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Affective Crisis and the Possibility of Attachment

A comparative study of contemporary fiction in neoliberal ruins

An in-depth study of contemporary novels through the lens of affect theory and ideology critique. 

Affective Crisis and the Possibility of Attachment offers a comparative critical study of contemporary fiction. It intervenes in discussions about contemporary fiction in its literary-historical relationship to postmodernism and in its socio-historical relationship to neoliberalism, arguing that contemporary literature is dominated by affective questions that are rooted in neoliberalism. Whereas previous research focused on either a literary-historical or a socio-historical approach, this study examines eighteen novels from various parts of the world in both their diachronic relation to postmodernism and in their synchronic relation to neoliberal society.


204 pages | 6.14 x 9.21 | © 2026

Comparative Literature and Culture

Literature and Literary Criticism: General Criticism and Critical Theory


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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction: The affective dominant, neoliberalism and friction

1 Autofiction and neoliberal reification

2 Identity and politics: recognition and redistribution; paranoia and repair

3 Disrupted development: Bildung, temporality and mediation

4 History: melancholic mediations of the past

5 The home as transitional infrastructure

6 Affective displacement: environmental crisis, slow violence and attachment

Conclusion: Affective crisis? It could be political

Index

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