Literature, film, and television have become obsessed with the intersection of survival and choice. Jane Elliott analyzes this new and distinctive aesthetic phenomenon, which she calls the microeconomic mode, through close readings that show how an aesthetics of choice has reshaped contemporary understanding of what it means to be human.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I. Political Subjectivity
1. Live Models
2. Life-Interest
Part II. Sovereignty
3. Survival Games
4. Sovereign Capture
Part III. Thriving
5. Partial Fictions
6. Binary Life
Notes
Bibliography
Index