Joshua Toth

Focused on shifts in contemporary US culture and the ethics of self-reflexive (or metafictional) narratives, Dr. Toth’s research concerns the ethics of representing otherness, or that which is too complex to be expressed in common language. Dr. Toth’s research interests are motivated by a single question: How might we offer sincere accounts (of the self, of the past, of others) while fostering respect for that which necessarily escapes our understanding? Or rather: How can we share while sustaining communities of real difference? This question is especially salient today—when xenophobia is on the rise and scholarly indictments of relativism have revitalized critical and artistic interest in what is “true” and “sincere.” Recently, Dr. Toth has been approaching this question through a theory of “plasticity”—or the possibility of infinite mutability within a fixed horizon. By looking at the function of various autobiographical fictions (especially in film), he is working to develop a narrative ethics of “self-giving.” This new work is tied to two forthcoming edited collections, a planned monograph and an expansion of a SSHRC-funded database that aims to catalogue self-reflexive narrative works across diverse media. | American literature, film, metafiction, self-reflexivity, ethics, autobiography, Hegel, plasticity, race, gender, postmodernism, post-structuralism, new materialism, speculative realism

Joshua Toth is Professor at MacEwan University. Their stated interests include Focused on shifts in contemporary US culture and the ethics of self-reflexive (or metafictional) narratives, Dr. Toth’s research concerns the ethics of representing otherness, or that which is too complex to be expressed in common language. Dr. Toth’s research interests are motivated by a single question: How might we offer sincere accounts (of the self, of the past, of others) while fostering respect for that which necessarily escapes our understanding? Or rather: How can we share while sustaining communities of real difference? This question is especially salient today—when xenophobia is on the rise and scholarly indictments of relativism have revitalized critical and artistic interest in . This summary considered all 2 collected sources.