Social Precarity and Literary Realism.

The article focuses on the exploration of social precarity as represented in German literature and film, emphasizing its complexity beyond traditional class categories. It discusses how literary works from roughly the past two hundred years depict marginalized social groups whose experiences of economic and social instability resist fixed classification, highlighting the tension between individual subjectivity and broader social conditions. The volume critiques conventional literary-historical periodizations and realist narratives for often overlooking or simplifying the precarious realities of these groups, proposing that literary realism functions as a means to negotiate the disruptions and contingencies of modern social life. Drawing on theorists like Theodor Adorno, Fredric Jameson, and Walter Benjamin, the text suggests that representing precarity involves integrating experiences typically excluded from dominant narratives, thereby challenging established hierarchies within literary form and cultural representation.