Angles New Perspectives on the Anglophone World

2 | 2016 New Approaches to the Body Performance, Experimentations

Anne-Laure Fortin-Tournès (dir.)

Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/angles/1770 DOI: 10.4000/angles.1770 ISSN: 2274-2042

Publisher Société des Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur

Electronic reference Anne-Laure Fortin-Tournès (dir.), Angles, 2 | 2016, « New Approaches to the Body » [Online], Online since 01 April 2016, connection on 23 September 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/angles/ 1770 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/angles.1770

This text was automatically generated on 23 September 2020.

Angles est mise à disposition selon les termes de la Licence Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. 1

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Video introduction to issue 2 Anne-Laure Fortin-Tournès

“In Difficulty is Ecstasy”: Physical Experience at the Limits in Colum McCann’s Dancer and Let the Great World Spin Lara Delage-Toriel

The Physicality of Writing in Paul Auster’s White Spaces and Winter Journal François Hugonnier

Corpo-real: in situ Natacha Grimaud and Alexandre Galopin

‘Bias Cut’ Ailsa Cox

Graphic Interlude New Approaches to The Body: Performance, Experimentations James McLaren, Elaine Constantine and Casey Orr

When Bodies Go Digital Claire Larsonneur

The Brain Without the Body? Virtual Reality, Neuroscience and the Living Flesh Marion Roussel

The Body of Los Angeles, Between Commodity and Identity Charles Joseph

The Actors’ Bodies in TV series LOST Sylvaine Bataille and Sarah Hatchuel

Broke House by the Big Art Group: Queer Transgressions on the Contemporary New York Stage Xavier Lemoine

‘Anthropologists of our own experience’: Taxonomy and Testimony in The Museum of Innocence and The Virgin Suicides Clare Hayes-Brady

Varia

And: A Complex Little Word at the Heart of Janet Frame’s Language Wilfrid Rotgé

An A to Z of Diasporic Life Françoise Král

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Video introduction to issue 2

Anne-Laure Fortin-Tournès

This media file cannot be displayed. Please refer to the online document http:// journals.openedition.org/angles/1772

Transcript:

1 Welcome to the second issue of Angles. My name is Anne-Laure Fortin-Tournès and I am this issue's guest editor.

2 This issue contains 13 contributions in various forms and media representing new approaches to the body, performance, experimentations. This issue means to explore new ways of representing the body, of relying on its performing and performative capabilities.

3 We'll see that as the material body seems to be receding in our digital cultures. Many cultural artifacts combine sanitization and semiotization which allows for new nomadic forms of corporeality to appear.

4 The first contribution by Lara Delage-Toriel analyses the body as a prime agent in McCann's narrative plots. Semiotized by a text which it summarizes in turn, the moving body is not only a central theme but also a textual matrix in McCann's fiction which engages the body in the literary process both as sense making and sensitive entity.

5 François Hugonnier also makes a point about the importance of physicality to writing and literary creation. He shows that Paul Auster's novels are fuelled by bodily failures and functions. Auster’s breakthrough experience of a real contemporary dance performance he witnessed in 1978 actually changed his approach to language, style and literature in general.

6 Alexandre Galopin and Natacha Grimaud's dance video clip for its part explores the possibilities for the dancing body to perform on its own and in relation to another body in a peaceful, natural setting according to a triptych-based pattern.

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7 In her short fictional piece of practice-led research, Elsa Cox introduces us to the spectral presence of a female body through the evocation of the silk bias-cut dress so as to raise the key issue of the spectral presence in language of the material body.

8 In ‘The brain without the body,’ Marion Roussel goes to the roots of the uncanny feeling we get when the frontier between the material and the immaterial or virtual body gets blurred. She bases her demonstration on Marcos Novak's experiments in digital architecture. His explorations of the insides of his own brain, for instance, which he externalizes and transforms into an immersive experience for the visitor.

