The Impossibility of Logging Off: Technological Disconnection in Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s La Clé USB (2019)

Abstract

This article examines the question of technological disconnection in Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s La Clé USB (2019). It shows how Toussaint’s novel offers a vision of everyday life in which existence is tantamount to being logged on, so to speak, in perpetuity. I consider how La Clé USB testifies to the fraught process of technological disconnection. I offer an extended analysis of the novel’s narrator, Jean Detrez, focusing specifically on his attempts to ‘disconnect’ from technological mediation, which result in paranoia, guilt and corporeal disembodiment. Ultimately, I argue that La Clé USB draws our attention to the affective, sensorial and relational dimensions of everyday life and compels us to reckon with their potential degradation in our hyperconnected digital age.