Reading the “Slash” in Percival Everett’s American Desert

IF 0.3 0 HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY Humanities (Basel, Switzerland) Pub Date : 2023-09-19 DOI:10.3390/h12050104
Joe Weixlmann
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Abstract

This article explores Percival Everett’s multi-dimensional use of a concept he has termed the “slash” (i.e., the line that both separates and conjoins signifier/signified) in his novel American Desert. In effect, this slash is a trope Everett deploys to compel readers not to align themselves with what might otherwise be perceived as the author’s message but rather to explore a wide range of the possible ideas and provisional meanings his fiction might generate, challenge these perceived meanings, constructively play with his text, and eventually tease out some (inevitably contingent) concepts that may, upon further consideration, morph into newer, richer sets of understanding. Although Everett’s use of the slash is not unique to American Desert, it is arguably the novel in which he uses the trope most pervasively.
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阅读珀西瓦尔·埃弗雷特的《美国沙漠》中的“斜杠”
本文探讨了珀西瓦尔·埃弗雷特在小说《美国沙漠》中对“斜线”(即分隔和连接能指/所指的线)概念的多维使用。实际上,这个斜杠是埃弗雷特使用的一种修辞,迫使读者不要把自己与作者的信息联系在一起,而是去探索他的小说可能产生的广泛的可能的想法和临时的意义,挑战这些感知到的意义,建设性地玩弄他的文本,最终梳理出一些(不可避免的偶然的)概念,这些概念经过进一步的考虑,可能会演变成更新、更丰富的理解。虽然埃弗雷特对斜线的使用并不是《美国沙漠》所独有的,但可以说这是他在小说中最广泛使用这一比喻的小说。
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