| Summary: | This thesis focuses on the possibilities of precarity as a perspective in the field of literary studies in order to analyse how insecurity is portrayed in literature. Sweden has a great tradition of proletarian literature, but researchers in the neoliberal era find it problematic to understand the emancipating aspects of the new proletarian literature that does not focus on collective movement and articulated emancipation. This thesis explores the possibilities of precarity as a perspective for analysing how literature narrated through an individual and passive perspective can work as a social critique. The analysis focuses on the novels Kärlekens Antarktis [The Antarctica of Love] by Sara Stridsberg and De afghanska sönerna [The Afghan Sons] by Elin Persson and tries to answer questions about how these novels portray precarity and how the perspective of precarity enables an understanding of how the novels work as social criticism. The thesis mostly uses theories by Judith Butler and Isabell Lorey, and the analysis uses a comparative method in combination with a reading that focuses on the thematics of precarity. This is disposed in connection to Lorey’s three dimensions of precarity – precariousness, precarity, and governmental precarization. The analysis results in an understanding of how these kinds of novels can capture the biopolitical perspective, where politics and life emerge. The reading’s focus on the aspect of the body, followed by the hierarchical and societal aspects, shows how the novels’ individual perspectives can have collective tendencies in connection to the reader’s ability to feel solidarity with the characters.
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