{"title":"Virtuelle Metamorphosen - Zur Subversion der Selbstoptimierung in Kevin Kuhns Roman Hikikomori","authors":"Stephan Resch","doi":"10.1007/s11061-024-09809-9","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>Kevin Kuhn’s novel <i>Hikikomori</i> is a postmodern Entwicklungsroman. In this essay, I read the novel as a subversion of the neoliberal paradigm, which manifests itself in an omnipresence of self-optimisation options, that the protagonist Till is constantly encouraged to take advantage of. By withdrawing into his room and creating a collaborative online world, Till rejects the cult of individuality modelled by his plastic surgeon father and his interior designer mother. Rather than going on a scheduled journey of self-enhancement around the world, I will argue that it is his virtual journey that attempts self-realisation. However, this rejection of a Weltanschauung based on economic principles comes at the price of exclusion from the analogue world, which bears many parallels with one of the most famous 20th century German language novellas: Franz Kafka’s <i>Die Verwandlung</i>.</p>","PeriodicalId":44392,"journal":{"name":"NEOPHILOLOGUS","volume":"34 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2024-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"NEOPHILOLOGUS","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-024-09809-9","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Kevin Kuhn’s novel Hikikomori is a postmodern Entwicklungsroman. In this essay, I read the novel as a subversion of the neoliberal paradigm, which manifests itself in an omnipresence of self-optimisation options, that the protagonist Till is constantly encouraged to take advantage of. By withdrawing into his room and creating a collaborative online world, Till rejects the cult of individuality modelled by his plastic surgeon father and his interior designer mother. Rather than going on a scheduled journey of self-enhancement around the world, I will argue that it is his virtual journey that attempts self-realisation. However, this rejection of a Weltanschauung based on economic principles comes at the price of exclusion from the analogue world, which bears many parallels with one of the most famous 20th century German language novellas: Franz Kafka’s Die Verwandlung.
期刊介绍：
Neophilologus is an international peer-reviewed journal devoted to the study of modern and medieval language and literature, including literary theory, comparative literature, philology and textual criticism. The languages of publication are English, French, German and Spanish.
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