Zadie Smith’s and Judith Butler’s Novelistic Inconsistencies
| dc.contributor.author | Sayers, Philip | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2019-01-07T01:37:24Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2019-01-07T01:37:24Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2019 | en |
| dc.description.abstract | This article argues that the novel’s embrace of inconsistency over rigour and commitment is its key distinguishing feature as a form of thought. Whereas critical theory, like other academic disciplines, tends to valorise rigorously argued and consistent ways of thinking, art – and in particular, the novel –has the capacity to generate different forms of knowledge through its inconsistency. Moreover, though, I also contend that the novelistic mode is a way of thinking that is not confined solely to texts that are themselves novels: it is also a mode that critical theory can engage. In this article, I analyse two texts characterised by this novelistic inconsistency: one by a novelist (Zadie Smith’s On Beauty), the other by a theorist (Judith Butler’s Precarious Life). Whereas Smith is open about her “ideological inconsistency,” Butler (as befits a writer of critical theory) tends to mask the discrepancies in her thought. I argue, however, that in their treatment of the question of authorial intention, both Smith and Butler adopt surprisingly similar positions: though predominantly loyal to the psychoanalytic and poststructuralist critique of intention and of the sovereign subject more broadly, they nevertheless at times defend the idea of authorial intention. This inconsistency, I argue, is an important virtue in Smith and Butler’s discussions of intentionality, especially as it relates to the context they are both concerned with: the university campus. | en |
| dc.identifier.issn | 2463-333X | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10092/16385 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://dx.doi.org/10.26021/324 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.publisher | University of Canterbury | en |
| dc.rights | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. | en |
| dc.rights.uri | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ | |
| dc.title | Zadie Smith’s and Judith Butler’s Novelistic Inconsistencies | en |
| dc.type | Journal Article | en |