“Sous Rature” of Truth: Rewriting in Contemporary British and American Fiction and the Turn of the Truth-Seeking Narrative

Foreign Literature Studies ›› 2019, Vol. 41 ›› Issue (4): 52-63.

• Studies of Literary Narratives • Previous Articles Next Articles

“Sous Rature” of Truth: Rewriting in Contemporary British and American Fiction and the Turn of the Truth-Seeking Narrative

Mu Yang

Online:2019-08-25 Published:2022-05-18
About author:Mu Yang, is a Professor at the School of English Studies, Beijing Language and Culture University (Beijing 100089, China). She specializes in contemporary literary theory and contemporary British and American fiction.
Supported by:
Talents Training Project, “Practice of Contemporary Western Literary Theory”, jointly sponsored by Beijing Municipal Government and the Central Government; BLCU Academic Talents Support Program for the Young and Middle-Aged; Beijing Language and Culture University Phoenix Tree Innovation Platform Project, “Teaching and Research of Language and Culture of English-Speaking Countries from the Perspective of China”, sponsored by the Basic Expense Fund of Universities Affiliated to the Central Government.

Abstract

Abstract: In terms of the general feature of contemporary British and American fiction, critics have put forward a number of definitions, among which William Gass's “metafiction,” Fredric Jameson's “postmodern pastiche,” and Linda Hutcheon's “postmodern parody” and “historiographic metafiction” are the most representative and influential. However, there exists an obvious dispute in the above notions: Does the general feature lie in content as in parody, or in form as in metafiction and pastiche, or in both as in historiographic metafiction? Among these notions, however, there is actually an intersection—rewriting, which could be focused on either the content of the pretext or its form, or both. This essay argues that it is through rewriting that the most pioneering and most representative contemporary British and American fiction reassesses the relationship between truth and fiction, reflecting on the truthful content in fiction and the form of fiction as a truth narrative. Such reflections mark the most radical turn of fiction writing as a truth-seeking discourse in contemporary literature, whose more specific representation in rewriting can be defined as “Sous Rature” (Martin Heidegger) of truth (truth), namely, to give the truth in the pretext a strikethrough while still retaining it as the focus. Consequently, by questioning, or preserving, or even foregrounding the truth, rewriting may reveal the irrationality, self-contradiction, self-disintegration, and instability of not only the truth implied in the pretext, but also the truth narrative form used in its representation. Such kind of rewriting has developed with the post-structuralist intellectual movement since the 1960s.

Key words: contemporary British and American fiction, rewriting, truth, narrative, Sous Rature

Mu Yang. “Sous Rature” of Truth: Rewriting in Contemporary British and American Fiction and the Turn of the Truth-Seeking Narrative[J]. Foreign Literature Studies, 2019, 41(4): 52-63.

References

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