‘An exercise in magical thinking’: The Troubling Matter of Will Self’s ‘Dirty Magical Realism’
However provocative a coinage to begin with, Will Self’s description of his work as ‘dirty magical realism’ has not only endured, but also proven to be an operative prism through which to approach his writing ethos and praxis from his debut short story collection to the Umbrella trilogy. His sustain...
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| Publicat a: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ebc, |
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| Autor principal: | |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Idioma: | Anglais |
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Études britanniques contemporaines
2025
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| Accés en línia: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Sumari: | However provocative a coinage to begin with, Will Self’s description of his work as ‘dirty magical realism’ has not only endured, but also proven to be an operative prism through which to approach his writing ethos and praxis from his debut short story collection to the Umbrella trilogy. His sustained exploration and interrogation of the modes and meanings of the mimetic impulse, and highly idiosyncratic brand of realism, demonstrates realism as a whole to be the ‘capacious form’ (Gąsiorek) it is now being (re)conceptualised as. His core fictional method, hinging on the ‘enmeshing of matter and thought’ (Bernard) and an ‘antipathy toward oppositional ways of thinking’ (Coole and Frost), grounds his philosophy and practice of realism in the new materialisms that have emerged in post-human times. By considering first embodiment, then entanglement and finally, enactment, this article explores some of the ways in the poetics and politics of Self’s dirty magical, and decidedly material, realism contribute to re-presenting it not as reproduction, but as redefinition of reality—and its interactions with fiction. |
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