Hello, I Say, It's Me

In many postmodernist theories and in dominant critical tenets movements of the past decades, the notion of subjectivity has been challenged, marginalized, fragmented, deconstructed, and pluralized. This leaves us with a dilemma: What is a subject or a self in this day and age? Do 'post-postmodern' authors and theorists reject or work with hypotheses about the subject which have been dominant in recent years?

The essays collected in this volume tackle these questions from various perspectives, sounding out new developments and theorizations in such diverse fields as materialism, neuroscience, gerontology, narratology, ethnic studies, autobiographical writing, and cultural theory - and reconnecting these to contemporary texts by authors such as Jonathan Safran Foer, Siri Hustvedt, Marisha Pessl, Richard Powers, Zadie Smith, and others. The contributions mark indicate a tendency, in (literary) theory and in contemporary literature, to move beyond postmodern skepticism, towards new foundations of self and subjectivity.