Fictional Space Research Articles

Without a True North: Tactical Approaches to Self-Published Fiction

In 2007, American online retailer Amazon.com launched both the Kindle ereader device and its associated independent publishing platform Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). In the years subsequent, the integration of KDP within the Amazon retail environment dramatically altered the digital self-publishing landscape, effectively paving the way for today's vibrant - and, at times, crassly entrepreneurial - self-published fiction communities. These communities operate in a chaotic zone of production located beyond the 'knowns' of traditional publishing. In this paper, I aim to map out some of the dominant beliefs and values extolled by successful self-published fiction authors. Over time, the fiction community around these writers have enacted various tactical approaches that specifically strive to tame their chaotic marketplace, and they have occasionally succeeded. Taken as a whole, their approach is lofty, effectively aiming to further democratise publication via increasingly sophisticated virtual and translocal scenes. In the doing, these ad-hoc communities act to geographically re-centre publishing's production hubs and foreground histories and business practices seldom discussed within the traditional book industry. Yet despite their brash commercialism, these authors desire operational autonomy, stable revenue-streams and fulfilling craft-based production within a field plagued by a disparity of capital and power.

Prosthetic scenographies: scenographic extension of the senses and mediation of the performance space in Tower

ABSTRACTIn this article I provide an account of how the spectator’s senses can be extended and mediated by scenography to argue for an expanded understanding of scenography’s affective operation in performance. This is discussed in the context of practice-research project Tower, a site-led performance presented in London in 2017 that is performed in a high-rise building and watched from the street through binoculars, with the audience listening to a binaural recording of the performers’ movements through headphones. The binaural soundscape and the binoculars are conceived of as mediating prostheses that extend the bodies of the audience to create a mediated sensory proximity that is experienced in disjunction with the physical distance of the performance. Drawing on perspectives on sensory and spatial perception from phenomenology and cognitive science, I analyse my own experience of the work from my dual perspective as creator and spectator. I argue that the sensory disjunction in Tower produces an affective unreality, which heightens the fictional space of the performance within the real site. I argue that by considering the mediating prostheses as part of the scenography, we open up new ways to think about both mediating technologies and how scenography operates on audiences.

Post-millennial “Indian Fantasy” fiction in English and the question of mythology: Writing beyond the “usual suspects”

Focusing on two novels published in 2016, one by HarperCollins India and the other by Hachette India, this paper argues that Savage Blue by Balagopal and Dark Things by Venkatraghavan carve out a new space in post-millennial Indian speculative fiction in English, namely one that does not privilege ‘Hindu Indian mythology’ tropes. Such tropes have been espoused by a growing number of authors whose novels are anchored in Hindu Indian mythology and narratives of itihasa since the early 2000s. Banker, Tripathi, and Sanghi are generally recognized as the authors who first published in this post-millennial genre of Indian fiction in English. This discussion of the novels by Balagopal and Venkatraghavan, alongside ideas of how ‘fantasy’ as a genre has been, and continues to be defined, raises questions about how we might think about ‘Indian fantasy’ as a genre term within the domestic Indian book market and how it intersects with post-millennial Indian living, Indianness, and the popular imaginary.

Nihilisme identitaire dans Lord of the Flies de William Golding et A Slight Ache de Harold Pinter

Two works of the mid-twentieth-century British literature form the corpus of this study, namely Lord of the Flies (1954) by the English William Golding and A Slight Ache (1961) by his contemporary and compatriot Harold Pinter. Based on the issue of nihilism as defined by Nietzsche and on the poststructuralist theory of the death of the subject, it aims to analyze how the two postmodern writers, Golding and Pinter, stress the emptiness of the human identity resulting from the collapse of the Western culture. The analysis shows that, in order to reveal this identity vacuity, the two authors make use of strategies at first sight different, but that prove to be basically similar. This identity emptiness is beforehand expressed by the emptiness of the fiction space, the isolation of characters and the justified absence of traditional points of reference that could constitute the base of the societies they attempt to form. The predictable collapse of these societies discloses the strange face of the individual behind it, and unveils the kingdom of nothingness foregrounded, in both works, by the image of darkness and chaos.

A personagem e o espaço e o espaço da personagem: uma reflexão a partir de um corpus português

O estudo procura demonstrar que a progressiva complexificação da construção da personagem feminina relaciona-se direta e necessariamente à construção do espaço ficcional, tomando como objetos de análise as seguintes obras: A Sibila (1954), de Agustina Bessa-Luís; O Anjo Ancorado (1958), de José Cardoso Pires; Casas Pardas (1977), de Maria Velho da Costa e Não entres tão depressa nessa noite escura (2000), de António Lobo Antunes.

