“Through a plurality of women, including Adriana Cavarero, Hannah Arendt, and Ingeborg Bachmann, Ferrante explodes the singular ‘I’ who writes. . . . When we tell a story (our own or someone else’s), we are always, for better or worse, every piece of literature we have consumed.”
“…communities of text and sound, the vernacular cry against impermanence, the rock upon which traditions are built,..”
“If authors are only allowed to write characters that mirror themselves and their own experiences, ‘the art of the novel ceases to exist’.”
I also recommend reading “Writing the Other,” a good intro to the topic by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward.
While I’m sure Stephens’s book is interesting, this excerpt–in its eagerness to praise the power of writing–seems to diminish or extinguish the role of oral cultures and traditions in favor of an ideology of consumption, growth, and progress. Perhaps some Walter Ong in your future?
“It is our duty, as writers, to commit acts of language [which] do not cancel each other out. They cannot eradicate each other, nor kill each other. They lay next to each other, in simultaneous existence. . .”
Recent Comments