DOCSLIB.ORG

Sce Reports 6

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Sce Reports 6 SCE REPORTS 6 SUPPLEMENT: ANNOTATED CHECKLIST '"BEYOND INTERPRETATION*' SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS 6 Supplement SCE REPORTS is published by The Society for Critical ExchanDe, Inc., a not for profit corporation organized to FALL, 1979 promote cooperatnve inquiry in criticism. All rights for material published in SCE REPORTS are retained by the authors. Address inquiries to: Patricia H. Sosnoski, Managing Editor, 5384 Coulter Lane, Oxford,Ohio 45056 For information concerning SCE, write to: SC E 6273 19th Ave. NE Seattle, Washington 981 15 SCE gratefully acknowledges the ossistance of the English Departments of Miami University and The University of Washington in the preparation of this issue. SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS Richard A. Barney Hiami University -of Reading (Baltimore: John Hopkina Univ. Press, BEYOND INTERPRETATION: AN ANNOTATED CHECKLIST 19781, Chapter 1; and Morse Peckham, Explanation --and Power (New York: The Seabury Press, 1979), Jonathan Culler, in response to an inquiry Chapters 1 and 2. But a consideration of these for background articles which might elucidate his works would go beyond the scope of the present essay, "Beyond Interpretation," wrote that com- discussion. piling such a checklist ". .would be of no I have organized the checklist under five help. What I was arguing was that critics have ireadings: (I) Beyond Interpretation; (11) New assumed that their task was to interpret literary Critics on Interpretation; (111) Other Theories works. If there were numerous articles that ex- of Interpretation; (IV) Overviews; and (V) SCE plicitly argued that this was the task of criticism, Members on Interpretation. that would indicate that it wasn't an assumption I. Beyond Interpretation at all." I do not wish to quarrel with Professor Culler. Critics appear increasingly dissatisfied His point is well taken and I have used it as with the predominance of interpretation in a guide. It seems evident, nopetheless, that the practice of criticism. Whether their numerous critics have had their consciences arguments are "against" interpretation, or for pricked, so to speak, because of his and other going "beyond" it, many critics are calling for challenges to traditional critical assumptions-- a new focus for literary investigations. that many critics are rising to the occasion Jonathan Culler, in "Beyond Interpretation: by defending interpretation. With both these The Prospects of Contemporary Criticism,'' Compar- views in mind, I have made the goal of this -ativeserves Literature, that the Mew 28,Criticism, No. 3 (1976), with fts244-56, commitment ob- checklist first, to outline the nature of the assumptions about interpretation, second, to the autonomy of the literary text, has benefited to survey the responses of those critics who the teaching of literature, but he attacks its have attempted to defend interpretation, and "most important and insidious legacy," which third, to present a few of the arguments that is the "widespread and unquestioning acceptance view interpretation as secondary. My choice of of the notion that the critic's job is to inter- articles and books has been selective, but, pret literary works" (p. 246). Instead, he I hope, representative. maintains that "while the experience of literature The participants in this session have been may be an experience of interpreting works, in very helpful with suggestions for the checklist. fact the interpretation of individual works is However, I have not annotated references they only tangentially related to the understanding of supplied where they go beyond the purpose of literature. To engage in the study of literature this checklist. Eugene Goodheart cites Roland is not to produce yet another interpretation of Barthes' essay "What is Criticism?", 1963, in King Lear, but to advance one's understanding of Essais Critique, as formative for an "anti-inter- the conventions and operations of an institution, pretive" outlook. Barbara Herrnstein Smith's a mode of discourse" (p. 246). suggestions for understanding her use of the term Literary criticism should focus its attention "interpretation" include: Wolfang Iser, The Act on a number of unanswered problems: (1) the role SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS The type of literary study which structuralism of literature in society or social consciousness; helps one to envisage would not be