Literary Montage in the Writings of Jonathan Safran Foer, Aleksandar Hemon and W

PHOTOGRAPHY AND TRAUMA IN PHOTO-FICTION: LITERARY MONTAGE IN THE WRITINGS OF JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER, ALEKSANDAR HEMON AND W. G. SEBALD By Romi Mikulinsky A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Ph.D Graduate Department of English University of Toronto © Copyright by Romi Mikulinsky (2009) Library and Archives Bibliothèque et Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de l’édition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre référence ISBN: 978-0-494-67754-4 Our file Notre référence ISBN: 978-0-494-67754-4 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non- L’auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant à la Bibliothèque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par télécommunication ou par l’Internet, prêter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des thèses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, à des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non- support microforme, papier, électronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. 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Photography and Trauma in Photo-Fiction: Literary Montage in the Writings of Jonathan Safran Foer, Aleksandar Hemon and W. G. Sebald Romi Mikulinsky Doctor of Philosophy Department of English University of Toronto 2009 ABSTRACT Located on the interstice between Media Studies and Literary Theory, my dissertation explores the emerging genre of photo-fiction -- literary works that incorporate photographic images into the manuscripts -- and its impact on the commemoration of traumatic historical events. I argue that the way we represent and remember historical traumas is dependent on the media in which images emanating from these events are produced and circulated; put differently, the context of these images shapes our engagement with them. By examining literary works that incorporate photographs into their printed text, I explore textual and visual representations of historical trauma (such as the two World Wars, the Balkan wars of the Nineties, and 9/11). The authors whose works I analyze (Jonathan Safran Foer, Aleksandar Hemon, W.G. Sebald) grant photography a new status: the inserted images transcend traditional “authentification strategies” and draw attention to the convergence of realism and indexicality featured by these photographs. These authors’ employment of photographs from various media (television, internet, printed press, encyclopedias and archives) questions not only the technical qualities of each medium but the veracity and accuracy of evidence. Photography’s capacity to secure and store information is put radically into ii question, not only because the new contexts of these images, but because of the manipulations and reconfigurations the movement between media has brought about. Drawing on Walter Benjamin’s concept of the literary montage, I suggest that literature provides an apt arena to examine the reception to images. By literary montage I mean the opening up of a new dimension in which visual and verbal elements are juxtaposed, and the disjunctions and gaps between them encourage readers to become active participants in the creation of narrative. Photo-fiction’s interplay between images and texts therefore not only sheds light on the mechanics of representation, but demand from its audience to reflect on the way we interpret and respond to historical traumas in a society saturated with images. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Writing a dissertation is a demanding process, and often an alienating one, I wish to thank all the people who accompanied me in this journey and made this process less isolating. I am forever indebted to my supervisor Linda Hutcheon for her generosity, wisdom and kindness. Our conversations and meeting were not only a source of inspiration and a much needed guidance but made the writing process less daunting, reminding me that writing is forever creative and exciting. Thanks to my committee members, Rebecca Comay, Louis Kaplan and Garry Leonard, for their insights and enthusiasm. I had the privilege of being their student and to later enjoy such thoughtful and brilliant group of scholars reading my work. I owe a large debt of thanks to my professors from both the University of Toronto and Tel Aviv University: Sara Jane Finlay, Elizabeth Harvey, Julian Patrick, Zfira Porat, Shirley Sharon-Zisser, Paul Stevens, and Tzachi Zamir for pulling me into the project and encouraging me to pursue my academic interests. My family and friends have also contributed to the successful completion of the dissertation. A huge thank you is sent to Gillian Northgrave who turned Canada into a brighter, warmer place for me even when the temperatures were way below zero. I wish to thank my classmates for providing welcome and an engaging side of Toronto: Dale Barleben, Prasad Bidaye, Amelia DeFalco, Ann Lanpher, Alysia Kolentsis, Cynthia Quarrie and Stephen Yeager. Their friendship sustained me over six years in Grad school, and I wish to thank them for their challenging questions as well as for their good humour that enabled me to occasionally “de-traumatize.” A special thanks to my brave friend and iv devoted reader Irmgard Emmelhainz for being there from the early stages of this project and for her imagination, curiosity and academic integrity. Extended thanks to Leah Abir and Ishay Mandil who nourished me with their love and care, eased my anxieties and balanced me when I was being overdramatic. I wish to thank to my parents and brothers for their patience, belief in me and endless support. Lastly, I wish to thank my one and only sister, for listening patiently, reading carefully and keeping me on track. Studying together at the University of Toronto was another path in our travelling sisterhood, I acknowledge her with love and immense gratitude. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ii Acknowledgements iv Table of Contents vi List of Appendices vii Introduction 8 Chapter I: Sebald’s Literary Montages 25 Chapter II: Aleksandar Hemon’s History at a Glance: Between Mediation and Witnessing 81 Chapter III: Jonathan Safran Foer: The Roles of Visuality and Legibility in Mourning and Recovery 142 Conclusion 189 Appendices 197 Works Consulted 205 vi LIST OF APPENDICES 1) The Hospital window, Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn 196 2) The Labyrinth, Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn 197 3) Blyth River, Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn 198 4) Blyth River, Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn 199 5) The Nazi Pamphlet, Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn 200 6) Richard Sorge, from Hemon’s The Question of Bruno 201 7) Richard Sorge’s Passport, from Hemon’s The Question of Bruno 202 8) Foer’s “Falling Man,” from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close 203 vii Introduction I. Trauma – the Missed Event, Representing the Unrepresentable “There is no reaching the disaster” (Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster, 1) How to represent the unrepresentable? How can we speak of that which refuses to lend itself to words, that which no image can contain? Disasters, or large-scale traumatic events, are the starting point of this project: events so horrid that they cannot be described or articulated in either words or images. The ruin and destruction that are the consequence of disasters are echoed in the very structure of the horrific event; in Freud’s thought, traumatic experience cannot be fitted easily into a life story, not because it is ‘unspeakable’ but because it remains unknown, a ‘gap’ within consciousness and memory that defies narrativization.1 Following Freud, contemporary trauma studies theorists consider traumatic experience too overwhelming to be registered fully in consciousness as it occurs, and thus unavailable to conscious recall (Robson 11). Drawing mainly on Freudian-based trauma theory, I consider trauma in terms of the inscription on the human psyche of, and the emotional reaction to an event so devastating that it cannot be contained, or consigned to the past. The sense of ineffable loss, at times referred to as the missed encounter with the real,2 therefore haunts not only artistic and literary representations but also affects legal and political discourses that run parallel to 1 Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub assert that massive traumas preclude their registration: “the observing and recording mechanisms of the human mind are temporarily knocked out, malfunction” (57). 2 Rosalind Krauss identifies a notion of trauma in the arts in her essay about surrealism: a notion tied to a sense of loss in the future - a predetermined missed encounter. In other words, the future is anticipated by the image: “the structure of trauma, then, is not just that it initiates a compulsion to repeat but that it institutes the gap of the trauma itself – the missed encounter – as the always-already occupied meaning of that opening onto a spatial beyond that we think of as the determining character of vision” (72).

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