Criticism and the Non-I, or, Rachel Cusk’s Sentences

Abstract

This chapter proposes a new way of thinking about the relationship between narrative and the question of literature’s historicity. First, it reconsiders the concept of the subject as it was variously deconstructed, banished, or radically redrawn in the moment of 1960s French structuralist anti-humanism. Second, it assesses free indirect style for its ability to produce narrative voices beyond the confines of the subject/object dichotomy. Finally, the chapter turns to the path-breaking sentences of the contemporary British novelist Rachel Cusk, who, it is argued, has constructed an immanent, unique theory-in-action of the literary subject, premised on a qualified evacuation of narrative-subjective interiority.