Enactive Perception and Fictional Worlds

Abstract

This chapter examines the experience of fictional worlds from the perspective of the theories of enactive perception. It suggests that while the spatial metaphors of entering and exiting worlds may match many of our intuitions about the ontological levels encountered during reading, they are unhelpful for describing the experience of experimental fictional environments, such as those generated by self-reflective fiction. I suggest that the sensation of encountering a fictional world may be better explained as having sensory ‘access’ to it, with the perception forming in cooperation between the object and the actions of the embodied mind encountering it. I illustrate this through an analysis of China Mieville’s novel The City & The City (2009), where the reader’s sense of access to the fictional world is reflected in the novel’s characters’ own strange way of rendering parts of their environment as cognitively inaccessible. By focusing on this experience of access, I suggest, we can see how the experience of fiction accommodates readers’ awareness of the fictionality of their perceptions, and still retains its immersive quality.