Fictocritical Innovations

Elements of fictocriticism are also perhaps comparable to the idea of jouissance, which can be inferred from a reading of Barthes’ The Pleasure of the Text (1973) and French feminism, in the discourse(s) of Julia Kristeva and Hélène Cixous, for instance (Spivak 166). Jouissance has been interpreted or connected to concepts such as “bliss”, “fully-tasted pleasure”, “orgasm” and “perversion” (Gallop 566). And it is a mode or an amalgamation of these things—an excited and stimulated sensation in which a feeling and/or sentiment of sexuality can be interconnected with a blissful intelligence and engagement with the text, whether in the act of reading or writing. And so, an ecstatic jubilation would come under that mode also. Like fictocriticism (and a lot of metafictive devices), jouissance is simple enough, though something that one needs to actively engage with in order to understand and appreciate.

Due to the amount of purely fictocritical discussion(s) that needed to take place throughout the research process, much of the ‘higher’ theory has been expounded in the creative folios also. This, in many ways, is complementary to fictocriticism’s double-voiced and subtextual (Rubenstein 37) nature. Still, a deliberate methodology pervading this body of work is all about splitting my cognitive awareness into two parts: one as creative self, the other as analytical self.

Occasionally these two writing approaches (creative and theoretical) are quite challenging to separate as there is a large amount of overlap between the two. This experimental study contends that this is a strong characteristic of fictocriticism though, and there are a myriad of academics that discuss the potential of literary research to be developed in this manner too (Barrett 2004; Kroll 2004; Nelson 2004; Brewster 2005; Arnold 2005). That is a discussion for another time: however, it is a possible avenue for future research and innovation.

Also, I initially assumed that my very early research and work was fictocritical because a concrete and consistent explanation of it could not be located elsewhere. I found it difficult to understand the methodology properly without this concrete, unequivocal definition. It created a severe mental block in the work. Thus, at the end of 2017 a decision was made to alter my doctoral project into a literary ‘experiment’ which would produce an industrious, working definition of fictocriticism as a literary genre. In essence, my doctoral dissertation (and subsequently this book) construct a definition of fictocriticism itself through the creative writing experiments that would push the methodology’s boundaries. This process and feedback formed a renewed and re-focused line of research questioning that was definitive: What is fictocritical fiction? Is there a definition of it that is agreed on by all fictocritical academics? And which of my experimental pieces succeed or fail in this vein? Other similar questions then include: Does fictocriticism work well within both academic and creative writing practices? Does it work in a hybridised manner? Is it a methodology that can still be innovated? Has, or how has, fictocriticism changed over the years to become more concise and dynamic, regimented, or has it become more vague and obscure? By ‘doing’ fictocriticism, what problems does it solve? And do the ‘experiments’ in fictocriticism presented in the different (creative) folios of this book innovate upon the form successfully, and also show pathways for future research, or do they fail? This exploration, by its conclusion, aims to demonstrate which pieces succeed, which pieces fail, or which elements of pieces succeed fictocritically and which elements fail fictocritically. Also, if fictocriticism can be better categorised and synthesised, what boundaries and rules could sustain it as a legitimate form and methodology in academia in the future?

Questions that are left unanswered, or open to debate, but demonstrate the potential to take up this scholarly research baton and continue studies in fictocriticism and other hybridised forms of writing, also relate to the potential of academic writing/research to be developed in a different (more engaging) manner (Barrett 2004; Kroll 2004; Nelson 2004; Brewster 2005; Arnold 2005). They are possible avenues for future research and innovation. Autoethnography, for instance, has been taking up an innovative methodological-pedagogical approach for itself for years (Ellis and Bochner 2000; Holt 2003; Canagarajah 2012; Méndez 2013; Anae 2014); Theses One and Two of this text contend that autoethnography and fictocriticism are cut from a similar methodological cloth.

Fortunately, some of these broader questions and theoretical concerns have begun to be addressed. In 2017, a thorough theoretical exploration into fictocriticism entitled Fictocritical Strategies: Subverting Textual Practices of Meaning, Other, and Self-Formation was published by Gerrit Haas. This occurred more or less during the final stages of my doctoral work. Hence, it has been both gratifying and validating to find a relatively recent work with a similar theoretical focus, despite fictocriticism often seeming dormant or veiled in the literary fringes of academia.

