Affective Crisis and the Possibility of Attachment
A comparative study of contemporary fiction in neoliberal ruins
Distributed for UCL Press
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
Table of Contents
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