Heterotopic Space in Selected Works of J. G. Ballard

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Heterotopic Space in Selected Works of J. G. Ballard 1 Heterotopic Space in Selected Works of J. G. Ballard Christopher James Duffy Submitted in accordance with the requirements for a degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of English November 2015 2 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. © 2015 The University of Leeds and Christopher James Duffy The right of Christopher James Duffy to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. 3 Acknowledgments Many thanks to Richard Brown for his invaluable advice and guidance, and to everyone who has supported me during the writing of this thesis. Dedicated to Miriam for her patience and understanding, and to Miles for making my life blessed. 4 Abstract J. G. Ballard’s writing confronts the potentiality of space within the contemporary landscape, articulating complex relationships between the external environment and the individual. In 1983, Ballard stated: ‘[…] the sort of architectural spaces we inhabit are enormously important -- they are powerful. If every member of the human race were to vanish, our successors from another planet could reconstitute the psychology of the people on this planet from its architecture.’1 Ballard’s texts are at all times bounded by a materiality which the reader is obliged to pay close attention to. This thesis takes a distinct approach to the spatial in the work of Ballard by concentrating on the external, physical environment and its psychological effects. It uses Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia as a theoretical underpinning to describe certain of Ballard’s spaces, a term richly generative for a number of reasons. Heterotopias are other spaces, off-centre with respect to the normal and everyday. They modify space in some way, drawing out latent possibilities. Ballard’s representations of space operate in a similar manner, from early short stories that contrast the quotidian with the fantastic, to investigations of postcivil society reconfiguring criminality in his final novels. This study approaches Ballard’s work in a chronological way, in order to reflect the way in which his heterotopic spaces map changing social conditions. This also enables consideration of Ballard’s developing textual spaces, and, following Foucault’s definition of disturbing literary heterotopias that destroy in advance syntax holding words and things together, Ballard’s unsettling of genre and traditional narrative structures will be examined along with the resistance of Ballard’s texts to easy categorisation and critical assimilation. Ultimately, in this thesis I argue that the spatial is a vital critical category for understanding Ballard’s work, conceiving him as an explorer of complex heterotopic space and writer of disruptive heterotopic literature. 1 V. Vale and Andrea Juno, eds., J. G. Ballard (San Francisco: RE/Search Publications, 1984), p. 44. 5 Table of Contents Abbreviations 6 Introduction 7 1 Two Heterotopic Spaces in ‘Prima Belladonna’ and ‘Escapement’ 31 2 Heterotopia and Post-Catastrophic Space in The Drowned World, The Drought, and The Crystal World 54 3 Heterotopia and Désoeuvrement in ‘The Terminal Beach’ and The Atrocity Exhibition 86 4 Heterotopia and ‘The Conquest of Space’ in Memories of the Space Age 116 5 Hidden Heterotopias in Crash and Concrete Island 138 6 Autobiography and Heterotopia: Reading Empire of the Sun with The Kindness of Women and Miracles of Life 168 7 Crime Fiction and Heterotopia in Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes 198 Conclusion 226 Bibliography 232 6 Abbreviations WFN -- The Wind From Nowhere DW -- The Drowned World D -- The Drought CW -- The Crystal World AE -- The Atrocity Exhibition C -- Crash CI -- Concrete Island VS -- Vermilion Sands ES -- Empire of the Sun MSA -- Memories of the Space Age KW -- The Kindness of Women UGM -- A Users Guide to the Millennium CN -- Cocaine Nights SC -- Super-Cannes CSS1 -- The Complete Short Stories: Volume 1 CSS2 -- The Complete Short Stories: Volume 2 ML -- Miracles of Life: An Autobiography 7 Introduction The work of J. G. Ballard confronts the spatial as a horizon of possibility within the contemporary environment, perceiving that space is not a neutral quantity and attempting to understand the processes that actively constitute different spaces inscribing certain kinds of reality. In Ballard’s fiction, structuring logics that encode behaviours and social relations regulate spatial possibilities. A central dynamic is the individual struggling to assert coherent alternative arrangements of things (physical and psychological), giving credence to the idea that characters shape their environment through imaginative investments that actively question the idea of reality encoded deep within the spatial. Ballard engages in a project of excavation and recovery in which alternative meanings of space are hidden in palimpsest environments making apparent the contingency of present circumstances and limits to totalising authoritative meaning, often forcing characters to pass through gaps and exclusions within the material landscape. This study reads space in Ballard as heterotopic, concentrating on his descriptions of physical environments and considering the way in which this aspect of