Cloneliness

Recent posthuman philosophies human-computer interface studies and technology-inspired biopolitical discourses and practices are reinventing and reimagining loneliness in different communities. <br/><i><br/></i><i>Cloneliness: The Reproduction of Loneliness</i> takes a cross-cultural approach to loneliness by examining 20th-century artistic expressions and examinations of loneliness in the context of more recent global expressions grounded in social networks virtual reality the biopolitical commons academic credentialization and such practices as <i>Hikikomori</i>. Newer forms of loneliness pushed by the algorithms of biopolitical capitalism result in what this books calls cloneliness. Michael O'Sullivan plots the transformation in loneliness in literature and philosophy in readings that take us from Henry James and such classic works as Frank O'Connor's <i>The Lonely Voice</i>and Richard Yates's <i>Eleven Kinds of Loneliness</i>to more recent expressions in such writers as David Foster Wallace Yiyun Li and Sayaka Murata.<br/><br/>Michael O'Sullivan argues that cloneliness<i></i>as an institutional practice of reproduction in society nurtures normalizes and reproduces loneliness in order to create subjects who are more willing to accept ideologies of competition extreme individualism and the stresses of being interconnected loners.