primarily (2) its "historical relation to other forms of interpretation. Rather than a criticism discourse through which the world is organized"; which discovers or assigns meanings it would (3) a formulation of an "apposite account of the be a poetics which strives to define the role of literature in the psychological economies" conditions of meaning . .The study of lit- of writers and readers; (4) the effect of fictional erature, as opposed to the perusal or discourse; and (5) a "typology of discourse and discussion of individual works, would become a theory of the relations (both mimetic and non- an attmept to understand the conventions which mimetic) between literature and other modes of make literature possible (p. 128). discourse which make up the text of intersub- jective experience" (p. 247). Through an analysis of verbal behavior, Barbara Culler contends that three promising attempts Herrnstein Smith examines the nature of literature, to break away from New Criticism have failed to challenging Culler's structuralist assumptions. In "combat the notion of interpretation itself" her book On the Margins of Discourse: =Relation- (p. 247). Northrop Frye, in his Anatomy of ship of Literature s Language (Chicago: Univ. of Criticism, posits the need for a "'coherent and Chicago Press, 19781, she first makes a distinction comprehensive theory of literature'," but his between "natural" and "fictive" utterances. Natural proposals ultimately are only used as methods of utterances are verbal acts characterized as "occur- archetypal interpretation. The second attempt, ances" that are caused by, and in response to their psychoanalytic criticism, has also failed to historical contexts (p. 15); fictive utterances, resist the tendency to be used merely "as a however, are not historcally unique "events", but, method of interpretation for texts which contain governed by their linguistic structures, are special oddities" (p. 250). Stanley Fish, using representations of natural utterances (p. 24). Thus his "affective stylietics," focuses his study there are distinct interpretations. A listener on the act of reading, but then attempts to use interprets a natural utterance by inferring its this approach for a new way to interpret texts motivational, temporal, and spatial contexts. For (see Fish). interpretating literature, the reader must draw Critics such as Jameson, Hartman, Bloom, from the linguistic structure of the text, his and de Man, however, have thrown off the inter- "experiences of the world," and acquired,knowledge pretive bent to begin a "reinventing [of] literary about natural utterances (p. 36-37). The literary history," and "to produce a theory of literature work presents the opportunity for the reader to as a conceptual space" (p. 255). Interpretation, engage in "cognitive play" about its meanings; especially for de Man, is "in fact literary history, although he can "never 'finally' understand a and in this context it "is always necessary error," poem," he can return to consider its potential thus these critics move on to more profitable meanings (p. 124). areas of literary study. With these assumptions, Smith contends that A year earlier, in Structuralist Poetics the "ethics" of scholarly interpretation do not, (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1975), Culler as E.D. Hirsch maintains (see Hirsch), prescribe argued that that literary critics privilege the ferreting out SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS of authorial intention, but that they acknowledge Ihab Hassan also argues for a reassessment that their interpretations are inextricably tied of literary criticism's traditional views in to the critic's cultural setting (p. 151). Thus, "The Critic as Innovator: A Paracritical Strip both historicist "explications" and individual in X Frames," Chicago Review, 28, No. 3 "readings" contribute to "the pleasure and interest (Winter 1977) ,= -sent8 a provocative we take in our cognitive engagement" with literature case for the critic's role as both analyst and (pp. 152-53; see Hancher). artist. Using the ideas of Wilde, de Gourmont, and Turning to the use of linguistics in literary Sartre to enforce his stance, Hassan argues--as theory, Smith exmaines the work of "new stylists" do Fiedler and de Man--that the critic, in writing such as Donald Freeman and Stanley Fish, and his discourse, is both the perceiver of a lit- structural studies by Jonathan Culler and John erary work, and the creator of his own "artwork" Rutherford. A stylistic analysis, in studying (pp. 11-15). He, as innovator, should recognize "syntactic strategies," brings the reader into his "Freedom" to create in critical discourse consideration, but in fact it only "attaches a (see Hancher). This freedom must also be com- new piece of apparatus [reader response] onto the plemented with "an erotic sense of Style," a machine (here an illfitting. .