Rezensionen 93 nisse. So wird etwa Murphy ohne die Beachtung seiner epistemologischphilosophischen Implikationen sowie der Dekonstruktion des Romans als „‚skurril„ - und quasi ‚prä-absurd„“ (170) abgetan, Watt auf „das humoristische Spiel mit den Serien“ (179) reduziert, oder Molloys Steinpermutation als „Sinnbild der Sinnlosigkeit des Daseins und des nichtigen Spiels mit Belanglosigkeiten“ (215) gedeutet. Die metareferenzielle und sonstige „Dichte der Beckettʼschen Werke“ (188) wird damit zwar angedeutet, verliert sich aber oft in problematischen Zusammenfassungen und dem repetitiven Gestus eines Durchstreifens „der Vollständigkeit halber“ (215). André Otto Institut für Romanische Philologie Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Claudia Lillge. Arbeit - Eine Literatur- und Mediengeschichte Großbritanniens. Paderborn: Willhelm Fink, 2016. Johannes Scherling “A man who has lost his job has lost his passport to society. It is not only that idleness is boring and the dole a mere pittance. What hurts most is the knowledge that his service is not wanted. His work is rejected, and that means that he himself is rejected, as a man and as a citizen.” This quotation from Thomas Humphrey Marshall, which Claudia Lillge draws on in her insightful and comprehensive book to define the phenomenon of labor, illustrates the great value that people attach to it. It also, however, shows the misery that befalls people when they are out of labor, and while the quotation stems from 1945, these fundamental feelings have not changed. If anything, they have been exacerbated by an economic system and a labor market that increasingly sees people as expendable and mere resources to be used in order to satisfy the requirements of „the market‟, an amorphous entity that is both a means and an end. Claudia Lillge‟s monograph explores literary and media representations of labor in Great Britain in the course of the 20 th and early 21 st century. With Great Britain widely seen as a pioneer in industrialization as well as in the emergence of a working class, the idea pursued in this book is to establish how British culture has reacted to and depicted situations and developments in recent British workers‟ history. In this endeavor, it covers the following major issues: industrialization and timed labor; unemployment; the Thatcher era and its labor disputes; workers‟ solidarity and resistance movements; the idleness of non-work; and the end of tenured labor. With all of these issues, Lillge contrasts historical developments or concepts from the field of labor Rezensionen 94 with their representations in a variety of media, ranging from novels to movies and photo exhibitions, selecting her examples with regard to aesthetic aspects, but also ensuring a sufficient degree of representativeness concerning “medienkomparatistische Gesichtspunkte” (31). She underlines and complements these examples with rich theoretical foundations by drawing from a variety of fields such as philosophy, the social sciences and literary studies. In chapter 1 (14-32), Lillge lays the theoretical groundwork by describing Great Britain‟s role in the context of labor and labor struggles and by providing a variety of definitions for the term of „labor‟ as well as outlining the importance of cultural studies for analyzing it. Labor is defined as a “passport to society” (17) and as an “Inbegriff des In-der-Welt-Seins” (18), and has, as a concept, undergone various modifications over time, such as the increasingly blurred borderline between work and non-work, the social legitimation of labor as well as the social meaning and societal function that labor is given (cf. 21). Lillge makes the argument for a cultural studies approach to the history of labor, where culture - following Stuart Hall‟s definition - is conceptualized as a site of struggle over meaning (23), and media-related forms of expression such as literature, film or photography are perceived as intersections between culture and society. Lillge then proceeds by giving an overview of developments, topics and policies in post-WWII Britain against which media artifacts are analyzed. Chapter 2 (33-89) is dedicated to the overarching issue of acceleration and deceleration of work processes. Following an introductory section, in which the author defines the concepts of time and timed-labor in the context of industrialized societies, she dives into an interpretation of how these are represented in Arnold Wesker‟s play The Kitchen (1956) as well as in Alan Sillitoes‟ novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958) (and its 1960 film adaptation), which are put forward as examples of texts by the Angry Young Men and the New Wave, respectively. The presented examples are described as illustrations of a growing critical attitude towards the steady decline in the possibility to manage one‟s own time (cf. 44) due to a growing synthesis between the time-optimized pro-cess management of Taylorism and the standardized industrial mass production of Fordism (cf. 46), affecting even private practices such as eating, which has become a mere means to ensure productivity. Chapter 3 (91-126) deals with the representation of unemployment, primarily in the works of photographer