Abstract

As a genre that confounds the distinction between fiction and non-fiction, fictocriticism continues to gain currency. It solves a problem for researchers and writers who do not wish to be held to that somewhat artificial division, and who consider their research methods necessarily to include the stylistic experiments that show their research and thought processes. Research, knowledge of the world, that continues to be ‘written up’, ‘after the fact’ in the usual academic genres, has a tendency to re-inscribe the status quo. The world stays the way it is; change, surprise and experiment elude the writer.
Stephen Muecke, one of the originators of fictocritical writing, presents a selection of his best essays in this innovative genre. In doing so he offers a rare and important theorization of the potential of speculative methods across disciplines including Literary Studies, Philosophy, Anthropology, Geography, and Science and Technology Studies.
For over twenty years, Stephen Muecke has been the key international force in fictocriticism. His work embodies the best of this exciting hybrid, weaving spells of truth and imagination that readers will adore and admire in equal measure.
Toby Miller, Professor and Director of the Institute for Media and Creative Industries, Loughborough University
Stephen Muecke is Professor of Ethnography at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.
Muecke is the wizard of fictocriticism. Here, he stretches a canvas over the speculative realism of events, worlds, and modes of being now. Hyperobjects and a stirring wind, indigeneity and the tapping at the keyboard, are lines of momentum pulling theory into critical proximity to the intimate tones and animating impurities of matters of concern.
Kathleen Stewart, Professor of Anthropology, University of Texas