*.Russian and Czech feeling for the artistic use of language that is Formalism)" (p. 160). A comprehensive theory free of jargon, and "an intuition of the New," the about readers and language is lacking. Although ability to look forward to innovation in criticism structuralist methods yield insightful conclusions (pp. 16-17). Hassan points out that art, in about
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Three Elegies for Susan Sontag
    Three Elegies for Susan Sontag 1. Art WHEN I WAS FINDING my voice as a writer in the thick of the sixties, Susan Sontag loomed large: she was among the relatively few literary intellectuals who were seriously trying to grapple with a new, rich, and, for many, disconcerting cultural situation. The title essay of her first collection, Against Interpretation, combined a formidable erudition about the avant-garde with a manifesto-like plea that critics end their one- sided emphasis on teasing out the meaning of art and embrace their pleasure in it. "What is important now," she wrote, "is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more . In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art." The arch- interpreters of the modernist canon, Marx and Freud, had in Sontag's view outlived their usefulness. Film, she declared, was "the most alive, the most exciting, the most important of all art forms right now" because its vivid immediacy discouraged interpretation. The reason, in part, was "the happy accident that films for such a long time were just movies; in other words, that they were supposed to be part of mass, as opposed to high, culture, and were left alone by most people with minds." Another essay in the same volume, "One Culture and the New Sensibility," argued that the distinction between high and low culture was breaking down and that the hallmark of the "new sensibility" was its orientation toward non-literary forms. "Sensations, feelings, the abstract forms and styles of sensibility": this was the stuff of contemporary art.
    [Show full text]
  • American Characters Reflected in Susan Sontag's Literary Writings
    American International Journal of Social Science Vol. 2 No. 7; October 2013 American Characters Reflected in Susan Sontag’s Literary Writings Song Shenli (宋沈黎) College of Foreign Languages, Zhejiang Gongshang University 1 Foreign Language College Zhejiang Gongshang University Xia Sha City-University-Town, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, 310018 China Abstract The influential yet controversial American writer and critic Susan Sontag, is reputable for her sharp insight and profound learning, Sontag’s writings cover a wide range of fields, including social criticism, literary creation, cultural studies, and political critiques. To further understand Sontag’s contributions to contemporary American literature and culture, this thesis is aimed at exploring the formation of her thematic consideration and the employment of artistic techniques so as to reveal the core values of Sontag’s creative writings. Key Words: American Characters; National identity; Utopia But there’s everything in Shakespeare. Exactly. As in America. America is meant to mean everything. — Susan Sontag, In America At the end of the twentieth century, Susan Sontag stands as a highly visible international figure for her established fame in the literary circle and the domain of social criticism. As an essayist, short story writer, novelist and a leading commentator on modern culture, Susan Sontag has produced many essays covering such diverse topics as camp, pornographic literature, fascist aesthetics, photography, AIDS, and revolution in the third world countries. Within the American literary circle, she was called “a literary pinup,” and “the dark lady of American Letters,” while she remains as one of 50 Great Living Americans in Marquis’s Who’s Who (1995). Ranking number 61 on Life’s list of “Women Who Shook the World,” (1995) Sontag has been named a Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters in Paris (1995) and has won a Macarthur “genius” award (1990) and the Montblanc de la Culture award (1994) for her humanitarian work in Sarajevo.
