IDEOLOGIES OF THE (AB)NORMAL IN SALLY ROONEY’S NORMAL PEOPLE

Abstract

By employing theories of ideology proposed by Louis Althusser, Pierre Bourdieu, and Slavoj Žižek, this paper aims to interpret the ideological dynamics of “(ab)normality” which inform the narrative of Sally Rooney’s second novel, Normal People (2018). Althusser’s idea of interpellation, Bourdieu’s notions of habitus, field, and symbolic capital, alongside Žižek’s psychoanalytic theory of the sublime object of ideology and the traumatic remainder constitutive for subjectivity, contribute to the analysis of Rooney’s representations of the late capitalist age, how it configures the spiritual realms of love and literature, and of (radical) intimacy as a potential space for alternative relations to those of the competitive power struggle.