Demeyer, Hans;
Vitse, Sven;
(2024)
Autofiction and the possibility of life in neoliberal ruins: reification, friction and the affective dominant in Weijers and Heti.
Textual Practice
10.1080/0950236x.2024.2417073.
(In press).
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Abstract
This essay analyses the intersection of the novel and neoliberalism as a relation of friction (Tsing). Whereas former studies of literature and neoliberalism imply models of resistance or complicity, the model of friction allows us to read novels as exploring possibilities of life and creativity within the worlds of neoliberal reification. We apply this model to contemporary autofiction: Kamers antikamers by Niña Weijers and How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti. Differing from idealist accounts of neoliberalism and a capitalist view of the subject as ‘entrepreneur of the self’, we engage a materialist approach that looks at the subject as a ‘gamer’ (Wark) whose affective and cognitive skills get reified into information. We conclude that both novels foreground the desire to find possibilities of life in affective attachments, which in their turn open up possibilities of difference and creativity in the context of neoliberal abstraction and alienation.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Autofiction and the possibility of life in neoliberal ruins: reification, friction and the affective dominant in Weijers and Heti |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/0950236x.2024.2417073 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0950236x.2024.2417073 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
| Keywords: | Contemporary fiction; neoliberalism; autofiction; Niña Weijers; Sheila Heti |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > SELCS |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10200333 |
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