    [Show full text]
  • A Few Lies: Queer Theory and Our Method Melodramas David Kurnick
    A Few Lies: Queer Theory and Our Method Melodramas David Kurnick ELH, Volume 87, Number 2, Summer 2020, pp. 349-374 (Article) Published by Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/elh.2020.0011 For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/757342 [ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ] A FEW LIES: QUEER THEORY AND OUR METHOD MELODRAMAS BY DAVID KURNICK “We have been telling a few lies”: the words mark the end of what we could call the overture of Leo Bersani’s 1987 essay “Is the Rectum a Grave?”1 The lies Bersani is referring to are, in the first place, the dignifying fantasies gay male activists have spun about the necessarily liberatory consequences of same-sex attraction. Right-wing politics, he has just reminded us, consort quite nicely with some men’s “marked sexual preference for sailors and telephone linemen.”2 He is about to tear off into what for some of us, more than thirty years later, remains a famous rebuttal of Dennis Altman’s claims for the gay bathhouse as a space of Whitmanian democracy. Bersani begs to differ: “Your looks, muscles, hair distribution, size of cock, and shape of ass determined exactly how happy you were going to be during those few hours[.]”3 Such deflationary rhetoric is, of course, one of Bersani’s hallmarks. But he’s not alone in it. In fact, uncomfortable truth-telling constitutes a central tradition in what we have for a while been calling queer culture.
    [Show full text]
  • SUSAN .SONTAG ESSAYS of the 1960S & 70S
    SUB Hamburg A 2014/7453 SUSAN .SONTAG ESSAYS OF THE 1960s & 70s Against Interpretation Styles of Radical Will On Photography ' Illness as Metaphor Uncollected Essays David Rieff, editor Contents AGAINST INTERPRETATION AND OTHER ESSAYS (1966) I Against Interpretation, 10 On Style, 21 II The Artist as Exemplary Sufferer, 44 Simone Weil, 53 Camus' Notebooks, 56 Michel Leiris' Manhood, 64 The Anthropologist as Hero, 71 The Literary Criticism of Georg Lukacs, 83 Sartre's Saint Genet, 93 Nathalie Sarraute and the Novel, 99 in Ionesco, 112 Reflections on The Deputy, 120 The Death of Tragedy, 127 Going to Theater, etc., 135 Marat/Sade/Artaud, 157 - iv Spiritual Style in the Films of Robert Bresson, 170 Godard's Vivre Sa Vie, 187 The Imagination of Disaster, 199 Jack Smith's Flaming Creatures, 215 Resnais' Muriel, 220 A Note on Novels and Films, 229 v Piety Without Content, 234 Psychoanalysis and Norman O. Brown's Life Against Death, 241 Happenings: An Art of Radical Juxtaposition, 248 Notes on "Camp," 259 One Culture and the New Sensibility, 275 STYLES OF RADICAL WILL (1969) I The Aesthetics of Silence, 292 The Pornographic Imagination, 320 "Thinking Against Oneself ": Reflections on Cioran, 353 II Theatre and Film, 374 Bergman's Persona, 394 Godard, 414 Vlll CONTENTS ill What's Happening in America (1966), 452 Trip to Hanoi, 462 ON PHOTOGRAPHY (1977) In Plato's Cave, 529 America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly, 546 Melancholy Objects, 563 The Heroism of Vision, 587 Photographic Evangels, 608 The Image-World, 635 A Brief Anthology of Quotations, 656 ILLNESS AS METAPHOR (1978), 675 UNCOLLECTED ESSAY'S William Burroughs and the Novel, 733 The Double Standard of Aging, 745 The Third World of Women, 769 Francis Bacon: "About Being in Pain," 800 A Woman's Beauty: Put-Down or Power Source?, 803 Beauty: How Will It Change Next?, 806 • Chronology, 815 Note on the Texts, 825 Notes, 831 Index, 853 .
    [Show full text]
  • Against Interpretation: and Other Essays Free
    FREE AGAINST INTERPRETATION: AND OTHER ESSAYS PDF Susan Sontag | 336 pages | 25 Aug 2001 | St Martin's Press | 9780312280864 | English | New York, United States Against Interpretation - Wikipedia However, your assignment doesn't have to be a hair-pulling, frazzled all-nighter. In the middle, you'll find the meat. Your introduction is like the top bun announcing the subject, your supporting paragraphs are the beef in the middle, and your conclusion is the bottom bun, supporting everything. Who, after all, would eat a burger composed only of bread and beef? Each part needs to be present: A soggy or missing bun would cause your fingers to slip immediately into the beef without being able to hold and enjoy the burger. But if your burger had no beef in the middle, you'd be left with two dry pieces of bread. Your thesis statement could read: "Information technology has revolutionized the way we work. The final sentences of your introduction, then, would be a mini-outline of what your essay will cover. Don't use an outline form, but explain briefly all the key points you intend to discuss in narrative form. These would include well-researched and logical points that support your thesis. Bellevue explains that your supporting paragraphs should provide rich, vivid imagery, or Against Interpretation: And Other Essays and specific supporting details, depending on your topic. A Against Interpretation: And Other Essays supporting paragraph for the technology topic, discussed previously, could draw on current events. In its Jan. The younger, hipper, agency, by contrast, had Against Interpretation: And Other Essays with Facebook Inc.
