New by Ben De Bruyn
This article examines the infrastructural imagination of Namwali Serpell's grief narrative The Fu... more This article examines the infrastructural imagination of Namwali Serpell's grief narrative The Furrows. Building on existing research about public transport, carceral geography, and the infrastructural uncanny, it draws attention to the pivotal role of schools, prisons, and airports as well as the Bay Area Rapid Transit system in Serpell's novel about a missing brother and his adult double. This enigmatic disappearance and several key scenes related to civic networks fit into the broader anti-Black condition Christina Sharpe has labeled the wake, as the narrative's use of maritime imagery underlines. Yet the novel also performs a defiant form of "wake work" by deploying literary techniques involving minor characters, subplots, and foreshadowing that scramble the narrative's own logistical operations in the service of an insurgent mode of formalism this article proposes calling "abolition narratology." Better an errant path than the known world.-Saidiya Hartman Introduction: #BLM and Narrative Infrastructure Literary texts are not cables, sewers, or railway tracks and so they should be distinguished, obviously, from literal, physical forms of hard infrastructure. Yet because most definitions of infrastructure do not just mention particular material objects, sites, and networks but also the related circulation of people, goods, and information, it might be argued that the concatenation of events, settings, and characters that is plot is akin to the networking quality of infrastructure. "[T]he nature of plot itself," in Yoon Sun Lee's words, strongly resembles the actions of "infrastructure," including "to connect, to gather, to enable trajectories and collisions" (213). Not everyone would agree that such a comparison is productive. In a recent contribution, Jennifer Wenzel formulates "a warning against too-broad notions of infrastructure that miss the concept-grounding power of the material" (Rich et al. 210), because "[w]ithin this promiscuous reading. .. lies the risk of literary critics reducing the hard-won insights and material objects of other disciplines. .. to mere metaphor, in a mode at once underthought and overimagined" (209-10). But at a time when literary critics are turning to "the aesthetic life of infrastructure," and when governments are signally failing to provide adequate services to racialized citizens especially, as I explain below, it is worth asking how creative texts handle the friction between the movements enabled by material infrastructure and the imaginative traffic supported by plot and narrative infrastructure, so to speak. Mark McGurl hints at a similar argument in his analysis of the Ibis Trilogy, which points out that Amitav Ghosh's novels represent "the emergent system of global free trade [and] the increasingly efficient communication networks that facilitated it" but CONTACT Ben De Bruyn
Books and Special Issues by Ben De Bruyn
Although Wolfgang Iser is one of the most influential literary theorists of the twentieth century... more Although Wolfgang Iser is one of the most influential literary theorists of the twentieth century, there is no authoritative study about his oeuvre. The present work remedies that problem by analysing Iser’s German and English writings in detail. Apart from being the first comprehensive account of his work, this study also modifies the established view of Iser’s theory. In contrast to the idea that his only contribution to literary studies is the reception theory of the 1970s, this account demonstrates the importance of Iser’s work on history and anthropology from the 1950s and 1990s. Instead of exclusively focusing on familiar terms such as ‘indeterminacy’, this analysis also discusses Iser’s view of modernity, fiction and culture. As this discussion shows, his writings develop a consistent theory of the novel and the way in which it allows its readers to articulate new views of reality. To situate this theory, Iser’s institutional and intellectual background is described as well, paying special attention to the Poetik und Hermeneutik-circle and thinkers like Blumenberg and Kermode. The continued relevance of his theory is demonstrated via comparisons with recent research on the novel and memory as well as examples from contemporary novelists like Juli Zeh and Hilary Mantel.
Literature and Environment by Ben De Bruyn
three interconnected aspects of the novel's complex sonic architecture, namely the fact that it i... more three interconnected aspects of the novel's complex sonic architecture, namely the fact that it incorporates the fragmentary utterances of traumatized animals, invites readers to participate in utopian acts of interspecies translation, and alerts us to the crucial role of tonal cues in uncertain acts of communication. This article focuses on Laura .fean McKay's The Animals in That ()ountr2 (2020), a prize-winning novel that responds to the interlocking crises of the Anthropocene and the Phonocene by reworklng the traditional animal fable and the motif of the speaking animal. Drawing on the work of Vinciane Despret and Rebecca Walkowitz, the analysis highlights
Humanities, 2020
This paper examines how contemporary works of fiction and nonfiction reflect on anticipated cases... more This paper examines how contemporary works of fiction and nonfiction reflect on anticipated cases of climate dislocation. Building on existing research about migrant agency, climate fiction, and human rights, it traces the contours of climate migration discourse before analyzing how three twenty-first-century novels enable us to reimagine the "great displacement" beyond simplistic militarized and humanitarian frames. Zooming in on stories by Mohsin Hamid, John Lanchester, and Margaret Drabble that envision hypothetical calamities while responding to present-day refugee "crises", this paper explains how these texts interrogate apocalyptic narratives by demilitarizing borderscapes, exploring survivalist mindsets, and interrogating shallow appeals to empathy.
In the middle of Martha Southgate's novel The Taste of Salt (2011), the reader comes across a sum... more In the middle of Martha Southgate's novel The Taste of Salt (2011), the reader comes across a summary of the project the protagonist is working on as a marine biologist at the renowned Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts: I'm working on a big study of the effect of LFA (that's low-frequency active) sonar on whales. This is the sonar that navy ships use to track down 'quiet' submarines-it blasts low frequency sound waves for hundreds of miles under the sea. On the way to the submarines, it impairs all the sentient marine life it encounters. The blasts of sound disorient and disable their delicate internal mechanisms and their hearing. Just another way that humans are making it rough, rough, rough for every other life form on this planet. It's depressing. Anyway, I came home late and miserable. (127)
Klimaat,migratre enevoluheinGun Island en Grand Hotel Europa Literah,turkan ons oymieuwlatennaden... more Klimaat,migratre enevoluheinGun Island en Grand Hotel Europa Literah,turkan ons oymieuwlatennadenken over dehedendaagseklimaatcrisís, derigratie van zowel mens als dier enhet nog alhjd daminante antopocentrísche wereldbeeld. Dit betoogt Ben De Bruyn door een vergelijfung te maken fussen Grand Hotel Europa (zo:f.) vanlljaLeonard$Uff , en Gun Island (zotg) van Atyntav Ghosh.In het eerste gedeeltevanhet arhl<ellaatDeBruyn zien dat de grootse, epischevormvar beíde verhalen geinterpreteerdkan word.en als een uiting van ongenoegen over kleinschakge mod"erne vertelvormen. By die zelfuosítionerbg van de romans speelt de culturele deftnitievanmens én dierbovendien een centralerol.Inhettweede gedeelte gaatDe
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New by Ben De Bruyn
Books and Special Issues by Ben De Bruyn
Literature and Environment by Ben De Bruyn