The Transfiguration of Normality: The Novels of the 1990s and 2000s

Abstract

This chapter’s aim is to dissect images of normality from the novels of the second analysed period, which covers the years from 1990 to 2010. While searching for similarities between the novels of that period in terms of their dominant vision of what is normality, it became clear that the main common feature is not the transgression of the solidity of normality, as it was in the first period, but rather the transfiguration of normality. The idea of transfiguration, as used by Danto (1981: v), refers to transfiguration of the commonplace into an artwork. He asserts that to see something as an artwork one has to know its history and have participated in the kinds of discussions that have been taking place. Danto illustrates his argument with a comparison of two indistinguishable objects: Andy Warhol’s Brillo Box sculpture and a pile of Brillo boxes in the supermarket. Showing that Warhol’s Brillo Box was a work of art, while its lookalike in the supermarket was merely a real thing, Danto (1981: vi) argues that these two objects have different causes. The purpose of the ordinary Brillo box is practical, while Warhol’s Brillo Box has its justification in its status as an artwork, seen as a product of the history and theory of art. Andy Warhol’s Brillo Box became possible as art only when the art world ‘was ready to receive it as one of its own’ (Danto 1981: vii).