Out of Sync & Out of Work

JOEL BURGES is an assistant professor of English and of visual and cultural studies at the University of Rochester in New York. He is coeditor of Time: A Vocabulary of the Present.

• Introduction: Falling into History1    Culture by Outmoded Means2    Reading by Residual Means3    Narrative by Obstinate Means4    Cinema by Dated Means5    Politics by Obsolete MeansAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

"A compelling account of an economic system that has proven itself more and more willing to allow workers to 'fall into history' by rendering their labor obsolete, the book masterfully illuminates the present and its prehistory. More than this, however, it is a persuasive and vivid manifesto for the work culture itself does, one that revivifies our sense that the labor of the cultural critic, at least, is more urgent than ever."— Annie J. McClanahan, author of Dead Pledges: Debt, Crisis, and 21st Century Culture"Chronicle of Higher Education weekly book list," by Nina C. Ayoub— Chronicle of Higher Education"Books Recordings" mention of Out of Sync and Out of Work in Rochester Review— Rochester Review"Out of Sync Out of Work is original, engrossing, remarkably timely, and consistently characterized by careful scholarship and convincing readings. It is a masterful work that demonstrates the power of contemporary cultural forms to reactivate readers' sense of history as a political medium."— Heather Hicks, author of The Culture of Soft Work: Labor, Gender, and Race in Postmodern American Narrative