9 The impact of new technologies on the way we conceive of our bodies is analyzed further in Claire Larsonneur's contribution which focuses on the dissolution of the boundaries between the material and the virtual in our digital age.

10 In the next contribution, Charles Joseph chooses the cultural studies approach to explore the relation between real and virtual Los Angeles so as to suggest that L.A.'s urban sprawl is shaped by organic preoccupations.

11 Sarah Hatchuel and Sylvaine Bataille's video clip essay on the centrality of the body to acting in Lost insists on the importance of the actors' bodies to the series. The script was indeed written for the actors and the characters they embodied often had to evolve to fit the actor's own change in physical and personal characteristics.

12 In the next contribution, Xavier Lemoine shows how the Big Art Group's Broke House uses queer performances and transgressive bodies to mediatize gender, racial, sexual and social questioning of traditional representational norms. The Big Art Group which constructs theatre through queer cyber performances blurs the line defining the normative bodies, subjectivities and technological performances.

13 The one last piece in our issue about body is Clare Hayes-Brady’s investigation of the rules of objects in Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides and Orhan Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence where the departed female body remembered through a number of memorabilia by the narrators tends to draw the reader into a voyeuristic position.

14 Finally, this issue's ‘Varia’ section consists of two contributions by Wilfrid Rotgé and Françoise Král. The first contribution is a linguistic analysis of the deceptively simple coordinator 'and' in Janet Frame's fiction, while the second paper presents us with an A to Z of the diasporic body which explores the various facets of diasporic theory and critique.

15 I hope you will enjoy this issue.

ABSTRACTS

This video introduces the thematic contributions on ‘New Approaches to the Body’. The guest editor then introduces the two contributions in the Varia section.

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La vidéo commence par présenter les contributions thématiques sur « Les nouvelles approches du corps: Performance et expérimentations ». La responsable du numéro présente ensuite les deux contributions de la section Varia.

INDEX

Mots-clés: vidéo, corps, langue, littérature, danse, humanités numériques, recherche expérimentale Keywords: video, body, language, literature, digital humanities, experimental research

AUTHOR

ANNE-LAURE FORTIN-TOURNÈS Guest editor of Issue 2. Professor at the Université du Maine. Her research focuses modern British literature, the relationship between text and image, art, trauma theory, the representations of the body, and women’s writing.

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“In Difficulty is Ecstasy”: Physical Experience at the Limits in Colum McCann’s Dancer and Let the Great World Spin

Lara Delage-Toriel

“In Difficulty is Ecstasy” (McCann 2003: 99)

1 “Words power the punch,” states Colum McCann (2012: Foreword), who believes in a natural affinity between writing and boxing — as if words were fuel that might better propel movement into being and make its impact all the more palpable.1 In both Dancer (2003) and Let the Great World Spin (2009), 2 McCann puts this creed into practice by staging physical performance at its most extreme: the former novel offers indeed a fictional portrait of Rudolf Nureyev, one of the 20th century’s most gifted dancers, whilst the latter revolves around Philippe Petit’s 1974 tightrope-walking exploit between the World Trade Center towers. Conversely, both these novels make it quite obvious that the writer’s own performance is energized and shaped by physical experience, be it at the level of a character’s heightened perceptions and bodily awareness, or on the larger scale of a narrative structured like a body, each part being interconnected and innervated by a central event (the tightrope walk) or character (Nureyev).

2 This essay is part of an ongoing inquiry into the possibility and usefulness of envisaging a semiotization of the body, along with, or leading to, a somatization of story, in the wake of the theories propounded by Peter Brooks in Body Work: Objects of Desire in Modern Narrative. Drawing from Brooks’ notion that the body is “a site of signification — the place for the inscription of stories — and itself a signifier, a prime agent in narrative plot and meaning” (Brooks 1993: 5-6), I wish to explore the ways in which McCann makes the body signify, particularly when it is pushed to its limits. This will lead me to investigate McCann’s politics vis-à-vis the reader and its possible

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repercussions: how do we participate in this signifying process? How may our psychosomatic and empathetic responses affect our position as critics?

