Quantum Histories, Contingency, and Stardom: Narrativizing the Self in Music, in a Foreign Language and My Life is like a Fairy Tale

• Authors: Diaconescu Alexandru
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Andrew Crumey’s Music, in a Foreign Language (1994) and Robert Irwin’s My Life is like a Fairy Tale (2019) foreground protagonists who undertake writing as a – fictional or fictionalised – means of representing the self against the pressures of collective histories represented by totalitarian regimes in the background. As contextualised, their practice emphasises the temporal dimension of both subjectivity and reality. While diametrically opposed, their approaches encompass a space that occasions the problematisation of such notions as history, temporality, and consciousness, at the intersection of chance and determinism, as well as the questioning of the interactions between their representations across a number of disciplines. The following study draws on theories from history, chaos theory, and quantum mechanics as discourses interwoven in the textual fabric of the two novels in order to examine the means by which fiction affords the exploration of the interplay of theoretical constructs while repositioning itself in the process.

Keywords

EN

history; temporality; determinism; chaos theory; quantum mechanics

• Publisher: Inter Litteras Research Centre, STEFAN CEL MARE University, Suceava, Romania; STEFAN CEL MARE Publishing House
• Journal: Concordia Discors vs Discordia Concors: Researches into Comparative Literature, Contrastive Linguistics, Cross-Cultural and Translation Strategies
• Year: 2023
• Volume: 20 (Multifaceted Approaches to Humanities II)
• Pages: 10-32

Contributors

author

Diaconescu Alexandru

• “Ştefan cel Mare” University of Suceava, Romania