Date of Award
Fall 12-2023
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
English
First Advisor
Rei Magosaki, Ph.D.
Second Advisor
Lynda Hall, Ph.D.
Third Advisor
Justine Van Meter, Ph.D.
Abstract
Charles Yu’s short story “Standard Loneliness Package” from the speculative fiction collection Sorry Please Thank You features a worker who conforms to the cultural logic of Wall Street and late capitalism. However, the privilege of working in a tech company in an up-and-coming industry does not shield him from experiencing the oftentimes destructive logic of financial speculation and in-built structural inequalities. This paper makes a case that a tragedy could be read into this worker’s seemingly stable situation in a way that can uncover the character’s truly sorry state from his illusion of privilege and choice. But first, readers must read empathetically into the failures of this worker’s colleagues, demonstrating that to be aware of others is to be aware of oneself. Ultimately, reading this way will reveal that workers have value beyond the dominant logic of late capitalism and Wall Street. Tragedy becomes an organic narrative device for self-realization for the readers, suggesting in the power of literature and reading responsibly to humanize characters counter to their own consent to the uncritical logic and acceptance of late capitalism that shapes their reality. Literature then becomes a way to imagine and “speculate” alternatively on human value against the status quo in which financial speculation has been a capitalistic tool for instrumentalizing the future
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Koh, Ian Yi Heng. Mirroring Financial Speculation and Late Capitalism Through Speculative Fiction: Worker Gullibility and Guilt as Re-imagination of Human Value. 2023. Chapman University, MA Thesis. Chapman University Digital Commons, https://doi.org/10.36837/chapman.000511