Conceptual Avant-Garde Writing in Contemporary Flanders: Evelin Brosi’s Thuis (2020)

Abstract

ABSTRACT Evelin Brosi’s novel Thuis (Home, 2020) collects all the plot summaries of the Flemish soap series that goes by the same name from 1995 to 2020. What may seem to be a gimmick at first sight, is in fact an intervention that revaluates contemporary culture as well as the avant-garde traditions of ready mades and uncreative writing. In this article, the former will be examined against the backdrop of Demeyer & Vitse’s (2021) argument about the topos of the house and belonging in contemporary novels. The latter will be elaborated in a close reading of the novel through the lens of the theory of the avant-garde and conceptual or uncreative writing (Goldsmith 2011, Broqua 2013). The article argues that Thuis pursues the contemporary reflection on home and homeliness, creates a critical distance from the claims about Flemish identity and belonging, and revitalizes avant-gardist thought about originality, authorship, and the everyday. As such the case study broadens our view of contemporary fiction and of the reception of the avant-garde in the Low Countries.