Subject of the Event

Reagency in the American Novel after 2000

Inbunden, Engelska, 2016

AvSebastian Huber

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What does falling in love have in common with the fall of the Berlin Wall? Or the fall of the Twin Towers?In the light of postmodernism’s programmatic critique of a humanist notion of the subject and an emphatic understanding of events, Subject of the Event shows that selected American novels after 2000 offer an alternative to the “death of the subject.” As the first book to comprehensively engage with Alain Badiou’s writings outside of a philosophical context, Subject of the Event analyzes five critically acclaimed novels of the new millennium—Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006), Jess Walter’s The Zero (2006), Mark Z. Danielewski’s Only Revolutions (2006), Paul Beatty’s Slumberland (2008) and Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day (2006)—and argues that they create different ‘subjects of the event’ that are empowered with “reagency.” The “subject of the event” and its empowerment, what this book calls “reagency,” implies that subjects only evolve out of their confrontation with the revolutionary impetus that events propel. Unlike a humanist capability of having agency, reagency is defined as a repetitive subjective praxis that is contingent upon events, which is given a concrete literary form in the novels under investigation. Sebastian Huber explores how the American penchant for events (“new beginnings,” “clean slates,” “apocalypse”) is being critically dealt with in the novels at hand, while still offering an emphatic idea of singular disruptions that open up ways for subjects to affirm and become empowered by the new propositions of these happenings.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2016-05-05
Mått152 x 229 x 22 mm
Vikt608 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor328
FörlagBloomsbury Publishing Plc
ISBN9781501317125

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AcknowledgementsList of AbbreviationsIntroduction: America’s Subjects of EventsChapter 1. The Question of the Event and the Question(s) of the SubjectChapter 2. ‘You have to carry the fire’: The Reactive Subject in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006)Chapter 3. 'With Us or Against Us’: The Obscure Subject in Jess Walter’s The Zero (2006)Chapter 4. ‘Let us go then you and I’: The Amorous Subject in Mark Z. Danielewski’s Only Revolutions (2006)Chapter 5. ‘You’ll never be passé’: The Aesthetico-Political Subject in Paul Beatty’s Slumberland (2008)Chapter 6. ‘There is nothing to compare it to now’: The Scientific-Political Subjects in Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day (2006)Conclusion: The End as EnjambmentNotesBibliographyIndex

Drawing on Alain Badiou’s notion of ‘the subject of the event,’ Huber leads the way out of a conceptual deadlock that has informed much of contemporary literary studies. Having less agency than the premodern ‘subject-supposed-to-be-autonomous,’ but more agency than the postmodern subject ‘supposed-to-be-a-victim-of-discursive-circumstance,’ the ‘subject of the event’ allows to think a precarious, invariably site- and time-specific subjectivity that is not either active or passive, but active and passive simultaneously. In a number of brilliantly provocative readings of contemporary American fiction, Huber asks what it means for this new subject – or should I simply say ‘us’? – to be ‘faithful’ or also ‘unfaithful’ to the event. What ultimately drives the book’s argument is Badiou’s equally pressing and acute question of ’how are we to be faithful to changing the world within the world itself?’ On this background, Huber’s book promises to become itself somewhat of an event.