On the Edge by Margaret Hillenbrand


ISBN
9780231212151
Published
Binding
Paperback
Pages
408

Charismatic artists recruit desperate migrants for site-specific performance art pieces, often without compensation. Construction workers threaten on camera to jump from the top of a high-rise building if their back wages are not paid. Users of a video and livestreaming app hustle for views by eating excrement or setting off firecrackers on their genitals. In these and many other recent cultural moments, China's suppressed social strife simmers-or threatens to boil over.

On the Edge probes precarity in contemporary China through the lens of the dark and angry cultural forms that chronic uncertainty has generated. Margaret Hillenbrand argues that a vast underclass of Chinese workers exist in "zombie citizenship," a state of dehumanizing exile from the law and its safeguards. Many others also feel precarious-sensing that they live on a precipice, with the constant fear of falling into this abyss of dispossession, disenfranchisement, and dislocation. Examining the volatile aesthetic forms that embody stifled social tensions and surging anxiety over zombie citizenship, Hillenbrand traces how people use culture to vent taboo feelings of rage, resentment, distrust, and disdain in scenarios rife with cross-class antagonism.

On the Edge is highly interdisciplinary, fusing digital media, art history, literary criticism, and performance studies with citizenship, protest, and labor studies. It makes both the distinctive Chinese experience and the vital role of culture central to global understandings of how entrenched insecurity and civic jeopardy fray the bonds of the social contract.
Christmas Catalogue 2024 x BookFrenzy
49.26
RRP: $57.95
15% off RRP



Instore Price: $57.95
Enter your Postcode or Suburb to view availability and delivery times.
If ordered before the 3rd of December, this product should arrive by Christmas unless it is going to regional Australia

Other Titles by Margaret Hillenbrand

Negative Exposures
65.99
56.09
15% Off

You might also like

Its The Menopause
45.00
35.00
22% Off
Forever Strong
34.99
29.74
15% Off
Super Gut
29.99
25.49
15% Off
The Metabolism Reset
36.99
31.44
15% Off
ROAR Revised Edition
39.99
33.99
15% Off
The Menopause Reset
32.99
28.04
15% Off
The M Word
Ginni Mansberg
34.99
29.74
15% Off
ADHD 20
32.99
28.04
15% Off
The Menopause Brain
34.99
29.74
15% Off

RRP refers to the Recommended Retail Price as set out by the original publisher at time of release.
The RRP set by overseas publishers may vary to those set by local publishers due to exchange rates and shipping costs.
Due to our competitive pricing, we may have not sold all products at their original RRP.