Precarious Flânerie and the Ethics of the Self in Contemporary Anglophone Fiction / / Eva Ries.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DG Plus DeG Package 2022 Part 1
• VerfasserIn: Ries, Eva,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter, , [2022]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Series: Buchreihe der Anglia / Anglia Book Series , 76
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (VIII, 298 p.)

Even though the literary trope of the flâneur has been proclaimed ‘dead’ on several occasions, it still proves particularly lively in contemporary Anglophone fiction. This study investigates how flânerie takes a belated ‘ethical turn’ in its more recent manifestations by negotiating models of ethical subjectivity. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s writings on the ‘aesthetics of existence’ as well as Judith Butler’s notion of precariousness as conditio humana, it establishes a link between post-sovereign models of subject formation and a paradoxical constellation of flânerie, which surfaces most prominently in the work of Walter Benjamin. By means of detailed readings of Ian McEwan’s Saturday, Siri Hustvedt’s The Blindfold, Teju Cole’s Open City, Dionne Brand’s What We All Long For and Robin Robertson’s The Long Take, Or a Way to Lose More Slowly, this book traces how the ambivalence of flânerie and its textual representation produces ethical norms while at the same time propagating the value of difference by means of disrupting societal norms of sameness. Precarious Flânerie and the Ethics of the Self in Contemporary Anglophone Fiction thus shows that the flânerie text becomes a medium of ethical critique in post-postmodern times.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- 1 The Return of the Flâneur -- 2 Flânerie and its Discontents -- 3 Michel Foucault’s Ethics of the Self -- 4 Judith Butler’s Precarious Subjects -- 5 Synopsis: Ethical Subjects and the Flânerie Text -- 6 The End of Flânerie? The Sovereign Subject and Precarious City Life in Ian McEwan’s Saturday -- 7 Flânerie as Technique of the Self -- 8 City Matters: Affect and Media in Precarious Performances of Subjectivity -- 9 Conclusion -- Works Cited -- Index