It is, therefore, at least necessary to summarise some of Haas’ goals and intentions and how they may or may not relate to this study. Haas calls for “a systemic conceptualisation of fictocriticism that can hope to capture its various historical strands as well as possible forms to come without stifling its subversive potential … a defining general pattern at work” (12).

What this book calls for is the (re)discovery and categorisation of distinct fictocritical innovations and/or traits. Put excruciatingly simply, Haas seeks to locate an overall theoretical pattern in fictocriticism, whilst my book aims to find some of its ‘new’ distinct patterns. Both Haas and myself observe, dissect and scrutinise the same literary form from two different angles: Haas from the macro, and myself from the micro.

Haas and I are in total agreement about fictocriticism being capable of more than “marginal relevance” (16), feminism’s antecedence in fictocriticism, and we are carefully considerate and respectful of our reliance on Flavell and Muecke’s research and writing in this area (12). Haas merely grinds at the ‘genre’ in a different way:

In many ways the precise connection between these two aspects of fictocriticism—between genre-subversion and marginal/ised speaking positions, between the text-discursive and the wider discursive, between the fictional and the ethical, theory and criticism—is the main subject of this thesis. (Haas 9)

It is necessary to reference Haas’ work, and where my own experiences and experiment(s) enter into the discussion or forefront of the debate surrounding fictocriticism. It is clear we must both be on the right track. Haas’ book is purely theoretical, whereas mine is about innovations, primarily based in response to my own creative works. Haas’ primary text sources for his study are vastly different (Haas 49-51). Also, due to the predominantly creative focus and field of this book, and the reliance of the theoretical work/theses to reflect back on the creative work/folios in a symbiotic way, I have experienced certain spatial limitations, or to put it more positively, my theoretical focus, methodology and process has had to be fine-tuned, tempered. Hence, this book’s predominant focus and/or expectant anticipation of innovative ‘technologies’ or “electric fictocriticism”, as coined by Simon Robb (100), entering the changing medium of reading, writing, communion and the reader-writer relationship in this field. Haas only alludes to this in passing in order to focus more greatly on the “wider discursive and cultural applications” (22) at hand.

Haas does actually propose a list of “textual markers” (30) for fictocriticism, and a reasonable, though pattered and mechanical “working definition” (59) of fictocriticism in his book, though he does not believe these “characteristics” are especially relevant or absolute due to their inconsistency “across the spectrum of fictocritical texts, which take a diverse range of experimental forms” (30). Thus, he does not offer distinct innovative markers either, which this book does. Hence, his working definition and “textual markers” fall short of actually defining the genre as it exists today. These markers can be considered relevant, particularly in relation to identifying and classifying my work.

The four main folios in this text are made up of fragments, stories, experiences and snapshots from my life, and placed or positioned into these four folios of specific interest as a working schema from the perspective of a Polish-Australian millennial between the ages of 25-30. The year each piece was constructed appear in parentheses beside their corresponding title to reflect the narrator/protagonist’s age at the time of construction, and generally all occur during the second decade of the twenty-first century. The significance of these four areas are that they are the factors that have most vividly made up my sense of an identity. These four areas relate to me, but also largely to the contemporary landscape of today’s zeitgeist, and are themes that appear in fictocriticism often (Muecke 2008; Raine 2009; Hancox and Muller 2011; Morgan 2012; Robb 2013).

Thesis One, “Examining the Fictocritical Value of Journeys: The Author Meanders”, is about journeys. This thesis, and the corresponding folio, questions if it is possible to innovate upon fictocriticism or if it is the ‘ultimate’ innovative genre, suggesting that there is a paradox between the theory surrounding fictocriticism, suggesting how ‘freeform’ it is, and how non-freeform it still seems to be due to its lack of theoretical boundaries. The theme of journeys is used as a strategy to convey the methodology of fictocriticism overall, as an untapped way of writing both personally and theoretically, with a unified and engaging double-voice. Attempts at pushing the threshold and parameters in differing experimental creative works advocate for what fictocriticism could be, and ask if it can be reinvented into something more stable, yet still evolve into a mode of writing that is engaging, identifiable and prominent within the academy.

