”Laskutan yksinäisyydestä, lievitän sitä maksua vastaan.”

Abstract

“I Charge for Loneliness and Alleviate it for Money”. Economization in Kari Hotakainen’s Novel Huolimattomat In his novel Huolimattomat (2006, ”The Careless Ones”) Kari Hotakainen depicts contemporary Finnish society, where laws and values of economy have broken into the new spheres of life. The most significant theme in the novel is the growing power of porn industry and the commercia¬lization of sexuality, but the novel also deals with the altered circumstances of working life and the impact of the visual character of contemporary culture. As a literary narrative, Huolimattomat employs language of economy and economics terminology in its language, narration and theme. In my article I analyze the novel’s focus on the ways economy permeates new spheres of life causing people to develop a sense of alienation from the society and from each other. As a theoretical background of my analysis I use the theoretical trend called economic criticism. Economic criticism developed the United States in the 1990’s and it investigates the ways rhetoric of economics has effected literature, culture and the process of meaning making in general. In my article I focus on literary devices the novel employs in order to show the implicit effects of economic discourses, concepts and practices on the contemporary Finnish society. The key concept of the article is the notion of economization. I approach the subject from three directions. First, I examine the novel’s criticism of pornography and of commercialization of visual culture. Second, I analyze the concept of nurture and the way it turns into business in the fictional reality of Huolimattomat. Third, I study economic metaphors, especially the metaphorical use of words seller and client.