Toward a Nonhuman Narratology: Material Metaphors in Ann Pancake’s Strange as this Weather Has Been

Abstract

This paper examines the convergence of affect theory and cognitive narratology. I investigate the methodological potential of a cognitive narratology informed by affect as found in the (autonomous) intensities and resonances that circulate about and between bodies (Gregory J. Seigworth and Melissa Gregg). By adopting Brian Massumi’s configuration of affect (as asymbolic, autonomous and asubjective), I aim to explore how this conception can account for nonhuman (narrative) agents and open up space for alternative forms of environmental situatedness in cognitive narratology. Expanding upon the “4E” cognitive model, I trace the enmeshment of human and non-human agents within the metaphorical pattern of Ann Pancake’s 2007 novel Strange as This Weather Has Been. I undertake an analysis of multiple extra- and inter-textual vectors to show how these metaphors underscore a view of cognition as participating in a field of affective intensities and becomings and highlight its emergence as entangled in a world of material interdependencies.