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Un amor and the Neoliberal Dream

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In Sara Mesa’s novel Un amor, Nat escapes the complications of her professional life in a big city by moving to a small, remote village. Except for a few elderly people, everybody in the village is from somewhere else. “It’s a village where no children are born any longer,” people say.

Nat is living the neoliberal dream, moving around with complete freedom, changing careers at whim. She’s completely unburdened by family, relationships, friends. No ties bind her, no societal structure oppresses her, she very freely chooses what to do with her body and nobody gives a toss – it’s gotta be great, right?

But no, it’s not great at all. Young women are supposed to be the greatest beneficiaries of neoliberalism but as Un amor shows us, reality is different.

21 responses to “Un amor and the Neoliberal Dream”

  1. stille Avatar
    stille

    I wouldn’t say that nobody gives a toss. More like… she doesn’t ever quite understand what the village social norms are, and therefore doesn’t quite notice what role she’s placing herself in.

    The writing style is very interesting btw. A third person narrative that seems to come from inside the main character’s head, but that elides most of her motivations and desires, everything but the stuff that’s closest to the surface of consciousness. It reads a bit as if she’s underwater.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      This is indirect free style that often points to the character’s subjectivity not being fully developed. Nat’s subjectivity is neoliberalized but she suffers because of it. It’s still not fully natural to her. She can’t be fully transactional about love, and we are observing the fault line between what a neoliberal subject is told she should want and what she really wants.

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      1. stille Avatar
        stille

        There’s indirect free style and there’s indirect free style, I feel like here it’s even more obfuscating than usual, and judging by the latter portions of the book, this is very deliberate. It gets less obfuscating while she’s going haywire with the love affair, she’s far more conscious of what she desires than before, and as the affair winds down, the obfuscation comes back in full force as Nat rewrites her memories of the story.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          My favorite part is when she decided to share with Andreas the reason why she had to leave her job. Finally, she tries to be real and honest, and his repsponse is just out there. I don’t want to kill it for people who haven’t read it yet but, gosh, can you get any more neoliberal than hitting each other over the head with victimhood which is not even your own?

          We have a person right here on the blog who does that kind of thing all the time. “But have you thought about the suffering of Palestinians?” It’s exactly this need to turn everything into a competition.

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  2. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    ““It’s a village where no children are born any longer,” people say.”

    This makes me nervous…. does she end up becoming the child born (again… though not religiously) in the village

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    1. stille Avatar
      stille

      Nah it’s very much not Hallmark

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  3. methylethyl Avatar
    methylethyl

    Hm. I’m only a little way in, and most of what I see is that she is a giant walking, talking Lack-of-Boundaries.

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    1. methylethyl Avatar
      methylethyl

      …halfway through, and gosh she’s disturbing.

      Cares really intensely about how people talk to her, the exact words they use, how they present themselves… but then super detached from everything they actually do. It’s so weird. She’s like a zombie intellect: can react only to words, paralyzed by actions.

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      1. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        Words, words, it’s all about words. Reality is made and remade with words. And when it’s not, that comes as a shock.

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    2. methylethyl Avatar
      methylethyl

      …and, you know, mostly a passenger in her own life. No agency. Any chance she grows a spine by the end of the book?

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      1. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        No borders = no self. If you can’t set up boundaries for your self, it disperses because there’s nothing to hold it together. If you are completely free, you are completely unnecessary.

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  4. overgrownhobbit Avatar
    overgrownhobbit

    Very much enjoying your discussion albeit sans any experience of the tale.

    Now if she had something interesting to do, even if only as an observer, and were the locale brought to life by the craftsmanship of the author.. the premise would get me to try the book.

    Say, a mystery like connected stories of The Little World of Don Camillo. Or better yet something with ninjas in. 😋

    As it is my pile of book to re-read and read is very long.

    But! And! If you have not read the Don Camillo stories, do give them a try. I save them to reread when visiting my mother; (I inherit her books… the inheritance families can enjoy together!) so if you decide to do this again, in November…

    (😋🤔Joking aside… That could make for an interesting tale. Might have to pass this thread on to the writers I know.)

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    1. Stille Avatar
      Stille

      Try it. It’s very short, after reading a couple of pages yesterday I finished it over breakfast. It was an unhurried breakfast but y’know

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  5. AcademicLurker Avatar
    AcademicLurker

    I haven’t read the book yet, but the discussion is reminding me of The Guest.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Spot on. The common factor of these novels is me. This is the kind of stuff I’m currently into. And don’t get me wrong, I’m reading very widely. But what gets me really going these days is neoliberal subjectivity.

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  6. methylethyl Avatar
    methylethyl

    OK, finished the book, and… not being immersed in feminism and the Neoliberal Way:

    This book is about Borderline Personality Disorder. Nat, our main character, was molested as a child (this doesn’t appear to be causal but is very common– if there’s a causal factor it seems to be abandonment by one or more parent-figures between the ages of 3 and 4), has no relationship with any family or anyone from her past, because any time she perceives any type of criticism or non-total-acceptance of her fragile little ego from anybody, she cuts them completely out of her life. This is what happens with BPD: these women cut ties with everybody, eventually, because the only type of relationship they can handle being in, is one where the other person 100% approves of them 100% of the time. Piter’s walking a fine line there, and eventually she’ll burn him too.

