
Hope and Kinship in Contemporary Fiction
Moods and Modes of Temporality and Belonging
Gero Bauer(Author)
Bloomsbury Academic USA (Publisher)
Published on 21. August 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
272 pages
979-8-7651-0418-7 (ISBN)
Description
Explores the emphasis that contemporary novels, films and television series place on the present, arguing that hope emerges from the potentiality of the here and now, rather than the future, and as intimately entangled with negotiations of structures of belonging.
Taking its cue from an understanding of hope as connoting an organizing temporality, one which is often presumed to be projecting into a future, Hope and Kinship in Contemporary Fiction challenges this understanding, arguing that hope emerges in practices of relationality in the present, disentangling hope from a necessary correlation with futurity.
Through close readings of contemporary works, including The Road, The Walking Dead, Cloud Atlas, Sense8, The People in the Trees and A Little Life, Gero Bauer investigates how these texts explore structures of kinship as creative and affective practices of belonging and care that claim spaces beyond the heterosexual, reproductive nuclear family. In this context, fictional figurations of the child - often considered the bearer of the future - are of particular interest.
Through these interventions into definitions of and reflections on fictional manifestations of hope and kinship, Bauer's analyses intersect with queer theory, new materialism and postcritical approaches to literature and cultural studies, moving towards counterintuitively hopeful readings of the present moment.
Taking its cue from an understanding of hope as connoting an organizing temporality, one which is often presumed to be projecting into a future, Hope and Kinship in Contemporary Fiction challenges this understanding, arguing that hope emerges in practices of relationality in the present, disentangling hope from a necessary correlation with futurity.
Through close readings of contemporary works, including The Road, The Walking Dead, Cloud Atlas, Sense8, The People in the Trees and A Little Life, Gero Bauer investigates how these texts explore structures of kinship as creative and affective practices of belonging and care that claim spaces beyond the heterosexual, reproductive nuclear family. In this context, fictional figurations of the child - often considered the bearer of the future - are of particular interest.
Through these interventions into definitions of and reflections on fictional manifestations of hope and kinship, Bauer's analyses intersect with queer theory, new materialism and postcritical approaches to literature and cultural studies, moving towards counterintuitively hopeful readings of the present moment.
Reviews / Votes
Following a comprehensive engagement with theoretical underpinnings, his close readings are meticulously crafted, offering a pleasurable reading experience. -- Aylin Dilek Walder * Anglistik * [Bauer] offers a theoretically ambitious project that sustains a lucid, original, and pedantically worked-out methodology throughout its six chapters. He carefully establishes a dense yet distinctive epistemological nexus between hope, kinship, temporality, and belonging. ... Hope and Kinship covers an impressive range of subjects and material. Anyone seeking new critical interpretations on the cultural texts included in the book will find in Bauer's analyses many useful and provocative insights. * Adrienne Mortimer, C21 Literature * This study makes use of queer theory and philosophy while focusing on an exemplary group of novels, spin-off films, and TV series. Bauer also discusses other current theoreticians, who support or challenge his argument ... While the works treated in this volume are often dark, demonstrating a prevailing cultural pessimism, Bauer emphasizes community, kinship, and hope ... Recommended for scholars in cultural studies, literary theory, and queer theory. * CHOICE * With unbounded erudition and an admirable ethical and political vision, Gero Bauer boldly rethinks the relationship between hope and kinship in our increasingly precarious contemporary world. Displaying all the hallmarks of literary studies at its best, Bauer's book offers his readers not only an incisive exploration of recent works of fiction but also a fresh perspective on some of the most urgent theoretical debates in the humanities. * Corey McEleney, Associate Professor of English, Fordham University, USA * Gero Bauer's study is an urgent and impassioned book for and about the present. In a time of seemingly perpetual crisis, how do we maintain our faith in the future? Ranging widely across contemporary culture, and engaging always with the reality of our anxious times, Bauer finds bold imaginings of hope, solidarity, care and belonging - the very things that can make a future possible, now. * Mark Turner, Professor of Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Literature, King's College London, UK *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
399 gr
ISBN-13
979-8-7651-0418-7 (9798765104187)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
01/2024
Bloomsbury Academic USA
€32.99
Available for download

E-Book
01/2024
Bloomsbury Academic USA
€32.99
Available for download
Person
Gero Bauer is Associate Professor of English and Managing Director of the Center for Gender and Diversity Research at the University of Tuebingen, Germany.
Content
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Hope and Kinship
Part I. What Comes After: Temporality and Belonging in Contemporary Post-Apocalyptic Fiction
1. Radical solidarity: The (anti-)futuristic politics of Cormac McCarthy's The Road
2. 'No more kid stuff': Monstrous kinship in AMC's The Walking Dead
Part II. Beyond Time and Space: Queering Hope and Globalizing Kinship in Contemporary Speculative Fiction
3. 'What is an ocean but a multitude of drops': Metafiction and universal kinship in David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas
4. 'I am also a we': Affect, simultaneity, and the global imagination in Netflix' Sense8
Part III. Hysterical Pessimism: Contingent Hope and the Proliferation of the Present in the Novels of Hanya Yanagihara
5. Moral matters: Power, coloniality, and narrative in The People in the Trees
6. Beyond repair: Friendship and the end of hope in A Little Life
Coda
References
Index
Introduction: Hope and Kinship
Part I. What Comes After: Temporality and Belonging in Contemporary Post-Apocalyptic Fiction
1. Radical solidarity: The (anti-)futuristic politics of Cormac McCarthy's The Road
2. 'No more kid stuff': Monstrous kinship in AMC's The Walking Dead
Part II. Beyond Time and Space: Queering Hope and Globalizing Kinship in Contemporary Speculative Fiction
3. 'What is an ocean but a multitude of drops': Metafiction and universal kinship in David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas
4. 'I am also a we': Affect, simultaneity, and the global imagination in Netflix' Sense8
Part III. Hysterical Pessimism: Contingent Hope and the Proliferation of the Present in the Novels of Hanya Yanagihara
5. Moral matters: Power, coloniality, and narrative in The People in the Trees
6. Beyond repair: Friendship and the end of hope in A Little Life
Coda
References
Index