    [Show full text]
  • Critique and Postcritique
    CRITIQUE AND POSTCRITIQUE ELIZABETH S. ANKER AND RITA FELSKI, editors CRITIQUE AND POSTCRITIQUE CRITIQUE AND POSTCRITIQUE ELIZABETH S. ANKER & RITA FELSKI, EDITORS duke university press Durham and London 2017 © 2017 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer i ca on acid- free paper ∞ Typeset in Minion Pro by Westchester Publishing Services Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Anker, Elizabeth S. (Elizabeth Susan), [date]— editor. | Felski, Rita, [date]— editor. Title: Critique and postcritique / Elizabeth S. Anker and Rita Felski, editors. Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifi ers: lccn 2016042487 (print) lccn 2016043715 (ebook) isbn 9780822363613 (hardcover : alk. paper) isbn 9780822363767 (pbk. : alk. paper) isbn 9780822373049 (e- book) Subjects: lcsh: Criticism. | Criticism— Methodology. | Hermeneutics. Classifi cation: lcc pn81 .c853 2017 (print) | lcc pn81 (ebook) | ddc 801/.95— dc23 lc rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2016042487 Cover art: Alma Th omas, Hydrangeas Spring Song, 1976. Acrylic on canvas. 198.1 × 121.9 cm. Courtesy of Charles Th omas Lewis and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Object Number 2002201. 125th Anniversary Acquisi- tion. Purchased with funds contributed by Mr. and Mrs. Julius Rosenwald II in honor of René and Sarah Carr d’Harnoncourt, Th e Judith Rothschild Foundation, and with other funds being raised in honor of the 125th Anniversary of the museum and in cele bration of African American art, 2002. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 Elizabeth S. Anker and Rita Felski PART I. COUNTERTRADITIONS OF CRITIQUE 1 “Nothing Is Hidden”: From Confusion to Clarity; or, Wittgenstein on Critique 31 Toril Moi 2 Th e Temptations: Donna Haraway, Feminist Objectivity, and the Prob lem of Critique 50 Heather Love 3 Th e Eighteenth- Century Origins of Critique 73 Simon During PART II.
    [Show full text]
  • Post-Theory and Beyond E-ISSN 2596-304X Pós-Teoria E Além
    artigos doi: https://doi.org/10.1590/2596-304x20212342lfv ISSN 0103-6963 Post-Theory and Beyond e-ISSN 2596-304X Pós-teoria e além Luiz Fernando Valente Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies. Department of Comparative Literature. Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA E-mail: [email protected] ABSTRACT This article surveys and assesses the eclectic trends in literary theory and criticism in the post- theory age with a focus on three rubrics: the cultural turn, the historic turn, and the affective turn. It concludes with a consideration of the current debate about symptomatic reading versus surface reading. KEYWORDS: cultural; historic; affective; symptomatic; surface. RESUMO Esse artigo faz um levantamento do eclético panorama da teoria e da crítica literárias na era da pós-teoria, avaliando-o a partir de três rubricas: a virada cultural, a virada histórica, e a virada afetiva. Conclui com uma reflexão sobre o debate atual entre leitura sintomática e leitura de superfície. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: cultural; histórico; afetivo; sintomático; superfície. editores: Regina Zilberman Gerson Roberto Neumann submetido: 29.09.2020 aceito: 22.10.2020 INTRODUCTION: THEORY AND POST THEORY headline in the October 13, 1993 edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education, a requisite publication for anyone concerned with the como citar: VALENTE, Luiz Fernando. professional debates in the North American academy, announced Post-Theory and Beyond. theA “beginning of the Age of Post-Theory” (WINKLER, 1993, n/p) after Rev. Bra. Lit. Comp., Porto a thirty-year dominance of what had become known as high theory. In Alegre, v. 23, n. 42, p. 21-37, jan./abr., 2021.