In this section’s folio, the tropes of travel provide a critical vehicle, focusing on the restlessness of the creative self’s need to travel both physically and metaphysically, and look at the creative self’s experiences within different zones (locations, contexts, environments) with differing comfort levels. Most of these journeys occur within Australia, though some take place in Europe, South America and North America, but these locations are rarely made explicit within the narrative. The motif of the horizon is often used as a symbol for restlessness and the creative self’s constant need for motion and momentum. The fictocritical theory used in this thesis prominently features Stephen Muecke and Noel King (1991), Donna Maree Hancox and Vivienne Muller (2011) and Hamish Morgan’s paper “What Can Fictocriticism Do?” (2012). Philosophies and approaches from Roland Barthes’ Mythologies (1957), Roland Barthes (1975) and A Lover’s Discourse (1977) are considered too. Multiple-authored fictocritical works in The Space Between: Australian Women Writing Fictocriticism (1998) are explored, as well as unique proto-fictocritical texts like Mark Z. Danielewski’s postmodern and metafictive writing in House of Leaves (2000), Stephen Muecke’s Joe in the Andamans: And other Fictocritical Stories (2008) and Josephine Rowe’s semi-autobiographical Tarcutta Wake (2012).

Folio Two is about family. This folio provides a (manufactured) context for my ‘self’ from the perspective of a first-generation Polish-Australian male, against the backdrop of a rather nationalistic and/or ‘authentic’ Polish (and migrant) heritage, background and legacy. The creative sequences in this folio aim to delve more deeply and metaphorically/symbolically into these issues and concept(ion)s, in a much more detailed and vivid way than could be established through a purely rational critical narrative. It articulates ‘skewed’ traditional Polish (and migrant) views, beliefs and attitudes and the conflict(s) created in a multi-generational family, via a constructed ‘persona’ called Lou. This thesis aims to find innovation in the contextualisation of fictocriticism. Most notably, in its antecedence in postmodernism and “metafictional strategies” (Waugh 22), its autobiographical characteristics in memoirs (Gaita 1999), anecdotes or use of the first-person (Smith 1001-02) and storytelling narratives (Muecke and King 14; Morgan 2012) primarily within the context of Polish and Australian landscapes, to provide a cultural context or diaspora in the history of some Polish/Australian (migrant) writing, and contextualising the author’s European-migrant ancestry and biased millennial voice, in a memoir-like narrative.

Folio One and Thesis One can be seen as diluting or bleeding into Folio Two and Thesis Two. They are both exegetical about my creative work (and comparing it to similar works) and they make their own distinct arguments. They (the folios and the theses) are alike and are about the nomad, who simultaneously cannot find his place at home with family, and who cannot escape himself abroad in the tangible and intangible pursuit of travel either. Hence, these sections remain inescapably hybridised in a way that I hope readers will not dislike.

Folio Three is about education and how the creative self was formally educated. It recalls specific experiences of being a Bachelor of Arts and Education (Secondary) undergraduate student at university from 2006 to 2010. The majority of the anecdotal, creative or abstract prose inserted into this folio relates to the narrator rebelling against some of his tertiary experiences, in a state of angst, hopefully creating a more compelling psychodrama within the narrative. It is where the idea of ‘purposeful purposelessness’ is most clearly introduced as a storytelling technique and narrative framework. The state of flux the creative self experiences in this folio stems from and identifies the same restlessness and exuberant anxiety, which arise from the culturally conflicted background of the first two folios, and which continue to pervade thematically into this folio and throughout this study overall. It utilises and adapts modes of fictocriticism inspired by Drusilla Modjeska’s The Orchard (1994) and other elemental fictocritical writings and theories by Anne Brewster, Katrina Schlunke, but primarily Anna Gibbs and her uninhibited enumerative, rhythmic, poetic and splicing approach to writing. Thesis Three uncovers some concrete and unambiguous traits of fictocriticism in its connections to education and pedagogy (Modjeska 1994; Brewster 2013), its similarities to more established academic modes like autoethnography (Walford 2004), its phraseology (Gibbs 311; Brewster 2013) and its observable need for a clear “narrative point” (Gibbs 2).

