Authorial control, multiple worlds, and the situationality of truth
The logic of fiction in Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds and John Banville’s The Singularities
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 16694842 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ian Tan (0000-0003-2268-2105, Nanyang Technological University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 1-16 |
| Publication date | 2026-04-14 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Irish Studies Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0967-0882 • E-ISSN: 1469-9303 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/09670882.2026.2657857 |
| OpenAlex | W7154212411 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 18 |
This essay reads Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds and John Banville’s The Singularities with the French philosopher Alain Badiou’s logic of multiple worlds and the attendant creation of immanent Truth in a world raised to maximal intensity. Badiou’s eschewing representational fidelity towards the forging of authentic possibilities in worlds within a fictional universe provides us with a useful way to consider the transgression of ontological framing in both novels, where characters crisscross multiple worlds and claim the truths of self-determination, narratological control, and the absolute validity of the phenomenological constitution of environment. At the same time, both novels raise the problem of an appeal to the transcendentalism they have putatively disavowed, demonstrating an inherent limitation to the Badiouian notion of an effective truth-procedure which synthesises actants and objects across worlds. I demonstrate how the Author-figure in both novels at once slips away and is hypostasised, creating and disavowing Truth in art.
Criticism · Irish · Style (visual arts · Contemporary Literature and Criticism · Flannery O'Connor and Thomas Merton · Irish and British Studies
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |