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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:liu-201302 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Lindh, Johan |
| Publisher | Linköpings universitet, Institutionen för kultur och samhälle |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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