The title of Thesis Four, “Solutionism: Fictocriticism and the Digital World”, is derived from concepts by Evgeny Morozov (2012, 2013) and his wariness of technology. This sets a tone for this thesis’ corresponding folio and fictocriticism’s meandering inconclusive ways. The ‘experimental’ writing focuses on the disengagement contemporary society has with political news and information because of a preference for other, less intellectually challenging forms of entertainment offered by cable television, streaming movies, Netflix, digitised porn and the whole YouTube phenomenon. These ‘arguments’ also encompass the negative impacts of the Internet and social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Thesis Four investigates some of the precise adaptations and changes that have occurred in fictocritical writing over time, particularly in the new millennium, contextualising the methodology in a more modern, technological, or ‘robotic’ era. This thesis shows how some of the fragmentary and freeform writings of Anna Gibbs, Marion Campbell and Alison Bartlett for instance, located in The Space Between, later began to exist in other tangible, less ambiguous mediums and forms, and how the vision of early pioneering fictocritics such as Anna Gibbs, Drusilla Modjeska, Amanda Nettelbeck and Heather Kerr, gradually evolved from their vague, unencumbered, yet highly ‘meta’ fictocritical beginnings, to the more deliberate and industrious “electric fictocriticism” (Robb 100) of the twenty-first century.

All of these folios incorporate different experimental writing techniques, including first-person narrative, prose-poetry, flash fiction, travel writing, vignettes, stream of consciousness, memoir, autobiography, fiction, creative non-fiction, autoethnography, song lyrics, mantras/meditations, narcissistic critique, storytelling, double-voicedness and soliloquy. The folios also use different voices, personas or narrators depending on what the folio and thesis are trying to portray and uncover. Yet all of these approaches can tentatively fall under the methodological umbrella of fictocriticism as the genre has quite a broad (possibly limitless) scope, particularly for experimentation. Still, the folios arguably becomes progressively more fictocritical as the theses develop and sustain their arguments about fictocritical innovations and discoveries, and as the creative self uncovers subtextual layers and improves upon the necessary critique in the folios. In this ‘confused’ way the folios are not entirely elegant or aesthetically pleasing. They incorporate their own mistakes and inconsistencies throughout the narrative, just as Mark Z. Danielewski preserves his mistakes and crossings out throughout House of Leaves (114-15).

In these creative works, however, I at least attempt to (consistently) employ the fictocritical solution to the ‘failure’ of the formal omniscient and/or masterful position, the view from nowhere, because now it is more accepted that knowledge is situational and contextual. Again, this partly stems from the feminist influence of fictocriticism, with its emphasis on the personal being political. Other solutions (and innovations) will be examined within the context of this exploration’s theses, as I/we progress through them.

Regarding viewpoints, because of the massive variations in my creative pieces’ lengths and styles/forms (there are many), not every narrator or scene in every one of the creative works is permitted a concrete (physical) description. This is done to save space and time. After all, for the record, basically all of the narrators/personas are more or less ‘reflections’ (‘ghosts’) of the same being/author (me) anyway. Also, as indicated by Haas, one of the common fictocritical markers is “minimal characterisation and dialogue” (26), which I tend to agree with (overall). That is not to say that my creative works do not feature dialogue and character description at all. These traits feature very prominently in the folios on family and education in particular, but dialogue and character description are not the focus here, as there are many other bases to cover, and more importantly to ‘play’ with, in order to uncover the breadth of fictocriticism’s potential, and what possible innovations lay dormant within it.

Taking this broad approach further, occasionally some of the creative pieces are left ‘seemingly’ unfinished, to indicate where the creative self could (or does not) elaborate on a concept because it would make it less or more fictocritical. This makes aspects of the folio work open-ended. An argument against this approach could be that it demonstrates a lack of texture, and intellectual resources, in the writing. Though it is this book’s contention that the creative folios certainly did not need to be completely polished pieces of work. In fact, aesthetic and commercial sleekness was deliberately resisted so that the work would be more experimental. This became the plan and methodology following this study’s first draft. This restructuring or deconstructive process became part of this book’s reviewed and renewed goals. This would ensure that this ‘experiment’ in fictocriticism was more official. And in reviewing the creative self’s work the analytical self is then able to better take on the responsibilities of a literary scientist in the more theoretical theses.

