NARRATIVES of NOTHING in TWENTIETH-CENTURY LITERATURE by MEGHAN CHRISTINE VICKS B.A., Middlebury College, 2003 M.A., University of Colorado, 2007

NARRATIVES OF NOTHING IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY LITERATURE by MEGHAN CHRISTINE VICKS B.A., Middlebury College, 2003 M.A., University of Colorado, 2007 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Comparative Literature 2011 This thesis entitled: Narratives of Nothing in Twentieth-Century Literature written by Meghan Christine Vicks has been approved for the Department of Comparative Literature _________________________________________________ Mark Leiderman _________________________________________________ Jeremy Green _________________________________________________ Rimgaila Salys _________________________________________________ Davide Stimilli _________________________________________________ Eric White November 11, 2011 The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards of scholarly work in the above mentioned disciple. iii Vicks, Meghan Christine (Ph.D., Comparative Literature) Narratives of Nothing in Twentieth-Century Literature Thesis directed by Associate Professor Mark Leiderman (Lipovetsky) This study begins with the observation that much of twentieth-century art, literature, and philosophy exhibits a concern with nothing itself. Both Martin Heidegger and Jean Paul Sartre, for example, perceive that nothing is part-and-parcel of (man’s) being. The present study adopts a similar position concerning nothing and its essential relationship to being, but adds a third element: that of writing narrative. This relationship between nothing and narrative is, I argue, established in the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, Mikhail Bakhtin, Jacques Derrida, and Julia Kristeva. As Heidegger and Sartre position nothing as essential to the creation of being, so Nietzsche, Bakhtin, Derrida, and Kristeva figure nothing as essential to the production of narrative. The parallels between their theories regarding nothing and being, and nothing and narrative, are particularly telling, especially as the twentieth century deconstructs our notions of reality and fiction, rendering these increasingly indistinguishable from one another. This thesis regarding nothing’s relationship to narrative is further developed through analysis of the literary works of Nikolai Gogol, Herman Melville, Vladimir Nabokov, Samuel Beckett, and Victor Pelevin. These authors compose literature that not only gives narrative form to nothing itself (narratives about nothing), but that also envisions nothing as a generator of narrative (narratives of nothing). My phrase narratives of nothing indicates the symbiotic relationship between nothing and writing, wherein nothing resides at the forever-deferring center of a semiotic system that produces writing, narrative fiction, and thus “reality” as we know it. In each of the texts I have selected, there is a clear relationship established between (1) the act of iv writing, producing narrative and/or meaning, and (2) nothing or one of its many signifiers (e.g. void, cipher, zero, etc.). My analysis ultimately refigures the transcendental signified as nothing itself. Nothing as the transcendental signified is therefore the ever-deferring generator of a system of signifiers that perpetually recreate their own original transcendental signified. Because of this, nothing as the transcendental signified is an infinite nothing that constantly transforms depending on its own signifiers’ significations. v Acknowledgments First and foremost, I am especially grateful to my dissertation advisor Mark Lipovetsky, who has worked closely with me throughout my entire graduate student career; Mark’s generosity, intelligence, advice, and friendship have shaped my scholarly pursuits in countless ways. Many thanks to Rimgaila Salys for her sharp wit, warm encouragement, and sound advice – and for her prompt edits on many early drafts. My sincere gratitude to Jeremy Green, Davide Stimilli, and Eric White for their invaluable participation in this project, and their thoughtful suggestions that have greatly improved my work and thinking about this subject. Many heartfelt thanks to Alyssa Pelish, Katina Rogers, Andrey Tolstoy, and Math Trafton for their thoughtful edits, suggestions, and compliments. I am immeasurably grateful to my parents and siblings for their unwavering support and love. And finally, a very special thanks to Eddie McCaffray for his countless edits, insightful conversations, and loving encouragement throughout this project. vi CONTENTS Chapter Zero: Introduction I. “…You ain’t heard nothin’ yet.”……………………………………………………………1 II. Narratives of Nothing……………………………………………………………………...17 Chapter One: Theorizing Nothing I. Mathematical Foundations: Zero………………………………………………………..