In
previous posts, I argued that, in its use of sketches or “story-islands,” The Country of the Pointed Firs challenges
the amalgamating aspects of Bruno Latour’s network theory methodology by
forcing the reader to alternate between seeing parts and wholes, sketches and
novel. Conceptually speaking,
characters do exist as part of a network, as attributes of Jewett’s work (not to mention the fact that they are
all somehow related by blood or marriage), but in spite of this quite literal
linkage characters are individuals placed against
the overarching structures that bind them. In the process of troubling critical
attempts to place the work firmly in any genre, the fragmented form of Pointed Firs also prevents its
characters from blending into any notion of network as a unified organism. A
question then arises about how deploying network theory in the process of
engaging with a more linear, plot-driven work might alter the reader’s
experience. Beyond that, if writers somehow espouse this theoretical methodology
in the creative process, one is forced to question whether the novel in its
traditional, hierarchical form can even continue to exist.
In Kate’s post “Haunted Networks in The Little Stranger” she engages with similar concerns. She cogently argues, that “to deploy Latour’s networks in Water’s novel is to decenter the novel’s focus on its human characters and broaden the scope of its interests,” allowing the reader to imagine the novel as being “about the ancestral home itself.” It’s exciting to imagine the seemingly limitless possibilities presented by Latour and Kate’s arguments, but I’m also left feeling unsure about the full ramifications of deploying this methodology. Generally, what does it mean for a novel to “broaden the scope of its interests” and beyond that, exactly how “broad” is this scope? As Kate points out, according to Latour’s theories, viewing the novel as a network can work to disperse positions of power and ownership, but isn’t the act of viewing Hundreds Hall as the sort of center of the novel (network), what the novel is “about,” a mode of reinstating a position of power? If by definition, a network de-centers, then how can viewing a novel as a network allow it to be “about” anything other than network? Which brings me back to my initial question of how Latour’s theories transform the novel. On the most basic level, how do we talk about a work, specifically a novel, in these terms?
I would argue that while the fragmented, highly idiosyncratic structure of The Country of the Pointed Firs troubles Latour’s conception of a fully amalgamated network, it also decenters the reader’s focus. Like Latour’s actor network, it seemingly has no center. It’s true that while we are inside the work, inhabiting Jewett’s world, she forces us to see each individual character and sketch in all of its peculiarities. I noticed, however, that once I am outside of the text looking back on what I’ve read, all the details blend; I have a heightened awareness of attributes, but all I can see is Dunnet Landing. In other words, the work isn’t just about Dunnet Landing it is Dunnet Landing. Dunnet Landing is a network constituted by its attributes—sketches—that effectively displaces the concept of “The Novel” as a point of inquiry. Therefore, it appears that in order to come to terms with this work I have to arrest my quest to find linear narrative in accumulated details and character studies. In short, I have to stop treating it like a novel. I need to take a hint from Jewett and start breaking rules.
In Kate’s post “Haunted Networks in The Little Stranger” she engages with similar concerns. She cogently argues, that “to deploy Latour’s networks in Water’s novel is to decenter the novel’s focus on its human characters and broaden the scope of its interests,” allowing the reader to imagine the novel as being “about the ancestral home itself.” It’s exciting to imagine the seemingly limitless possibilities presented by Latour and Kate’s arguments, but I’m also left feeling unsure about the full ramifications of deploying this methodology. Generally, what does it mean for a novel to “broaden the scope of its interests” and beyond that, exactly how “broad” is this scope? As Kate points out, according to Latour’s theories, viewing the novel as a network can work to disperse positions of power and ownership, but isn’t the act of viewing Hundreds Hall as the sort of center of the novel (network), what the novel is “about,” a mode of reinstating a position of power? If by definition, a network de-centers, then how can viewing a novel as a network allow it to be “about” anything other than network? Which brings me back to my initial question of how Latour’s theories transform the novel. On the most basic level, how do we talk about a work, specifically a novel, in these terms?
I would argue that while the fragmented, highly idiosyncratic structure of The Country of the Pointed Firs troubles Latour’s conception of a fully amalgamated network, it also decenters the reader’s focus. Like Latour’s actor network, it seemingly has no center. It’s true that while we are inside the work, inhabiting Jewett’s world, she forces us to see each individual character and sketch in all of its peculiarities. I noticed, however, that once I am outside of the text looking back on what I’ve read, all the details blend; I have a heightened awareness of attributes, but all I can see is Dunnet Landing. In other words, the work isn’t just about Dunnet Landing it is Dunnet Landing. Dunnet Landing is a network constituted by its attributes—sketches—that effectively displaces the concept of “The Novel” as a point of inquiry. Therefore, it appears that in order to come to terms with this work I have to arrest my quest to find linear narrative in accumulated details and character studies. In short, I have to stop treating it like a novel. I need to take a hint from Jewett and start breaking rules.
3 comments:
I really like your formulation of the implications of a Latourian reading of the novel as a thing, the question of what it can be "about" if it lacks a center, for even this word "about" suggests a kind of spatial orientation toward or in relation to a central or overpowering notion. Perhaps, in a center-less universe, it is only accurate to say that the novel is about nothing, or about what it does not narrate. But implicitly (and at the end of your post more explicitly) you elide the distinctions between reading-as-interpretation and reading-as-production, which I find quite provocative. If the novel (or perhaps only this novel) is engaged in an act of worldmaking, I wonder, then, whether it's possible to think of your "quest for linear narrative" as play not only in the Derridean sense but as an act of textual production itself. What might it mean if your job as a critic becomes not to "find" something but rather to expand something? In some ways you become implicated in drawing lines and producing networks, listing attributes and filling in the center. I suppose I'm alluding to a form of reading that is something like Colebrook's, but she does not formulate this kind of reading in terms of "inhabiting" the world of a novel. I suppose I'm reading your post as an inversion of Colebrook's argument--that perhaps the kinds of reading you suggest are not characterized by lack, but by production.
Aaron,
Thanks for the provocative comment! It does seem like what we do as critics is "productive," in that we collaborate with texts to expand their potential. Once we can get outside of the desire to decode a work, we actually in some ways produce more of said work (if that makes sense).
I'm glad you picked out this moment in my post to respond to, because I agree that it is definitely a problem. I still do feel that something that Latour's ANT can bring to literary study is the inclusion of non-human actors by de-centering focus from its human "main" characters. But I also agree that saying that the novel is "about" the house or "about" Dunnet Landing as a whole seems to, in some ways, reinstate the problem. I'm not sure that I'm interpreting Aaron's comment correctly, but I like his idea of our job as literary critics "expanding something" about the novel. I think our novels present different challenges in that regard: it seems that part of what makes Jewett's novel so difficult to work with is that it doesn't present you even with an illusion of a center? Is that right? Whereas my novel gives you a first person narrator who is, essentially, asking you to sympathize with him and identify with him. By shifting focus to something like the house (or even the dog), it becomes much easier to question Faraday's, and indeed humanity's, primacy in the narrative.
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