"Her Voice is Full of Money": Mechanical Reproduction and a Metaphysics of Substance in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Issue 8 (17th November 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Norris, Marcos Antonio
• Is Part Of: English studies. Volume 99:Issue 8(2018)
• Page Start: 890
• Page End: 903
• Publication Date: 2018-11-17
• Subjects: English philology -- Periodicals; English literature -- Study and teaching -- Periodicals; Philologie anglaise -- Périodiques; Littérature anglaise -- Étude et enseignement -- Périodiques; 420
• DOI: 10.1080/0013838X.2018.1541217
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0013-838X

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Much has been written on F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, but critics have largely ignored how 1920s consumer culture contributes to the novel's philosophical themes. Viewing the novel through Marxist literary critic Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", this article argues that 1920s consumer society—and the popularisation of mechanically reproduced consumer goods—deconstructs the metaphysical underpinnings of upperclass privilege modelled by Tom and Daisy Buchanan. Gatsby strives to imitate an aristocratic identity but is eventually found out by Tom, who exposes Gatsby's social performance as an inauthentic forgery. But, as Benjamin argues, mechanical reproduction results in a diminished aura, the originary ontology that authorises a metaphysics of substance and, with it, a social order governed by the logic of authenticity. So, while the American aristocracy is successful in its condemnation of Gatsby's inauthentic social performance, the novel deconstructs a metaphysics of substance and thereby critiques the ontological authority of the ruling class. Gatsby may have been born into the working class but his upper-class simulation, like all simulations, is no more or less authentic than those of the American aristocracy.