&NOW 2018

According to Derrida, "the motif of homogeneity, the theological motif par excellence, is decidedly the one to be destroyed." Otherwise stated, homogeneity need not be destroyed because (textual) homogeneity does not exist. This reading and Q&A features four prose writers whose work interrogates the concepts of hybridity and unity. As early as Don Quixote, novels have been critiqued for their perceived heterogeneity, lack of proportion, or the incorporation of extraneous material. Yet what would would a "pure" text, free from mixture, look like? How much may a novel absorb, for example, from poetry, nonfiction, the visual arts, or the Internet before it ceases to be a novel? These are just a few of the issues and questions that will be taken up by the reading and discussion to follow.