Ballard’s work develops over the course of his career. In his lecture ‘Of Other Spaces’2 (‘Des Espaces Autres’) given to the Circle of Architectural Studies (Cercle d’ètudes architecturales) on 14 March 1967, Michel Foucault calls the present an ‘epoch of space’ defined in the following way: ‘We are in the epoch of simultaneity; we are in the epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch of the near and far, of the side-by-side, of the dispersed.’3 Anticipating a spatial turn within the humanities, Foucault no longer sees space as a fixed, taken-for-granted ontological category. Foucault’s epoch 2 Foucault’s lecture was first published by the French journal Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité in October 1984. It has been translated into English as both ‘Of Other Spaces’ (in the journal Diacritics in Spring 1986 translated by Jay Miskowiec) and ‘Different Spaces’ (in the collection Aesthetics: Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, Volume 2 translated by Robert Hurley). It appears as ‘Of Other Spaces’ in the recent 2008 translation by Michiel Dehaene and Lieven De Cauter in the collection Heterotopia and the City: Public Space in a Postcivil Society, which is the version referred to in this study. 3 Michel Foucault, ‘Of Other Spaces (1967)’, trans. by Michiel Dehaene and Lieven De Cauter, in Heterotopia and the City: Public Space in a Postcivil Society, ed. by Michiel Dehaene and Lieven De Cauter (London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 13-30 (p. 14). 8 is one in which different types of space, or ‘emplacements’ to use his particular term,4 can be juxtaposed next to each other, existing within the same continuum as separate but related to each other. In ‘Of Other Spaces’, Foucault also defines heterotopia, an extremely rich term that has continued to generate a number of different meanings since 1967. Heterotopias are alternative orderings, heterogeneous to the rest of normalised space all around them. Foucault makes an important distinction: unlike utopias that do not exist anywhere, heterotopias exist in the real world.5 Peter Johnson notes the concept of heterotopia problematises the utopic nowhere so that ‘heterotopia refers to varied spatial and temporal disruptions that imaginatively interrogate and undermine certain formulations of utopia’.6 Although heterotopias may spatially encode certain impulses towards a better life, this is always carried out in negotiation within the parameters of material existence, however messy and complex. Heterotopias are therefore defined by their relationship with the real spaces of the world. The concept helps stress physical materiality in Ballard’s work continually reasserting itself against the possibilities of utopic transcendence. Etymologically, heterotopia combines ‘hetero’ (another or different) and ‘topos’ (place). Originally, heterotopia is a medical term referring to a displaced but otherwise harmless tissue developing in an unusual or abnormal place. According to Heidi Sohn: ‘From the 1920s onwards, heterotopia increasingly appears in medical literature to describe phenomenon occurring in an unusual place, or to indicate “a spatial displacement of normal tissue”, but which does not influence the overall functioning and development of the organism.’7 Although Foucault does not refer to 4 ‘Emplacement’ means different things in French and English. As Dehaene and De Cauter note: ‘In Foucault’s text, emplacement should be considered a technical term, that is space or rather place in the era of the network as opposed to extension. The space of emplacement only exists as “discrete space”, an instance of one of the possible positions that exist within a set of positions […] On occasion, he uses the term in a non-technical sense to refer more generally to sites and places, but it is clear that he deliberately avoids the common words “place”, “lieu”, or “endroit” and thereby produces an effect of both emphasis and estrangement.’ (Foucault, ‘Of Other Spaces’, pp. 23-24) 5 Foucault, ‘Of Other Spaces’, p. 17. 6 Peter Johnson, ‘Unravelling Foucault’s “Different Spaces”’,
Recommended publications
  • Note to Users
    NOTE TO USERS Page(s) not included in the original manuscript are unavailable from the author or university. The manuscript was microfilmed as received 88-91 This reproduction is the best copy available. UMI INFORMATION TO USERS The most advanced technology has been used to photo­ graph and reproduce this manuscript from the microfilm master. UMI films the original text directly from the copy submitted. Thus, some dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from a computer printer. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyrighted material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are re­ produced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each oversize page is available as one exposure on a standard 35 mm slide or as a 17" x 23" black and white photographic print for an additional charge. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. 35 mm slides or 6" X 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. AccessinglUMI the World’s Information since 1938 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Mi 48106-1346 USA Order Number 8820263 Leigh Brackett: American science fiction writer—her life and work Carr, John Leonard, Ph.D.
