Today Cruel Optimism and Severance Mass manufacturing in

Today • “Cruel Optimism” and Severance • Mass manufacturing in Severance • Shopping in Hong Kong • Bibles • Candace burning images for her parents • What is out of reach for Candace re: China? • Candace art • Stalking Ashley home

Cruel Optimism “The fantasies that are fraying include, particularly, upward mobility, job security, political and social equality, and lively, durable intimacy. The set of dissolving assurances also includes meritocracy, the sense that liberal-capitalist society will reliably provide opportunities for individuals to carve out relations of reciprocity that seem fair and that foster life as a project of adding up to something and constructing cushions for enjoyment” (3).

Cruel Optimism In Severance, characters become attached to objects and situations that they hope will carry them through their uncertain worlds, but which turn out to let them down. Berlant is talking about something like failed salvage—when people attempt to make something permanent out of a situation with frayed connections but when circumstances don’t allow them to do so. The theorist Lauren Berlant calls such attachments “cruel optimism” “A relation of cruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing. It might involve food, or a kind of love; it might be a fantasy of the good life, or a political project. It might rest on something simpler, too, like a new habit that promises to induce in you an improved way of being. These kinds of optimistic relation are not inherently cruel. They become cruel only when the object that draws your attachment actively impedes the aim that brought you to it initially” (1). “Why do people stay attached to conventional good-life fantasies—say, of enduring reciprocity in couples, families, political systems, institutions, markets, and at work—when the evidence of their instability, fragility, and dear cost abounds? ” (2).

Mass manufacturing In particular, Severance sees forms of mass-manufacturing, and the ways that such manufacturing mediates and obscures identity, as crucial problems of the pre-apocalyptic world. We can think here of: • the shopping that Blythe and Candace do in Hong Kong (99 -100 • Ashley trying on mass-produced clothing • the way that “Bible” gets emptied out of meaning because of the many ways it is manufactured • Candace burning images of mass-produced objects for her parents. Later, the novel suggests that the fever has sprung from these systems.

Blythe and Candace shopping “She took me around Causeway Bay … Nowhere else did the boundaries of real and fake seem so porous” 99 -100 How would you describe Candace’s experience here? What adjectives would you use?

Bibles 66 -68, 22 -25, 138, 80 What is ironic about the Bibles as massmanufactured object?

Look at the details of the passage where Candace burns objects for her parents • What can you tell me about this episode? • What kinds of objects does she burn? What seems ironic about the choice of objects? • 104 -105

Finding a space outside cruel optimism Contrast Evan memories of summer (110). Evan memories of working at internship in New York (111).

Jonathan and Candace episode 131 -137. Finding a space outside cruel optimism Skim this section. What elements of this episode seem notable? What passages from elsewhere in the book does this episode resemble? What passages from elsewhere in the book contrast with this passage?

Read this passage, from a longer segment in which Candace tours a facility that manufactures Bibles. Why do you think Ma includes it? “The shipping boxes were the least important part of the book production, I wasn’t sure why were focusing on this so much. But I was mesmerized anyway. It was such a rote, mechanical movement, the punching in of measurements, the pulling of the lever. Cardboard boxes of different sizes and shapes were produced. He did this same thing over and over, on a loop, until suddenly, he stopped in midaction and unleashed what sounded like a protest” (89).

What parts of China are out-of-reach for Candace: that is, where do we see hints of realities she cannot access? “My room…I turned back” (79 -80) “There were several nearby buildings…New Year” (85 -86) “The second uncle…. is opened” (94 -95) “The third uncle … come back (95 -96) “We walk… so happy (97 -98)

A number of artists seem to find inspiration in abandoned, gritty spaces. Candace’s photos seem to aspire to this kind of art. Look at 14, 40 -41, 135. How would you describe this art in terms of salvage?

Details of stalk with Ashley What elements seem important in this episode? 120 -top 123; 125 -126