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Verses Nature

出版	FeedARead.com, 2016-05-04
主題	Fiction / Romance / Erotic
ISBN	17861097199781786109712
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=rEnljwEACAAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api

註釋The present thesis argues for heterogeneity and dialogism as inherent strategies at work innovel-writing as praxis. It provides a bifurcated response to the question: how can I write anovel in such a way that it remains true to my sense of form, my sense of language, to thelimitations of both, and to my understanding of plural subjectivities?The first part of the response takes the literary form of a novel, entitled Verses Nature, apostmodern, rebellious conglomerate of genres, in which I put heterogeneity and dialogism tothe test. The intention is to sound out the breaking point of the novel, not only to underlinecertain limits of the novel as a literary form, but also to explore how this particular literaryform positions us as readers.In order to explore the limits of representation and interpretation, I sought a way to useVerses Nature to break into our coding system to change it from the inside. Codes are notnatural, but made. As the title of my work suggests, Verses Nature sets out to interrogate theseemingly natural. What is a novel? What is a genre? What does it mean to read? How do Iread? How am I a reader? What do I expect from myself and from the author? I sought todemonstrate that for each of these questions, there is no straightforward answer and that wemust first recover from our assumptions. The open-ended structural and semioticpropositions in Verses Nature refuse to play to such assumptions, soliciting instead variouslevels of surprise. Due to these shattered expectations, readers find themselves having toreposition, to redefine and thus relocate themselves into new narrative/interpretive spaces.Such deliberately loose, at times overlapping, structures render the notion of dialogism andheterogeneity alive. The intention is to agonize the reader so that she accepts that the novel isout of my hands and becomes her responsibility. If the reader fails to see my femaleprotagonist, Carmina, in all her complexity, seeking instead to reduce her to a woman whoseracial profile is more pronounced so that she fits ready-made (and white-ordained) notions ofblackness, this reader must accept the responsibility for her expectation and hopefullyinterrogate why this expectation exists in the first place. If the reader is given no clear point ofentry into a text, but must decide for herself where she must place her eyes on the page andwhere to go from there, this reader must accept responsibility for how she makes meaningfrom the text. If the reader finds herself constantly rethinking, renaming the place this workoccupies - is it a novel? Is it erotica? Is it feminist literature? - then because I have notalleviated her of the responsibility to decide for herself what she wants to see. This readermust acknowledge, by virtue of her doubts, that such classification is not quiet, but always onviiithe move. Not silent, but noisy. By deliberately writing a work with numerous dynamicinterfaces and by testing out the various levels and limits of their co-existence in my mind andin that of the reader, I hope to not only provide initial answers to my research question, but tomake a contribution to an ongoing discussion about the properties of the novel. Thiscontribution, like the spirit of my research question, seeks to remain open and dynamic.The second part of the response takes the form of a commentary, by means of which I presentand analyse samples of my novel-writing as praxis with a view to demonstrating the routesand measures taken to expose what I consider the inherent structural heterogeneity of thenovel and its dialogical dynamics, as informed by Mikhail Bakhtin and Jacques Derrida. Here, Ialso examine how a close reading of 'writing in the feminine' as exemplified by a passage inNicole Brossard's Fences In Breathing (2007), further refines my understanding ofheterogeneity by allowing me to probe a theme that is common to both our work: how thebody interacts with generic structure to create/advocate new reading realities/subjectivities.I come to the conclusion that both Nicole Brossard, a Canadian feminist lesbian writer, and I,make valuable contributions to an on-going discussion about the properties of writing.Neither the potential heterogeneity of the novel nor the multiple reader stances it permitshave been sufficiently recognized. The novel, notwithstanding its highly elastic properties,still has room for considerable structural innovation. Verses Nature may be seen todemonstrate something of the immense heterogeneity potentially at work within the novelform. In so doing, it is hoped that this novel may invite readers to renegotiate the borders ofthe novel as a genre and reanimate an understanding of what the novel may do.