A Derridean Theory of Textual Animality
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Of Zoogrammatology: A Derridean Theory of Textual Animality José Rodolfo da Silva Doctor of Philosophy in Critical and Cultural Theory School of English, Communication and Philosophy Cardiff University Cardiff, 2017 Declaration This work has not been submitted in substance for any other degree or award at this or any other university or place of learning, nor is being submitted concurrently in candidature for any degree or other award. Signed: José Rodolfo da Silva Date: 29 September 2017 Statement 1 This thesis is being submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD in Critical and Cultural Theory. Signed: José Rodolfo da Silva Date: 29 September 2017 Statement 2 This thesis is the result of my own independent work/investigation, except where otherwise stated, and the thesis has not been edited by a third party beyond what is permitted by Cardiff University’s Policy on the Use of Third Party Editors by Research Degree Students. Other sources are acknowledged by explicit references. The views expressed are my own. Signed: José Rodolfo da Silva Date: 29 September 2017 Summary Of Zoogrammatology: A Derridean Theory of Textual Animality This thesis aims to ‘apply’, as it were, some of Jacques Derrida’s conclusions regarding the age-old distinction between ideal and material to an understanding of animality and how it emerges in texts. I propose the paleonym “arche-animality” to understand the workings of animality in texts. In the field of Literary Animal Studies, some challenging questions concerning animals in texts seem to mirror Derrida’s topics in his early works. On the one hand, we can conceptualise animals as radically different from humans due to their embodiment, but, on the other hand, we can take them to be only differently embodied subjectivities, not unlike the human’s as it is thought to be housed in the body. Both positions are fraught with problems and are, in fact, entangled with the relationship between materiality and ideality. These challenging questions – especially concerning animal embodiment – must be approached with an eye towards paleonymy, the procedure by means of which Derrida was able to propose arche-writing as the origin of both vulgar writing and speech. To demonstrate the appropriateness of paleonymy, I uncover the arche-animal in different texts of different genres and varying degrees of ‘animal presence’: a ‘theoretical’ text (Sigmund Freud’s Totem and Taboo), a film (Darren Arofnosky’s Black Swan), a novel (Clarice Lispector’s The Apple in the Dark), and a poem (Ted Hughes’ ‘The Thought-Fox’). Acknowledgements This thesis is dedicated to my partner and husband Fernando Pabst, without whom it certainly wouldn’t exist. I thank him for the constant support, contribution, and love, from the very genesis of this research project, through his reading of each chapter, and to the proof-reading and editing in the final stages of giving it (to) the light. I am thankful to my supervisor Neil for his constant support, supervision, and dedication to my research and this thesis. I would like to thank the Brazilian government’s Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Ensino Superior (CAPES) for funding my doctoral studies. Table of Contents Introduction _____________________________________________________________________ 1 Chapter 1: Animal as Text _____________________________________________________ 25 Introduction __________________________________________________________________ 25 Animals that matter __________________________________________________________ 29 The materiality of language and the signifying body ________________________ 32 Rhetorics of the body ________________________________________________________ 36 Husserl and the bodies of linguistics ________________________________________ 54 The trace _____________________________________________________________________ 61 Chapter 2: Totem and Taboo __________________________________________________ 69 Introduction __________________________________________________________________ 69 Totem, taboo, and the primal crime _________________________________________ 73 Totemic writing and the materiality of/through language __________________ 89 Iterability, lions, and dogs ______________________ Error! 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Derrida’s Husserl, incarnation, and the two types of writing ______________112 A non-worldly body and a third type of writing ____________________________117 Nachträglichkeit ______________________________________________________________127 Arche-animality and the inscribed origin of the primal crime _____________133 Chapter 3: Black Swan _______________________________________________________ 139 Introduction: memories of a ballet goer ____________________________________139 Mirrored swans _____________________________________________________________145 Transcendanse _______________________________________________________________151 Ci-ferae _______________________________________________________________________170 Wolf tales ____________________________________________________________________174 A multiplicity of feathers ____________________________________________________179 Chapter 4: The Apple in the Dark ___________________________________________ 196 Introduction _________________________________________________________________196 Escuridade ____________________________________________________________________198 That dangerous supplement ________________________________________________205 Neoteny, or the internal cleavage of Nature _______________________________213 The double nature of Nature _______________________________________________221 The cow of all cows __________________________________________________________226 The light that therefore I give (to) __________________________________________235 I am given (myself?): donner le change _______________________________________241 The labour of self-creation __________________________________________________246 The stream-like transparency of writing ___________________________________248 Aping(,) the arche-animal ___________________________________________________257 Chapter 5: Hughes and Poetry ______________________________________________ 263 Introduction _________________________________________________________________263 The poetic function and its bodily form ____________________________________264 Mimologism _________________________________________________________________271 Poetic reformation and animal reality ______________________________________274 The formation of ‘form’ _____________________________________________________278 Mimological contradictions _________________________________________________284 The Derridean trace as a meditation on bodily form _______________________286 Hughes ______________________________________________________________________ 291 Pawprints and onomatopoeia ______________________________________________ 300 Three levels of poetic experience __________________________________________ 309 Shamanic zoopoetics _______________________________________________________ 316 The arche-animal in the forests of the night _______________________________ 323 Conclusion ____________________________________________________________________ 332 Bibliography __________________________________________________________________ 336 The alleged derivativeness of writing, however real and massive, was possible only on one condition: that the “original,” “natural,” etc. language had never existed, never been intact and untouched by writing, that it had itself always been a writing. An arche-writing whose necessity and new concept I wish to indicate and outline here; and which I continue to call writing only because it essentially communicates with the vulgar concept of writing. The latter could not have imposed itself historically except by the dissimulation of the arche-writing. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology Animal language—and animality in general—represents here the still living myth of fixity, of symbolic incapacity, of nonsupplementarity. If we consider the concept of animality not in its content of understanding or misunderstanding but in its specific function, we shall see that it must locate a moment of life which knows nothing of symbol, substitution, lack and supplementary addition, etc.— everything, in fact, whose appearance and play I wish to describe here. A life that has not yet broached the play of supplementarity and which at the same time has not yet let itself be violated by it: a life without différance and without articulation. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology Ecce animot. Neither a species nor a gender nor an individual. Jacques Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am 1 Introduction This thesis aims to challenge a common practice in Animal Studies scholarship regarding literary representation so as to theorise more fully the nexus between animality and the literary. This common practice consists of an extreme materialism in framing the ‘animal question’ with respect to (literary) language, to the exclusion of other frameworks. In short, materialism is portrayed as the only channel for a literary theory of animality insofar as ‘animals in literature’ are believed to be relevant (only) due to their supposed material embodiment. Kari Weil refers to this tendency as the ‘counter- linguistic turn’, in which animals’ supposed lack of language is refashioned as an asset reliant on their bodiliness: Although many current projects are intent on proving that certain animals do have language