    In the story, you’ll notice the only female person she ever shows any approval of, is Roberta, who is senile… and even that fails as soon as Roberta’s senile ramblings sound like they might be judging Nat. Nat is so self-absorbed that she can’t even make room in her psyche for brushing off the ramblings of a completely senile old woman. It sends her into a little tailspin.

    The relationship with Andreas seems pretty typical here: she’s more than willing to use sex to get what she wants, but only with people who have never expressed any personal disapproval of her. She can’t keep it antiseptic though, because that’s what BPDs *do*: every sexual relationship is an all-consuming obsession… right up until the fellow betrays some hint of not approving of her, which Andreas does. He says something personally critical of her, and not only does her attraction to him sputter out, but she has a bit of a mental breakdown. It’s not unusual for BPDs at this point to attempt suicide. They put their locus of self-worth in whoever the current person is they’re obsessed with, and when it inevitably ends (because they are obsessive and oversensitive), they’re completely blown out: no locus of self until they can attach to somebody else.

    I don’t know how this relates to neoliberalism: not my wheelhouse. But if anything, given the apparent causal factors that go into BPD, we are manufacturing them at terrific rates these days and the treatment prospects are nil… so it wouldn’t shock me to find that divorce and single-mom culture has made BPD more common, and that this is influencing the cultural milieu among the 18-35 set.

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    1. methylethyl Avatar
      methylethyl

      –and, you know, the way she left her previous job is totally consistent with this pattern as well. She did a dumb thing. Everybody found out about it. It doesn’t matter that they forgave her: she can’t handle forgiveness. She had to leave because *people were judging her* and she can’t see past that to *they’re still willing to work with her*.

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      1. methylethyl Avatar
        methylethyl

        also also:

        Her self-worth is completely, totallly, locked up in her sexual desirability. She has job skills as a translator that are good enough that her former bosses were willing to overlook the minor theft. But none of her identity or self-worth is attached to her abilities, what she can do, other more casual relationships, her value to others (helping out with Roberta: her only thoughts on this are that people she used to know would judge her for it). Nothing. The only way she’s worth anything is if men desire her. That’s it.

        Also a BPD thing.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          That’s all women, though. It’s an evolutionary thing. If no man is willing to take you on and protect you, no matter how much money you make, you see yourself as flawed and everybody else secretly does, as well. And we see why very clearly in the novel. Píter or Andreas can live this shiftless, unattached life with no particular danger. But Nat immediately finds herself at the mercy of whoever wants to sexually abuse and intimidate her. It’s simply not the same for an unattached woman versus an unattached man. I value this novel because it so clearly demonstrates this un-PC reality.

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          1. methylethyl Avatar
            methylethyl

            Yes, true of shiftless and unattached. Women don’t have that luxury.

            Which is why you don’t go and burn all your community and family connections. Which aren’t sexual.

            So… I sort of get what you’re saying, but I still think Nat’s behavior is totally consistent with serious mental illness. If this is the sort of thing modern culture is selling to young women, that is horrifying.

            On the other hand… no idea how you get to “all women” here. I get a lot of self-worth out of *stuff I can do* and my (nonsexual) usefulness to other people, family, community, etc. Neighbor kid keeps turning up on my front doorstep bleeding from some bike accident or other. I am there, with the disinfectant and bandages, and able to send someone to get the kids’ grandparents. I don’t freak out, I don’t freak the kid out (he had to go to the ER for one of those– I literally saw his exposed kneecap), and both the kid and his grandparents trust me. I feel good about that. I can cook a main dish for a potluck, I can read music and sing in the choir, I can grow food, and right now I’m amicably cooperating with my fence-neighbor to clear our shared, overgrown fenceline. Those are all contributors to self-worth that have nothing to do with sexual desirability. These are all points of contact with my community, where I’m a contributor rather than just a taker. That’s value.

            In the book, every time Nat gets into a tizzy over something– at every single point, I can honestly say, if I were in any similar situation, landlord problems, social difficulties (and that happens a lot to ASDs!), job issues… in every single case, I pick up the phone and I call my siblings or my mom to get their input. Where are Nat’s family? Her social safety net? Why doesn’t she have anybody? Because she’s burned all those connections.

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            1. methylethyl Avatar
              methylethyl

              –and no joke: worst year of my life, I lost everything. Family, home, job, all at once. I had 12 different people in about five different states contact me within a couple of weeks to offer me a no-strings-attached place to live (and in some cases a job) until I could get back on my feet. I didn’t ask for any of that, didn’t put out a distress call, and I was a full-grown adult with experience living on my own and supporting myself. I’m a terrible introvert with poor social skills. So none of that was just automatic and logical. But that’s the web I live in. I understand there are people who come from sh*tty families who are missing out on a lot of that, which is unfortunate. But dang. Be a valuable member of the communities you are a part of, and they will catch you when you fall.

              And not everything’s about sex.

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