Narrative and Becoming

by Ridvan Askin

Overview

What is narrative? Ridvan Askin brings together aesthetics, contemporary North American fiction, Gilles Deleuze, narrative theory and the recent speculative turn to answer this question. Through this process, he develops a transcendental empiricist concept of narrative. Askin argues against the established consensus of narrative theory for an understanding of narrative as fundamentally nonhuman, unconscious and expressive.
Close readings include: Ana Castillo, The Mixquiahuala Letters (1986); Michael Ondaatje, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (1970); Colson Whitehead, The Intuitionist (1999); Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves (2000).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474432214
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	02/22/2018
Series:	Plateaus - New Directions in Deleuze Studies
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

Ridvan Askin is Postdoctoral Teaching and Research Fellow in American and General Literatures at the University of Basel. His recent publications include two co-edited volumes, Aesthetics in the 21st Century, a special issue of Speculations (2014), and Literature, Ethics, Morality: American Studies Perspectives (Narr, 2015).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Introduction: Differential Narratology

1. Intensive Narration: Ana Castillo’s The Mixquiahuala Letters

2. Narrating Sensation: Michael Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid

3. Sensational Realism: Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist

4. Real Folds: Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves

Conclusion: From the Becoming of Narrative to the Narrativity of Becoming

Works Cited

Index

What People are Saying About This

Narrative and Becoming takes everything we thought we knew about narrative theory, and places it in a startling new light. Ridvan Askin recasts storytelling both as speculation, exceeding the boundaries of the known, and as an upwelling of the nonhuman even in what we think of as a quintessentially human activity.

Steven Shaviro

Narrative and Becoming takes everything we thought we knew about narrative theory, and places it in a startling new light. Ridvan Askin recasts storytelling both as speculation, exceeding the boundaries of the known, and as an upwelling of the nonhuman even in what we think of as a quintessentially human activity.

Editorial Reviews

Narrative and Becoming takes everything we thought we knew about narrative theory, and places it in a startling new light. Ridvan Askin recasts storytelling both as speculation, exceeding the boundaries of the known, and as an upwelling of the nonhuman even in what we think of as a quintessentially human activity.

Steven Shaviro