Rebecca Brown's Disidentificatory Reading of Canonical Minimalism: Placing Anti-Abjection on the Literary Agenda

Abstract

In its two most canonical forms, embodied by Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Carver, literary minimalism serves either to suppress existential and psychological crises or to dramatize the banality of existence in lower socio-economic classes. Rebecca Brown's lesser-known variety of minimalism borrows stylistically (and strategically) from both traditions to counter processes of abjection, aiming to convey the idea that, as Brown put it in her most recent collection of essays, American Romances, “we're all here, we're all queer (or colored or weird or different) and just get used to it”. Brown's reworking of the minimalist tradition constitutes a practice that might be labelled, with José Esteban Muñoz, “disidentification”—an approach of “working on and against” canonical formats that “tries to transform a cultural logic from within”, evoking popular modes “with a difference”.