The Dynamic of the Kaleidoscope: Mc Cann’s Narrative Kinæsthetics3

3 One of the most striking features of both novels is their kaleidoscopic structure, one in which the narrative is not taken in charge by a single prevailing narrative voice but by a rather heterogeneous cluster of focal agents, comparable to the spokes of a wheel rotating around a central axis. In both cases, this nexus is enabled by a non-fictional figure, but McCann shows less interest in the hard facts of Rudolf Nureyev or Philippe Petit’s lives, than in the way in which these focal agents perceive and are affected by them.4 As a matter of fact, Petit’s identity is only given in the paratext of Let the Great World Spin; the author seems to have purposefully withheld the name from the novel itself, always referring to him as the tightrope walker or funambulist, and cutting out the actual scene of his trial, in which his name would have been most likely mentioned. McCann does allow for more biographical details in Dancer, but there again, he deliberately omits any information about the dancer’s birth or his death; Nureyev’s first entrance and final exit are both dance steps, a six-year-old’s squatting dance and a forty-nine-year-old’s pirouette. The latter figure is emblematic of the kaleidoscopic structure of the two novels: a chorus of characters spins around an object that itself is intensely mobile, and these characters all spin together, yet each in his or her own way, the stories that shape the two novels.5

4 Colum McCann himself has acknowledged the appropriateness of this optical metaphor for his writing of Dancer: “each individual story has its own sort of kaleidoscopic moment, its own crystal, if you will. You look at it, you shine the light through it and you see it fractured several different ways. But the accumulation of those things can tell a sort of biography.” (Maudet 2014). I would like to suggest a more dynamic modality of the kaleidoscope, in keeping with the shifting viewpoints that characterize both novels, and in the wake of Henri Bergson’s intuitions about the relationship between the movement of one’s body and the evolving perceptions of one’s environment: Voici un système d’images que j’appelle ma perception de l’univers, et qui se bouleverse de fond en comble pour des variations légères d’une certaine image privilégiée, mon corps. Cette image occupe le centre ; sur elle se règlent toutes les autres; à chacun de ses mouvements tout change, comme si l’on avait tourné un kaléidoscope. (Bergson 1896: 10)

5 Contemporary cognitive science has confirmed the correlation between physical movement and sensorial stimulation, particularly when it is visual.6 The narrative dynamic of McCann’s two kaleidoscopic novels is also worth being considered in the light of a body’s motions and one’s perceptions of this motion, what I call his narrative kinæsthetics. Indeed, both Dancer and Let the Great World Spin confer a central position upon the moving body, both as theme and as formal matrix.

6 One of the most obvious reasons for this centrality, thematically speaking, is the fact that both Rudolf Nureyev and Philippe Petit were extraordinary physical performers. As fictional heroes they consequently elicit intense responses on their spectators’ part: the tightrope walk seems to arrest time, it impels all its chance witnesses in New York

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City to suddenly stop whatever they are doing, making them “pull in their breath all at once” (LGWS 7); this simultaneity has, in turn, an immediate spatial effect: “the air felt suddenly shared”. They thus experience a moment of collective sublime, in which “awful and beautiful” (LGWS 3) are paradoxically combined.7 The power of the performer’s impact is also manifest in Dancer, insofar as Nureyev, by his mere presence in a room, is able to charge its space with a magnetic field: “there is a sudden sense of magnetism in the room, Rudi seems attached to everyone” (D 245). When his own mother beholds him on the stage, she “leans forward […], awed and slightly frightened,” barely recognizing in this dancing creature “devouring space” (D 107) her own flesh and blood. Interestingly enough, both performers’ audiences have their “necks craned” (D 198, LGWS 3, 185), a very physical token of the way in which the audience’s inertia is disrupted, their emotion driving them to bodily reach out towards the performer.8 The body’s response here bespeaks a deeper psychological and spiritual displacement, as is revealed by Yulia when at the end of Dancer she muses, “something about him released people from the world, tempted them out” (D 334). Likewise, the funambulist suddenly removes Marcia from her humdrum mortality when she catches sight of him high up in the sky on her way to Manhattan and construes this celestial vision as an apparition of her late son, a pilot who fell in Vietnam. As long as she can entertain that vision in her mind, fix in time and space the figure’s sheer dance with death, she is able to pretend her son never fell.9

