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Article published In: English Text Construction
Vol. 13:2 (2020) ► pp.109–131

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Neoliberalism’s “official crap art”?

Sentimental humanism and the work of Tom McCarthy

 | KU Leuven
Published online: 10 December 2020
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https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.00037.tsi
Abstract
British writer Tom McCarthy has repeatedly taken aim at what he calls a “sentimental humanism” and the contemporary cult of the “authentic self”. This article investigates his work through the lens of that critique. Extrapolating from McCarthy’s public statements, I endeavour to delineate sentimental humanism as a mode of cultural production and flesh out his linking of it to a neoliberal political economy. I show how his antagonism manifests itself in his work, particularly his debut novel, Remainder. By contrast, his latest novel, Satin Island, marks a turning point in that trajectory. Although implicitly framed by its author as a way of thematising the challenges with which Big Data has confronted literature, Satin Island more specifically reveals that his anti-humanist agenda has also reached an impasse. Much of the logic behind the critique of sentimental humanism mounted by Remainder, I argue, is in a sense pre-empted or assimilated by the kinds of corporate digital environments described in Satin Island.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Sentimental humanism
  • 3.Authenticity and the creative economy
  • 4. Remainder’s poetics of inauthenticity
  • 5. Satin Island and the corporate scriptorium
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
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