Hope and Kinship in Contemporary Fiction

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 in the 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 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, the fictional figurations of the child - often considered the bearer of the future - is 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 away from pessimistic readings of the present moment.