Public Space and Novel as Coextensive Textualities

Abstract

The debate about self-fiction and the notion of post-autonomy are indicators of the relationship between fiction and reality in the contemporary novel. Considering the prose of Silviano Santiago and Ricardo Lísias, it is clear that fiction is no longer a central topic in the novel, being only one element among others in its elaboration. We call this coextensive textuality, when the inventive representation is weakened in favor of the articulation of different textual genres in novel writing. Thus, these genres are reframed not by means of a totalizing fictionalization that embraces them, but by the attribution of the value of literary work because they are circumscribed to the sign of the novel. This bio-fictional indeterminacy of the novelistic narrative has transformed the strategies by which the writer works in the public space today, when the difference between writer and character is attenuated.