    [Show full text]
  • Review Article in the Archive of Longing: Susan Sontag's Critical Modernism
    Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, Vol. IX, No. 1, 2017 0975-2935 DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v9n1.35 Full Text: http://rupkatha.com/V9/n1/v9n135.pdf Review Article In the Archive of Longing: Susan Sontag’s Critical Modernism Mena Mitrano, In the Archive of Longing: Susan Sontag’s Critical Modernism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016), 214 Pages, £70.00, ISBN 978-1-4744-1434-0. Reviewed by Rajni Singh Associate Professor, Indian Institute of Technology (Indian School of Mines), Dhanbad, India. ORCID: 0000-0002-1569-8339. Email: [email protected] Mena Mitrano’s In the Archive of Longing: Susan Sontag’s Critical Modernism is an illuminating archival scrutiny of Sontag’s conflicting cravings for ‘knowledge and experience’. The book lays open the rich and diverse intellectual experiences of a young and aspiring writer who wished to transform literary criticism into a privileged space of reflection. Mitrano affirms that Sontag’s cry for ‘new’ brought her accolades (but only in the later part of her career) as well as condemnation. René Wellek paired her with Roland Barthes and rejected her for her appeal for a ‘new’ beginning by tagging her as a destroyer of criticism. As Mitrano shows, Sontag's archive “remains largely understudied” (2) the project presents ‘the Sontag’ who chose to be anti-philosopher or rather ‘non-traditional philosopher’. The archive of Sontag is examined under seven headings: ‘Thoughts about Thinking: Approaching Sontag’, ‘Aesthetic Experience and Critical Theory’, ‘The Public Intellectual’, ‘Modernism and Theory’, ‘Iconologies’, ‘Aura, Dread and the Amateur’, and ‘Interlocution’.
    [Show full text]
  • Edward Said, Marxism, and the Valences of Critique
    What’s Left? Marxism, Literature and Culture in the 21st Century How to Cite: Ryan, R C and Fitz Gerald, J 2018 Form at its Limits: Edward Said, Marxism, and the Valences of Critique. Open Library of Humanities, 4(2): 1, pp. 1–21, DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.241 Published: 20 July 2018 Peer Review: This article has been peer reviewed through the double-blind process of Open Library of Humanities, which is a journal published by the Open Library of Humanities. Copyright: © 2018 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Open Access: Open Library of Humanities is a peer-reviewed open access journal. Digital Preservation: The Open Library of Humanities and all its journals are digitally preserved in the CLOCKSS scholarly archive service. Robert Cashin Ryan and James Fitz Gerald, ‘Form at its Limits: Edward Said, Marxism, and the Valences of Critique’ (2018) 4(2): 1 Open Library of Humanities, DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.241 WHAT’S LEFT? MARXISM, LITERATURE AND CULTURE IN THE 21ST CENTURY Form at its Limits: Edward Said, Marxism, and the Valences of Critique Robert Cashin Ryan1 and James Fitz Gerald2 1 University of Illinois-Chicago, US 2 Binghamton University, US Corresponding author: Robert Cashin Ryan ([email protected]) In his 1936 essay ‘Narrate or Describe’, György Lukács writes: ‘when a writer attempts as an observer and describer to achieve a comprehensive description, he must either reject any principle of selection, undertake an inexhaustible labour of Sisyphus or simply emphasize the picturesque and superficial aspects best adapted to description’.
