Assembly & Mrs Dalloway: Rewriting, Refusal, and Racialized Outsidership

What critical claim do readers make about the relationship between Assembly and Mrs Dalloway?

That Assembly can be read as a purposeful rewriting or critical reaction to Mrs Dalloway from a Black, contemporary perspective

What formal similarities support the comparison between Assembly and Mrs Dalloway?

Both novels are short, highly interior, temporally compressed, and structured around a culminating social event

Why is reading Assembly as a rewriting of Mrs Dalloway intuitively appealing?

Because the shared focus on consciousness, social performance, and a single day invites intertextual comparison

What methodological risk does the rewriting interpretation pose?

That Assembly may be reduced to a merely reactive or derivative text

What broader literary tradition is questioned through this comparison?

Modernist liberal humanism and its assumptions about universality, inclusion, and subjectivity

Which contemporary issues does Assembly bring into the comparison with Mrs Dalloway?

Race, neoliberalism, and forms of conditional inclusion

What is the lecture’s proposed approach to the rewriting thesis?

To weigh arguments for and against it and move toward a more productive synthesis rather than a reductive reading

What temporal structure do Mrs Dalloway and Assembly share?

Both unfold over a compressed time frame oriented toward a single social event

What social events structure Mrs Dalloway and Assembly respectively?

Mrs Dalloway centres on Clarissa’s party, while Assembly centres on a country estate wedding

How do the social events function narratively in both novels?

They serve as social culminations rather than traditional narrative climaxes

Where does meaning primarily emerge in both novels?

Through accumulation, juxtaposition, and reflection rather than through plot-driven action

Why does this shared structure make Assembly legible as a rewriting of Woolf’s novel?

Because it reoccupies Woolf’s modernist form in a contemporary context

How is interior monologue presented in Mrs Dalloway?

As fluid, associative, and shaped by memory, sensation, and social awareness

How does interior monologue function differently in Assembly?

As defensive labour marked by vigilance, calculation, and restraint

What does Assembly suggest about the cost of interiority under neoliberal and racialized conditions?

That interiority becomes a form of exhausting self-regulation rather than lyrical exploration

How is outsidership treated in Mrs Dalloway?

As psychological and gendered but ultimately survivable through social connection

How does Assembly reinterpret social ritual and belonging?

As mechanisms that quietly police difference and enforce conditional inclusion

What critique of modernist liberal humanism emerges from reading the two novels together?

That its faith in social cohesion depends on exclusions it fails to acknowledge

How does illness function in Mrs Dalloway?

Septimus’s death produces existential insight that affirms life and connection

How does illness function in Assembly?

Cancer produces no epiphany, redemption, or narrative resolution

What does Assembly’s treatment of illness reject in Woolf’s model?

The redemptive aesthetic structuring of suffering

What is the main risk of framing Assembly as a “Black Mrs Dalloway”?

It risks subordinating Brown’s novel to a white modernist lineage

Why can the rewriting label be politically problematic?

It can imply that contemporary Black fiction is derivative rather than formally autonomous

Which additional influences shape Assembly beyond modernism?

Financial discourse, bureaucratic language, and Black political critique

How does the style of Mrs Dalloway differ from Assembly?

Mrs Dalloway is lyrical, expansive, and polyphonic, while Assembly is compressed, austere, and tightly controlled

How do Woolf and Brown differ in their use of perspective?

Woolf multiplies perspectives, while Brown restricts the narrative to a single consciousness

What narrative effect does Woolf aim for compared to Brown?

Woolf seeks immersion, while Brown enforces distance

Why can the formal differences be read as refusal rather than adaptation?

Because Brown deliberately rejects Woolf’s methods instead of reworking them

How is Clarissa Dalloway positioned within her social order?

She is socially central even when inwardly estranged

How does the narrator of Assembly differ in social position?

She is structurally expendable despite her professional success

What kind of outsidership characterises Clarissa Dalloway?

Psychological and gendered outsidership that does not threaten her status

What kind of outsidership characterises the narrator of Assembly?

Systemic outsidership rooted in social and institutional structures

Why is the difference in outsidership more than racial variation?

Because it reflects a fundamentally different social logic

What intertextual feature is missing from Assembly?

Explicit allusions or acknowledgements of Woolf

How does Assembly differ from overt rewritings like Wide Sargasso Sea?

It does not announce itself as a response to an earlier text

Why does the comparison between Assembly and Mrs Dalloway remain critical rather than intertextual?

Because it is imposed by readers rather than signposted by the novel itself

What is the most defensible position on the relationship between Assembly and Mrs Dalloway?

A position between endorsement and rejection

Why is it limiting to treat Assembly simply as a rewriting of Mrs Dalloway?

Because it reduces Brown’s novel to a reactive or derivative text

What is a more productive way to frame Assembly’s relationship to Woolf’s novel?

As occupying and testing the formal space Woolf helped create

How can Assembly be described in relation to modernist form?

Assembly inhabits the modernist interior form

What does Assembly expose about the modernist interior form?

Its racial, economic, and institutional limits

Does Assembly directly respond to Woolf’s novel?

No, it demonstrates what Woolf’s model cannot sustain

Under which contemporary conditions does Woolf’s model break down according to this synthesis?

Neoliberal inclusion and racialized precarity

What does Brown’s novel show about modernist liberal humanism?

That it cannot fully accommodate contemporary structures of inequality

Why is the comparison between Assembly and Mrs Dalloway pedagogically valuable?

Because it helps students understand how similar forms produce different meanings across historical and social contexts

How does the comparison show changes in modernist interiority?

It shows how interior consciousness shifts under neoliberal pressure

What does the comparison reveal about race and private consciousness?

That race reshapes interiority into a site of vigilance rather than reflection

How do social rituals function differently in Assembly compared to Mrs Dalloway?

They become hollow performances rather than sources of social meaning

Why does Assembly feel colder and less consoling than Mrs Dalloway?

Because it refuses faith in social reconciliation

Does Assembly lack aesthetic ambition compared to Woolf’s novel?

No, its austerity is a deliberate critical choice

What belief central to Mrs Dalloway does Assembly reject?

The belief that social connection can reconcile difference

What is the most illuminating way to read Assembly alongside Mrs Dalloway?

By avoiding claims of direct rewriting and focusing on historical transformation

What does the comparison between Assembly and Mrs Dalloway primarily reveal?

How similar literary forms change meaning across different historical conditions

How are modernist forms shown to function differently in Assembly?

They register attrition, exhaustion, and managed vulnerability rather than hope

What kind of hope did modernist forms like Mrs Dalloway sustain?

Liberal humanist hope in belonging and social reconciliation

What has happened to those modernist promises of belonging in Assembly?

They no longer hold and are exposed as unsustainable

How should Assembly be understood in relation to Woolf’s novel?

As a diagnosis rather than a corrective

What does Assembly diagnose about contemporary society?

What remains when promises of belonging and inclusion collapse