Zones of Focused Ambiguity in Siri Hustvedt's Works: Interdisciplinary Essays

by Johanna Hartmann (Editor), Christine Marks (Editor), Hubert Zapf (Editor)

Overview

This collection comprises essays from various interdisciplinary perspectives – e.g. literary scholarship, intermediality, art history, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and medicine – to analyze and interpret the fictional and non-fictional works by Siri Hustvedt, an author whose reputation and public presence have been growing steadily in the 21st century and who is recognized as one of the most widely read and appreciated contemporary American writers. In her significance and stature as a public intellectual, she is not merely an American writer but a transnational, cosmopolitan author, who develops new forms not only of literary narrative but of interdisciplinary thought and writing, bringing together otherwise separated genres and branches of knowledge in a broad spectrum between literature and philosophy, historiography and art, psychoanalysis and neuroscience, narrative and medicine. The present volume is structured into the parts “Literary Creation and Communication,” Psychoanalysis and Philosophy,” “Medicine and Narrative,” “Vision, Perception, and Power,” and “Trauma, Memory, and the Ambiguities of Self” and closes with an interview of Siri Hustvedt by Susanne Becker in which Hustvedt elucidates her personal conception of her own creative processes of writing.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783110578690
Publisher:	De Gruyter
Publication date:	11/07/2017
Series:	Buchreihe der Anglia / Anglia Book Series , #52
Pages:	434
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Johanna Hartmann, University of Augsburg, Germany; Christine Marks, CUNY, New York, USA; Hubert Zapf, University of Augsburg, Germany.

Table of Contents

Introduction Johanna Hartmann Christine Marks Hubert Zapf 1

Literary Creation and Communication

Why One Story and Not Another? Siri Hustvedt 11

The Rich Zones of Genre Borderlands: Siri Hustvedt's Art of Mingling Gabriele Rippl 27

Reality Bites: Fractured Narrative and Author-Reader Interaction in Siri Hustvedt's Work Diana Tappen-Scheuermann 39

"A carnival in hell": Representations of New York City in Siri Hustvedt's Novels Caroline Rosenthal 51

The Shaking Woman in the Media: Life Writing and Neuroscience Alfred Hornung 67

Psychoanalysis and Philosophy

The No Truth about Siri Lucien Mélèse 83

Siri's Timequakes Francoise Davoine 99

The Self Is a Moving Target: The Neuroscience of Siri Hustvedt's Artists Jason Tougaw 113

Dimensions of Tacit Knowledge and the Art(s) of Explication in Siri Hustvedt's Work Klaus Lösch Heike Paul 133

Wounding Words Mark C. Taylor 153

Medicine and Narrative

The Great Glazed Tank of Art: From the Real to the Imaginary with Siri Hustvedt Rita Charon 185

"NO self is an island": Doctor-Patient Relationships in Siri Hustvedt's Work Carmen Birkle 193

Mysterious Illness and the Acceptance of Ambiguity Britta Bein 225

In Search of a Diagnosis: Siri Hustvedt's The Shaking Woman Petra Gelhaus 237

"The image makers": Reality Constitution and the Role OF Autism in Siri Hustvedt's The Blazing World Susanne Rohr 249

Vision, Perception, and Power

"What fascinate me are the journeys that begin with looking and only looking": Siri Hustvedt's Visual Imagination Carla Schulz-Hoffmann 265

"I look and sometimes I see": The Art of Perception in Siri Hustvedt's Novels Astrid Böger 281

"Openings that can't be closed": Patterns of Surveillance Culture in Siri Hustvedt's Novels Birgit Däwes 295

Portraits of the (Post-)Feminist Artist: Female Authorship and Authority in Siri Hustvedt's Fiction Anna Thiemann 311

Trauma, Memory, and the Ambiguities of Self

History and Trauma in Siri Hustvedt's The Sorrows of an American Jean-Michel Rabaté 329

Crisis of Knowledge: Trauma in The Sorrows of an American Katharina Donn 341

"The wounded psyche is not a broken leg": Illness, Injury, and Writing the Self in Siri Hustvedt's Work Katja Sarkowsky 357

Embodied Memories, Embodied Meanings: Mind, Matter, and Place in the Works of Siri Hustvedt Christopher Schliephake 373

"We have different selves over the course of a life, but even all at once": The Multiple Self and Cultural Multiple Personality in Siri Hustvedt's The Blazing World Heike Schwarz 389

Interview with Siri Hustvedt

"Deceiving the reader into the truth": A Conversation with Siri Hustvedt about The Blazing World (2014) Susanne Becker 409

List of Contributors 423

Editorial Reviews

"It is an excellent introduction to her writing for students and scholars of contemporary writing, which will hopefully find its way onto more academic programmes in the US, UK and Europe. As this volume proves, it certainly deserves to be. At long last, we have an academic study worthy of the association with her work."
Alexander Williamson in: Anglia 2017; 135(1): 234–238

From the Publisher