| Contemporary fiction is engaged in a complex consideration of systemic notions of subjectivity and the subject's relationship with social systems such as space. The novels under consideration portray the relationship between space and subjectivity as its own system, consisting of multiple, complex parts in interaction, with space and subjects contributing to the production and reproduction of one another. As in all complex, open systems, the spatial-subjective system portrayed in these novels can reproduce itself indefinitely, in a steady-state, or it can change through the processes of emergence.; In Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine, Walter Mosley's Devil in a Blue Dress, and Don DeLillo's White Noise the spatial-subjective system exists in a steady state. Jasmine examines the complex interaction between subjects, space, race, gender, class, capitalism, and patriarchy, and how these interactions change over time and space. The result is neither a static subject nor a static space, but a constantly adapting relationship that continues to benefit late capitalism and patriarchy, reproducing the system in steady-state.; In Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist, change is a result of Lila Mae's alterity in the spatial-subjective system. Lila Mae's position does not reproduce the existing structure and cannot be captured by the dominant power system, creating a crisis point in the system, producing emergent space and change. In Patrick Chamoiseau's Texaco, emergent space is produced through the activities of a heterogeneous, Creole subject. Marie-Sophie produces a Creole space, which becomes an emergent space that the existing spatial-subjective system cannot exploit. Jack Kerouac's On the Road chronicles Sal Paradise's attempts to discover spaces that he believes will enable him to control his self-definition independent of others' intervention. His failure to achieve his desire leads to a repetition compulsion, which drives the narrative's content and style and introduces the processes that are necessary to emergent space. Stephen Wright's Going Native demonstrates that the processes that produce emergent space in one context are not likely to be repeated. In Going Native , the space of the road lacks any of the qualities of emergent space present in On the Road because the capitalist system has co-opted the processes of desire. |