    [Show full text]
  • Near Vermilion Sands: the Context and Date of Composition of an Abandoned Literary Draft by J. G. Ballard
    Near Vermilion Sands: The Context and Date of Composition of an Abandoned Literary Draft by J. G. Ballard Chris Beckett ‘We had entered an inflamed landscape’1 When Raine Channing – ‘sometime international model and epitome of eternal youthfulness’2 – wanders into ‘Topless in Gaza’, a bio-fabric boutique in Vermilion Sands, and remarks that ‘Nothing in Vermilion Sands ever changes’, she is uttering a general truth about the fantastic dystopian world that J. G. Ballard draws and re-draws in his collection of stories set in and around the tired, flamboyant desert resort, a resort where traumas flower and sonic sculptures run to seed.3 ‘It’s a good place to come back to,’4 she casually continues. But, like many of the female protagonists in these stories – each a femme fatale – she is a captive of her past: ‘She had come back to Lagoon West to make a beginning, and instead found that events repeated themselves.’5 Raine has murdered her ‘confidant and impresario, the brilliant couturier and designer of the first bio-fabric fashions, Gavin Kaiser’.6 Kaiser has been killed – with grim, pantomime karma – by a constricting gold lamé shirt of his own design: ‘Justice in a way, the tailor killed by his own cloth.’7 But Kaiser’s death has not resolved her trauma. Raine is a victim herself, a victim of serial plastic surgery, caught as a teenager in Kaiser’s doomed search for perpetual gamin youth: ‘he kept me at fifteen,’ she says, ‘but not because of the fashion-modelling. He wanted me for ever when I first loved him.’8 She hopes to find in Vermilion Sands, in its localized curvature of time and space, the parts of herself she has lost on a succession of operating tables.
    [Show full text]
  • Download (8Mb)
    A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick Permanent WRAP URL: http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/110900 Copyright and reuse: This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. For more information, please contact the WRAP Team at: wrap@warwick.ac.uk warwick.ac.uk/lib-publications THE BRITISH LIBRARY BRITISH THESIS SERVICE COPYRIGHT Reproduction of this thesis, other than as permitted under the United Kingdom Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under specific agreement with the copyright holder, is prohibited. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. REPRODUCTION QUALITY NOTICE Th e quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the original thesis. Whilst every effort has been made to ensure the highest quality of reproduction, some pages which contain small or poor printing may not reproduce well. Previously copyrighted material (journal articles, published texts etc.) is not reproduced. THIS THESIS HAS BEEN REPRODUCED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FLATLINE CONSTRUCTS: GOTHIC MATERIALISM AND CYBERNETIC THEORY-FICTION Mark Fisher Presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Philosophy University of Warwick July 1999 Numerous Originals in Colour Abstract FLATLINE CONSTRUCTS: GOTHIC MATERIALISM AND CYBERNETIC THEORY- FICTION Cyberpunk fiction has been called “the supreme literary expression, if not of postmodernism then of late capitalism itself.” (Jameson) This thesis aims to analyse and question this claim by rethinking cyberpunk Action, postmodernism and late capitalism in terms of three - interlocking - themes: cybernetics, the Gothic and fiction.
