On Shame, Desire, and Other Daily Disasters: A Situated, Affective Reading of Zaina Arafat’s You Exist Too Much (2020)

Abstract

This thesis offers a situated, affect-oriented reading of Zaina Arafat’s You Exist Too Much, examining how its narrative and affective structures resist catharsis and destabilize redemptive arcs. Drawing on affect theory, queer theory, and diaspora studies, it treats shame not as a relational affect shaped by gendered, heteronormative, and diasporic frameworks, and analyzes its entanglement with “cruel optimism” as a structuring force in the protagonist’s attachments. Methodologically, the thesis departs from distanced criticism, foregrounding the reader’s own affective responses, not as anecdotal, but as epistemologically significant. The analysis traces how the novel enacts affective impasse through fragmentation, suspension, and repetition, inviting the reader to dwell in unresolved tensions rather than seek interpretive closure. In approaching the text as a translocal site of negotiation, the thesis contributes to queer literary analysis and to debates on reading as an affective practice, proposing that moments of discomfort and misalignment are not failures of comprehension, but spaces where knowledge emerges through proximity rather than mastery.