Precarious University Life in Post-Welfare Sweden: Time, Place and Identity in Isabelle Ståhl’s Just nu är jag här (2017)

Abstract

How are today’s precarious life conditions and complex class distinctions processed in contemporary fiction? Since class has become more and more of a floating concept (Standing, 2011), the need for new approaches is imminent. In recent years, a group of Swedish novelists have described precarious life among university students, which in an age of mass education can no longer be considered a middle-class reserve. Though these depictions differ in many ways, their protagonists share similar struggles to ‘pass’ in the uncertain and competitive university environment, and in late-modern existence as a whole. This article deals with one of these works, Isabell Ståhl’s novel Just nu är jag här (Right Now I am Here, 2017). The novel depicts first-person protagonist Elise’s aimless drifting through urban neo-liberal reality – poor, depressed and detached. Even though class is immanently present, its nature often appears obscured in the narration, and I address how this is linked to Elise’s evasive experiences of the world and apparent unwillingness to assert a specific identity or lifestyle. I also reflect on what challenges these seemingly distant, emotionally numb depictions – not conforming to the edifying, emancipatory demands usually imposed on ‘political’ literature – evoke for literary researchers interested in the complex dialogue between art and society.