UC Santa Cruz

This thesis explores the intersections of anxiety, experience, and literary representation in modernity, with a focus on the late nineteenth century. Anxiety is traditionally thought to be the catalyst for and subject of modern literature. This assumption is frequently made with minimal consideration for the nature of anxiety or the material experience that gives rise to it. This thesis explores the etiology of anxiety and resituates its unique presence in modernity within a dialectical framework. I use this framework to reconsider political and economic experience in Europe during the nineteenth century and its relationship with anxiety. I argue for a new conception, volatility of experience, which better captures the plurality of movement during this time. In section three, I use this conceptualization to consider two works of Émile Zola’s Rougon-Macquart and how these texts represent volatility while attempting to manage its resulting anxiety through the incorporation of colonial space.