Conceptual Avant-Garde Writing in Contemporary Flanders: Evelin Brosi’s Thuis (2020)

ABSTRACT

Evelin Brosi’s novel Thuis (Home, 2020) collects all the plot summaries of the Flemish soap series that goes by the same name from 1995 to 2020. What may seem to be a gimmick at first sight, is in fact an intervention that revaluates contemporary culture as well as the avant-garde traditions of ready mades and uncreative writing. In this article, the former will be examined against the backdrop of Demeyer & Vitse’s (2021) argument about the topos of the house and belonging in contemporary novels. The latter will be elaborated in a close reading of the novel through the lens of the theory of the avant-garde and conceptual or uncreative writing (Goldsmith 2011, Broqua 2013). The article argues that Thuis pursues the contemporary reflection on home and homeliness, creates a critical distance from the claims about Flemish identity and belonging, and revitalizes avant-gardist thought about originality, authorship, and the everyday. As such the case study broadens our view of contemporary fiction and of the reception of the avant-garde in the Low Countries.

KEYWORDS:

• Neo-avant-garde
• ready made
• conceptual writing
• uncreative writing
• Flemish identity
• the everyday

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Demeyer and Vitse, Affectieve crisis, 14.

2. Demeyer and Vitse, Affectieve crisis, 15–18, 215–256.

3. Demeyer and Vitse, Affectieve crisis, 220.

4. See Dhoest, “The National Everyday,” 68.

5. Dhoest, “Mutlti-ethnic Imagined Community”.

6. Dhoest, “The National Everyday,” 66–67. Dhoest refers to the work of David Morley.

7. Marx Knoetze, “Who Feels at Home?”.

8. Tim is kwaad op Sam. Peggy hoort ’s nachts vreemde geluiden in de Zus & Zo. Het afscheidsfeestje van Lowie brengt emoties met zich mee. Marianne doet haar beklag bij Eddy. Nancy kan genieten van een leuke namiddag. (Brosi, Thuis, 341).

9. Rosa raadt Peggy aan om hulp te zoeken (Thuis, 277).

10. Tibo wil Lynn eens testen (Thuis, 277).

11. Bourdieu, “The Field of Cultural Production,”

12. Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, 80.

13. See Scheunemann, “From Collage to the Multiple,” 18–21.

14. Of course, there are historical alliances between the avant-garde and the field of politics, in which this autonomy is suppressed (see Bourdieu, “The Field of Cultural Production”, 325).

15. Incidentally, this puts the book into dialogue with Marcel Broodthaers’s 1969 appropriation of Mallarmé’s Un Coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard (1887), in which the artist covers the words of the poet with black bars.

16. Perloff, Unoriginal Genius, 51.

17. Epstein, “Found Poetry,”

18. Epstein, “Found Poetry, “Uncreative Writing,” and the Art of Appropriation”, 314.

19. Broqua, À partir de rien, 90–92.

20. See the interview with De Martelaer (”Evelin Brosi: 34650 seconden/3968”).

21. https://www.ubu.com/sound/brosi.html

22. “je waart rond unheimlich archief van Vlaanderens zelfbeeld, een archief van het absurde” (Goethals, ‘Een archief van het absurde’)

23. “Schrijver bundelt 25 jaar “Thuis” in boek zonder één aflevering te zien: “Dat interesseert me allemaal niet”” Het Nieuwsblad, 26 December 2020.

24. Brosi, Thuis, 5.

25. See Phelan, “On First Lines,”.

26. In Meir Sternberg’s approach to narrativity, these are the three types of narrative interest emerging from a text’s organization of informational gaps (between what the audience, the narrator, and the characters know).

27. Brosi, Thuis, 277.

28. Brosi, Thuis, 349.

29. “Femke bekent alles aan Ann. Marianne heeft een besluit genomen. Peggy krijgt slecht nieuws van Ann. Franky zet Femke op haar plaats.” (Brosi, Thuis, 289)

30. In addition, it compresses tv productions over a period of 25 years.

31. “cette pratique littéraliste qui semblait rejeter l’originalité et vouloir se faire la plus ordinaire possible, se joue un renversement qui rend l’ordinaire étranger” (Broqua, À partir de rien, 91).

32. The author wishes to thank Vincent Broqua and Marco Caracciolo for their comments on an earlier version of this paper.

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Notes on contributors

Lars Bernaerts

Lars Bernaerts is an associate professor in the Department of Literary Studies at Ghent University in Belgium. His research and publications focus on modern Dutch fiction, narrative theory, neo-avant-garde literatures, and the literary radio play. Recent publications include co-edited volumes on audionarratology (with Jarmila Mildorf) and the radio play in Dutch (with Siebe Bluijs).