Literature and Epistemic Injustice Power and Resistance in the Contemporary Novel

Acknowledgements

INTRODUCTION

PART I           ‘WE CANNOT BREATHE’. PRACTICES OF POWER

CHAPTER 1. VIOLENT TIMES

I.               Necropolitical space-time

Petrifying times and twin temporalities in 1000 Coils of Fear

II.            Epistemic ghosting

Picaresque unheroism and ghosted knowledge in Voroshilovgrad

CHAPTER 2. ABSENT VOICES

I.               Epistemologies of ignorance and petrified stories

White lies in the Bardo

II.            Deadly silences  

Violent silencing, necro-joking and necro-pleasure in We That Are Young

CHAPTER 3. DIVISIVE FORMS

I.               Hierarchies and binaries

Logics of purity in We That Are Young

II.            Split-separation in the necropatriarchy

The murderous Midas touch. Purity and profiteering in Ada’s Realm

CHAPTER 4. PETRIFIED BODIES

I.               Written on the body

Traces of injustice in We Need New Names

II.            The body as archive

Marks of violence in Glory

CHAPTER 5. THE END OF MEANING

I.               The pure and simple … lie

Life and Death and the lie of state

II.            Postnarrative

‘There is no why here’. Ultimate epistemic injustice in Glory

PART 2          BREATHING FIRE. ANIMATING AESTHETICS

CHAPTER 6. INSURRECTIONARY TIMES

I.               Transtemporal possibilities

Time in the singular plural. 1000 Coils of Fear and Ada’s Realm

II.            Epistemic revenants

Haunting and counter-memory. Voroshilovgrad and Glory

CHAPTER 7. OTHER VOICES

I.               Eccentric narrators

Disruptive knowledge. Picaresque and trickster voices in We Need New Names and Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out

II.            Guerrilla epistemology

Animals as epistemic guerrilleros. Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out and Glory

CHAPTER 8. BODIES IN RELATION

I.               Affirmative pleasure

Counter-pleasure and blues irony in Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out and Voroshilovgrad

II.            Motherhood and mayonnaise

Chiasmus and curdling. Lincoln in the Bardo and Ada’s Realm

CHAPTER 9. THE FUTURE OF MEANING

I.               Meaning beyond monody

Provoking pluralism in Lincoln in the Bardo and We That Are Young

II.             Animapoetics. Stories in the face of death

‘There’s a chance you won’t be remembered as a total asshole’. Hope and community in Voroshilovgrad and Glory

CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Index

Biography

Sarah Colvin is the Schröder Professor at the University of Cambridge, UK. She has authored and edited a number of books including Shadowland: The Story of Germany Told by its Prisoners (2022) and (with Stephanie Galasso) Epistemic Justice and Creative Agency: Global Perspectives on Literature and Film (Routledge, 2023)

"Literature and Epistemic Injustice adeptly interweaves theory with rich readings of contemporary novels to give timely, vital insights into literature's role in both revealing oppression and countering it. Colvin urgently reminds us of what defines our humanity through and across difference––our need to share, learn, and be heard through stories."

-Didem Uca, Assistant Professor of German Studies, Emory University, USA

“Sarah Colvin’s Literature and Epistemic Injustice is an intellectually powerful examination of how  contemporary fiction discloses the operations of epistemic injustice and articulates forms of resistance to it. The study moves confidently between ethics, political theory, narratology, and global literatures, treating the selected novels as rich sources of insight. Colvin positions contemporary fiction as an active participant in debates about knowledge and power. A central achievement of the  book is its clear demonstration that epistemic injustice functions as a deliberate and strategic practice of authoritarian power. At the same time, the emphasis on narrative meaning-making as a form of resistance is one of the book’s strongest conceptual threads. Overall, the monograph is rigorous, generous, and lucid. It offers a persuasive account of how literature intervenes in the politics of knowledge and power and presents storytelling as a vital practice that restores the capacity to think, feel, and interpret in conditions designed to obstruct those capacities. It stands as a significant contribution to literary studies, ethics, and contemporary political analysis.”

-Pavlo Shopin, Associate Professor, Mykhailo Drahomanov State University of Ukraine



“Colvin’s book offers hope. Through subtle and engaging readings that both expose and resist the long history of oppression, exploitation and violence, it moves, shocks and summons us to imagine that things could yet be otherwise.”

-Prof Anne Fuchs, Times Literary Supplement