Affective Boundaries: Death, Mediation, and Virtual Space in Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station (2011)

Abstract

In the following article, I examine contemporary conceptions of authenticity in Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station (2011). I focus on how virtual and material encounters with death affect the protagonist, Adam Gordon and discuss what these encounters communicate regarding the relationship between experience and mediation. Turning to the writings of Andreas Reckwitz, Fredric Jameson, and Manuel Castells, I investigate death’s virtual expressions and pervasiveness in contemporary postindustrial societies versus its more rare and affective presence in material space. Through this context, I argue that Atocha Station privileges literature that foregrounds its own form as a medium, over eliciting affect in readers. Nevertheless, I conclude that the novel does leave space for affect by narrating an encounter with death through the aesthetic of a chat log.

Keywords

• death
• virtuality
• space
• art
• affect
• mediation