    [Show full text]
  • Arch : Northwestern University Institutional Repository
    NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY Myth and the Modern Problem: Mythic Thinking in Twentieth-Century Britain A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS for the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Field of History By Matthew Kane Sterenberg EVANSTON, ILLINOIS December 2007 2 © Copyright by Matthew Kane Sterenberg 2007 All Rights Reserved 3 ABSTRACT Myth and the Modern Problem: Mythic Thinking in Twentieth-Century Britain Matthew Sterenberg This dissertation, “Myth and the Modern Problem: Mythic Thinking in Twentieth- Century Britain,” argues that a widespread phenomenon best described as “mythic thinking” emerged in the early twentieth century as way for a variety of thinkers and key cultural groups to frame and articulate their anxieties about, and their responses to, modernity. As such, can be understood in part as a response to what W.H. Auden described as “the modern problem”: a vacuum of meaning caused by the absence of inherited presuppositions and metanarratives that imposed coherence on the flow of experience. At the same time, the dissertation contends that— paradoxically—mythic thinkers’ response to, and critique of, modernity was itself a modern project insofar as it took place within, and depended upon, fundamental institutions, features, and tenets of modernity. Mythic thinking was defined by the belief that myths—timeless rather than time-bound explanatory narratives dealing with ultimate questions—were indispensable frameworks for interpreting experience, and essential tools for coping with and criticizing modernity. Throughout the period 1900 to 1980, it took the form of works of literature, art, philosophy, and theology designed to show that ancient myths had revelatory power for modern life, and that modernity sometimes required creation of new mythic narratives.
    [Show full text]
  • JG Ballard's Reappraisal of Space
    Keyes: J.G. Ballard’s Reappraisal of Space 48 From a ‘metallized Elysium’ to the ‘wave of the future’: J.G. Ballard’s Reappraisal of Space Jarrad Keyes Independent Scholar _____________________________________ Abstract: This essay argues that the ‘concrete and steel’ trilogy marks a pivotal moment in Ballard’s intellectual development. From an earlier interest in cities, typically London, Crash ([1973] 1995b), Concrete Island (1974] 1995a) and High-Rise ([1975] 2005) represent a threshold in Ballard’s spatial representations, outlining a critique of London while pointing the way to a suburban reorientation characteristic of his later works. While this process becomes fully realised in later representations of Shepperton in The Unlimited Dream Company ([1979] 1981) and the concept of the ‘virtual city’ (Ballard 2001a), the trilogy makes a number of important preliminary observations. Crash illustrates the roles automobility and containerisation play in spatial change. Meanwhile, the topography of Concrete Island delineates a sense of economic and spatial transformation, illustrating the obsolescence of the age of mechanical reproduction and the urban form of the metropolis. Thereafter, the development project in High-Rise is linked to deindustrialisation and gentrification, while its neurological metaphors are key markers of spatial transformation. The essay concludes by considering how Concrete Island represents a pivotal text, as its location demonstrates. Built in the 1960s, the Westway links the suburban location of Crash to the West with the Central London setting of High-Rise. In other words, Concrete Island moves athwart the new economy associated with Central London and the suburban setting of Shepperton, the ‘wave of the future’ as envisaged in Ballard’s works.
