Agency beyond Action: Modernist Charactersas Interpreters and Readers

Résumé 0

Drawing on a distinction theorized by Bruno Latour, this article focuses on how modernist texts tend to divert attention from climactic actions toward the more complex networks of human and non-human agencies that underlie these actions. This trend encompasses very different processes, both narrative and poetic, which break up the centrality of characters. Instead of being defined by their choices, these are construed as focal points, reflexive nodes where influences collide. Using Jean-Jacques Lecercle’s concepts of “interpellation” and “counter-interpellation,” I argue that the strength of modernist characters lies in this decentred status: they are forced to construct their identities in a never-ending movement of interpretation and reappropriation of external agencies. Hence the reading scene, a moment of confrontation with written texts as well as other readers and social conventions, constitutes a paradigmatic trope: it epitomizes the tension inherent to reception, but also the potentialities for creative readings and self-expression, which modernist characters harness to come into their own.