'Scripted fantasies': writing the twenty-first century. Issue 3 (4th March 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Childs, Peter
• Is Part Of: Textual practice. Volume 36:Issue 3(2022)
• Page Start: 365
• Page End: 381
• Publication Date: 2022-03-04
• Subjects: Twenty-first century fiction -- the contemporary novel -- Tom McCarthy -- Shoshana Zuboff -- surveillance capitalism -- nonhuman turn; Literature, Modern -- 20th century -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Criticism -- Periodicals; Criticism, Textual -- Periodicals; Semiotics -- Periodicals; 801.95
• DOI: 10.1080/0950236X.2022.2030114
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0950-236X

Abstract

ABSTRACT: If fiction is seldom perceived to be a contemporary form oriented towards global, ecological, or nonhuman concerns, it documents and dramatises crises, particularly of identity, that demonstrate these contexts. The twenty-first century novel both reflects and seeks to influence ethical, philosophical and critical discussion while negotiating its status as a medium that gained a strong cultural foothold because it addressed the establishment and imposition of civilizational norms in human societies from the Enlightenment through to the twentieth century. This essay considers how novels have approached challenges to human and humanist centrality from a range of forces in the last twenty years as multiple debates have taken a nonhuman turn.