Field of Force, Field of Access: Literary Presence and the Formalization of Non-Coincidence

This position paper develops the distinction between field of force and field of access as two dominant tendencies in the production of literary presence. It argues that literary presence is not what escapes mediation, but what mediation makes available without allowing it to be fully possessed. The paper defines perceptual misalignment as a formalized non-coincidence between an index of presence and the scene that makes it available. Through two limit-cases — Faulkner’s modernist syntax in Light in August and Homeric formulaic language — it shows how presence may be concentrated as syntactic and rhythmic pressure or distributed across formula, voice, body, performance, and scene. The argument builds on Auerbach’s account of Homeric exteriority rather than rejecting it, rereading exteriority as a non-sovereign organization of subjectivity and presence. The paper proposes a methodological framework for comparing modernist narrative and archaic Greek poetry without treating one as the precursor or repetition of the other. Its central claim is that presence is not a given but a production: it arises in the gap between what the text activates and what the scene can hold.