Corporate Persons, Collective Responsibility, and the Literary Imagination

This essay examines the contributions of Lisa Siraganian\u27s Modernism and the Meaning of Corporate Persons (2021) to our understanding of the historical development and philosophical underpinning of United States corporate law as well as to broader studies of law and literature. The first part of the essay considers Siraganian\u27s analysis of problems related to corporate agency, intention, and responsibility. The second part considers the book\u27s implications for other types of collective social entities. In particular, the essay reads Ida Fink\u27s The Table (1970) and Charles Reznikoff\u27s Holocaust (1975) through the lens of Siraganian\u27s study, examining their treatment of the challenges posed by the collective nature of the Nazi genocide. The essay suggests that Siraganian\u27s book not only offers strikingly new insights about modern literature, thought, and culture, but also gives us the resources to think better about corporate accountability broadly conceived