This essay examines various aspects of alienation in Karl Ove Knausgaard's autobiographical novel My Struggle and its cultural contexts. The overall purpose of the essay is twofold. The aim is to analyze both the depiction and the causes of alienation in My struggle, and to examine how the cultural contexts contribute to the author Knausgaard's experience of alienation. To accomplish this the analysis is divided into two sections. The first part focuses on the literary character Karl Ove and aims to analyze the experience of alienation in the novel. The aim of the second part is, on the other hand, to look at how the cultural context affects the author Knausgaard in an alienating way, mainly how the media landscape and the digitalization of society increases Knausgaard's self-exploitation and the reification of his name. The second part, thereby, reads the novel as a work of autofiction where the author (Knausgaard) and the protagonist (Karl Ove) are treated as one and the same. The theoretical framework of the essay is based upon Rahel Jaeggi's and Hartmut Rosa's definitions of alienation. Altogether, the analysis indicates multiple examples of alienation in My Struggle. The protagonist, Karl Ove, is indifferent to the people and the world around him, and he feels as if he has lost control over his own life. Karl Ove is also unable to combine his two most important social roles in life – as a father and as a writer. Consequently, this leads to an internal division between his conflicting ideals and gender notions. Furthermore, Karl Ove is described as a rootless and formless subject, who is alienated from time and space. Another form of alienation occurs when Knausgaard becomes famous, and his authorship is reified. The reification of Knausgaard's name and face implies that he, as a commodified subject, is linked to the trademark Knausgaard™ over which he has limited control. Also, the results of the analysis suggest that it matters whether you choose to read the book as a novel or as autofiction. As a novel, My Struggle’s ending seems to indicate that the protagonist, Karl Ove, manages to replace his alienation with a meaningful seeing, and that he is able to shift his attention to what really matters in life. If you read My Struggle as autofiction, however, this progress is not that obvious. Rather, it looks as if the uncontrollable autobiographical feedback structure of My Struggle continues in media even after the novel is completed.

Das schreibende Ich prägt formal wie thematisch die literarische Entwicklung der letzten Jahre. Seit der Jahrtausendwende hat die Produktion autobiographischer und autofiktionaler Literatur insbesondere auf dem skandinavischen Buchmarkt erheblich zugenommen. Obwohl (noch) kein kritischer Konsens besteht, was der Begriff Autofiktion genau bezeichnet, ist das Changieren zwischen Fakt und Fiktion im autobiographischen Schreiben zu einer der beliebtesten literarischen Strategien im zeitgenössischen Erzählen avanciert. Die literaturwissenschaftliche Forschung zur Autofiktion ist im Zuge dessen auf diesen Trend aufgesprungen und insbesondere nach der Veröffentlichung von Karl Ove Knausgårds Romanprojekt Min kamp (2009–2011) sind die literaturwissenschaftlichen Diskussionen zu Autofiktion und literarischer Selbstdarstellung in Skandinavien deutlich angestiegen. Die literaturwissenschaftlichen Beiträge kreisen im weiteren Sinne um die dichotomischen Beziehungen von Fakt vs. Fiktion, Roman vs. Autobiographie sowie um die Inszenierung der Autor*innen in der literarischen Öffentlichkeit. Dabei ist autofiktionales Schreiben als konkrete erzählerische Praxis betrachtet in den Hintergrund gerückt, weshalb in dieser Arbeit der Versuch gemacht wird, die Fragen nach den literarischen Verfahren innerhalb dieser Texte in den Vordergrund zu stellen. Mit Ausgangspunkt in Texten von August Strindberg, Maja Lundgren, Karl Ove Knausgaard und Björn Rasmussen wird in dieser Arbeit Spezifika einer autofiktionalen Erzählpraxis herausgearbeitet, in welcher die Autorin oder der Autor in erster Linie einen narrativen Autoritätsanspruch über ihren bzw. seinen autobiographischen Text erhebt und hierdurch in der Bestrebung, die autobiographische Wirklichkeit zu schreiben, die Grenze zwischen Wirklichkeit und Literatur und somit zwischen Leben und Text transzendiert / Since the turn of the Millennium there has been a remarkable increase in the production of autobiographical and autofictional literature in Scandinavia. While there is (still) no critical consensus to what the term autofiction precisely designates, the oscillation between fact and fiction in autobiographical writings has emerged as one of the most favoured literary strategies when it comes to negotiating, (re)-constructing, and staging identity and individuality. The academic discussions about autofiction and autofictional writing in Scandinavia are mostly concerned with the opposed relations of fact/fiction, true/false, and novel/autobiography or with the mediatised performativity of the author in the public sphere. In this respect, the specific narrative practices of autofictional writing have taken a back seat in the academic exploration of autofiction. In this thesis it is examined how autofictional writing in selected novels by August Strindberg, Maja Lundgren, Karl Ove Knausgaard and Björn Rasmussen is being set forth within the narration of the text, a thus far unexplored research field. The analysis of the position of the author in his or her text enables us to see that the interplay of fact and fiction in the autobiographical text is predominantly conveyed by narrative strategies. The narrative presence of the author in the text entails specific self-reflexive practices, which can be identified through an increased use of narrative transgressions of the extradiegetic and diegetic discourses that allow the actual author of the text to slip into his narration. The narrative roaming between the reality of the author and the narration that he is producing is used as a means of taking over the authority of the individual life story and to write autobiographical on own subjective and aesthetic terms.