Abstract
The aim of this article is to provide a critical reading of the stories in Samanta Schweblin's collection Seven Empty Houses (2015) from the perspective of the new materialism. The methodological tools of the study are two theoretical categories: Jane Bennett’s “vibrant matter” and Jolanta Brach-Czaina’s “everyday hustle and bustle”. Drawing on the above-mentioned concepts, the paper proposes an interpretation of Schweblin's stories in which, from a constellation of paradoxical scenes and images, emerges a coherent philosophical vision, one that corresponds to the presuppositions of the new materialism, which, while proposing an alternative epistemology, develops a conceptualisation of a series of ontological paradoxes, which the article will discuss.
Keywords:
new materialism; vibrant matter; Samanta Schweblin; ontological paradoxes