7 “What sort of ontological glue” (LGWS 325) holds the tightrope walker so high in the air, often wonders another character, thirty-two years after facts she only witnessed indirectly, by dint of a photograph. The persistence of the question, the fact that this character, Jaslyn, values to such a degree the photographic trace of the walk that coincided with the day of her mother’s death, indicates that this “glue”, or magnet, also joins the destinies of the characters, shaping them into significant patterns. Thus Marcia’s encounter with the funambulist’s exploit is rendered itself as a storytelling feat, riveting its audience to such an extent that they no longer notice the peripheral action of their hostess, Claire. The power of Marcia’s story is further highlighted by the fact that in this section, Claire is the focal agent, and the reader thus made privy to her frustration at being eclipsed. Her limited point of view also enables the narrative to gather tension as Marcia edges her way towards the question mark of the funambulist’s fate. The final stretch of her story waxes lyrical as it takes on the form of a call-and- response gospel, with the listeners echoing her words like a chorus: — Because I didn’t want to know if the poor boy fell. — Ah-huh, says Gloria. — I just didn’t want to hear him dead. — I hear you, ah-huh. Gloria’s voice, as if she’s at a church service. The rest of them nodding slowly while the clock on the mantelpiece ticks. — I couldn’t stand the mere thought of it. — No, ma’am. — And if he didn’t fall… — If he didn’t, no…? — I didn’t want to know. — Ah-huhn, you got it. (LGWS 99)

8 The narrating voice here remains in the background, its brief intrusion ever so slight — notice the lack of conjugated verbs in either of the two sentences, to avoid weighing the scene down with grammatical sedateness. By bringing to the fore the characters’

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vocal communion and its spontaneous outpour, it allows for a more immediate connexion between the reader and the text: the women’s empathy infuses our own inner reading voice. The strength of that empathy is ultimately reinforced by the reflex response of recalcitrant Claire, whose voice had remained outside the chorus and which now gushes forth, at first with paratactic urgency: All of it like a slam in the chest. So immediate. At all of their coffee mornings, it had always been distant, belonging to another day […], but this was now and real, and the worst thing was that they didn’t know the walker’s fate, […] or maybe maybe maybe there was another maybe, maybe. (LGWS 99)

9 I have omitted a string of hypotheses that display the variety of uncertainties with which Claire is confronted. Yet from all these negations and aporias, from the pain of loss and the dread of death, emerges an affirmation, that of a deeply shared feeling.

10 It is significant that Claire’s empathy is first conveyed as a bodily experience, thanks to the simile of the slam in her chest; indeed McCann himself considers the empathetic virtues of literature in terms of the body, affirming that “the greatest thing about fiction is that we become alive in bodies not our own” (Lennon 2012: 104).10 Elsewhere he writes, “if we can step into another body out of this place into somebody else’s place, then we’re making a human leap that seems to me entirely necessary.” (Maudet 2014). By using the first person plural, he suggests that this human leap relies on the fictional impetus the writer and the reader jointly whisk into being.11 In both Dancer and Let the Great World Spin, this ability to step into someone else’s body is encouraged by the fact that their central protagonists make extremely bold steps out of the mundane, out of frames set up by society, thereby creating with their bodies a new creed.