    [Show full text]
  • Illness As Metaphor Susan Sontag
    Illness as Metaphor Susan Sontag January 26, 1978 issue Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place. I want to describe not what it’s really like to emigrate to the kingdom of the ill and to live there, but the punitive or sentimental fantasies concocted about that situation; not real geography but stereotypes of national character. My subject is not physical illness itself but the uses of illness as a figure or metaphor. My point is that illness is not a metaphor, and that the most truthful way of regarding illness—and the healthiest way of being ill —is one most purified of, most resistant to, metaphoric thinking. Yet it is hardly possible to take up one’s residence in the kingdom of the ill unprejudiced by the lurid metaphors with which it has been landscaped. It is toward an elucidation of those metaphors, and a liberation from them, that I dedicate this inquiry. I Two diseases have been spectacularly, and similarly, encumbered by the trappings of metaphor: tuberculosis and cancer. The fantasies inspired by TB in the last century, by cancer now, are first of all responses to a disease thought to be intractable and capricious—that is, a disease not understood—in an era in which medicine’s central premise is that all diseases can be cured.
    [Show full text]
  • Performing Cancer: Toward an Aesthetic of the Unpresentable
    i PERFORMING CANCER: TOWARD AN AESTHETIC OF THE UNPRESENTABLE by Virginia Dakari A Dissertation Submitted to the Department of American Literature and Culture, School of English, Faculty of Philosophy, In fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece September 2016 ii PERFORMING CANCER: TOWARD AN AESTHETIC OF THE UNPRESENTABLE by Virginia Dakari Has been approved September 2016 Dissertation Committee: APPROVED Savas Patsalidis, Supervisor ____________________ Zoe Detsi-Diamanti, Co-Advisor ____________________ Domna Pastourmatzi, Co-Advisor ____________________ Department Chairperson: ACCEPTED Michalis Milapides ____________________ iii This dissertation is dedicated to my mother iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments.............................................................................................................. vi Abstract.............................................................................................................................. viii INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................. 1 PART I: THEORETICAL VIEWS ABOUT PAIN, ILLNESS, AND THE AESTHETICS OF THE UNPRESENTABLE IN PERFORMANCE CHAPTER 1 Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor: The story behind the essay and a critical fallacy............................................................ 40 CHAPTER 2 Theoretical and philosophical perspectives on the experience and expression of suffering..............................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • “Artistic Utopia”: Susan Sontag's Modern Interpretation of American Spirits Song Shenli
    Review of Arts and Humanities June 2014, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 31-48 ISSN: 2334-2927 (Print), 2334-2935 (Online) Copyright © The Author(s). 2014. All Rights Reserved. Published by American Research Institute for Policy Development Self Exile & Redemption in the “Artistic Utopia”: Susan Sontag’s Modern Interpretation of American Spirits Song Shenli (宋沈黎)1 Abstract As a highly visible international figure for her established fame in the literary and critic circle, Susan Sontag has produced many influential works covering a wide range of fields and diverse topics, including social criticism, literary creation, cultural studies, and political critiques. Based on the study of her major work In America, the author of this thesis attempts to examine the relationship between the artistic self- consciousness of creative writings and the innovative contextualization of the reality in order to situate her contributions within the conception of the intellectual life in the United States. Through an in-depth analysis of Sontag’s understanding of the modern American society as presented in her historical novels, the author tries to make investigations on such subjects as American spirits, American characters and the American Dreams, of which Sontag offers a new definition in her creative writings Keywords: American Spirit; national identity; American Dreams; Utopia In a world in which culture and particularly religion shape the allegiances, the alliances, and the antagonisms of people on every continent, Americans could again find their national identity and their national purposes in their culture and religion. — Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We The influential yet controversial American writer and critic Susan Sontag, whose writings cover a wide range of fields, including social criticism, literary creation, cultural studies, and political critiques, is reputable for her sharp insight and profound learning.
    [Show full text]