Carregal Romero, José2023-11-212023-11-212023Carregal-Romero, J. (2023). Unspeakable Injuries and Neoliberal Subjectivities in Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends and Normal People. In: Caneda-Cabrera, M.T., Carregal-Romero, J. (eds) Narratives of the Unspoken in Contemporary Irish Fiction. New Directions in Irish and Irish American Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30455-2_11978-3-031-30454-5978-3-031-30455-2 (electrónico)https://hdl.handle.net/10272/22609This chapter draws on care ethics and vulnerability theory to explore Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends (2017) and Normal People (2018) as novels that delve into contexts of silence and dysfunction in the lives of Irish millennials who experience their vulnerability as unspeakable, as a sign of weakness and abnormality in a competitive, individualistic world. The analysis details the ways in which Rooney’s characters adopt strategies such as passing, concealment and ironic distance, and how their anxieties highlight the injustices and contradictions of their neoliberal culture. This chapter ultimately argues that, even though in both novels plot events foreground the lies, omissions and frustrations of dysfunctional silences, a silence of refusal progressively emerges whereby Rooney’s protagonists evade social expectations, abandon previous pretences and begin to establish a more honest and caring relationship with their significant others.engAtribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 3.0 Españahttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/SilenceCare ethicsContemporary Irish fictionSally RooneyVulnerabilitybook part10.1007/978-3-031-30455-2_11open access6202.02 Análisis Literario