    [Show full text]
  • JUDITH MERRIL-PDF-Sep23-07.Pdf (368.7Kb)
    JUDITH MERRIL: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY AND GUIDE Compiled by Elizabeth Cummins Department of English and Technical Communication University of Missouri-Rolla Rolla, MO 65409-0560 College Station, TX The Center for the Bibliography of Science Fiction and Fantasy December 2006 Table of Contents Preface Judith Merril Chronology A. Books B. Short Fiction C. Nonfiction D. Poetry E. Other Media F. Editorial Credits G. Secondary Sources About Elizabeth Cummins PREFACE Scope and Purpose This Judith Merril bibliography includes both primary and secondary works, arranged in categories that are suitable for her career and that are, generally, common to the other bibliographies in the Center for Bibliographic Studies in Science Fiction. Works by Merril include a variety of types and modes—pieces she wrote at Morris High School in the Bronx, newsletters and fanzines she edited; sports, westerns, and detective fiction and non-fiction published in pulp magazines up to 1950; science fiction stories, novellas, and novels; book reviews; critical essays; edited anthologies; and both audio and video recordings of her fiction and non-fiction. Works about Merill cover over six decades, beginning shortly after her first science fiction story appeared (1948) and continuing after her death (1997), and in several modes— biography, news, critical commentary, tribute, visual and audio records. This new online bibliography updates and expands the primary bibliography I published in 2001 (Elizabeth Cummins, “Bibliography of Works by Judith Merril,” Extrapolation, vol. 42, 2001). It also adds a secondary bibliography. However, the reasons for producing a research- based Merril bibliography have been the same for both publications. Published bibliographies of Merril’s work have been incomplete and often inaccurate.
    [Show full text]
  • And Concrete Island
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by York St John University Institutional Repository York St John University Beaumont, Alexander (2016) Ballard’s Island(s): White Heat, National Decline and Technology After Technicity Between ‘The Terminal Beach’ and Concrete Island. Literary geographies, 2 (1). pp. 96-113. Downloaded from: http://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/2087/ The version presented here may differ from the published version or version of record. If you intend to cite from the work you are advised to consult the publisher's version: http://literarygeographies.net/index.php/LitGeogs/article/view/39 Research at York St John (RaY) is an institutional repository. It supports the principles of open access by making the research outputs of the University available in digital form. Copyright of the items stored in RaY reside with the authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may access full text items free of charge, and may download a copy for private study or non-commercial research. For further reuse terms, see licence terms governing individual outputs. Institutional Repository Policy Statement RaY Research at the University of York St John For more information please contact RaY at ray@yorksj.ac.uk Beaumont: Ballard’s Island(s) 96 Ballard’s Island(s): White Heat, National Decline and Technology After Technicity Between ‘The Terminal Beach’ and Concrete Island Alexander Beaumont York St John University _____________________________________ Abstract: This essay argues that the early fiction of J.G. Ballard represents a complex commentary on the evolution of the UK’s technological imaginary which gives the lie to descriptions of the country as an anti-technological society.
    [Show full text]
  • Level 6-7 Two Years' Vacation
    Level 6-7 Two Years’ Vacation Workbook Teacher’s Guide and Answer Key Teacher’s Guide A. Summary 1. Book Summary Twelve boys were going to sail around New Zealand on a special summer trip. But their ship floated away from the harbor at night without any adults on board. It was carried by a storm to an island. The boys only had supplies for a short time, so they had to hunt and fish for food. They found that many years ago a Frenchman had been on the island and died there. Months later, they met a woman and a man, Kate and Evans, who had escaped from two criminals after their boat turned over at the island. The group tried to capture the criminals, but the men escaped and then fell into some old animal pits and were killed. Evans and the boys repaired the boat that Evans and Kate had come in, and they all set sail for South America. The boys had been on the island for two years. They soon met a ship that took them to New Zealand. 2. Chapter Summary ► Chapter 1 Twelve boys from Charman’s School in Auckland were going on a special summer trip around New Zealand, but their boat floated away from the harbor while they were sleeping, without any adults on it. Gordon was the first to realize the ship was moving, and he told the others. The sails were too heavy for the boys to put up, so they couldn’t control the ship. They went through a storm for almost two weeks before landing on a sandy beach.
