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Develops a rigorous theory of narrative as apost-deconstructive model for interpretation.
Interrogating stories told about life after deconstruction, and discovering instead a kind of afterlife of deconstruction, Daniel Punday draws on a wide range of theorists to develop a rigorous theory of narrative as an alternative model for literary interpretation. Drawing on an observation made by Jean-François Lyotard, Punday argues that at the heart of narrative are concrete objects that can serve as "lynchpins" through which many different explanations and interpretations can come together. Narrative after Deconstruction traces the often grudging emergence of a post-deconstructive interest in narrative throughout contemporary literary theory by examining critics as diverse as Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Elizabeth Grosz, and Edward Said. Experimental novelists like Ronald Sukenick, Raymond Federman, Clarence Major, and Kathy Acker likewise work through many of the same problems of constructing texts in the wake of deconstruction, and so provide a glimpse of this post-deconstructive narrative approach to writing and interpretation at its most accomplished and powerful.
"…Punday provides a rich reading of deconstruction and narrative theory by looking at contemporary critics and experimental novelists." — CHOICE
"…a well-researched study that seeks to coordinate frameworks for inquiry (e.g., cultural geography, feminist theories of materiality, and deconstructive literary theory) whose interconnections indeed deserve to be explored more fully." — Poetics Today
"Narrative after Deconstruction offers a lucid, erudite, and persuasive argument for rethinking contemporary narration in light of, and in response to, the deconstructive questionings of the previous decades. This book is engaging, insightful, and accessible, in spite of the difficult theories that it unpacks." — Marcel Cornis-Pope, author of Narrative Innovation and Cultural Rewriting in the Cold War Era and After
"Punday provides new insights into the field of critical theory by formulating unique spatial/temporal distinctions for understanding narrative in the aftermath of deconstruction." — M. W. Smith, author of Reading Simulacra: Fatal Theories for Postmodernity
Preface
1. THE NARRATIVE TURN
Deconstruction and Narrative
Narrative Totality and Narrative Openness
Recent Theories of Materiality
2. DECONSTRUCTION AND THE WORLDLY TEXT
Localizing Deconstruction
Rethinking Deconstructive Space
Producing Space in the Worldly Text
The Multiple Spaces of Post-Deconstructive Narrative
Derrida after Deconstruction
3. THE SEARCH FOR FORM IN AMERICAN POSTMODERN FICTION
Problems in the Poetics of Postmodern Fiction
Defining Form in Postmodern Fiction
Negotiating Materiality in Postmodern Fiction
4. A GENERAL OR LIMITED NARRATIVE THEORY?
Universal Narrative Forms?
Revising Spatial Form
The Feel of Multiple Spaces
5. RESISTING POST-DECONSTRUCTIVE SPACE
Space and Commodity Culture
Jameson's Resistance to Postmodern Space
The Open Landscape
6. READING TIME
Temporality in the Worldly Text
Theories of Reading Process
A Poetics of the Hesitating Text
One and Several Sites
7. STRUGGLING WITH OBJECTS
Respect for the Concrete
Problems of the Antihegemonic Concrete
Describing Whole Objects
8. NARRATIVE AND POST-DECONSTRUCTIVE ETHICS
Ethics after Deconstruction
The Ruins of the Other
Conclusions
Notes
Works Cited
Index