A01=Lennard J. Davis
academic life
accountability
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
authenticity
Author_Lennard J. Davis
automatic-update
biopolitics
capitalism
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=AB
Category=DS
class
class ressentiment
Columbia University
COP=United States
Delivery_Pre-order
Dorothea Lange
Dorothy Allison
double consciousness
economic inequality
endo-writers
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
exo-writers
female sex workers
first-generation students
Florence Thompson
identity politics
income inequality
inequality
J. D. Vance
James Agee
Joseph Earl Thomas
Justin Torres
Language_English
local knowledges
Maggie Anderson
Migrant Mother photograph
Now Let Us Praise Famous Men
PA=Not yet available
poornography
Poverty
poverty journalism
poverty memoir
poverty porn
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Forthcoming
realism
representation
representational inequality
slumming
social justice
softlaunch
stereotypes
transclass
transclass writers
urban poverty
Walker Evans
women's work
Product details
- ISBN 9781478031024
- Weight: 431g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 15 Nov 2024
- Publisher: Duke University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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For generations most of the canonical works that detail the lives of poor people have been created by rich or middle-class writers like Charles Dickens, John Steinbeck, or James Agee. This has resulted in overwhelming depictions of poor people as living abject, violent lives in filthy and degrading conditions. In Poor Things, Lennard J. Davis labels this genre “poornography”: distorted narratives of poverty written by and for the middle and upper classes. Davis shows how poornography creates harmful and dangerous stereotypes that build barriers to social justice and change. To remedy this, Davis argues, poor people should write realistic depictions of themselves, but because of representational inequality they cannot. Given the obstacles to the poor accessing the means of publication, Davis suggests that the work should, at least for now, be done by “transclass” writers who were once poor and who can accurately represent poverty without relying on stereotypes and clichÉs. Only then can the lived experience of poverty be more fully realized.
Lennard J. Davis is Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois Chicago and the author of many books, including Enabling Acts: The Hidden Story of How the Americans with Disabilities Act Gave the Largest US Minority Its Rights.