    [Show full text]
  • "Resurrected from Its Own Sewers": Waste, Landscape and the Environment in JG Ballard's Climate Novels Set in Junky
    "Resurrected from its own sewers": Waste, landscape and the environment in JG Ballard's climate novels Set in junkyards, abandoned waysides and disaster zones, J.G. Ballard’s fiction assumes waste to be integral to the (material and symbolic) post-war landscape, and to reveal discomfiting truths about the ecological and social effects of mass production and consumption. Nowhere perhaps is this more evident than in his so- called climate novels, The Drowned World (1962), The Drought (1965), originally published as The Burning World, and The Crystal World (1966)—texts which Ballard himself described as “form[ing] a trilogy.” 1 In their forensic examination of the ecological effects of the Anthropocene era, these texts at least superficially fulfil the task environmental humanist Kate Rigby sees as paramount for eco-critics and writers of speculative fiction alike: that is, they tell the story of our volatile environment in ways that will productively inform our responses to it, and ultimately enable “new ways of being and dwelling” (147; 3). This article explores Ballard’s treatment of waste and material devastation in The Drowned World, The Drought, and The Crystal World, focussing specifically on their desistance from critiquing industrial modernity, and their exploitation, instead, of the narrative potential of its deleterious effects. I am especially interested in examining the relationship between the three novels, whose strikingly similar storylines approach ecological catastrophe from multiple angles. To this end, I refrain from discussing Ballard’s two other climate novels, The Wind from Nowhere (1962), which he himself dismissed outright as a “piece of hackwork” he wrote in the space of a day, and Hello America (1981), which departs from the 1960s texts in its thematic structure (Sellars and O’Hara, 88).
    [Show full text]
  • The Atrocity Exhibition
    The Atrocity Exhibition WITH AUTHOR'S ANNOTATIONS PUBLISHERS/EDITORS V. Vale and Andrea Juno BOOK DESIGN Andrea Juno PRODUCTION & PROOFREADING Elizabeth Amon, Laura Anders, Elizabeth Borowski, Curt Gardner, Mason Jones, Christine Sulewski CONSULTANT: Ken Werner Revised, expanded, annotated, illustrated edition. Copyright © 1990 by J. G. Ballard. Design and introduction copyright © 1990 by Re/Search Publications. Paperback: ISBN 0-940642-18-2 Limited edition of 300 autographed hardbacks: ISBN 0-940642-19-0 BOOKSTORE DISTRIBUTION: Consortium, 1045 Westgate Drive, Suite 90, Saint Paul, MN 55114-1065. TOLL FREE: 1-800-283-3572. TEL: 612-221-9035. FAX: 612-221-0124 NON-BOOKSTORE DISTRIBUTION: Last Gasp, 777 Florida Street, San Francisco, CA 94110. TEL: 415-824-6636. FAX: 415-824-1836 U.K. DISTRIBUTION: Airlift, 26 Eden Grove, London N7 8EL TEL: 071-607-5792. FAX: 071-607-6714 LETTERS, ORDERS & CATALOG REQUESTS TO: RE/SEARCH PUBLICATIONS SEND SASE 20ROMOLOST#B FOR SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94133 CATALOG PH (415) 362-1465 FAX (415) 362-0742 REQUESTS Printed in Hong Kong by Colorcraft Ltd. 10987654 Front Cover and all illustrations by Phoebe Gloeckner Back Cover and all photographs by Ana Barrado Endpapers: "Mucous and serous acini, sublingual gland" by Phoebe Gloeckner Phoebe Gloeckner (M.A. Biomedical Communication, Univ. Texas) is an award-winning medical illustrator whose work has been published internationally. She has also won awards for her independent films and comic art, and edited the most recent issue of Wimmin's Comix published by Last Gasp. Currently she resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. Ana Barrado is a photographer whose work has been exhibited in Italy, Mexico City, Japan the United States.
