Helping the novel: Neoliberalism, self-help, and the narrating of the self in Mohsin Hamid’s How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

Abstract

Self-help books sell the myth of self-determinism, empowerment and the eternal hope of reinvention, reasons no doubt for their enormous popularity. In this article, I examine Pakistaniborn Mohsin Hamid's latest novel, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (2013) which, with its catchy, hyperbolic title signalling its masquerade as a self-help book, openly and ironically advertises itself as a satire. The object of the novel's satire is the capitalist, neoliberal notion of the self that is predicated on an overweening sense of control and complete agency. Neoliberal subjectivity endorses the care and transformation of the self in order to take best advantage of a market economy, since the means to achieving material affluence is seen simply as a matter of individual choice and personal will. In the novel, Hamid brings into productive tension the conventions and assumptions of the self-help genre with those of the more traditional realist novel in order to interrogate not just the neoliberal self but the very ways in which the self is narrated and constructed. Engaging in particular with the affordances of technology in his novel as a thematic, Hamid appropriates the vantage points and perspectival positions made possible by modern technology to undermine the solipsistic self of the self-help book. He further exploits the narrative energies of the novel form to foreground a sense of historical contingency to lay bare various modes of self-constitution and self-narration. Through his use of metatextual narrative strategies, Hamid raises fundamental questions about the genre of the novel itself and the ways in which it is intimately invested in the insinuation of the development of a self. These questions, I argue, ultimately underline his affirmation of the novel's important place and the ethical role it can play at this contemporary moment of late and global capitalism.

The Construction of the Neoliberal Self in Belgrade Psychotherapeutic Practice

“…Budući da neoliberalizam stavlja značajan naglasak na slobodu pojedinaca, njihove preduzetničke kapacitete i ličnu odgovornost, kultura samopomoći je doživela značajan procvat na zapadu. Literatura za samopomoć je postala zaštitni znak takve kulture i vrlo je dobro proučena (Coyle & Grodin 1993;Rimke 2000;Barker 2002;Crawford 2004;McGee 2005;Illouz 2008;Effing 2009;Collingsworth 2014;Poon 2015;Salmenniemi & Adamson 2015;Tiaynen-Qadir & Salmennieni 2017). S druge strane, na prostoru bivše Jugoslavije ona ostaje relativno zanemarena.…”

Beyond economic globalization in Mohsin Hamid’s How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia: The false promise of self-help and possibilities through reading with a creative mind

“…Simultaneously, however, Hamid critiques globalization by overtly branding his text as a self-help book — even though it is not necessarily a self-help book, but a literary work. To reference Poon’s argument, the novel, “with its catchy, hyperbolic title”, is suggestive of “its masquerade as a self-help book” and “its satiric intent” (2015: 2). As Poon explains, “[t]he object of the novel’s satire is the capitalist, neoliberal notion of the self that is predicated on an over-weening sense of control and ultimate agency” (2015: 2).…”

“…To reference Poon’s argument, the novel, “with its catchy, hyperbolic title”, is suggestive of “its masquerade as a self-help book” and “its satiric intent” (2015: 2). As Poon explains, “[t]he object of the novel’s satire is the capitalist, neoliberal notion of the self that is predicated on an over-weening sense of control and ultimate agency” (2015: 2). But readers might stretch beyond seeing it as simple satire.…”

“…Certainly, the literary past of self-help as a rhetorical genre that Hamid critiques involves the historical moment to which Poon traces the genre: it involves Samuel Smiles’s Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct , which Poon identifies as “the original book which gave the genre of self-improvement literature its name” (2015: 2). However, Hamid himself seems to trace the genre to different key points.…”

“…This article addresses economic globalization in Hamid’s third novel, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia , by building on Angelia Poon’s assertion that the novel involves “capitalist realism” and “reflects upon what it means to live in the present historical moment of globalization and neoliberalism” (2015: 11). I read the novel as indicative of Hamid’s own complex relationship with globalization and as a presentation of alternatives that he sees to it — alternatives that he makes evident by way of his book’s literary form.…”