Self-help in the digital age : Ted talks, speculative fiction, and the role of reading / Loredana Filip.

1 Introduction: What Do We Expect?.-- Happy Confessions: Context, Theory, Approach.—Introduction.-- Confessional Culture and American Self-Help.-- 3 Confessions and Science Communication.-- 4 Confessions and Reading: From Self-Writing to Life Writing.--II Self-Improvement: Finding Success in a Digital Age..—5 TED Talks on “How to Be a Better You” and Social Media Influencers..--6 Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story and the Privilege of “Merely Existing”.--6.1 Self-Help Culture: “You’ve Got to Sell to Live”.--6.2 Self-Descriptive Reminiscence: “Dear Diary”.--6.3 Literary Synesthesia: “That Thing Smells like Wet Socks”.--7 Literature and Scanning: “A Burble of Warm White Spray”.--III Mindfulness and Self-Vigilance in the Anthropocene.—Introduction.--8 TED Talks on Mindfulness and the “Second Sight”.-- 9 Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy and the “Insight of Interbeing”.-- 10 Literature and Storytelling: “These Stories Are Real as Kitchens”.-- 11 TED Talks on “What Makes You Happy?” and the Science of Happiness.--12 Richard Powers’ Generosity: An Enhancement and the “Small Shared Joy” of .--13 Literature and Compositing: “The Secret Quickening in the Hands”.--14 Conclusion: A Kinship of Posthumanity.—Index.

In an age where science and technology hold sway and the humanities face a crisis, this book explores the evolving role of literature. It delves into how American self-help culture shapes contemporary ideals of success, mindfulness, and happiness, with a particular focus on its influence in science communication, notably in TED talks. Moreover, it underscores the enduring relevance of literature in the digital era by analyzing speculative novels that challenge established norms, including those propagated by TED. These novels include Richard Powers' Generosity: An Enhancement, Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy and Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story. They question the Western preference for visual perception, which perpetuates a human-centric worldview. By focusing on literary synesthesia in the readings, this book emphasizes sensory experiences and human-nonhuman interactions. It adopts the concept of research as assemblage and uses a diverse range of theories and approaches, while it foregrounds critical posthumanism and new materialism. Ultimately, it advocates for a less anthropocentric approach to reading and presents literature as a "transdisciplinary life science" capable of fostering a "kinship of posthumanity."