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Across the four novels Daniel Davis Wood has published to date, it is possible to delineate an evolving ethics of literary voice. His initial step in Blood and Bone is to subvert the third-person omniscient voice by drastically expanding the imaginative abilities of the first-person narrator, thus showing how the narrator must always speak through a subjective position. The second step involves examining the extent to which the narrator's desire is not their own: the narrator of Unspeakable is portrayed as the victim of toxic narcissism and media manipulation, for instance, while the protagonist of At the Edge of the Solid World is so alienated from his own emotions that he relives the calamities of others to process his own tragedy. Despite possessing the quasi-omniscient powers of Blood and Bone, these two narrators, far from being godlike, are shown to be puppets of desires that are not their own. The outcome is the dissolution of the subjective "I" in In Ruins, in which the narrator comes to understand the Otherness that permeates human subjectivity. Moral failures are dissolved by the inability to say "I", making the new ethical task bearing witness to the desire of the Other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Teddy Wayne’s The Great Man Theory (2022) is most obviously a response to the Trump presidency, this essay explores how the novel also engages larger questions about political critique and a meaningful response to power. We analyze, in particular, the protagonist’s closing attack on a right-wing pundit in the context of the novel’s exploration of magical thinking, drawing special attention to Wayne’s references to the idealism of Hegel. This essay thus reveals Wayne’s core idea in this novel, that the persistence of the “great man theory” in American culture represents a perverse ideology of disempowerment that must be overcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In the work of Jacques Lacan there exists an extended metaphor of clothing, whereby the 'naked' truth is always "clothed' in deception. For Lacan, clothing functions at the intersection of the symbolic and the imaginary, with outward appearance shaping what we imagine to be underneath in order to determine the landscape of symbolic desire. Joan Copjec considers the political implications of this metaphor, arguing that utilitarianism, in particular, divides desire into a false dichotomy of rational, naked desire, and the ornamental clothing of irrationality, a mindset woven into both capitalism and French colonialism. The article then examines two examples from Lacan's commentary on ethics: the story of Saint Martin and the beggar, and the myth of Actaeon and Diana, further demonstrating how clothing metaphors are entwined with notions of truth and deception. The article concludes by considering whether Lacan's words are similarly clothed in deception, and ponders whether he should be telling us the naked truth. Lacan weighs both options and concludes that the most effective form of communication constitutes a double bluff in which he strategically pretends to lie, not for the sake of deception, but in order to 'clothe' (and thus protect) the naked truth concealed underneath. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prevailing tendency among critics is to read the fiction of Hari Kunzru through a postcolonial lens, emphasizing either his themes of fluidity and hybridity, or his cosmopolitan resistance to national boundaries. This essay takes a different approach by examining how Kunzru engages notions of political theology. Kunzru uses computer programming, for instance, as a metaphor for divine creation, so that in works like Transmission and Gods Without Men his protagonists, both programmers, confront the notion of hacking the divine "code." In Gods Without Men, this process is achieved through a computer program named Walter that is able to predict first the stock market, and then the course of historical events. Walter is named after Walter Benjamin, who argued that a concealed political theology underlies the logic of modern society. Following similar clues in Kunzru's fiction, this essay explores his diagnosis, on the one hand, of political theology's responsibility for the creation of a modern society of control, and the revolutionary potential of being able to subvert and manipulate that divine code, on the other. In a world where the hegemony of modern capitalism feels increasingly stifling, Kunzru offers a means of escape and resistance by turning society's code against itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cahiers de la Nouvelle: Journal of the Short Story in English is the property of Presses Universitaires de Rennes and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The ambivalence at the heart of Rachel Kadish's third novel, The Weight of Ink (2017), comes from the tension between Kadish's exploration of Jewish identity, on the one hand, and her position as a feminist on the other. Kadish thus uses the form of the historical novel to critique patriarchal traditions in Jewish culture that exclude women from the domain of scholarship and philosophical thought. The Weight of Ink weaves a complex narrative contrasting the life of a twenty-first-century historian, Helen Watt, to the fierce intellect of Ester Velazquez, a female scribe from the seventeenth century, who is forced to develop her philosophy secretly under a series of male pseudonyms. This essay starts out by examining the delicate balance required for this kind of cultural critique, for while Kadish excoriates the past ill-treatment of women and homosexuals, she nonetheless is also clearly proud of her identity as a Jewish woman. The second section of this paper looks at the extent to which Kadish launches a successful feminist analysis of Jewish culture and traditions. Her strongest points come when she turns the logic of this tradition back on itself: the very existence of Ester's intellect or Alvaro's homosexuality, she argues, are proof that such things are ordained by divine will rather than its contradiction. The conclusion of the paper explores the limitations of Kadish's approach, focusing in particular on the way she creates a biological tie between Ester and Shakespeare. This narrative twist appropriates Ester to the realm of the patriarchal law, encapsulating the irresolvable tension between Kadish's Jewishness and her feminist politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]