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Stefanie Müller (Frankfurt am Main): "'Here Goes Nothing'– Corporate Power and the Public Good in Sloan Wilson’s The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit"
Abstract
Sloan Wilson’s The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit is set in the early 1950s and tells the story of Tom Rath, a veteran of World War II. Tom wants to enjoy life with his family, but finds that in order to do so he must earn ever more money. His search for a new job leads him into the world of corporate finance, in which his new boss is just launching a philanthropic project. The novel has often been read as a critique of consumer society, an exploration of the tension between individualism and conformity that preoccupied US-society during the Cold War: Tom struggles with financial problems, yet realizes that in order to be successful in his new job he will have to “sacrifice” his private life and ultimately also his personality. Yet on closer inspection the novel also offers fascinating insight into the concept of benevolence in American society in the first half of the 20th century. The corporation’s multi-million dollar investment into a philanthropic campaign is juxtaposed with Tom’s involvement into a community project. Repeatedly Tom’s experiences with the corporation are compared to his experiences with the military, and the “public good” that both enterprises purport to serve appears increasingly impersonal and remote. Significantly, Wilson contrasts Tom’s boss – the embodiment of corporate power (to do good) – with a judge who helps Tom with the community project and who is committed to “simple justice”, that is, a form of justice that is based on “complete knowledge” of the law and of all parties involved. In my talk I want to investigate this relationship between the public good and corporations, which on the basis of their alignment with the military also signify upon the nation, and their juxtaposition with an older ideal of private responsibility and equity.
Bio
Stefanie Müller is research assistant at the Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main. She completed her PhD thesis in November 2011 and is now working on a new project (Habilitation) of which the talk will be part and which is tentatively called, “Public Charity and Private Giving: American Legal Fictions of State and Corporate Power”. Her research interests include African American literature, Figurational & Relational Sociology, and Law & Literature.