Not a Big Deal
eBook - ePub

Not a Big Deal

Narrating to Unsettle

  1. 342 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Not a Big Deal

Narrating to Unsettle

About this book

Not a Big Deal asks how texts might work to unsettle readers at a moment when unwelcome information is rejected as fake news or rebutted with alternative facts. When readers already recognize "defamiliarizing texts" as a category, how might texts still work toward the goals of defamiliarization? When readers refuse to grapple with texts that might shock them or disrupt their extant views about politics, race, or even narrative itself, how can texts elicit real engagement? This study draws from philosophy, narratology, social neuroscience, critical theory, and numerous other disciplines to read texts ranging from novels and short stories to graphic novels, films, and fiction broadcasted and podcasted—all of which enact curious strategies of disruption while insisting that they do no such thing. Following a model traceable to Toni Morrison's criticism and short fiction, texts by Kyle Baker, Scott Brown, Percival Everett, Daniel Handler, David Robert Mitchell, Jordan Peele, and Colson Whitehead suggest new strategies for unsettling the category-based perceptions behind what Everett calls "the insidious colonialist reader's eye which infects America." Not a Big Deal examines problems in our perception of the world and of texts and insists we do the same.

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Yes, you can access Not a Big Deal by Paul Ardoin in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & North American Literary Criticism. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Series Page
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright Page
  5. Dedication
  6. Epigraph
  7. Contents
  8. List of Illustrations
  9. Acknowledgments
  10. Introduction
  11. Part 1
  12. 1. Seeing and Settled Seeing
  13. 2. Not Unfamiliar
  14. 3. Obligations to Unsettle Sight
  15. 4. Not Showing and Not Seeing Race
  16. Part 2
  17. 5. Case Studies in Unsettling Narration
  18. Conclusion
  19. Notes
  20. Works Cited
  21. Index
  22. About Paul Ardoin
  23. Series List