I am never 100% sure I understand any of these theorists. I have colleagues who are patiently and weekly tutored through everything they read by three different faculty members, and of my five-person committee, my chair is in the middle of three major projects, one is on maternity leave, one is on sabbatical, one isn't even in my department (it's a requirement) and the fifth is being loaned out this semester for a chair somewhere in the midwest. I'm reading these totally alone.
So. . . De Man. I did need to supplement this essay with another lecture or two, but if I had to dangerously reduce the idea into a summary I would say that he's comparing allegory (in a general sense, after conflating or redefining other forms of symbolic narrative into it) to irony around the function of linear time. In the case of allegory, I would say that it is irreconcilable through time. It is inevitably separated the story from its antecedent. In the case of irony, De Man argues that the subjectivity is irreconcilable (a mystified subject is being viewed by the same subject from some aware, but still mystified distance), but the chronology is conflated - both subjectivities must exist simultaneously, while never reconciling. They are simultaneous and perpetual.
So, fascinated by this description of irony. . . I had already decided that "allegory" was the perfect category for speculative fiction, although De Man seems to think the novel the perfect form of irony - fiction aware that it is fiction, in the way that history is mystified, and unaware of its fictiveness. In this way, Spec Fic seems to be another layer of mystification on top of the irony: Fiction aware that it is fiction, but also simultaneously fully and irreconcilably convinced that fiction is the only reality.
So. . . De Man. I did need to supplement this essay with another lecture or two, but if I had to dangerously reduce the idea into a summary I would say that he's comparing allegory (in a general sense, after conflating or redefining other forms of symbolic narrative into it) to irony around the function of linear time. In the case of allegory, I would say that it is irreconcilable through time. It is inevitably separated the story from its antecedent. In the case of irony, De Man argues that the subjectivity is irreconcilable (a mystified subject is being viewed by the same subject from some aware, but still mystified distance), but the chronology is conflated - both subjectivities must exist simultaneously, while never reconciling. They are simultaneous and perpetual.
So, fascinated by this description of irony. . . I had already decided that "allegory" was the perfect category for speculative fiction, although De Man seems to think the novel the perfect form of irony - fiction aware that it is fiction, in the way that history is mystified, and unaware of its fictiveness. In this way, Spec Fic seems to be another layer of mystification on top of the irony: Fiction aware that it is fiction, but also simultaneously fully and irreconcilably convinced that fiction is the only reality.
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