Against Exemplarity: W. G. Sebald and the Problem of Connection

• Published in: Contemporary literature 2014-04, Vol.55 (1), p.1-31
• Main Author: BEWES, TIMOTHY
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Austerity; British & Irish literature; Caribbean literature; Coetzee, J M (1940- ); English literature; Fiction; German literature; Holocaust; Literary criticism; Literature; Naipaul, V S (Vidiadhar Surajprasad) (1932-2018); Narratives; Narrators; Novels; Prose; Sebald, Winfried Georg (1944-2001); South African literature; Writers; Writing; Written narratives
• ISSN: 0010-7484; 1548-9949; 1548-9949
• DOI: 10.1353/cli.2014.0005

Bewes uses "exemplarity" to denote both what Agustin Zarzosa calls an "instance" and what Lauren Berlant calls a "case." The context of his discussion is the work of a writer, W. G. Sebald, for whom connection seems possible only on the basis of a suspension of exemplarity, whether intradiegetic or extradiegetic. That suspension is instigated with the premises of Sebald's writing: that logical connections themselves are a matter of uncertainty; and that fiction is no longer a form that can sustain, or that requires, an identifiable whole to authenticate it. Here, he looks briefly at two other writers, contemporaries of Sebald, in whom the problem of exemplarily is articulated in slightly different terms, and with correspondingly different solutions: J. M. Coetzee and V. S. Naipaul. He also examines Sebald's prose literary works.