Let the Great Narrative Spin: A Poetics of Relations

Abstract

Contemporary art is at a turning point, questioning crystallized
systems of representation and intersubjective relations in order to reconfigure the imaginative framework of people at multiple cultural intersections. Literature is a space which consists of various fractured spaces of knowledge which are simultaneously interconnected. Based upon the renowned physicist David Bohm’s proposal (1992) which points out the way in which thought shapes our perceptions, significations and daily actions, I will analyse Colum McCann’s narrative in Let the Great World Spin (2009) to understand how the writer explores the contemporary “shadows” of the present (Agamben 2006), which manifest themselves in a constant flux of relationships that are triggered by memory and grasped at different levels of perception. I will only focus on the opening of the novel and the closing chapters of the four books, which function as interchapters or intermezzos of the episodes in the lives of the various characters which are narrated in between; the life of Corrigan seen mainly through the eyes of his brother Ciaran is the main line of the narrative which is intersected by other narratives. Colum McCann’s art of writing discloses a different treatment of literary elements and concepts in transition, requiring a theoretical approach
that apprehends contemporary literature in its complexity. Édouard Glissant’s “poetics of relation” (1990) - both aesthetic and political - helps to understand McCann’s literary strategies of telling, connecting and constructing parallel consciousness of self and surroundings in order to transform mentalities and reshape societies.