Like I’ve Been There Before: The Consolation of Junk Fiction

Philosophers have considered many different paradoxes concerning our emotional engagement with fiction. In this paper, we outline a new paradox in this area: the paradox of junk recidivism. The puzzle we address is why fiction consumers regularly return to familiar fictions which lacked much literary merit to begin with. This appears to be irrational, as there is no literary or aesthetic value to be gained from continued engagement with such fictions. However, we will argue that these works can be understood as affective scaffolds that people draw on to help regulate their emotions. Once we view these works in this way, then continued reengagement with such fictions is no longer puzzling. People often turn to such works to regulate their emotions because they are trusted affective scaffolds that can be relied upon to bring about the desired feelings.