Inhuman writing in Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy. Issue 8 (2nd August 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Strombeck, Andrew
• Is Part Of: Textual practice. Volume 34:Issue 8(2020)
• Page Start: 1365
• Page End: 1382
• Publication Date: 2020-08-02
• Subjects: Jeff VanderMeer -- Southern Reach trilogy -- ecocriticism -- Bruno Latour -- object oriented ontology; Literature, Modern -- 20th century -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Criticism -- Periodicals; Criticism, Textual -- Periodicals; Semiotics -- Periodicals; 801.95
• DOI: 10.1080/0950236X.2019.1583684
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0950-236X

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, which has become well-known for its embrace of the nonhuman, is nevertheless highly interested in texts, literary and otherwise. VanderMeer has identified a key passage from the novel as originating in a dream he had after the Deepwater Horizon spill. He thus figures the spill as writing through him, a figuration which the series itself takes up. Moving from the dream writing, through scientific journals, through the agency designed to manage Area X, the series figures Area X as emanating what Bruno Latour has called beings of fiction. VanderMeer characterises, then, that which is unrepresentable in text as nevertheless representing itself in text, raising intriguing problems with the discourses – object oriented ontology and new materialism – that have often framed discussions of his novels.