Metaleptic Connectivity: Sheila Heti, Autofiction, and the Structural Transformation of the Private Sphere

Exploring Sheila Heti’s Motherhood (2018) as a paradigmatic example of contemporary autofiction, this article argues that the recent surge of autofiction can be explained by a structural transformation of the private sphere unfolding since the 1960s. Building on historiographic accounts of privacy and autofiction theory, it contends that the private sphere underlying autofiction structurally differs from that of the classic novel and older autobiographical models: The private is no longer a refuge from the public or the state but a domain in which intense self-observation serves the creation of new social ties, resulting in “networked privacy.” Against readings of autofiction as either an epiphenomenon of neoliberal capitalism or a mere marketing label, the article proposes that autofiction actively participates in the conceptual updating of privacy. It further argues that autofiction reflects the social morphology of networked privacy by creating an aesthetic analogue to the forging of network connections, which shifts literary communication toward values of relatability and self-help. The article concludes by showing how Motherhood navigates the dilemmas that this altered communication model creates for the form of the novel.