“What’s Real?”: Digital Technology and Negative Affect in Jennifer Egan’sLook at MeandThe Keep

Abstract

This article investigates the relationship between affect, digital technology, and neoliberalism in Jennifer Egan’s second and third novels: Look at Me (2001) and The Keep (2006). I argue that this relationship is central to Egan’s politicized (post-postmodern) understanding of the contemporary subject, whose feeling is overtly conditioned by the new media culture and technology as well as by the aspirational and elitist orientation of neoliberal discourse. Emphasizing these texts’ engagement with negative affects, including “cruel optimism” and shame, which dominate their narrative focalizations, I nevertheless consider how these feelings remain open to transformation in these novels, particularly in moments of critique, creativity, and interpersonal care.