Paul Graham and his „social photography‟. Graham‟s photo book Beyond Caring is based on pictures taken in labor offices during the Thatcher era, whose social unrest is epitomized in the Falklands War, the miners‟ strike and an escalation of the conflict in Northern Ireland. It was a time during which the number of unemployed people rose to some 10 million (96) and in which social tensions erupted in the crowded and overburdened labor offices, where, according to Graham, “political policy and people collide, where economic decisions and human lives meet head on” (100). Lillge focuses her analysis of these photographs on the representation of time, space and social relations (101). Her conclusion is that, while his pictures were taken at different places at different times, they all seem to Rezensionen 95 be eerily similar. Lillge sees the reason for this in their shared identities as „non-spaces‟ which are not ruled by human beings, but by regulations (104). In chapter 4 (127-166), Lillge deals with worker solidarity once more against the backdrop of the Thatcher government. After introducing the rise and fall of the welfare state and outlining the erosion of the working class, she discusses several media examples in which class differences are depicted and critically reflected on. The main focus of the chapter is on three films by director Ken Loach, namely Riff-Raff, Raining Stones and The Navigators. This discussion is contextualized within the dramatic social and political changes of the Thatcher era in Britain, such as the destruction of workers‟ unions and the privatization of large parts of the economy and of the social system, an issue that features heavily in Loach‟s works. The “ideological success” of the Thatcher era, in Stuart Hall‟s terms (165), is therefore seen in the dissolution of class consciousness and by consequence of class solidarity, in that it created an atmosphere of constant insecurity and competition. According to Lillge, Loach discusses this topic by illustrating this lost solidarity on the one hand, but on the other hand by creating empathy and thus revitalizing solidarity with the workers at the same time. Moving on to a different medium, chapter 5 (167-214) discusses musical performances as an act of resistance against bleak or constraining social conditions. The question that is pursued by Lillge is to what extent the political potential of art performances can be activated or used for alternative selfimages in times of work-related hardships. In the two films The Miners’ Hymns (Bill Morrisson) and Brassed Off (Mark Herman), which can be seen as homages to Britain‟s coal industry (172), music and musical performance serve as a means of protest against the closure of mines under the Thatcher government as well as a signifier for the miners‟ collective identity. The movie The Full Monty, on the other hand, shows the fate of six men in Yorkshire, a British city in decline, where the closing down of the local steelworks has forced these six workers into unemployment. Having restorted to stripping - a traditionally female occupation - their gender roles have become „unstable‟ and „exchangeable‟ (192). While their gender roles are questioned, their courageous action and solidarity with each other protects them - for a time - from the relentless new economic order. Finally, the film Billy Elliot - I will dance focuses on the creative energies of the working class in the face of overwhelming problems. Set against the background of the miners‟ strike, it shows a young boy‟s fight to transcend the traditional expectations of his social group, the working class community, by following his dream of becoming a ballet dancer, which in itself is an expression of protest. The 6 th chapter (215-250) revolves around the issue of non-work as a challenge to society in which citizens are seen as constantly having to legitimate their existence through a recognized activity. The issue is illustrated by Nick Hornby‟s novel About a Boy, whose protagonist is entitled to live his life without having to work, due to his late father‟s musical success. The reason for analyzing this novel is the author‟s proposed reading as a text on the phenomenon of non-work. Even though the protagonist is an adaptable, flexible, single male, and thus an ideal worker in the modern economy, he chooses to Rezensionen 96 refuse both the established model of the family as well as any kind of traditional work life in favor of a lifestyle following the dictates of „coolness‟. This abundance of freedom and spare time, Lillge points out (236), leads to the interesting phenomenon that the protagonists‟ daydreams revolve around the issue of work, more particularly around welfare and voluntary work, which do not promise economic compensation, but only social appraisal. In spite of or through not working, Hornby‟s protagonist manages to obtain the socializing effect otherwise only attributed to work (245). In the book‟s final chapter (251-270), Lillge discusses the end of working society (“Arbeitsgesellschaft”) under the influence of New Capitalism, which has transformed lifelong work from the norm to the exception, and where „flexibility‟ has become a key asset, which means that people need