“This Is Not an Exit”

Fight Club’s ending confirms that transgression is a cyclical process of redevelopment rather than a destructive form of radicalism. Transgressive fiction does not propose or directly enable radical social change but reflects and interrogates how transgression in its extra-textual context facilitates ideological reconstruction. Freedom can only be achieved through aggressive physical transgressions in the form of terrorist acts and even then the novel argues that this strategy will by no means be a guaranteed success. The novel’s implicit use of intersectionality as a supporting concept points out the multidimensionality of the transgressions that facilitate the reconstruction of freedom as an ideology, showing how gender and race act as intertwined divides that both shape freedom as an ideal and question its potential to exist as a social reality. Many transgressive texts implicitly or explicitly identify the connection between freedom and capitalism as one of the causes of freedom’s less desirable side effects.