An other absence: the ethics of the negative in Canadian prairie literature
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2007
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Abstract
This study examines the operations of absence, negation, negativity, what I call "the Negative," in prose fiction and poetry written by what might loosely be called "prairie" writers. However, rather than discuss the geographical roots and repercussions of the Negative, this project explores the ethical dimension of the Negative, effectively arguing that the Negative is inherently ethical. As a result, an implied argument throughout the study is that questions of national and regional identity, though often valuable, tend to prioritise the geographical character of a text rather than the text itself. In this way, my dissertation seeks to move beyond thematic criticism, beyond identity in much the same way Levinas's ethical model resists the thematisation and totalising identification of the Other in the face-to-face encounter. The first chapter lays the theoretical foundation for the rest of the project; it develops a reading of the Negative that is not ontological but rather ethical. The chapter also proposes the concept of individuated materiality that becomes important in contesting Levinas's construction of the pre-linguistic face. The second chapter is an examination of the irruption of the Negative in the representation of the face-to-face encounter in Howard O'Hagan' s Tay John and Frederick Phillip Grove's Settlers of the Marsh. The third chapter examines the ethics and economy of death in Aritha van Herk's Restlessness. In particular, it reads the novel as an allegory of literary exchange. The fourth chapter examines the irruption of the Negative as it appears in what might be called life-writing poetry; at the very least, it examines the Negative in an Eli Mandel poem and a Claire Harris poem. The fifth and final chapter illustrates the ways in which the poetic form itself contributes to the irruption of the NEgative. In particular, this chapter examines STeven Ross Smith's Fluttertongue 3: Disarray and the ways in which the text's formal experimentation are experiments with the Negative. The conclusion begins by questioning the purpose and efficacy of studying the Negative and proposes an outline for an ethics of the Negative.
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Bibliography: p. 190-198
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Gamble, J. (2007). An other absence: the ethics of the negative in Canadian prairie literature (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/974