What is narrative? Ridvan Askin brings together aesthetics, contemporary North American fiction, Gilles Deleuze, narrative theory and the recent speculative turn to answer this question. Through this process, he develops a transcendental empiricist concept of narrative. Askin argues against the established consensus of narrative theory for an understanding of narrative as fundamentally nonhuman, unconscious and expressive.
Close readings include: Ana Castillo, The Mixquiahuala Letters (1986); Michael Ondaatje, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (1970); Colson Whitehead, The Intuitionist (1999); Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves (2000).