ОБРАЗ ПРОСТРАНСТВА В ПРОЗЕ ПИСАТЕЛЕЙ ПРИЕНИСЕЙСКОЙ СИБИРИ

Статья посвящена актуальной в условиях глобализации проблеме региональной идентичности. Предметом исследования являются произведения Н. Волокитина, В. Астафьева, А. Бондаренко и других писателей Приенисейской Сибири. Объектом исследования выступает образ регионального пространства в данных произведениях.Цель. Рассмотреть особенности художественного пространства в произведениях, выявить основные маркеры, характеризующие пространство Приенисейской Сибири.Методы исследования: в основу исследованы положены описательный метод, метод контекстуального анализа, сравнительно-типологический метод.Результаты. В результате проведенного исследования выявлено, что изучение региональной идентичности ведется в различных направлениях [1, 4, 6, 8, 9, 12]. Маркерами регионального пространства в художественной литературе являются как природные образы (реки, озера, горы, тайга (лес), так и образы культуры (дом, село (город), архитектурные объекты и др.).Хронотоп Сибири в произведениях писателей Красноярского края второй половины ХХ в. качественно изменился: это «мертвый» край, но не в силу природных условий (долгая зима, убивающие все морозы), а в результате деятельности человека (вырубленная тайга, захламленные реки и озера, исчезнувшие деревни).Река – один из устойчивых маркеров регионального пространства. В произведениях сибирских писателей это не только знак, привязывающий к месту действия, но и смыслообразующий образ.Область применения результатов. Результаты исследования могут быть использованы при рассмотрении вопросов региональной идентичности при изучении таких дисциплин, как «Фольклор и литература Красноярского края», «Локальные тексты русской литературы и культуры» (раздел «Сибирский текст»), «Культура Сибири», «Сибирская ссылка».

Mannerist Fiction: Pathologies of Space from Rabelais to Pynchon. William Donoghue. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014. Pp. 185.

<i>Mannerist Fiction: Pathologies of Space from Rabelais to Pynchon</i>. William Donoghue. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014. Pp. 185.

Between Portland and Seattle. The Civilized Monster in Grimm and IZombie

Contemporary cities have become a recurring space in television fiction. Many of these cities represent real-life scenes, but they introduce fantastic beings, which sometimes destabilize the foundations of everyday life, meaning an inevitable comparison between the discourses of logos and mythos. With the aim of understanding how this dialectical relationship between cities and monsters is produced, this paper analyses the TV shows Grimm and iZombie, which are set in Portland and Seattle respectively. Both fictions show different types of fantastic beings, thus the first example recovers German fable monsters, while the second case explores the ravages of a zombie infection. Therefore, the goal of this study is the completion of narrative analysis, focused on the settings and characters, analyzing how they interact and if the perception of the real cities represented is changed.

Canada as a Superpower in Elizabeth Bear’s Science Fiction: The Jenny Casey Trilogy

English-speaking science fiction readers were impressed by Elizabeth Bear’s Jenny Casey trilogy when it appeared in 2005. Along with the high quality of the novels, Hammered, Scardown and Worldwired, the American author surprised her public by a number of features that distinguishes this trilogy from most recent American science fiction. The aim of this article is to examine two of these features more closely: Bear’s combination and revision of certain earlier science fiction genres and her depiction of a world of 2062 in which Canada and not the USA has the leading role in space exploration and global conflicts. The article uses both a comparative examination of science fiction genres and a qualitative analysis of those aspects of Canada that Bear chooses to highlight. American space fiction tends to be nationalistic, but the USA of 2062 is shown as suffering from ecological disasters that its weak and divided society cannot deal with. Canada, on the other hand, though not an ideal society, successfully upholds values like moderation, and is still able to rely on the loyalty of very different kinds of characters.

On the Fictionality of Literature: An Evolutionary and Neuroscientific Legitimation

