Book contents
- Globalization and Literary Studies
- Cambridge Critical Concepts
- Globalization and Literary Studies
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Origins
- Part II Development
- Part III Application
- Chapter 15 The Globalization of the Enclave
- Chapter 16 Geopolitics and the Novel
- Chapter 17 Spy Fiction in the Age of the Global
- Chapter 18 The Twenty-First-Century Global Slave Narrative Trade
- Chapter 19 Planetary Poetics
- Chapter 20 Addressing Globalization in the Anthropocene
- References
- Index
Chapter 17 - Spy Fiction in the Age of the Global
from Part III - Application
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 April 2022
- Globalization and Literary Studies
- Cambridge Critical Concepts
- Globalization and Literary Studies
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Origins
- Part II Development
- Part III Application
- Chapter 15 The Globalization of the Enclave
- Chapter 16 Geopolitics and the Novel
- Chapter 17 Spy Fiction in the Age of the Global
- Chapter 18 The Twenty-First-Century Global Slave Narrative Trade
- Chapter 19 Planetary Poetics
- Chapter 20 Addressing Globalization in the Anthropocene
- References
- Index
Summary
The figure of the spy is almost invariably tied to the concept of the nation and of the sovereign state – so much so that, as this chapter suggests, the removal of the state from the spy story would amount to what might be thought of as an ontological reconfiguration of the genre. William Gibson’s Blue Ant trilogy – Pattern Recognition (2003), Spook Country (2007), and Zero History (2010) – effects just such a reconfiguration. The chapter traces the ways in which Gibson reimagines the figure of the spy in the age of the global and unearths the implications of this transformation. While the centrality of the nation-state has much to do with the conservativism that typically underpins spy fiction, the absence of the state in the Blue Ant trilogy’s global setting does not serve to transform a fundamentally conservative genre into a progressive one; rather, it points to something that is in fact more regressive: the emergence of a neo-feudal world.
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- Globalization and Literary Studies , pp. 277 - 293Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022