Your Skin Grows Cold from Your First Glimpse of the Enormous Beast...

Just finished reading Augie's Trial by Flower—which you should totally check out, if you haven't already—and it got me thinking about second-person narrative. Now, I don't know about any academic theories on the matter, but here's how I'd go about it:

You're a blank slate; an observer. The author makes no assumptions about how you feel or react. Of course, being a purely passive character, you can't be the protagonist. You're seeing someone else's story. And here we get into why the story's written this way—the protagonist is involved in events during the story which you cannot have immediate knowledge of. That may not be justification enough, so perhaps there are multiple protagonists

As an example, imagine you're Rough Tumble, viewing the lives of doctors, nurses and fellow patients from the confines of your cot. You witness some of the goings-on at the hospital—politics, affairs, visits, etc.— working with incomplete information to piece together the greater picture, like in a mystery novel