문학은 허구이다. 문학은 자신의 허구적 측면을 ‘시적 관용’의 차원에서 논증하고 변호해온 역사를 갖는다. 이 논문은 진화론적 시각, 특히 진화 심리학과 인지 신경과학의 시각을 반영하면서 문학의 허구 프레임이 갖는 의미와 의의를 재점검하고자 한다. 인간의 언어는 사물과 사태의 개념화와 추상화를 촉진하였으며, 이에 기반한 반사실적 사고로서의 허구는 인류의 인지적 진화에 있어 가장 최종 심급에 위치하고 있다. 정신분석학, 역사학, 탈식민론 등을 참조하면서 자신의 논리를 지속적으로 재점검 해온 문학과 문화 연구는 이제 인문 사회적 사유와 함께 인류학과 진화 심리학 그리고 인지과학 등이 제시하는 시사점을 포월하면서 그 지적 지평을 넓혀갈 필요가 있다.Literature dwells in fictional space. Drawing on such concepts as ‘artistic,’ ‘poetic,’ or ‘dramatic’ license, literary studies have a standard genealogy in defending the fictionality of literature. Accommodating some implications of the evolutionary perspective, especially evolutionary psychology and cognitive neuroscience, this paper tries to articulate the intellectual horizon of literature in a more expansive disciplinary orientation and to recast the much discussed project of consilience between natural science and humanities. In conjunction with adaptive, prospective, and constructive meaning-making engagement, enabled by linguistic conceptualization and abstraction in the development of the human species, the fictive thinking goes hand in hand with its cognitive fluidity. The imaginary and fictional mode of literature, par excellence, is a chief exemplar of cognitive revolution in human evolution. Taking over those controversies concerning nature vs. nurture, science vs. humanities, and biology vs. culture, this paper suggests that as for literary studies at least what is called for at present is both to counterbalance an uneasy biological reductionism and also to interconnect the established self-productive autonomy of literary theories with other academic fields, especially anthropology, evolutionary psychology and cognitive neuroscience.

UNHU/UBUNTU ANACHRONISTIC? THE MANIFESTATION OF FEMALE AGENCY IN VIRGINIA PHIRI’S HIGHWAY QUEEN (2010)

The contemporary relevance of female sexuality as discursive space in fiction is that it reflects current events as it criticises, exposes and illuminates lived reality, such as the HIV and AIDS epidemic, excruciating poverty, homelessness and a general economic meltdown as is the case in Zimbabwe in the first decade of the new millennium. However, the practice of female sexuality may still go against the principles of ubuntu. In Highway Queen Phiri gives agency to the female first person narrator, Sophie, and also sets out males and females who in their interaction with each other, may or may not promote ubuntu. An analysis of this novel shows that the writer challenges many unhelpful attitudes towards the HIV and AIDS pandemic by exploring the employment of travel and female sexuality as coping strategies for dealing with poverty, HIV and AIDS, and the economic downturn in the first decade of the new millennium in Zimbabwe. However, the well-intentioned female agency fails to hold up in the face of the dire circumstances of poverty and disease and Sophie’s urbanised family has to go back to the village for survival under the care of the patriarchal uncles; thus Phiri appears to give a flawed instrumentality to these women.

Racialized space and discourse in the picture books of Ezra Jack Keats

Scholars have argued elementary social studies is uniquely suited to build a foundation of critical knowledge of race and racism with young children (e.g. Bolgatz, 2005, 2007; Wills, 2005). To build this foundation, we must more deeply examine the materials, such as picture books, that are used in early classrooms. This research is a qualitative content analysis of one set of picture books: the neighborhood books of Caldecott award winner Ezra Jack Keats. Drawing on Goldberg׳s (1993) theory of racialized discourse and Neely and Sumatra׳s (2011) theory on racialized space, this research analyzes the racialized fictional space of Keats׳s neighborhood, and contextualizes the texts within broader socio-historical racial discourse. The author argues Keats׳s texts racialize neighborhood space through the characters’ relationships with each other, their interaction with the space, and the physical depiction of the setting. This research contributes to a growing movement toward addressing race and racism in elementary social studies by demonstrating how scholars, teachers, and students may interrogate picture books as transmitters of racial knowledge and history.

Histoire et Fiction dans à Quoi Rêvent les Loups ? de Yasmina Khadra

History and Fiction in the novel What Wolves Dream Yasmina Khadra Successful author translated into several languages, yasmina khadra of his real name Mohamed Moulessehou is no longer to be presented. An officer in the Algerian army, he participated in the fight against terrorism, the institution he left in two thousand to dedicate himself to his vocation writing, he chose to do French. Morituri reveals it to the general public. The work of Yasmina Khadra is part of a particular political context, so the reader is tapped between two diametrically opposed positions insofar as the latter sees herself hearing between the analysis of a real lived that is identifiable and that of d A fictional production in the strict sense of the word. It is therefore at the threshold of our research that we must question the notion of fiction in its epistemological meaning and in its distanced view of reality in order to account for the extent of the fictitious composition that structures the works of Yasmina Khadra. Our attention will be limited to the analysis of a novel Wolf Dreams that exploit the referential spaces within which is traced the Algerian tragedy of the nineties. However, the paratexte according to Gerard Genette specifies that it is an artistic production signed by an author. It is around this novel and the double reading that he proposes (Reading fictional / factual reading) that articulates our problematic: -what are the superior processes the author uses to pass from history to fiction? -By passing from history to fiction, what effect does it seek to produce on the reader? Based on the notions History / Fiction, we will see commentary through the course of the character Nafa walid, it slips from a real space to a fictional space. For more information, please visit our website. Gerard Genette, John Searle, Jean-Marie and Philippe Lejeune, which makes our analysis a multidisciplinary approach.

