Transgressive fiction is a
genre of
literature that focuses on characters who feel confined by the norms and expectations of society and who break free of those confines in unusual or illicit ways. Because they are rebelling against the basic norms of society,
protagonists of transgressive fiction may seem
mentally ill,
anti-social, or
nihilistic. The genre deals extensively with
taboo subject matters such as
drugs,
sexual activity,
violence,
incest,
pedophilia, and
crime. The genre of "transgressive fiction" was defined by
Los Angeles Times literary critic
Michael Silverblatt.
Michel Foucault's 1963 essay "A Preface to Transgression" also provides an important methodological origin for the concept of transgression in literature. The essay uses
Story of the Eye by
Georges Bataille as an example of transgressive fiction. Rene Chun, a journalist for
The New York Times, described transgressive fiction thus:
- A literary genre that graphically explores such topics as incest and other aberrant sexual practices, mutilation, the sprouting of sexual organs in various places on the human body, urban violence and violence against women, drug use, and highly dysfunctional family relationships, and that is based on the premise that knowledge is to be found at the edge of experience and that the body is the site for gaining knowledge.