ABSTRACT

This paper begins by mapping what it calls the ‘affect-neoliberal’ debate in contemporary literary studies. This debate, centred on the relationship between the personal-affective novel and neoliberalism, contains two dominant positions, termed capitulationist and subversion views. The former asserts that the personal novel form, as tied to the particular, fails to represent late capitalism; the latter argues that affective literature is always-already social, potentially offering a poignant critique of neoliberal individualism. Yet instead of favouring one position over the other, this paper claims that each view is ultimately one-sided: capitulationists fail to see how the social mediates the personal, thus missing the possibility of self-critical affective novels; the subversion view fails to see how the social is caught up in the personal and neoliberal, thus missing the capitulatory aspect of so-called ‘impersonal’ affect. Ultimately, this paper argues that the task is not to think the affective novel in its purely personal (capitulatory) or social (subversive) dimension, but to see it as antagonistically situated between the two. This perspective entails thinking the impossibility of the affective novel, or the way such novels may think the personal-affective as disruptively mediated by neoliberalism, a position derived from Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go.

摘要

本文首先描绘了当代文学研究中所谓的“情感-新自由主义”辩论。这场围绕个人情感小说与新自由主义之间关系的辩论包含两个主导立场，即投降主义和颠覆观点。前者断言个人小说形式，与特定事物联系在一起，不能代表晚期资本主义；后者认为，情感文学一直是社会性的，可能对新自由主义个人主义提出尖锐的批评。然而，本文并没有偏袒一个立场，而是声称每种观点最终都是片面的：投降主义者没有看到社会如何调解个人，从而错过了自我批评情感小说的可能性；颠覆观点没有看到社会是如何陷入个人和新自由主义的，因此错过了所谓的“非个人”情感的投降方面。最后，本文认为，任务不是从纯粹的个人（投降）或社会（颠覆）维度来思考情感小说，而是将其视为两者之间的对立。这种观点需要思考情感小说的不可能性，或者此类小说可能认为个人情感被新自由主义破坏性调解的方式，这一立场源自石黑一雄的《永不让我走》。但将其视为两者之间的对立。这种观点需要思考情感小说的不可能性，或者此类小说可能认为个人情感被新自由主义破坏性调解的方式，这一立场源自石黑一雄的《永不让我走》。但将其视为两者之间的对立。这种观点需要思考情感小说的不可能性，或者此类小说可能认为个人情感被新自由主义破坏性调解的方式，这一立场源自石黑一雄的《永不让我走》。