Fictions act performatively to transform readers rather than merely represent reality
Evidence
Poovey draws upon a long history in literary studies of seeing fiction as working at the intersection of the real and the imaginary. From this approach, fictions do not represent as much as they act. As with MacKenzie’s (2005) performative account of financial instruments, fictions are not an entirely accurate depiction of the world, but neither are they simply false. As literary criticism has insisted for decades, fiction is best imagined as a strategic narrative or imaginative intervention that does not merely seek to amuse or please but to change reality by transforming the reader and causing them to act differently (see Jameson 1981). In this sense, fictions, like metaphors, are inherently social and intertextual: they depend on the reader understanding a broader cultural context and, in turn, contribute to that broader context. Indeed, we live by and through our fictions. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 109
Categorization
- DEFINE: Defines the literary-performative concept of fiction that anchors the whole book’s ‘social fictions’ framework.
- XREF: Echoes MacKenzie’s performativity of economics as picked up in economic sociology; bridges to deWaard. — connects to: Reading transforms both its object and the reader when practiced critically — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 396; Reading fiction within power networks changes both the critic and its object; The basic structures of fiction shape how we make sense of reality — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1877
- SEED: Possible essay angle: how financial instruments and literature are both performative fictions that act on readers/markets.
Broader Connections
- Reading transforms both its object and the reader when practiced critically
#corroborates(0.85) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 396 - Reading fiction within power networks changes both the critic and its object
#corroborates(0.85)