This project is comprised of a novel, Being Helle, and an accompanying dissertation. Being Helle explores in fictional form a number of ideas relating to the uneasy relationship between the individual, digital media and late-capitalism that emerge after undertaking a reading of the fiction of Don Delillo and Bret Easton Ellis alongside the critical theory of Jean Baudrillard and Fredric Jameson. Being Helle interrogates Baudrillard's contentious notion that the hegemony of capitalism undermines the autonomy of the individual subject. This is evident on a number of levels, both stylistically and thematically: the novel explores and reflects how late-capitalism's pervasive digital media affects the writer, the individual and the shape, form and scope of fiction writing. Following the life of photographer Helle Dahl, who has recently moved to Copenhagen, Being Helle ultimately challenges the limits of Jean Baudrillard's theoretical position as regards the influence of capitalism on the individual subject. Although the essential self may well be under attack in an era of rabid capitalism, Being Helle considers whether there are ways and means of formulating some kind of resistance to this, especially through artistic endeavour. The accompanying dissertation, Creative Writing at the Nexus of Fiction & Theory, is a case study analysis of the interaction between reading and creative praxis, focusing in detail on the kind of reading and thinking that took place in the production of Being Helle. In this way, the critical component of this project documents how when a writer engages in reading critical theory alongside fiction a "possibility space" is established which allows for a criticalcreative "cross-over" to occur. In the dissertation I posit that a writer who's methodological approach to novel writing embraces the reading of critical theory and fiction in tandem establishes a useful basis from which an informed cultural debate in the form of a novel can occur.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:439068 |
| Date | January 2004 |
| Creators | Buscall, Jon |
| Publisher | Liverpool John Moores University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/5856/ |
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