chapter nine
The invert, the cross-
dresser ,the fictocritic
In Chapter 2 we saw that genre was a moveable feast; this chapter focuses
on ways of challenging literary genres more radically. Genre divides liter-
ary texts into categories such as poem, play or story, but an experimental
approach often breaks down this categorisation. We will look here at four
types of writing which transgress generic norms. They are the synoptic
novel, discontinuous prose, mixed genre writing, and fictocriticism: a
hybrid of creative and critical writing.
The title of the chapter alludes metaphorically to transformed and
transgressive sexual identities. The invert (at least in psychiatric dis-
course) assumes the identity of the opposite sex, and the cross-dresser
enjoys dressing up in the clothes of, and identifying with, the opposite
sex. This analogy is appropriate because much postmodern writing mis-
chievously subverts generic identities. It turns them upside down (inverts
them) as in the synoptic novel and discontinuous prose, or mixes (cross-
dresses) them as in mixed-genre writing and fictocriticism. But the title
also suggests how bending and blending genres may have desirable and
provocative cultural consequences. It can be a way to explore, formally as
well as thematically, nonconformist modes of behaviour and alternative
identities. When we subvert genre we splice what we regard as whole; mix
things that don’t match; and turn hierarchies upside down. This process
may give us new ways to think about sexual or racial identity, power or
disability.
Genre itself has a strong historical dimension. Genres have transformed
over the centuries, and their forms and content have been shaped by, or
developed in resistance to, historical pressures. Popular fiction has also
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