Publication Date

Spring 2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

English

First Advisor

Dr. Christopher White

Second Advisor

Dr. Liam Lanigan

Third Advisor

Dr. Vida Owusu-Boateng

Abstract

David Foster Wallace stated that the aim of his fiction and art was to reflect what it meant to be alive and form a relationship with the reader. In "E Unibus Plurum", Wallace posited that the tenets of Post-Modern fiction were once used to criticize the hypocrisies of the 1950's and 60's American had been subsumed by television and were no longer effective tools of criticism. Wallace argues for a move away from irony and stunt pilotry of postmodern fiction towards a fiction which espoused "single entendre values" (Wallace 192). While Wallace advocated for a return to more traditional story-telling, he was still a disciple of post-modern literary practices with the hallmarks of Wallace's fiction is metacommentary, anxiety, recursion, which at times traps the reader within his characters. Wallace's use of Post-Modern literary techniques reflects what it meant to be alive at the turn of the 21st century.

Byung-Chul Han is a Korean-German philosopher widely known for his writing on Neoliberalism, particularly what he deemed "psycho-politics" and "burnout". For Han, the Neoliberal subject has internalize the panoptic mechanisms in the name of the word Can; this positivity leads the subject towards relentless self-surveillance and optimization. "The achievement- subject is perpetrator and victim all in one" (Han 9). The key feature of our age is anxiety we are truly doing enough, and this anxiety inevitably leads to burnout. Han also writes about the crisis of romantic relationship. For Han, in order for there to be erotic love, one must elevate the Other. However, Han argues that modern life compresses all relations into the Same, leaving no room for difference or discovering the Other.

The aim of this thesis is to draw connections between Wallace's short fiction and Byung Chul Han's writing on the effects of Neoliberalism on contemporary culture. Wallace's characters and fiction exude the anxiety which is central to Han's writing of Neoliberalism and achievement-subjectivity. I will be analyzing Wallace's short fiction collections, beginning with his first published short story in the Amherst review "The Planet Trillaphon as it Stands in Relation to the Bad Thing" and ending with "Good Old Neon" in his short story collection, Oblivion.

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