Organisation, Listening and the Aesthetics of Disposal

Abstract

Tristram Shandy deconstructs the conventions of the emerging modern novel almost as fast as its conventions were minted on the page by other 18th century writers. In consequence, readers of this early novel could not just consume the words on the page as they might do with a history but they required instead an aesthetics of disposal to help them to manage the endless digressions, the blanks in text, and the ambulation in chronology of this most disorganised of novels. In this paper listening to ruptures and fissures in the text is likened to the work of employees today, who similarly have to manage the inter-plays of convention and invention within the disorganisation of the contemporary corporation.