Sally Rooney: “We’re trapped in a cultural moment”

A humanism that responds to the collapse of Big Authenticity will be sexier . As Magdalene Taylor recently wrote, “Real things and actual human experiences are hot, even in the written form. They have a libidinal energy that’s been drained from us in the current technological era. And we’re going to want to get that energy back.”

There is a gentrification that is happening to cities, and there is a gentrification that is happening to the emotions too, with a similarly homogenising, whitening, deadening effect. Amidst the glossiness of late capitalism, we are fed the notion that all difficult feeling - depression, anxiety, loneliness, rage - are simply a consequence of unse

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