The open-ended nature of the ‘experimental’ creative folios make it so the works cannot be considered pure memoir or autobiography as they are, in essence, abstract(ed) and fictionalised accounts. Though they contain obvious elements of these forms, particularly Folios One and Two, where pseudonyms and leeway are given to the expression and dramatisation of real people, places and events, the creative work(s) do not subscribe to any one genre exclusively. The creative works must be considered a fictocritical ‘experiment’ because of the blending of so many differing genres and forms. Most importantly, the folios must be fictocritical because, as a whole, they are essentially half-creative, half-critical.

Finally, by 2018-19 my literature review found that there are only a small number of theses devoted to a personally exploratory and/or specifically fictocritical, critical or ‘fictocritical-esque’ hybridised methodology. These include Monique Louise Trottier’s Masters thesis “If Truth be Told…” (2002), The Holocaust at Home: Representations and Implication of Second Generation Experience (2004), a North American doctoral dissertation by Susan Jacobowitz about the literary experiences, identities and representations of second generation Holocaust survivors (iv); Brent Jason Royster’s “The Construction of Self in the Contemporary Creative Writing Workshop: A Personal Journey” (2006), Jeanette Weeda-Zuidersma’s “Keeping Mum: Representations of Motherhood in Contemporary Australian Literature—a Fictocritical Exploration” (2007), “Between the City and the Bush: Suburbia in the Contemporary Australian Novel” (2008), a North American literary doctoral dissertation by Nathaniel David O’Reilly, Emily Naismith’s Honours thesis “Emily Coughs: A Fictocritical Exploration of the Self via Social Media” (2009), Danuta Raine’s “Essaying the Self: Ethnicity, Identity and the Fictocritical Essay” (2009), Jorge Villalobos’ “My Name Is/Mi Nombre es: Developing Internal Voices in a Quest of an Identity” (2012), Robin Hely’s “Project Neurocam: An Investigation” (2013), Lissi Athanasiou Krikelis’ “Postmodern Metafiction Revisited” (2014) and Ania Walwicz’s 2016 PhD “horse: a psychodramatic enactment of a fairytale”. As can be seen from these titles, they are similar to this work in that they are literary, often fictocritical, autobiographical, a form of storytelling and they explore personal(ised) themes, yet these themes or autobiographies are not simultaneously Polish-Australian, male or about the primary themes addressed in this study: journeys, family, education and technology.

The works listed above relate to specific aspects of these individual writers’ lives, ideas, beliefs, identities, philosophies and experiences that make them them (i.e., motherhood, love, religion, ancestry, social media and cystic fibrosis, a Mexican-American upbringing, and so forth). These documents are unique to these individual people, though none are like this exploration because none of them are me. None of them feature a crossover or dense tapestry of interests or experiences that specifically include a fusion of travel, education, a hybridised Polish-Australian background and living in the digital world. And that unique fusion, in the combination and sequence of four experimental folios, is one of the ways that make this experimental fictocritical exploration unique, amongst a set of existing ‘fictocritical-esque’, personalised and explorative works that are already marginal, fairly radical or unorthodox in their format and structure, and certainly relatively few in number.

From this point onwards, my cognitive self will be split in two: when referring to my ‘self’ or the multiplicity of my various ‘selves’ that feature in the creative folios, ‘I’ shall be referred to as the creative self; I will then shift to an alternate clinical persona known as the analytical self in the four theoretical theses, critiquing the creative self’s writings for their merit and fictocritical innovativeness. And when referring to my other, full, self, i.e., both my creative self and my analytical self together (i.e., the complete ‘Pawel Cholewa’), in moments where both intersect and are relevant/applicable, I will simply refer to my collective person as the author. This (somewhat) goes without saying, but not to worry! Context shall make this clear enough, to be sure.