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Foucault's Heterotopia in the Fiction of James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov

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Foucault's Heterotopia in the Fiction of James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov Real Places and Impossible Spaces: Foucault’s Heterotopia in the Fiction of James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, and W.G. Sebald Kelvin Knight Thesis submitted for the qualification of Doctor of Philosophy University of East Anglia School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing February 2014 This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived there from must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotation or extract must include full attribution. Abstract This thesis looks to restore Michel Foucault’s concept of the heterotopia to its literary origins, and to examine its changing status as a literary motif through the course of twentieth-century fiction. Initially described as an impossible space, representable only in language, the term has found a wider audience in its definition as a kind of real place that exists outside of all other space. Examples of these semi- mythical sites include the prison, the theatre, the garden, the library, the museum, the brothel, the ship, and the mirror. Here, however, I argue that the heterotopia was never intended as a tool for the study of real urban places, but rather pertains to fictional representations of these sites, which allow authors to open up unthinkable configurations of space. Specifically, I focus on three writers whose work contains numerous examples of these places, and who shared the circumstance of spending the majority of their lives in exile: James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, and W.G. Sebald. In each case, I argue that these sites figure the experience of exteriority constituted by exile, providing these authors with an alternative perspective from which to perform a particular kind of contestation. In Ulysses, I argue, they allow Joyce to interrogate the notion of a unified Irish identity by bringing into question the space that constitutes the common locus upon which the nation is founded. In Nabokov’s Ada, they help the author to create a world that transcends the discontinuities of his transnational biography, but also serve to contest this unreal world. In Sebald’s fiction, finally, we find a critique of Foucault’s concept. In relation to the Holocaust, he questions the validity of the heterotopia by bringing into doubt the equation of space and thought upon which it is established. 2 Contents Abstract ....................................................................................................................... 2 Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................... 5 Abbreviations ............................................................................................................. 6 Introduction: Resolving the Paradox of Foucault’s Heterotopia .......................... 7 The Paradox of the Heterotopia ......................................................................................... 14 The Reception of the Heterotopia ...................................................................................... 22 Geography and Architecture .......................................................................................... 23 Literary Studies .............................................................................................................. 29 Heterotopias in Foucault’s Other Works ........................................................................... 34 Spaces of Confinement and Fantasy .............................................................................. 35 The Library is on Fire .................................................................................................... 40 Spaces of the Outside and Contestation ......................................................................... 44 Heterotopias and Exile ....................................................................................................... 49 Same People, Different Places: The Space of the Nation in Ulysses .................... 54 “A Kind of Encyclopaedia” ............................................................................................... 61 ‘Ithaca’ ........................................................................................................................... 65 ‘Cyclops’ ........................................................................................................................ 70 “The Cracked Lookingglass of a Servant” ......................................................................... 75 “What You Damn Well Have to See” ................................................................................ 85 “Ce bordel où tenons nostre état” ...................................................................................... 92 Conclusion: “Incommensurability in the Midst of the Everyday” ..................................... 98 Nabokov’s Magic Carpet: The Time and Space of Exile in Ada ....................... 100 The Other World of Ada .................................................................................................. 106 Rifts in the Texture of Space ........................................................................................... 120 Mirrors ......................................................................................................................... 122 The Garden .................................................................................................................. 126 The Library .................................................................................................................. 131 The Brothel ................................................................................................................... 133 The Ship ....................................................................................................................... 136 Conclusion: The Cloudless Course of Demonian History ............................................... 139 3 Extraterritorial Spaces: Placing the Holocaust in W.G. Sebald’s Fiction ........ 141 Sebald’s Dissecting Table: Space and Order in The Rings of Saturn .............................. 153 “A Higher Form of Stereometry”: Architecture and the Holocaust in Austerlitz ............ 169 Conclusion: A Darkness Never Yet Penetrated ............................................................... 187 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 189 Bibliography ........................................................................................................... 203 4 Acknowledgements This thesis was made possible by a studentship awarded by the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. I would like to thank the school for their financial support and encouragement during my years at UEA. I have also benefitted from several grants awarded by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, which allowed me to attend language classes, visit archives, and present at conferences, both in the UK and abroad. My greatest debt is to my PhD supervisors, Jeremy Noel-Tod, Tommy Karshan, Jo Catling, and Rachel Potter, whose constant guidance and support has been invaluable. I am also grateful to the members of my upgrade panel, Clare Connors and Stephen Benson, for their recommendations when this project was at a formative stage. I would also like to thank my friends and colleagues in the Graduate School, in particular the members of the Critical Writing Workshop, who read drafts of the following chapters at various stages of completion. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends, in particular my parents and my girlfriend Sophie, for their continued love and support. 5 Abbreviations References to the following frequently cited texts appear in parentheses with the following abbreviations: A W.G. Sebald. Austerlitz. Translated by Anthea Bell. London: Penguin, 2002. AA Vladimir Nabokov. Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970. LH Michel Foucault. ‘Les Hétérotopies.’ In Le Corps utopique suivi de Les Hétérotopies. Edited, with an Afterword by Daniel Defert. Paris: Nouvelles Éditions Lignes, 2009. 21-36 OS Michel Foucault. ‘Of Other Spaces.’ Translated by Jay Miskowiec. Diacritics. 16.1 (Spring 1986): 22-26. OT Michel Foucault. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. Abingdon: Routledge, 2009. RS W.G. Sebald. The Rings of Saturn. Translated by Michael Hulse. London: Vintage, 1998. U James Joyce. Ulysses. Edited, with an Introduction and Notes by Jeri Johnson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. 6 Introduction: Resolving the Paradox of Foucault’s Heterotopia Michel Foucault’s concept of the heterotopia endures as a source of inspiration for geographers, architects, and literary critics alike. Yet it remains notoriously ill- defined. He first used the term in the preface to The Order of Things (1966) to describe an impossible and entirely unimaginable space, a notion he illustrates through reference to a fictional Chinese encyclopaedia described by Jorge Luis Borges. In this compendium, titled the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, animals are said to be classified according to the following categories: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very
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