The Postmodern Condition: Inhumanity and Agnosticism in Barnes's Arthur and George (2005) and Nothing to Be Frightened of (200
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
MINSTRY OF HIGHER EDUCATION AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH UNIVERSITY OF ORAN-SENIA FACULTY OF LETTERS & LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT OF ANGLO-SAXON LANGUAGES Doctoral School of English: 2009 SECTION OF ENGLISH The Postmodern Condition: Inhumanity and Agnosticism in Barnes’s Arthur and George (2005) and Nothing to be Frightened of (2008) Submitted in partial fulfilment for the degree of Magister in British and Commonwealth Studies: British Literature by Nariman LARBI soutenue le 09/05/2013 Board of Examiners Chairwoman: Prof. R. YACINE, UNIVERSITY OF ORAN Supervisor : Prof. A.BAHOUS, UNIVERSITY OF MOSTAGANEM Examiner : Dr L. MOULFI, UNIVERSITY OF ORAN M.C.A. Examiner : Dr B. BELMEKKI, UNIVERSITY OF ORAN M.C.A. 2012-2013 To my Father, my Mother and Sister Y.L Abstract The focal point of this dissertation is to demonstrate the continuous demise of religion and Man’s hopeless sustainability of the belief in a divine state/purpose in the face of the post-modern reality. The purpose of this modest thesis is to prove that Julian Barnes’s anxiety in his admission of God and religion as a divine set of abstract foundation resides in the validity of the truthfulness, or even the authenticity of their nature and essence. The latter being the most doubted characteristic which brings about Man’s sceptical position concerning the transcendental. Hence it is the lack of evidence; earthly tangible evidence though, which renders the transcendental uncertain of its being. Postmodernism values the scientifically and empirically sustained truth, the latter being of an eminent foreground in a century which relies on materialistic evidence to forge judgement, knowledge, and sustainability for its legitimacy. This dissertation is created for a try to decipher these turns of belief and disbelief through the analysis of Barnes’s scepticism towards spirituality, yet construed within his research in the history as well as the historicity of the social and individual knowledge of the assumed sacred. Choosing Barnes as the representative figure of both the English and the Western Man in general who, because of their loss of belief in a deity or any transcendental being, has led to a state of an emotional and existential despair. However the resistance against the belief in religion and God is under the assumption that they are “fabulated”, i.e., created by Man, through established institutions, the evidence for which is hardly, if not at all, being proved. My approach is being parted into dilemmatic positions. By referring to Julian Barnes’ Arthur and George and Nothing to be Frightened of, (I give each of these a chapter for analysis in terms of narrative technique as well as thematic approach), I am to decipher both of inhumanity and agnosticism which veil upon the narratives, and thereby reflecting the outside social behaviour; responding reflection and approach to these matters. The other chapter deals with matters of religion and God in terms of their authentic and truthful state/ nature, as being of, or rather emanating from a reported or ‘narrated’ knowledge, the existence of which isn’t rationally sustained. Résumé Cette thèse cherche à démontrer ce que le postmodernisme cache derrière sa philosophie sur le plan thématique de la préoccupation de l'Homme contemporain. En se basant sur les 2 livres de Julian. P. Barnes – que je considère comme étant un des représentants du postmodernisme – cet écrivain Anglais est porté sur la crédibilité du transcendantale; le spirituel ainsi que la fiabilité des sources du savoir, ce dernier qui entre autre, celons Barnes, nous est délivré par le mode de narration. Ainsi, Barnes est aussi imprégné par les problématiques qui constituent l'identité en elle-même. L'Anglicisme, ayant été une identité et un état d'être porté sur le mysticisme qu'il est généralement difficile à cerner et à définir. J'essaie tout au long de cette thèse de mapper son historicité – tout en restant sur 'les normes' et conceptions de la position de J. Barnes – de la ramener sur sa réalité/authenticité. CONTENTS Dedication General Introductionp1 Chapter I : Barnes and Postmodernism I1 Barnes’s Life and Literary Work ............................................................... p7 I2 Barnes’s Postmodernist Novel (Arthur and George .................................. p22 Chapter II: II1 Postmodernism and Literature 1a Postmodern Historiography: -Historical Representation within Fictional Narrative ...................... p45 -The Interrelation of Historical Theory and Literar Technicalities: Postmodern Novel is being Historiographic .............................. p47 1b Postmodern Concern with Religion ................................................... p49 II2 Inhumanity and Agnosticism in Arthur and George (2005) Englishness and Inhumanity in Arthur and George ............................... p51 II3 Eschatology in Barnes’s Articulation of the Absence of Spirituality in English Society ............................................................ p70 Chapter III: Agnosticism in Nothing to be Frightened of (2008) III1 Agnosticism in Nothing to be Frightened of ............................................ p78 III 2 Postmodernism, Barnes and Religion .................................................... p99 General Conclusion ........................................................................................................... p115 Bibliography ..................................................................................................................... p124 Introduction Contemporary Western societies on the general board, and the English in particular have witnessed a liberal tendency of a soaring disinterest in the belief in a spiritual/theistic deity, as well as the disconsolation of religion’s coexistence with the ‘frenetic materialism’ from the advent of the previous modernist ideologies. The latter are implied in the strong belief in rationality, scientifically- based truths, and the hold on the Darwinian evolutionist theory to the detriment of the creationist and transcendental creation of the universe. Similarly, the belief in the fact that science is the way of explaining the universe taking it as the only source for tangible certainty is being doubted. Barnes quotes Emile Littré’s claim that “Man is a most unstable compound, and the Earth a decidedly inferior planet”1, a very speculative phrase of the state of the postmodernist Man in particular. This is found in the nature of the human being who expresses his/her existence in both an empirical, pragmatic sense as well as the need for that spiritual unscientific belief in a deity or both of the deity and the Holy Scriptures for another hidden satisfaction. Postmodernism expresses this twofold aspect of the self quite plainly. The congruency of the spiritual in conjunction with the tangible sides/ states of the self are the impetus of the postmodern contextual themes. The belief in God, the monotheistic religions, the display of which in the world is of serious- by which is heard/experienced for cruelty, rigidity, and the primary cause of the world’s wars and revolutions2. These doubts towards theism, and historical past are as much disclosed on the societal spectrum as on the literary narratives. Mythical versions of the setting of the universe is the claim held by atheism and agnosticism, which in their part neglect and rather pontificates upon the disconsolation of Man’s immortality and strong atheism. 1 Julian Barnes, Nothing to be Frightened of, 2008, p. 57. 2 Cf: Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006, 279- 288. 1 Matters of death and dying, religion’s credibility, the evidence of which isn’t disclosed tangibly in our hyper-modernist logicism, and the human’s inhumane – by which I ascribe here to racist – reflections are matters close to my heart, enclosing my constant wonderings and therefore form and make the impetus of this modest magister dissertation. Having read the majority, if not all of Barnes’ works which entails a content of existential matter as well as identity issues, I have tried to thin them down to Man’s belief in a religious schism and transcendental being despite their intrinsic beastliness witnessed through their inability of racist display towards the other. I therefore chose Arthur and George as a quintessential account of Barnes which uncovers, even denounce the long-held attitude of English racism towards the other. Nothing to be frightened of is related to themes of death, religion, God- question which are retrieved not only in Arthur and George but the majority of his works. Barnes’s concerns with death and dying starts to be of a relentless, regular theme he retrieves in the majority, if not all, of his woks. Indeed, in 2004, he published somehow a sequel, or response to his translation in a volume of short stories about the theme of ageing and approaching death, The Lemon Table (2004). In 2005, Arthur and George, a novel which infers Doyle’s spiritism and wonderings upon the existence of God, and eternal promised afterlife as one of many themes which could be withdrawn from this 505-pages fiction narrative. In 2008, Barnes broke his fictional tendency to a more personal, autobiographical memoir, Nothing to be Frightened of, in which he endeavours to disclose the nature and essence of his thanatophobia3, approaching death from a vast set of existential matters. Otherwise said, the scope here is being construed within the meaningfulness of life, the coexistence of God, and religion, with Man’s mortality as well as the demise of religion’s importance