The art of endurance: incurable trauma and the commodification of queer suffering in A Little Life

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how Hanya Yanagihara’s novel, A Little Life, applies a calculative and artistic tactic that combines not only emotional intensity with market value but also makes ‘trauma’ and ‘queer identity’ central forces both economically and creatively. On one hand, most trauma fictions portray tropes of friendship, chosen family, or love as the ultimate healers of trauma; however, Yanagihara disregards such narratives of recovery or hope, eliminating contemporary trends of readers enjoying trauma to a certain extent with the desire of witnessing characters reaching a peaceful closure. Based on this, Queer theory, Trauma studies, affect theory, and Cultural Materialism examine how the author provokes instinctive reactions from readers with the implementation of affective strategies. By doing so, trauma becomes an effective narrative tool as well as a strategy for increasing market value, as the author forces readers to feel a series of affective emotions, such as grief, disgust, discomfort, and even voyeurism. Here, the eradication of healing stage or promising closure for characters, especially the protagonist Jude, compels readers to become compliant in being consumers of queer pain and suffering. Hence, this paper argues that A Little Life transforms trauma into ‘affective capital’, emphasizing contemporary literary fields that romanticize emotional endurance and queer trauma but, in actuality, it is commodification.