Beyond the Simulation: Reading, Trans-Corporeality, and Juli Zeh

abstract:Few contemporary authors challenge the binaries that govern our reading experience—mind/body, fictional/real, self/other—like Juli Zeh does. She creates fictional worlds in which the material body, the physical environment, and the world of discourse are shown to be enmeshed; collapses distinctions between fictional and real worlds; and foregrounds the material body within her own political discourse. Zeh’s works thus provide an opportunity to think through the role of embodiment when we read fiction. I contend that reading Zeh through Stacy Alaimo’s concept of trans-corporeality supports findings in the neurosciences on “embodied semantics.” Reading fiction is a full-body endeavor.