Frances Ferguson - "Records of Reward: Essays on Literature and Value" - Heather Keenleyside

"One of our most brilliant literary critics, Frances Ferguson here ranges across literature, philosophy, and social thought to asks how forms-whether aesthetic, legal, or bureaucratic-assign value and thereby organize our relations and identities. Ferguson is a literary critic who takes her lead, unexpectedly, from Jeremy Bentham, showing how modernity tracks and makes perceptible the values of a host of human activities-the knowledge that comes from early learning exercises, the specialized knowledge that funds particular professions, and the exacting if unspecialized knowledge of the social world of courtship or hanging out. Gathering Ferguson's most influential and still timely essays, Records of Reward includes, for example, "The Nuclear Sublime," where Ferguson takes the unthinkability of nuclear disaster as a version of the sublime; "Jane Austen, Emma, and the Impact of Form," in which she rescues literary character from the shadows of formalism; and "Pornography, the Theory," which thinks about the threshold between speech and action and to take up the question of harm. Most unexpectedly, perhaps, Ferguson's "Bitcoin: A Reader's Guide" shows how something utterly intangible can produce affective, aesthetic, and narrative allure, mirroring older questions about representation, value, and the strange beauty of speculation. The book closes with a new and extensive interview with Ferguson. A vivid demonstration of the enduring rewards of theory and close reading alike, Ferguson's book will be essential reading across the field of literary studies"-- Provided by publisher.