Escaping the urban middle-class scene of adulthood: Adulthoodphobia and the precariat in the work of Hanne Viemose, Theis Ørntoft and Christina Hagen

Contemporary Danish literature has seen many autobiographical texts about growing up in the precariat.Some take place in what we term Udkantsdanmark(peripheral Denmark), others in what is termed the ghettos. Often these narratives are about climbing the social ladder and breaking out of the ghetto. This article dealswith protagonists moving the other way,or who use class mobility as a marker of superior identity linkedto the urban middle class. Many texts fetishiseprecarity and the ghetto, as well as the people living there. This can entail thesexualisation of the exotic other that we know so well from postcolonial studies, but sometimes becoming the precarious otheris depicted as an attractive goal. In these texts the narrative of leaving the ghetto is reversed, producinga strange kind of Bildungsroman. This kind of narrative, too, deals with social mobility, but down the social ladder. This is not alwaysa self-destructive move; in some novels of disillusion,taking the ladder downwards is an attempt to grow (emotionally) and create solidarity with the precarious other. Itmay seem paradoxical to claim that a text that fetishises the other at the same time tries tocreate solidarity with the other. This fetishisation works as a caricature of the urban middle class, a class which fears growing up and which therefore refuses to acknowledge its privileges and responsibilities.