Cloneliness: On the Reproduction of Loneliness

Recent posthuman philosophies, human-computer interface studies, and technology-inspired biopolitical discourses and practices are reinventing and reimagining loneliness in different communities. Cloneliness: The Reproduction of Loneliness takes a cross-cultural approach to loneliness by examining 20th-century artistic expressions and examinations of loneliness in the context of more recent global expressions grounded in social networks, virtual reality, the biopolitical commons, academic credentialization and such practices as Hikikomori. Newer forms of loneliness, pushed by the algorithms of biopolitical capitalism, result in what this books calls "cloneliness." Michael O'Sullivan plots the transformation in loneliness in literature and philosophy in readings that take us from Henry James and such classic works as Frank O’Connor’s The Lonely Voice and Richard Yates’s Eleven Kinds of Loneliness to more recent expressions in such writers as David Foster Wallace, Yiyun Li, and Sayaka Murata. Michael O’Sullivan argues that cloneliness as an institutional practice of reproduction in society nurtures, normalizes, and reproduces loneliness in order to create subjects who are more willing to accept ideologies of competition, “extreme individualism,” and the stresses of being "interconnected loners."

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments 1. Introduction: Radical Embodied Cognitive Loneliness 2. Loneliness as Method: Henry James and the “Essential Loneliness” of Artistic Practice 3. The “Lonely Voice” and “Submerged Population” in O’Connor, Joyce, and Mansfield: How Can We Live “Alone Together”? 4. Loneliness Is Part of the Job: “Sentimental Loneliness” in Carson McCullers and Richard Yates 5. Beating University Loneliness and Workplace Boredom: David Foster Wallace on "How to Keep Yourself Open to a Moment of the Most Supernal Beauty" 6. Loneliness in a Selection of Japanese Philosophy and Fiction: Doi, Soseki, Nishida, Murakami, Murata [Section on Shintoism by Raphael Wung Cheong Chim] 7. Filial Piety and Loneliness in a Selection of Chinese Novels: Cao Xueqin, Mo Yan, Dai Sijie, Ha Jin, Yiyun Li 8. “I Am Trash”: How Student Stress and Self-Stratification Is Creating a Generation of “Interconnected Loners” [with Flora Ka Yi Mak] 9. An Erotics of Loneliness Notes Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Michael O’Sullivan is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His recent publications include Weakness: A Literary and Philosophical History (Bloomsbury, 2014), Academic Barbarism, Universities, and Inequality (2016), and The Humanities in Contemporary Chinese Contexts (2016). He is the founding editor of the journal Hong Kong Studies.

Review :
Michael O'Sullivan has quickly become a major voice in the defense of enlightened approaches to teaching. Cloneliness is a clear-sighted and wide-ranging response to contemporary forms of connected isolation. What is particularly inspiring about O'Sullivan's approach is the manner in which he links his analysis so profoundly to the needs of his students, and does so in truly global contexts. With his astute, even shimmering, cross-articulations of 'cloneliness,' Michael O'Sullivan is rapidly positioning himself among the forefront of affect theorists for our (post)digital age. In O'Sullivan's timely rendering, the telegram-like beat of his scholarly approach--'radical embodied cognitive loneliness'--assumes the contemporary guise of eerily penetrating fiberoptic pulses. 'Cloneliness' serves dark and unseen masters, as our desires to connect become thwarted by the pixelated trap of a market-driven, online existence. The antidote to such despair? The hard-fought perspicacity of O'Sullivan's driving intellect, which bids us--every last one of us facing the monitor's false dawn--to resist. Through wide-ranging exploration of the theme of loneliness in neuroscience, informatics, biopolitics, education, arts, and popular culture, and by bringing in various texts of philosophy, religion, sociology, and literature from the East and West over different periods, Michael O'Sullivan demonstrates in Cloneliness: On the Reproduction of Loneliness how the concept of loneliness has changed, how people have struggled with the fatal condition as human beings, and how in a similar vein people nowadays are urged to be lonely and forced to inwardly connect with each other in an algorithmically controlled environment of education, career, and everyday life rooted in cyberspace. Cloneliness makes a significant contribution to the humanities in a digital global society, especially with its critique of education today.