to be willing to ignore past work experience and be ready to tackle entirely new kinds of labor as the opportunity arises. As an example of this new worker, Lillge examines Iain Levison‟s novel A Working Stiff’s Manifesto (2002). Levison‟s protagonist is struggling to make ends meet and drifting from job to job without these jobs being in any way related to his qualifications, something Lillge refers to as “Job-Odyssee” (257). “There are two types of jobs in here,” he is quoted as saying (260), “jobs I‟m not qualified for and jobs I don‟t want. I‟m considering both.” This highlights the quintessential dilemma of young people in the neoliberal age - that they are not expected to study in order to gain knowledge and develop their interests and talents, but primarily to become a „human resource‟ catering to the needs of „the market‟. „Flexibility‟, in this respect, is not so much concerned with the notion of „freedom‟ than with worker „insecurity‟ (266), i.e. with keeping workers in a limbo of precarious work and, thus, docile. Overall, Lillge‟s book shows great potential and raises many interesting and highly topical questions about the place of work in British society, and how its conceptualization has developed during the postwar years and the neoliberal age. It tackles existential questions such as whether we work to live or live to work; whether the economy works for the people or the people for the economy. By drawing on an impressive variety of scholars and philosophers, Lillge provides a solid theoretical basis on which she constructs her analysis of selected exhibitions, novels, plays and films. Unfortunately, this also has a downside: by drawing on existing literature to such an extent, this book obscures the author‟s own accomplishments aside from compiling and coherently combining quotations from said literature. It is difficult to see what, behind and beyond all the citations and references and extensive metatextual footnotes, the author‟s stance on the issue is. This only becomes evident on closer reading, but then quite remarkably so. Very occasionally, the reliance on famous philosophers also feels excessive, for example when Lillge discusses the comedy The Full Monty and attempts to interpret the act of striptease by the protagonists by drawing on the philosophical explications of Roland Barthes: “Man sieht die Professionals des Strip-tease [sic] sich in eine wunderbare Gewandtheit einhüllen, die sie unausgesetzt bekleidet, sie entrückt und ihnen die eisige Gleichgültigkeit geschickter Praktikerinnen verleiht, die sich hochmütig in die Sicherheit ihrer Technik zurückziehen. Rezensionen 97 Ihre Technik umgibt sie wie ein Gewand” (196). Considering that the film intentionally presents a clumsy act of striptease that is supposed to create a humorous effect, this reference to the great semiotician seems like an all too keen attempt at finding supportive evidence. Another issue concerns the book‟s structure, which - apart from its major chapters - does not seem to follow a consistent pattern. At times, the chapter headings focus on works of art (e.g. “>Last Resorts< bei Paul Graham und Martin Parr: Das Fotobuch und die New Colour Photography”), while at other times the focus is on topics (“Kultur und Theater der Zeitfresser”), or on details in the analysis (“Arbeiter verlassen (nach wie vor) die Fabrik”). There are also occasional inconsistencies in chapter content, for example in chapter 3, which examines unemployment, where an exhibition is discussed that portrays run-down holiday resorts of the working class; or in chapter 5, which focuses on resistance through performance, where the author discusses gender roles without overtly linking this to the overarching topic. Unquestionably the strongest asset of the book is its critical exegesis of political and economic developments and their impact on the concept and quality of labor from what could be called a Marxist perspective. Each chapter in the book contains extensive background information that allows the reader to meaningfully contextualize the media discussed. However, even though the overarching links that are drawn are strong and consistent, at times there is a certain lack of detail. For example, the closing of the steelworks is merely mentioned, but no reason is given (such as the increasing outsourcing of labor). Also, the author fails to sufficiently establish the link between Blair and New Capitalism: while Blair may have symbolized a new and humane economic approach, he essentially continued and strengthened the neoliberal economic system already in place. Nevertheless, the book provides a lucid and intense discussion of the struggle over work and worker solidarity which has a very familiar ring in a time where jobs have become a luxury and full-time or lifelong employment have come to sound like utopian dreams. Due to its rich data, the monograph will be of high value to students and researchers of cultural as well as literary studies, and additionally - as it effectively emphasizes the impact of social changes reflected in art - also for illustrative purposes in the social and political sciences. Johannes Scherling Institut für Anglistik Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz