Postmodern Nihilism: Theory and Literature

Postmodern Nihilism: Theory and Literature Will Slocombe What follows was originally presented to the University of Wales, Aberystwyth for the qualification of PhD in English in September 2003. A revised version has subsequently been published, with major changes primarily to the ―Literature‖ section, as Nihilism and the Sublime Postmodern: The (Hi) Story of a Difficult Relationship (Routledge, 2006). ii Table of Contents Table of Contents ii List of Tables and Diagrams iv Acknowledgements v Abstract vi ‘The Preface’ 1 Part I: Theory 1. Ex nihilo: Constructing Nihilism 5 Generating Nihilism 10 Humanist Nihilism (1799-1851) 16 Anti-Authoritarian Nihilism (1852-1871) 20 Anti-Humanist Nihilism (1872-1888) 26 Authoritarian Nihilism (1889-1945) 31 2. Stylising the Sublime 40 Sublime Texts and their Contexts 42 The Burkean Formulation of the Sublime 47 The Kantian Formulation of the Sublime 55 The Romantic Sublime 67 3. Nihilism and the Sublime Postmodern 75 A Postmodern Enlightenment? 77 The Sublime Postmodern I: Lyotard and the Unpresentable 84 Nihilism and the Lyotardian Sublime 94 The Sublime Postmodern II: Baudrillard and the Hyperreal 101 Nihilism and the Baudrillardian Sublime 109 4. Postmodern Nihilism 114 ‗Truth is untrue‘: N ihilism ,R elativism ,and Pluralism 116 ‗N othing w as w hat it is‘: N ihilism and Poststructuralism 122 ‗E verything looked and sounded unreal‘: N ihilism and Postm odernism 134 Postmodern Nihilism 147 Part II: Literature 5. ‘Welcome to the Fall’: Nihilism and Apocalypse 157 (Post)Modern Apocalypses 160 iii The Writing of the (Postmodern) Disaster 171 Nuclear Criticism and Nuclear Writing 180 The Apocalyptic Desert 186 6. There is Nothing at which to Laugh: Nihilism and the Absurd 198 Twentieth-Century Tragedy and Existential Absurdity 199 Postmodern Absurdity 212 The Quotidian and the Quixotic: Writing Postmodern Fictions 225 7. B eing ‘Absent-M ind ed’: T ow ards an ‘E thical’ N ihilism 236 Blank Fiction: T he ‗E thical N ihilism ‘of Postm odernity 240 (En)Gendering Absence 250 B eing ‗A bsent-M inded‘: Silence in Postm odern Literature 265 8. ‘N everland’: T he Space of N ihilism 273 Everything is Constructed: From Time to Space 275 Nothing is Constructed: From Space to Non-Space 284 N ihilism ‗at the D oor‘ of the T extualHouse 290 Haunting the Textual House: The Space of Nihilism 299 ‘T he Preface Again’ 310 Bibliography 317 iv List of Tables and Diagrams Tables: 3.1 Nihilistic and Sublime Moments within Ideologies 83 4.1 Nihilisms before Postmodernism 148 Diagrams: 4.2 Modernist Nihilism 150 4.3 Postmodern Nihilism 151 6.1 T he ‗Both/A nd‘ 234 8.1 Nihilism and Narrative Proliferation 289 v Acknowledgements A debt of thanks goes to my supervisor, Dr Tim Woods, who frequently pointed out those things that I, had I any intellectual ability, should have thought of myself. His guidance and criticisms have been invaluable and the ego massages that his comments have sometimes provided have seen me through this project when my own confidence has faltered. His attempts to instil some form of academic respectability in me during my seven years at Aberystwyth may not have been entirely successful, but most of my ability is due to his patient tutoring. Aside from him (Him?), further thanks must also go to Dr Damian Walford Davies for his sublime summation of the sublime – a not-so-ironic je ne sais quoi – and to Malte Urban for his invaluable assistance in translation during our numerous coffee mornings (and afternoons) at the Arts Centre. The University of Wales, Aberystwyth kindly provided the research studentship required to see this project to fruition and the members of department of English have provided much appreciated support in all manner of ways. Without these, this product of teenage angst would have remained just that, and I am grateful for the opportunity to prove myself more than merely another aging teen-nihilist. My final thanks go to my fiancée, Jennie Hill, who has struggled to proofread what was often Greek to her, despite having plenty of her own work to do, and who has pointed out that no matter how many theses I complete, I will still always be a teen-nihilist at heart. It is with considerable shame that I must therefore admit that this thesis is dedicated to none of these. It is, and can only ever be, ‗to no -one in particular‘. 6 Abstract This thesis examines the relationship between nihilism and postmodernism in relation to the sublime, and is divided into two parts: theory and literature. Beginning with histories of nihilism and the sublime, the Enlightenment is constructed as a conflict between the two. Rather than promote a simple binarism, however, nihilism is constructed as a temporally- displaced form of sublimity that is merely labelled as nihilism because of the dominant ideologies at the time. Postmodernism, as a product of the Enlightenment, is therefore implicitly related to both nihilism and the sublime, despite the fact that it is often characterised as either nihilistic or sublim e. W hereas prior form s of nihilism are ‗m odernist‘ because they seek to codify reality, postmodernism creates a new formulation of nihilism – ‗postm odern nihilism ‘ – that is itself sublime. This is explored in relation to a broad survey of postmodern literature through a series of interconnected themes. These themes – apocalypse, the absurd, absence, and space – arise from the debates presented in the theoretical chapters of this thesis, and demonstrate the ways in which nihilism and the sublime interact within postmodern literature. Because of the theoretical and literary debates presented within it, this thesis concludes that it cannot be a thesis at all. 1 ‘T h e Preface’ This thesis can be summarised as an exploration of nihilism in relation to postmodern theory and literature. This is not to say that it is a survey of all occurrences of nihilism within postmodern literature, however, because there is more at stake than merely observing what others have already observed: what is at stake, the ‗ante‘ that is put forw ard, is, broadly speaking, the future of nihilism . T here is m uch m ore to nihilism than m erely ‗rage against B eing‘ or ‗the destruction of B eing‘, and so the future of nihilism is not sim ply a ‗nihilism of the future‘, a perception of the future in w hich all is bleak, but the m eans by w hich w e adm it G ianni V attim o‘s call for philosophy today ‗to recognise nihilism is our (only) chance‘. 1 A lthough the argum ent presented here is different from V attim o‘s, the fact nevertheless remains that nihilism – the philosophy of absence and nothingness – must remain paradoxically ‗present‘ w ithin philosophy and culture. Its eradication w ould hail a new fundamentalism, a new Enlightenment perhaps even more damaging than the first. Nihilism is our (only) chance. The approach to nihilism that this thesis proposes is a new formulation of nihilism based upon postmodern theory – a ‗postm odern‘ nihilism . A lthough m any critics argue that postmodernism is nihilistic, others argue that postmodernism is a response to an earlier ‗m odernist‘ nihilism . T hese tw o argum ents are incom m ensurable and so this thesis does not hope to resolve them, but to instead move them into the arena of the sublime. Although a number of studies link postmodernism and nihilism, and others link postmodernism and the 1 David Levin, The Opening of Vision: Nihilism and the Postmodern Situation (London: Routledge, 1988), p. 5; Gianni Vattimo, The End of Modernity: Nihilism and Hermeneutics in Post-modern Culture, trans. by Jon R. Snyder (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994), p. 23. 2 sublime, none have yet explicitly linked nihilism and the sublime within postmodernism despite the fact that the Enlightenment origins of nihilism and the sublime suggest a link between the two. Nihilism, assumed by most to be a negative signifier, an adjective to describe that which is bleak and hopeless, and the sublime, frequently interpreted as the positive signifier, rich in potential for ethics, are not as distinct as might be assumed. It would be facile and obvious to conclude that both nihilism and the sublime mean different things to different people. Rather, we must establish why these divisions occur, and so this thesis is as much an excavation of the cultural etymology of these signifiers as it is about how they function in relation to postmodern literature. The first half of this thesis is concerned with the theoretical aspects of nihilism, postmodernism, and the sublime. Histories of nihilism (chapter one) and the sublime (chapter two) will be discussed and compared, and will then be used in the construction of postmodernism. Nihilism and the sublime exist as parallel movements throughout the history of modernity. Postmodernism, as the culmination of that movement, therefore incorporates both nihilism and the sublime. This association of postmodernism with nihilism does not mean that postmodernism is (nihilistically) negative because postmodernism is both sublim e (w e should talk about the ‗sublim e postm odern, not the ‗postm odern sublimand e‘) nihilistic. Perceived in this way, postmodernism merely inverts the oppositional hierarchy of nihilism and the sublime seen during the Enlightenment period. Thus, nihilism and the sublime form the divisions of the final two theoretical chapters, although rather than histories, these are accounts of how the two concepts interact within contemporary theory and postm odernism . T his study is separated into chapters on the ‗sublim e postm odern‘ (chapter three) and ‗postm odern nihilism ‘ (chapter four), thereby defining the differences between nihilism and the sublime within the postmodern. This construction suggests a 3 ‗postm odern‘ form ulation of nihilism , distinct from earlier form s, that is itself sublim e, w hich is also called ‗reflexive nihilism ‘or ‗deconstructive nihi lism ‘.

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