Institution:Concordia University
Degree Name:M.A.
Program:Film Studies
Date:28 May 2020
Thesis Supervisor(s):Lefebvre, Martin
Keywords:Adorno, Film Studies, Aproductivity, Inherent Vice, Paul Thomas Anderson, Thomas Pynchon
ID Code:986963
Deposited By: Miles Taylor
Deposited On:25 Nov 2020 16:46
Last Modified:25 Nov 2020 16:46

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