More than ‘ignorant bushbaby bullshit’

Abstract

According to the social psychologists R. D. Laing, H. Phillipson and A. R. Lee, we human beings are constantly speculating about the view that others have upon us, thereby forming a metaperspective (Laing et al. 1966). Yet despite the fact that literature is grounded in some of the most fundamental and general structures of human cognitive experience (Gavins and Steen 2003: 2), proving a rich seam to mine for metaperspectives, the concept has not yet been explored in a literary context. Accordingly, this paper adopts an interdisciplinary approach to investigate metaperspectives within fiction for the first time. Introduced is my coinage of the racialised metaperspective, denoting a sub-type concerned with colour, culture, and/or ethnicity. Taking as my literary case study Marlon James’ A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014), I demonstrate that the racialised metaperspective both contributes to the depiction of a specific social milieu within a text, and serves a characterising function.