…22 II. Theoretical Foundations: Nothing’s Relationship to Being Heidegger and Sartre……………………………………………………………….………33 III. Theoretical Foundations: Nothing’s Relationship to Narrative Nietzsche, Derrida, Bakhtin, and Kristeva…………………………………………………42 Chapter Two: Prototypes: Akaky Akakievich and Bartleby as Nothings that Write Narrative.………………..55 Chapter Three: Cradling the Abyss: Vladimir Nabokov and the Semiotics of Nothing I. “A Voluptuous Pause”……………………………………………………………………..71 II. The Critical Tradition…..……………………………………………….…………………73 III. Tracing Nothing Throughout Nabokov’s Narratives………………………………………80 IV. The Real Life of Sebastian Knight: Nothing as the Real.........…………………………….89 V. “Signs and Symbols”: Patterning and Nothing…………………………………………….99 VI. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….….110 Chapter Four: Samuel Beckett: Writing Immanent Nothingness I. Nothing happens, more than twice………………………………………………………..112 II. Aesthetics of Lessness……..……………………………………………………………..114 vii III. Immanent Nothingness…………………………………………………………………...116 IV. Critical Approaches to Nothingness in Beckett’s Writings………………………………123 V. Molloy: Re-Questing Immanent Nothingness…………………………………………….129 VI. Conclusion: Aesthetics of Immanent Nothingness……………………………………….147 Chapter Five: Writing the Void and Voided Writing in the Works of Victor Pelevin I. Post-Soviet Russian Literature, Déjà vu Postmodernism, and Zero-Point Literature……154 II. Nihilistic, Unproductive Nothingness in Generation “P”……………………………….162 III. Bifurcated Realities and the Sacred, Productive Void: Chapaev and Voyd and The Sacred Book of the Werewolf……………………….………183 IV. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………..206 Conclusion: Nothing as the Transcendental Signified……………………………………………………….209 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………...…….217 1 Chapter Zero Introduction I. “… You ain’t heard nothin’ yet.”1 What is it about the human condition that even allows us to conceive of and question nothing itself, and to generate various signifiers of nothing, such as zero? For when one thinks about it, nothing, (as trite as it sounds), quite simply does not exist. What about destruction? – one may ask. Two jet planes crashing into the Twin Towers, causing their collapse: no more towers, no more jet planes, just Ground Zero left in the wake of the attack. Isn’t that nothing? Don’t we say, “There’s nothing left”? Aren’t we now honoring that space with the National September 11 Memorial, formally known as Reflecting Absence?2 We may say, “There’s nothing left,” but this does not seem accurate upon further examination: the material is all still there, but in another form. Were it not for human consciousness imagining, expecting, remembering the towers and finding them absent, there would be no appearance of nothing, only the appearance of something else (and even this “something else” is up for debate, also likely dependent upon human consciousness). There is being before the jet planes hit the towers, and there is being afterwards. There is no nothing. Additionally, the problem is made even more complex when we acknowledge that there is a significant difference between nothing and absence, even though these are oftentimes used as synonyms in common parlance, and certainly shade into one another through their similar 1 Al Jolson, The Jazz Singer (1927); first words spoken in the first widely-seen talking film. 2 In the words of the architects Michael Arad and Peter Walker, “This memorial proposes a space that resonates with the feelings of loss and absence that were generated by the destruction of the World Trade Center and the taking of thousands of lives on September 11, 2001 and February 26, 1993. It is located in a field of trees that is interrupted by two large voids containing recessed pools. The pools and the ramps that surround them encompass the footprints of the twin towers. A cascade of water that describes the perimeter of each square feeds the pools with a continuous stream. They are large voids, open and visible reminders of the absence” (emphasis mine). 2 characteristics. Unlike nothing, absence traditionally figures in opposition to presence, carries with it the expectation of a presence, or is distinguished by a presence that has been lost or no longer exists. As such, absence is intimately related to negation or negativity; it is the negation of a presence that produces emptiness. In The Theory of Absence (1995), Patrick Fuery explores in depth the “relational schema” between absence and presence, which “[leads] to the conceptual figuring of absence and absences only because there is a presence, or a register of presence, to begin with. Absence is seen to be derived from a state of presence,

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