Präventionsfantasien
Zukunftssicherung in der Gegenwartsliteratur
[Fantasies of Prevention: Securing the Future in Contemporary Literature]

Preventive concern about the future shapes both the everyday actions of individuals and the organization of entire societies. However, the success of preventive measures is difficult to verify. Indeed, the expectations of disaster and predictions of harm that guide preventive thought and action retain a structural fictionality and thus a certain proximity to literary fiction. Conversely, literature itself engages in preventive thinking about the future. Where, then, do the differences lie between the fictionality of anticipations that guide preventive action and the fictionality characteristic of literary narrative? To what extent does the impending question of securing uncertain futures render literature today different from that of other eras?

Johannes Becker reexamines sociological and discourse-analytic literature on the concept of prevention through analyses of contemporary American feature films and novels. In doing so, Becker develops new perspectives on central categories of literary studies, such as plot, fiction, and narration.

Präventionsfantasien thus contributes to the conceptual differentiation and critical examination of an influential discourse that shapes our understanding of both the future and the present. It is a discourse that implicates control, fear, and apprehension, but also holds surprising possibilities for participation, emancipation, and utopia. (Publisher’s blurb)