Sound, Space and Bodies: Building Relations in the Work of Invisible Flock and Atelier Bildraum

In this article, I discuss sounds potential to construct fictional spaces and build relations between bodies using two performance installations as case studies. The first is Invisible Flock’s 105+dB, a site-specific sound work which transports crowd recordings of a soccer match to alternative geographical locations. The second is Atelier Bildraum’s Bildraum, an installation performance using live photography, architectural models and ambient sound. By writing through these two works, I question how sound builds relations between bodies and across space as well as questioning the role of site within sound installation works.

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“We were all commanded out of the chamber” (5.2.5–6): Privacy and Architecture in The Winter’s Tale

ABSTRACTRelying on architectural imagery and turning a private matter into public concern, The Winter’s Tale echoes many early modern anxieties about privacy. Constantly questioning what is seen, heard and said, it finally leaves many of its secrets untold and appears to be built around a blank. It creates an intricate relation between architectural space, presence and absence as fictional domestic space and actual theatrical space interact in a complex public/private dialectic.

Monstrous Territories, Queer Propositions: Negotiating The Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, between Australia, the Philippines, and Other (Island) Worlds

For the 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (apt) (2015–16), Sydney-based artists Justin Shoulder and Bhenji Ra collaborated to present Ex Nilalang, a series of filmic and live portraits exploring Philippine mythology and marginalized identities. The artists’ shared Filipino ancestry, attachments to the Filipino diasporic community, and investigations into “Philippine-ness” offer obvious cultural connections to the “Asia Pacific” concerns of the apt. However, their aesthetic interests in inhabiting fictional spaces marked by the “fantastic” and the “monstrous”—alongside the lived reality of their critical queer positions and life politics—complicate any straightforward identification. If the Philippine archipelago and island continent of Australia are intersecting cultural contexts for their art, the artists’ queering of identity in art and life emphasizes a range of cultural orientations informing subjectivities, always under negotiation and transformation, and at once both the product of and in excess of these (island) territories.

The ‘Bad Global Citizen’, ‘Naked’, in the ‘Transnational Penal Space’

Abstract This article explores how transnational criminal law is used as a tool to create a legal space within the state where the fugitive resides or is acting, in order in effect to re-set the border inside that jurisdiction and to make it possible, by proxy, to enforce another state’s law. It argues that transnational criminal law is used to establish a kind of fictional transnational legal space, created by changing domestic laws and practices of both the state exercising its jurisdiction and the state in which that jurisdiction is being exercised, so that restrictions on cooperative action are minimalized. It explores how that space is created and how it shapes the structure of transnational criminal law through the building of normative structures—both legal and administrative—to suppress the activities of alleged criminals in this space. But its specific focus is on how this purely functional relationship impacts on individuals caught within that space.

Fictionalising the Romantic Marketplace: Self-reflexivity in the Early-Nineteenth-Century Frame Tale

The following paper presents the frame tale as a particular genre of early-nineteenth-century literature that openly negotiated the late Romantic period's displaced correspondence between imaginative production and the economic market. The frame tale is best described as a type of narrative fiction that consists of a frame story (such as a storytelling session) in which multiple sub-narratives in a network of reciprocal exchange are embedded. By discussing two frame tales by the Scottish author James Hogg, the following analysis will show how the resurgence of this particular genre in the early nineteenth century is indicative of Romantic literature's active interest in discussing the relations between literary and economic signification. In this reading, the frame tale emerges as a prime indicator of Romanticism's ghostly link between literature and the marketplace. In both The Queen's Wake (1813/1819) and the Three Perils of Man (1822), Hogg conjures intricate fictional spaces of reciprocity as mirrors of the print market in which these texts were themselves published. By means of a mise-en-abyme of narrative exchange, Hogg's frame tales bridge the gap between literature and economics in a way that illuminates both the economics of literature and the literariness of economy in the early nineteenth century.

Translating the Dynamics of Fictional Space: Estonian Translation of Marcel Proust’s Le Temps retrouvé

The article discusses the way that Proust’s text constructs dynamic and static elements of fictional space, and the further dynamisation or fixation of these elements by the process of translation. The focus of the study is on how movements of fictional space and characters can change in strength, direction and manner, when translated. In other words, rather than looking for that which is “lost in translation”, we are dealing with a comparison of two fictional worlds and the processes in them and between them.