Stuck on Stuckness: On the Intractability of the Present

This essay is part of the C21 Literature special issue, The Century at 25, which reflects on the first twenty-five years of the 21st century in literature and literary studies. The essay complements the introduction to the issue which identifies stuckness as a central theme across the contributions. This contribution serves as a ‘hinge’ that both connects and extends the articles in the issue, which have been assembled into two halves: the first concerned with crisis and chronology, and the second which brings (informational) technocultures into view. In doing so, this essay theorises stuckness as a concept that can be observed in a body of contemporary novels. Though stuckness is often most vividly depicted as an affective feature of contemporary life in these texts, it can also be traced through a material history of the present, as exemplified by certain aspects of technology, and to various political moments of the 21st century, as exemplified in ongoing and developing crises. To construct its account of present-day stuckness, this essay proceeds through brief readings of six novels published in the last five years: Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You (2022) and Sarah Moss’s The Fell (2021); Ali Smith’s Summer (2020) and Samantha Harvey’s Orbital (2023); Carlos Manuel Álvarez’s False War (2021, trans. 2025) and Natasha Brown’s Assembly (2021).