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Spaces of Memory: Performing Identity In FACULTADE DE FILOLOXÍA MÁSTER INTERUNIVERSITARIO EN ESTUDOS INGLESES AVANZADOS E AS SÚAS APLICACIÓNS Spaces of Memory: Performing Identity in Travels in the Scriptorium Student: Beatriz Solla Vilas Advisor: Eduardo Barros Grela TFM June 2019 V.º B.º Facultade de Filoloxía Máster en Estudos Ingleses Avanzados e as súas Aplicacións Beatriz Solla Vilas 2 Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................. 3 Keywords .......................................................................................................................... 3 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................. 4 2. Context .................................................................................................................... 9 3. Theoretical Framework ......................................................................................... 12 4. Deconstructing Identity through Spaces and Memory .......................................... 15 5. Memory ................................................................................................................. 18 5.1 Writing Identity through Memory ................................................................... 18 5.2 Mr. Blank and the Rhizome: Multiplicity and Decentering ............................ 22 5.3 Spaces of Empathy ........................................................................................... 27 6. Space ..................................................................................................................... 32 6.1 Secluded Agency ............................................................................................. 35 6.2 Fear and Spatiality ........................................................................................... 40 6.3 Transgression of Spaces and Spaces of Transgression .................................... 43 7. Conclusions ........................................................................................................... 48 8. Works cited ........................................................................................................... 50 9. Appendix ............................................................................................................... 54 Facultade de Filoloxía Máster en Estudos Ingleses Avanzados e as súas Aplicacións Beatriz Solla Vilas 3 Abstract As Michel Foucault said in his text Of Other Spaces, ―the great obsession of the nineteenth century was, as we know, history‖ (22). Although with the turn of the century this obsession has been gradually diluted, giving rise to a balanced equilibrium between the studies of time and space, there are still many authors in whom this change of perspective has not been studied. In books such as The New York Trilogy, American author Paul Auster has discussed questions of space, but also of identity. This Master‘s thesis studies how space and identity are applied in Auster‘s book Travels in the Scriptorium, a novel that has been briefly studied and whose main character, Mr. Blank, develops a fragmented identity within a contingent space. To this end, it will focus on two themes: first, memory, and second, the aforementioned space. The Master‘s thesis will attempt to articulate how a character with a fragmented memory in a closed and uncertain space can (or cannot) construct and deconstruct his own identity from different elements. Thus, firstly, it will be studied how his fragmented memory affects this character not in the recovery of his identity, but in the creation of a new one based on his lack of empathy and in the disruption of his personality. Secondly, it will be studied how the closed space in which Mr. Blank appears influences his construction of an identity, considering the concepts of spatiality and agency, and studying how fear manipulates space. Finally, it will be studied how the spaces created along the plot develop in a parallel way resulting in a series of heterotopias. Keywords Paul Auster, space, space and memory, agency, identity, spatiality. Facultade de Filoloxía Máster en Estudos Ingleses Avanzados e as súas Aplicacións Beatriz Solla Vilas 4 1. Introduction Although the concepts of space and spatiality have been widely studied in recent times, both are recent in their current conceptualization. The study of space began in Descartes‘ time, albeit in a different manner to how it is studied today. For Henri Lefebvre, Descartes‘ concept of space had already shifted the Aristotelian definition: The status of such categories had hitherto remained unclear, for they could be looked upon either as simple empirical tools for ordering sense data or, alternatively, as generalities in some way superior to the evidence supplied by the body's sensory organs. With the advent of Cartesian logic, however, space had entered the realm of the absolute. As Object opposed to Subject, as res extensa opposed to, and present to, res cogitans, space came to dominate, by containing them, all senses and all bodies (Lefebvre 1). Since this change in focus, space began to be understood ―as an arena for human action‖ and ―subordinate to the concept of revolutionary time‖ (Alford 622). Space, therefore, was considered a container of objects, always subordinated and modified by time. During the nineteenth century, scholars continued to focus specially on time and history, the former being considered the most important dimension for modernist aesthetic. However, gradually, as Bertrand Westphal has suggested, the recovery of societies during and in the aftermath of the Second World War led to the decline of the obsession with time in favor of the studies of space (Tally 12). This change in thinking, better known as the spatial turn, meant a new perspective of study to which artists and thinkers responded with different movements, Facultade de Filoloxía Máster en Estudos Ingleses Avanzados e as súas Aplicacións Beatriz Solla Vilas 5 among which postmodernism is the most remarkable. As Fredric Jameson1 explains to describe his own sense of displacement: [T]his latest mutation in space—postmodern hyperspace—has finally succeeded in transcending the capacities of the individual human body to locate itself, to organize its immediate surroundings perceptually, and cognitively to map its position in a mappable external world (The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism 44). The discipline of space is no longer considered a recipient of ideas but an exporter of them (The Spatial Turn 1). According to Barney Ward and Santa Arias, ―geographers are increasingly being read by scholars in the humanities and other social sciences‖ (The Spatial Turn 1), and, today, the idea of space as a social construction is relevant in all fields of study to understand how human history and culture work. Important theorists, such as Henri Lefebvre, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, David Harvey, and Edward Soja, have studied the concept, and several postmodern authors have used it in their novels. Among the authors who have experimented with it, Paul Auster is specially noted for including space as a living and changing element that influences people‘s identity in his novels, and his narratives have been studied in a variety of different publications. For example, in ―Spaced-Out: Signification and Space in Paul Auster‘s The New York Trilogy‖, Alford starts his article by explaining that, In Paul Auster‘s The New York Trilogy, we encounter genuinely puzzling characters and spaces: characters disappear from the space of the novel, 1 Although many scholars have studied the relationship between postmodernism, epistemology, and art, including Jean-François Lyotard, Christopher Norris, or David Harvey, this thesis is only using Jameson’s quotation because it is considered the most appropriate in this particular context. Facultade de Filoloxía Máster en Estudos Ingleses Avanzados e as súas Aplicacións Beatriz Solla Vilas 6 characters seek to lose themselves by wandering through unfamiliar space …. By looking at how three spaces … function in the novels, we can see that thematically a relationship is established between selfhood, space, and signification (613). In ―A Place both Imaginary and Realistic: Paul Auster‘s The Music of Chance”, Ilana Shiloh also analyzes Paul Auster‘s play ―Laurel and Hardy Go to Heaven‖, where, once again, Auster experiments with the concept of spatiality: When I think of the wall, it's as if I were going beyond what I can think. It's so big, so much bigger than anything else. (Pause).And yet, in itself... in itself... it's just a wall. A wall can be many things, can't it? It can keep in or keep out. It can protect or destroy. It can help things... or make them worse. It can be part of something greater... Or only what it is. Do you see what I mean? It all depends on how you look (149). Shiloh analyzes here the function of the wall not only as a physical element, but also as a changing space with multiple and contradictory meanings. In addition to these contributions, there are other authors who have analyzed Auster‘s work. In Auster’s Posmodernity, Brendan Martin investigates ―Auster‘s literary postmodernity in relation to a full range of his factual and fictional writings‖ (9). The author explains that Auster constructs postmodern autobiographies and that his characters share Auster‘s experiences. Martin also explains that he ―explore[s] Auster‘s evocation of a postmodern autobiography,
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