“It Was Our Great Generational Decision”: Capitalism, the Internet and Depersonalization in Some Millennial Irish Women’s Writing

Abstract

ABSTRACT A defining feature of the current “golden age” of Irish literature is its attention to capitalism, online culture and precarity in contemporary society. This article brings together four “millennial” Irish women writers – popular novelists Sally Rooney and Naoise Dolan, and critically acclaimed but lesser-known short fiction writers Nicole Flattery and Lucy Sweeney Byrne – and examines their engagement with global capitalism and the internet in Conversations with Friends, Exciting Times, Show Them A Good Time and Paris Syndrome, respectively. In this work, capitalism is an oppressive system which actively inhibits the protagonists. While Rooney and Dolan depict sexual relationships with a subtext of economic exchange, Flattery sees capitalism as an absurdist charade and Sweeney Byrne’s narrator is detached from her surroundings due to surveillance capitalism. In all four texts, the “real” world is mirrored by a virtual one which holds increasing sway. In the context of economic precarity for the “millennial” generation, social media is presented as a means of fostering an illusion of control. However, the hyper-saturation of a media-rich world fosters deracination and depersonalization in the characters. Ultimately, these texts are deeply critical of both capitalism and social media, which are presented as conjoined forces of dehumanization.