The Aesthetics of Detachment: Negotiations of Representation in Lars Norén’s Journal. While Lars Norén’s confrontational and confessional En dramatikers dagbok (A Dramatist’s Journal, 2008) has spurred numerous discussions regarding the nature of confession in today’s mediated literary public sphere, less has been said about the aesthetic project of the journal. This article traces the journal’s aesthetic project back to Norén’s poetry of the 1960’s and 1970’s. Utilising comparisons with works by Lyn Hejinian and Kenneth Goldsmith, an ongoing dialectic between subjectivity and textuality is outlined. Drawing upon Hal Foster’s ideas regarding “the return of the real”, and Simone Weil’s notion of “detatchment”, the article consequently argues that the journal’s subject is aestheticized to the point of negation by means of a performative process that reconstructs the journal’s self in the realm of public debate.