Journal Article

“No Magic in Being Lost”: Conservative Sentiment in Ling Ma’s Severance

Peters, Ingo

2024

Overview

Ling Ma’s post-apocalyptic novel Severance (2018), like many examples of the genre, has generally been interpreted as a progressive work. This essay contends, however, that it expresses a conservative disposition as English philosopher Michael Oakeshott defined it, with clear preferences for the familiar over the unknown and a disdain for utopias. A close reading of Severance through the lens of Oakeshott’s philosophy reveals that change is shown as negative, since both the world after a deadly pandemic strikes and pre-2010 New York are portrayed as diminished by disruption ‒ and as devoid of a sense of adventure that might otherwise turn disruption interesting. Furthermore, the novel warns of ideology and teleology: the apocalypse remains unexplained and is not used to communicate criticism or lessons, while the progressive and totalitarian characters that aim to impose a grand vision on the rest are ridiculed, and the personal and the private appear as tantamount. Finally, laissez-faire capitalism and the neo-liberal state are criticized not so much for their inherent exploitation, but for forcing a lifestyle onto people that is without alternative, that they did not choose, that (through the hegemony of work) leads to a profanation of life, and that causes an erosion of tradition.

• Publisher: LUCIAN BLAGA University Press of Sibiu,Editura Universitatii LUCIAN BLAGA din Sibiu
• Subject: American Literature / Language and Literature Studies / Other Language Literature / Studies of Literature