I WILL BE YOUR MIRROR

THE LITERARY REFLECTION IN THE ERA OF SIMULACRA

Abstract

This article proposes a critical analysis of the relationship between literary reflection and subjectivity in the age of simulacra, drawing from the theories of Jean Baudrillard and György Lukács. While Lukács advocates for a realism that critically and comprehensively reflects social reality, contemporary art, represented here by Hal Foster’s traumatic realism, addresses the fragmentation and desubjectification resulting from advanced capitalism and consumer society. By analyzing the poem First, My Motorola by Alexandra Numerov and the novella Men in the Sun by Ghassan Kanafani, it is argued that contemporary literary reflection no longer seeks organicity but instead reveals the deformities and ruins of fragmented subjective experience.