RAEI (Alicante Journal of English Studies/Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses) invites contributions to a special issue entitled “Cruel Meritocracy in 21st-Century U.S. Literary Narratives,” edited by Virginia Pignagnoli (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain) and Laura Roldán-Sevillano (Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain), to be published in July 2025.

Submission details

Final essays should be between 6,000 and 8,000 words (including abstract, keywords, and bibliography). The deadline for completed manuscripts is 15 January 2025. These should be sent via the RAEI website, in the Special Issue 2025 section, following the guidelines for authors.

Abstract

The ethos of the American Dream suggests that an individual’s success in life is largely dependent on their efforts and hard work—that is, on personal merits—despite external factors such as gender, socio-economic status, ethnic background, or origins. This ideology implies that those who fail to achieve a successful life deserve their “low position because they did not try hard enough” (Chen 2022, 63). The problem, as various scholars have demonstrated (Hochschild 1995; Peters 2012; Stiglitz 2013; Sandel 2020), is that in the twenty-first century, the so-called American Dream has proven to be an illusion, particularly after the Great Recession, a period in which systemic inequalities have undermined the promises (Sardoč and Prebilič 2022) made by the ethos of meritocracy. The “cruelty” (cf. Berlant 2001) of the meritocratic system in the current neoliberal era lies in the alienation the myth creates for individuals who, despite their efforts and talents, are not only unable to achieve their career goals but continue to believe in the ideal of meritocracy. This belief deepens their disappointment, marginalization, and economic hardship. The concept of “cruel meritocracy” thus designates not only the tyranny and unfairness behind the meritocratic ideology (Sandel 2020, 73) inherent in U.S. neoliberalism, but also the deep attachment to merit within a society that highly values its force for self-improvement.

In response to this, many contemporary authors have begun challenging the grand narratives (or scripts) (cf. Bamberg and Wipff 2021) surrounding the myth of meritocracy. New inquiries have emerged into how the “spreading precarity” that characterizes the present moment shapes contemporary U.S. literature (Connell 2017; Ramírez and Quassdorf 2021). How do literary narratives act as forms of resistance against unattainable neoliberal systems of economic mobility? Which critical and theoretical discourses, formal devices, and strategies do these narratives employ to expose the fallacy of meritocracy as a path to a good life? To conceptualize “cruel meritocracy” in contemporary literary narratives, this special issue seeks papers that explore the cruel side of meritocracy and the enduring legacy of the American Dream in conversation with a renewed interest in politics and real-world matters (cf. Alber and Bell 2019), as well as care or empathy ethics (Held 2006; Rifkin 2009) in the era of post-postmodernism. How do twenty-first-century—and especially post-Great-Recession—narratives address the pervasive myth of meritocracy in today's U.S. society? What thematic and stylistic elements are used to envision alternatives to the alienation, inadequacy, and failure experienced in a system of inequality that blames individuals rather than the false promises on which the ideals of meritocracy are based? Different theoretical approaches are welcome, and topics may include, but are not limited to the followings aspects on Twenty-First-Century American Fiction:

• issues of meritocracy and racism; meritocracy and neoliberalism; meritocracy and citizenship
• explorations of work, class exploitation, and precarity
• genres, modes, and paratexts that embody social change
• counter-narratives on careers, education, privilege, race, and gender
• contextualist approaches to narrative theory, narrative ethics, ethnic studies, feminist, queer and gender studies, disability and neurodiversity studies, Marxist literary criticism

Keywords: narrative ethics, work and literature, contemporary U.S. literature, literature and economics, meritocracy, American Dream, neoliberalism

Suggested bibliography and works cited 

• Alber, Jan, and Alice Bell. 2019. “The Importance of Being Earnest Again: Fact and Fiction in Contemporary Narratives Across Media.” European Journal of English Studies, 23 (2): 121–35.
• Ajunwa, Ifeoma. 2023. The Quantified Worker: Law and Technology in the Modern Workplace. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Berlant, Lauren. 2001. Cruel Optimism. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
• Bamberg, Michael and Zachary Wipff. 2021. “Reconsidering Counter-Narratives.” In Routledge Handbook of Counter-Narratives, Klarissa Lueg and Marianne W. Lundholt, eds. London and New York: Routledge. 70-82.
• Bradbury, Alice. 2021. Ability, Inequality and Post-Pandemic Schools: Rethinking Contemporary Myths of Meritocracy. Bristol: Policy Press.
• Chen, Victor. 2021. “The Mirage of Meritocracy and the Morality of Grace.” In The Routledge Handbook on the American Dream, vol. I, Robert Hauhart and Mitja Sardoč, eds. London: Routledge. 57-72.
• Connell, Liam. 2017. Precarious Labour and the Contemporary Novel. Brighton: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Connell, Liam. 2022. “Crisis, Labor, and the Contemporary.” In The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Economics, Paul Crosthwaite, Peter Knight and Nicky Marsh, eds.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 212-226.
• Held, Virginia. 2006. The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Hochschild, Jennifer L. 1995. Facing Up to the American Dream: Race, Class, and the Soul of   the Nation. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Giddens, Anthony. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Stanford University Press.
• Jaffe, Sarah. 2021. Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone. New York: Bold Type Books.
• Jillson, Calvin. 2004. Pursuing the American Dream: Opportunity and Exclusion over Four Centuries. Lawrence: Kansas University Press.
• Littler, Jo. 2017. Against Meritocracy: Culture, Power and Myths of Mobility. London: Routledge.
• Peters, Michael A. 2012. Obama and the End of the American Dream: Essays in Political and Economic Philosophy. Boston, MA: Sense Publishers.
• Ramírez, J. Jesse and Sixta Quassdorf, eds. 2021. Work: The Labors of Language, Culture, and History in North America. SPELL vol. 40. Tubinga: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag.
• Reay, Diane. 2020. “The Perils and Penalties of Meritocracy: Sanctioning Inequalities and Legitimating Prejudice.” The Political Quarterly, 91(2), 405–412.
• Rifkin, Jeremy. 2009. The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin.
• Sandel, Michael. 2020. The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? London: Penguin Books.
• Sardoč, Mitja and Vladimir Prebilič. 2022. “Equality, Opportunity, and The American Dream.”  The Routledge Handbook on the American Dream, vol. II, Robert Hauhart and Mitja Sardoč, eds. London: Routledge. 121-133.
• Sen, Amartya. 2000. “Merit and Justice.” In Meritocracy and Economical Inequality, Kenneth   Arrows, Samuel Bowles and Steven Dourlauf, eds. Princeton University Press, 5-16.
• Weeks, Kathy. 2011. The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries. Duke University Press.
• Young, Michael. 1958. The Rise of the Meritocracy 1870-2033: An Essay on Education and Society. London: Thames and Hudson.