An Analysis of Embodied Consciousness and Neoliberal Ecology in David Szalay's Flesh

Abstract

This paper examines the interrelationship between embodied consciousness and neoliberal ecology in David Szalay’s Flesh (2025). Drawing upon the philosophical frameworks of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Michel Foucault, the study explores how the human body functions not merely as a biological entity but as a lived site shaped by socio-economic forces, power relations, and cultural structures. The novel portrays the life journey of István, whose experiences of sexuality, war, labour, intimacy, and loss reveal how neoliberal systems commodify human existence and transform emotional relationships into functional exchanges. Through episodic narration, Flesh foregrounds bodily experience as the primary medium through which identity, memory, trauma, and perception are constructed. The analysis highlights how neoliberal ecology destabilizes emotional bonds, weakens moral commitments, and converts the body into an economic and social resource. Ultimately, the study argues that embodied consciousness enables individuals to perceive and endure lived realities, yet remains limited in healing existential rupture and psychological fragmentation. The novel thus presents the modern human condition as one marked by vulnerability, adaptation, commodification, and isolation within neoliberal modernity.