Anderson, Miranda: From Literary Immersion to Fission-fusion Aesthetics

In Immersion: The Experience of Literary Reading. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. pp. 50-64. 2026In this chapter, Anderson draws on the notion of fission-fusion, originally from anthropology and ethology, and develops the concept in relation to literary reading and immersion. The term fission-fusion refers to the shifting capacity of all sorts of phenomena (including people, animals, and conceptual systems) to act autonomously or come together in an integrated group, as the situation dema