Impulses Toward a Telepathic Reading of Clarice Lispector’s The Stations of the Body and “The Beak of A Bird” by Amina Cain

Abstract

Reading Clarice Lispector’s The Stations of the Body alongside “The Beak of a Bird” by Amina Cain, Carmody draws on Nicholas Royle’s notion of telepathy to mark a way that critical readings might allow for a rational irrationality and produce a definitively nonreligious way of discussing fiction’s ability to communicate unspoken thoughts, feelings, or perceptions. According to Carmody, a telepathic reading of Cain through Lispector assures the uncanny and produces an affective method for thinking through and into the social and political realities held within the text. The traditional abstract included here is merely a content teaser and, we hope, reads ironically against the innovative critical work that follows. If you wish to read more about the process by which this author undertook writing this essay, as well as the critical stakes of its production, please see the introduction to the volume as well as the accompanying anti-abstract at the close of the chapter.