    [Show full text]
  • WSFA Journal 69
    . »x.'N ■ •*' p. l^-> = f/M'i/ilf'if'''-. ///" fiii: It I - . ■I»'• n, ll i.^/f f •] ! i W 'i j :i m y't ) ' ' / •* ' - t *> '.■; ■ *"<* '^ii>fi<lft'' f - ■ ■//> ■ vi '' • ll. F V -: ■ :- ^ ■ •- ■tiK;- - :f ii THE WSFA journal (The Official Organ of the Washington Science Fiction Association) Issue Number 69: October/November, 1969 The JOURNAL Staff — Editor & Publisher: Don Miller, 12315 Judson Rd., Wheaton, Maryland, .•U.S.A., 20906. ! Associate Editors: Alexis & Doll Gilliland, 2126 Pennsylvania Ave,, N.W., Washington, D.C., U.S.A., 20037. Cpntrib-uting Editors:- ,1 . " Art Editor — Alexis Gilliland. - 4- , . Bibliographer— Mark Owings. Book Reviewers — Alexis Gilliland,• David Haltierman, Ted Pauls. Convention Reporter — J.K. Klein. ' : . r: Fanzine Reviewer — Doll Golliland "T Flltfl-Reviewer — Richard Delap. ' " 5 P^orzine Reviewer — Banks.Mebane. Pulps — Bob Jones. Other Media Ivor Rogers. ^ Consultants: Archaeology— Phyllis Berg. ' Medicine — Bob Rozman. Astronomy — Joe Haldeman. Mythology — Thomas Burnett Biology — Jay Haldeman. Swann, David Halterman. Chemistry — Alexis Gilliland. Physics — Bob Vardeman. Computer Science — Nick Sizemore. Psychology -- Kim West on. Electronics — Beresford .Smith. Mathematics — Ron Bounds, Steve Lewis. Translators: . French .— Steve Lewis, Gay Haldeman. Russian — Nick Sizemore, German -- Nick Sizemore. Danish ~ Gay. Haldeman, Italian ~ OPEN. Joe Oliver. Japanese. — OPEN. Swedish" -- OBBN. Overseas Agents: Australia — Michael O'Brien, 158 Liverpool St., Holaart, Tasmania, Australia, 7000. • South Africa — A.B. Ackerman, P^O.Box 6, Daggafontein, .Transvaal, South Africa, . ^ United Kingdom — Peter Singleton, 60ljU, Blodc h, Broadiiioor Hospital, Crowthome, Berks, RGll 7EG, United Kingdom. Needed for France, Germany, Italy, Scandinavia, Spain, S.America, NOTE; Where address are not listed above, send material ^Editor, Published bi-monthly.
    [Show full text]
  • Contents PROOF
    PROOF Contents Acknowledgements vii Notes on Contributors viii Introduction 1 Jeannette Baxter and Rowland Wymer Part I ‘Fictions of Every Kind’: Form and Narrative 1 Ballard’s Story of O: ‘The Voices of Time’ and the Quest for (Non)Identity 19 Rowland Wymer 2 Ballard/Atrocity/Conner/Exhibition/Assemblage 35 Roger Luckhurst 3 Uncanny Forms: Reading Ballard’s ‘Non-Fiction’ 50 Jeannette Baxter Part II ‘The Angle Between Two Walls’: Sex, Geometry and the Body 4 Pornographic Geometries: The Spectacle as Pathology and as Therapy in The Atrocity Exhibition 71 Jen Hui Bon Hoa 5 Disaffection and Abjection in J. G. Ballard’s The Atrocity Exhibition and Crash 88 Emma Whiting 6 Reading Posture and Gesture in Ballard’s Novels 105 Dan O’Hara Part III ‘Babylon Revisited’: Ballard’s Londons 7 The Texture of Modernity in J. G. Ballard’s Crash, Concrete Island and High-Rise 123 Sebastian Groes v September 30, 2011 17:22 MAC/BAXI Page-v 9780230_278127_01_prex PROOF vi Contents 8 J. G. Ballard and William Blake: Historicizing the Reprobate Imagination 142 Alistair Cormack 9 Late Ballard 160 David James Part IV ‘The Personal is Political’: Psychology and Sociopathology 10 Empires of the Mind: Autobiography and Anti-imperialism in the Work of J. G. Ballard 179 David Ian Paddy 11 ‘Going mad is their only way of staying sane’: Norbert Elias and the Civilized Violence of J. G. Ballard 198 J. Carter Wood 12 The Madness of Crowds: Ballard’s Experimental Communities 215 Jake Huntley 13 ‘Zones of Transition’: Micronationalism in the Work of J. G.
    [Show full text]