Secrecy and Community in 21st-Century Fiction examines the relation between secrecy and community in a diverse and international range of contemporary fictional works in English. In its concern with what is called 'communities of secrecy', it is fundamentally indebted to the thought of Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy and Maurice Blanchot, who have pointed to the fallacies and dangers of identitarian and exclusionary communities, arguing for forms of being-in-common characterized by non-belonging, singularity and otherness. Also drawing on the work of J. Hillis Miller, Derek Attridge, Nicholas Royle, Matei Calinescu, Frank Kermode and George Simmel, among others, this volume analyses the centrality of secrets in the construction of literary form, narrative sequence and meaning, together with their foundational role in our private and interpersonal lives and the public and political realms. In doing so, it engages with the Derridean ethico-political value of secrecy and Derrida’s conception of literature as the exemplary site for the operation of the unconditional secret.
Author(s): Dr. María J. López (editor), Dr. Pilar Villar-Argáiz (editor)
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic USA
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 248
Tags: Literary Criticism, Critical Thinking, Literary Theory
Cover page
Halftitle page
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication
Contents
Contributors
Foreword
Acknowledgements
Introduction Secrecy and community in twenty-first-century fiction
Secrecy, literary form and the community of readers
Communities of secrecy
Secrecy, postcolonialism and democracy
References
Part One Secrecy, literary form and the community of readers
1 Secrecy and community in ergodic texts: Derrida, Ali Smith and the experience of form
Modernism and the ergodic novel
Derrida and the secret of literature
How to be both: Secrecy and community
References
2 Protective mimicry: Reflections on the novel today
References
3 ‘Where all is known and nothing understood’: Narrative sequence and textual secrets in Toni Morrison’s Love
Introduction
Retrospective revelation, sequence and causality
Ethical judgement and narrative reassessment
Marine debris, textual secrets
References
4 Challenging stereotypes of femininity through secrets in Alice Munro’s fiction
Introduction
Narrative and secrecy
Alice Munro, feminism and beyond
‘Dimensions’
‘Free Radicals’
‘Child’s Play’
Conclusions
References
5 Zoë Wicomb and the secrets of the canon
Reading and the canon
Otherness and the universal reader
Knowledge and the autobiographical author
Conclusion
References
Part Two Communities of secrecy
6 Cryptaesthetic resistance and community in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland
Introduction
Operative and inoperative communities in Lahiri’s fiction
The community of siblings
Secrets and cryptaesthetic resistance in The Lowland
The lowland: An undecidable topography
Conclusion
References
7 Queering the Māori crypt: Community and secrecy in Witi Ihimaera’s The Uncle’s Story
‘Their own secret language’: Community and secrecy in Uncle Sam’s story
‘Charred’: Sam’s diary as a haunting crypt
‘Like looking at a bloody ghost’: Michael’s transgenerational trauma
‘Deleted from the text’: The queer Māori clan in Michael’s story
The ‘hollow coffin’: Concluding remarks
References
8 Secrecy, invisibility and community in Jeanette Winterson’s The Daylight Gate
Introduction
Secrecy, invisibility and history
Secrecy and community
Conclusion
References
9 Novel mediums: The art of not speaking in (and of) Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black
Introduction
The medium’s dilemma: Withholding the place ‘Beyond Black’
Death and taxes: Mediumship as a profession
Making space for what might occur: Mediumship as craft
How to avoid reading: Mediumship as passion
Conclusion: Addendum on the ‘law of tact’
References
Part Three Secrecy, postcolonialism and democracy
10 Shame and the idea of community in Ian Holding’s Of Beasts and Beings and What Happened to Us
References
11 ‘Whilst our souls negotiate’: Secrets and secrecy in Jonathan Franzen’s Purity
Introduction
Secrets and narrativity
Against transparency
Secrets and mutual trust
Confession as aggression
‘Merger of souls’, or, the dangers of too much trust
Conclusion
References
12 Conversing with spectres: Secrets and ghosts in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees*
Political secrecy: Singularity and democracy (to come)
Foreign bodies: Ghosts in Nguyen’s text
References
Index
