{"title":"Zadie Smith Brings Time into the House: Embodied Temporalities in NW","authors":"Cynthia Quarrie","doi":"10.1353/sdn.2023.a913307","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper takes a new look at the relationship between Zadie Smith’s widely-discussed 2008 essay, “Two Paths for the Novel,” and her subsequent experimental novel, <i>NW</i> (2012), focusing on Smith’s critique of Tom McCarthy’s implicitly post-racial and masculinist avant-garde aesthetic. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s image of the well-worn path (to which her phrase “strange temporalities” is attached), as well as Tyler Bradway’s argument for narrative temporality as “a condition of possibility for queerness,” this paper examines the ways in which queer, feminine, and racialized bodies diverge from McCarthy’s path. As Smith puts it in her novel, whether they want to or not, “women come bearing time.” This essay examines the temporalities these bodies are caught up in, as they make use of the affordances of the lyrical realist novel, but with attention to its elisions, and by pushing on its limits.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":54138,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN THE NOVEL","volume":"42 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5000,"publicationDate":"2023-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"STUDIES IN THE NOVEL","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sdn.2023.a913307","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This paper takes a new look at the relationship between Zadie Smith’s widely-discussed 2008 essay, “Two Paths for the Novel,” and her subsequent experimental novel, NW (2012), focusing on Smith’s critique of Tom McCarthy’s implicitly post-racial and masculinist avant-garde aesthetic. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s image of the well-worn path (to which her phrase “strange temporalities” is attached), as well as Tyler Bradway’s argument for narrative temporality as “a condition of possibility for queerness,” this paper examines the ways in which queer, feminine, and racialized bodies diverge from McCarthy’s path. As Smith puts it in her novel, whether they want to or not, “women come bearing time.” This essay examines the temporalities these bodies are caught up in, as they make use of the affordances of the lyrical realist novel, but with attention to its elisions, and by pushing on its limits.
期刊介绍：
From its inception, Studies in the Novel has been dedicated to building a scholarly community around the world-making potentialities of the novel. Studies in the Novel started as an idea among several members of the English Department of the University of North Texas during the summer of 1965. They determined that there was a need for a journal “devoted to publishing critical and scholarly articles on the novel with no restrictions on either chronology or nationality of the novelists studied.” The founding editor, University of North Texas professor of contemporary literature James W. Lee, envisioned a journal of international scope and influence. Since then, Studies in the Novel has staked its reputation upon publishing incisive scholarship on the canon-forming and cutting-edge novelists that have shaped the genre’s rich history. The journal continues to break new ground by promoting new theoretical approaches, a broader international scope, and an engagement with the contemporary novel as a form of social critique.
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
分享
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：
扫码关注我们
