Beyond Safety

Beyond Safety looks at how contemporary fiction and popular texts portray danger in a world where personal safety can no longer be separated from global consequences. Emily Johansen starts from the observation that modern life is bound up in worldwide connections that create precarious outcomes. She points to climate crises in the Caribbean and Australia, the refugee situation in Europe, the American border crisis, and the more recent worries over Coronavirus. Some people can ignore risk or pass it on to others, so it can be reduced for certain groups while remaining unavoidable for others. Johansen argues that this ethical problem changes how neoliberal contemporary life is represented.

The study focuses on transnational fictional and popular texts that emphasize border crossing and global interdependence in their narratives or forms of representation. Johansen shows how these texts use risk to question and rethink the norms and practices of global citizenship.

The book brings together three keywords that have been central to literary criticism over the past decade: cosmopolitanism, precarity and neoliberalism. By examining where they overlap, it offers a fuller picture of contemporary life and imagines a different global future.