Title: ‘Fiction without Mimesis: A Comparative Philosophy of Fiction’
Abstract:
Is “fiction” a transhistorical and transcultural concept? Gregory Currie (2014) says yes. In this talk, I argue that we ought to be skeptical of such a universal notion of fiction because “fiction” is a concept that responds to a philosophical culture’s given metaphysical framework. Observing how classical Chinese (Daoist) metaphysics affected Chinese theories (and practice) of fiction shows us how considerations other than imagination, make-believe, or mimesis can be the basis of a concept of fiction. More broadly, the comparative approach to fiction shows what the existing assumptions of analytic philosophy of fiction had been, and how it might reconceptualize its aims and methods.
Bio:
Hannah Kim is an Assistant Professor at the University of Arizona. She works on aesthetics, metaphysics, and Asian philosophy, with particular interests in fiction, poetry, music, time, Confucianism, and Juche. She received her PhD in Philosophy and PhD minor in Comparative Literature from Stanford University.
