Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.47960/2303-7431.28.2023.22
NEOLIBERAL TEMPORALITY OR HOMO ECONOMICUS IN VOLATILE TIMES IN DEIRDRE MADDEN’S TIME PRESENT AND TIME PAST
Sanja Radmilo Derado
orcid.org/0000-0003-4004-510X
; University of Split, Faculty of Economics
Abstract
The paper investigates the literary representation of fluid neoliberal temporality in Deirdre Madden’s Time Present and Time Past. The purpose
of the paper is to determine the complexity of the contemporary economic processes that have befallen Ireland in the last two decades,
and to determine the literary procedures by which the economic content is represented in literary prose. The aim of the paper is to point out
the subversive dimension of the dialogue of contemporary Irish women’s writing on the one hand, and the ubiquitous logic of the capital on the
other. The paper establishes how the contemporary homo economicus is represented from the aspect of his non-belonging in the neoliberal space,
i.e., from the position of displacement from the social context of Ireland in a period when the nation is dominated by the abstract discourse of
financialization. In a conceptual-theoretical sense, the analysis starts from the theoretical paradigm of the new economic criticism which establishes a close connection of unfathomable economic processes and the fate of the individual in those processes, with literary ideas that simultaneously fictionalize and denounce such extra-textual processes. Finally, the paper establishes that the novel Time Present and Time Past
points to the instability of some of the fundamental economic categories that have dominated the collective ethos of Ireland in the new millennium,
which testifies to the necessity of such interdisciplinary research, both for the understanding of contemporary economic paradigms and
their interactions with society, as well as for understanding the changing roles of contemporary women’s writing in them.
Keywords
Deirdre Madden; contemporary Irish women’s writing; literary representations of neoliberalism; neoliberal subject; new economic criticism
Hrčak ID:
304834
URI
Publication date:
13.6.2023.
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