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A Body of Individuals: The Paradox of Community in Contemporary Fiction
Contributor(s): Lee, Sue-Im (Author)

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 ISBN: 0814204074     ISBN-13: 9780814204078
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
OUR PRICE: $60.75  

Binding Type: Hardcover - See All Available Formats & Editions
Published: March 2009
* Out of Print *
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Criticism | American - General
Dewey: 813.540
LCCN: 2008048781
Physical Information: 0.7" H x 6.2" W x 9.2" L (0.90 lbs) 196 pages
Features: Bibliography, Index, Table of Contents
Review Citations: Chronicle of Higher Education 05/08/2009 pg. 20
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
Why are some versions of the collective "we" admired and desired while other versions are scorned and feared? A Body of Individuals: The Paradox of Community in Contemporary Fiction examines the conflict over the collective "we" through discourses of community. In the discourse of benevolent community, community is a tool towards achieving healing, productiveness, and connection. In the discourse of dissenting community, community that serves a function is simply another name for totalitarianism; instead, community must merely be a fact of coexistence. What are the sources and the appeal of these irreconcilable views of community, and how do they interact in contemporary fiction's attempt at imagining "we"? By engaging contemporary U.S. writers such as Toni Morrison, Richard Powers, Karen Tei Yamashita, Lydia Davis, Lynne Tillman, and David Markson with theorists such as Jean-Luc Nancy, Giorgio Agamben, Fran ois Lyotard, Ernesto Laclau, Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, this book reveals how the two conflicting discourses of community--benevolent and dissenting--are inextricably intertwined in various literary visions of "we"--"we" of the family, of the world, of the human, and of coexistence. These literary visions demonstrate, in a way that popular visions of community and postmodern theories of community cannot, the dialectical relationship between the discourses of benevolent community and dissenting community. Sue-Im Lee argues that contemporary fiction's inability to resolve the paradox results in a model of ambivalent community, one that offers unique insights into community and into the very notion of unity.
 
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