The Powers of the False: Reading, Writing, Thinking Beyond Truth and FictionCan literature make it possible to represent histories that are otherwise ineffable? Making use of the Deleuzian concept of “the powers of the false,” Doro Wiese offers readings of three novels that deal with the Shoah, with colonialism, and with racialized identities. She argues that Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated, Richard Flanagan’s Gould’s Book of Fish, and Richard Powers’s The Time of Our Singing are novels in which a space for unvoiced, silent, or silenced difference is created. Seen through the lens of Deleuze and his collaborators’ philosophy, literature is a means for mediating knowledge and affects about historical events. Going beyond any simple dichotomy between true and untrue accounts of what “really” happened in the past, literature’s powers of the false incite readers to long for a narrative space in which painful or shameful stories can be included. |
Contents
| 3 | |
| 14 | |
Everything Is Illuminated Foer 2002 | 41 |
Crimes of Historiography and Forces of Fabulation in Richard Flanagans Goulds Book of Fish 2003 | 98 |
Richard Powerss The Time of Our Singing 2003 | 143 |
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The Powers of the False: Reading, Writing, Thinking beyond Truth and Fiction Doro Wiese Limited preview - 2014 |
Common terms and phrases
able affect Agamben Alex Alex’s allows argue Augustine Auschwitz Barthes become Bergson biopolitical Book of Fish Brod called captured Celan chapter characters concept convict-painter convicts creates David death Deleuze Deleuze’s Deleuze|Guattari Delia depicted deterritorial durée ekphrasis ethical Everything Is Illuminated evoke experience false father’s Félix Guattari fictional fish drawings Flanagan Foer forces Foucault future Genette Gérard Genette Gould’s Book grandfather Hammet historiography Homo Sacer intradiegetic invent Jonathan Joseph Kafka language literary machine literature’s lives means memory metalepsis muselmann narrative narrator nevertheless notion of race novel Nyong’o one’s paintings palimpsest past perceive perception perspective photograph political possible powers present racial readers reading reality relation relativity theory Sarah Island semiotic semiotic model sense Shoah shows shtetl Singing singular someone space specific story line suggest temporal thereby tion tive Trachimbrod translation truth understanding virtual vision voice words writing