The Complicit Text: Failures of Witnessing in Postwar Fiction (Reading Trauma and Memory) - Hardcover

Ivan Stacy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1498598706 ISBN 13: 9781498598705

Publisher: Lexington Books, 2021

Synopsis

The Complicit Text: Failures of Witnessing in Postwar Fiction identifies the causes of complicity in the face of unfolding atrocities by examining the works of Albert Camus, Milan Kunera, Kazuo Ishiguro, W. G. Sebald, Thomas Pynchon, and Margaret Atwood. Ivan Stacy argues that complicity often stems from narrative failures to bear witness to wrongdoing. However, literary fiction, he contends, can at once embody and examine forms of complicity on three different levels: as a theme within literary texts, as a narrative form, and also as it implicates readers themselves through empathetic engagement with the text. Furthermore, Stacy questions what forms of non-complicit action are possible and explores the potential for productive forms of compromise. Stacy discusses both individual dilemmas of complicity in the shadow of World War II and collective complicity in the context of contemporary concerns, such as the hegemony of neoliberalism and the climate emergency.

About this title

About the Author

Ivan Stacy is associate professor in the School of Foreign Languages and Literature at Beijing Normal University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1498598706
• ISBN 13: 9781498598705
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 246