The transformative power of art

Abstract

[eng] This chapter examines the impact of the artistic encounters facilitated by Smith’s disruptive characters. The exploration is undertaken from a double perspective. First, the nature and extent of this impact are analysed considering the characters that experience them and their personal traumas. Then this impact is explored in relation to the extradiegetic issues the characters’ personal crises mirror. This leads to a discussion of the ethical and political dimensions of Smith’s literary project, which this chapter defines by evoking the concept of “elsewhere” that the author puts forward in Public Library. Smith’s fiction, therefore, emerges as a prime example of “artivism” through which the reader is compelled to approach reality not only intellectually but also affectively. The chapter investigates how Smith seeks to move the reader, providing an in-depth discussion of the role that the theme of the border plays in her fiction. What ultimately transpires is a strong faith in the re-sensitising power of literature and art in today’s fragmented, neoliberal, dramatically desensitised world, invariably showing the way to a symbiotic model of ecological co-existence eminently based on dialogue.