Stepping Out, Making a Statement with One’s Body

11 Both tightrope walker and dancer demonstrate an absolute commitment to their art — “Live inside the dance” (D 99) is one of the injunctions Nureyev writes to himself. The same holds true for Petit, for whom “the only place he was entirely himself, anyway, was high on the wire” (LGWS 239). Notice the play on “high,” as if to hint that this ‘trip’ affords him an ecstasy as fulfilling as that of a chemical drug, except that his body is not reduced to passive consumption, nor to an oblivion of self, but is on the contrary endowed with a hyper-awareness and self-affirmation that is in keeping with David Le Breton’s reflexion on the Ancient rite of the ordalium, which he associates with modern forms of risk-taking: “la longue ordalie sur le fil du rasoir prodigue enfin à l’individu une réponse ferme à la question redoutable de sa propre existence.” (Le Breton 2002: 82). Ordalia were trials that placed the individual in an extreme physical situation, an ‘ordeal’, the outcome of which was supposedly fixed by God or the gods, who were thus made to pass judgment when a case was deemed too challenging for a mere human tribunal. Risk-taking, in its extreme form, is a modern way for individuals to impose this ordalium upon themselves when they are at odds with the established norms of their society; their survival is thus a way of validating their right to exist, but also of lending legitimacy to their marginality.12

12 Thus, when McCann ends Let the Great World Spin’s first chapter with these three words, “Out he went” (LGWS 7), surrounding them with a typographic blank that turns the page into a fragment of the vast expanse of sky he is about to cross, the stakes of each step become indeed very high. This exit resounds with all the other exits that have

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made it possible to fully live inside this act and let “the cable become his spinal cord” (LGWS 160). This total immersion is also very palpable in an outstanding piece from Dancer: Eight perfect entrechats-dix, a thing of wonder, the audience silent now, no body anymore no thought no awareness this must be the moment the others call god as if all the doors are open everywhere leading to all other open doors nothing but open doors forever no hinges no frames no jambs no edges no shadows this is my soul in flight born weightless born timeless a clock spring broken he could stay like this forever and he looks out into the haze of necklaces eyeglasses cufflinks shirtfronts and knows he owns them. (D 199)

13 Gradually divested of any form of punctuation, the sentence mimics the dancer’s emancipation from rules, gathering momentum as the stream of his consciousness lapses into a Whitmanesque celebration of the soul unyoked by social and æsthetic strictures, as exemplified by the string of negations and privative prefixes.13 The instability of the focalization, oscillating between close-up first-person and a more remote third-person point of view, seems to corroborate the dancer’s elusive quality, his body and being in mid-air, flitting in and out of focus. Having grazed what people call god, the ordalic maverick is justified in his decision to ‘step out’ of social norms, for the audience is also a tribunal, one that he must win over in order to survive and assert his radical autonomy. Another audience has to be seduced, and that is McCann’s readership. Each reader is free to be affected in his or her own individual way, but my feeling is that this passage is all the more enticing for offering an insight, seldom given elsewhere in this novel, into the dancer’s subjective experience of grace. Moreover, the looseness of the syntactic warp and weft leaves space for the reader’s own somatic imagination to roam at leisure and feel some of the elation that comes from untethered movement. In these instances, McCann’s grip on the reader’s body is such that the more critical mind, which may at times remain aloof from the protagonist and consider him too arrogant, too self-engrossed, now yields to the pure energy of the moment.

14 Both Petit and Nureyev are perpetually defying the natural laws of gravity, but in so doing, they are also breaking away from the human laws that condition their societies. This is particularly manifest in the case of Nureyev, who is educated in the coercive context of the Soviet Union, where any expression of individualism is reprehensible. His defection in Paris — a very literal act of transgression if one considers the term’s etymology (transgredi meaning to step across, go beyond) — turns him into an enemy of his own country, a renegade who is officially disowned by his father. On a less dramatic scale, Petit is also a criminal, since his tightrope walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center was illegal — its meticulous preparation is appropriately compared to that of a “bank raid” (LGWS 163) — and it is doubly so. The funambulist is indeed liable for reckless endangerment and criminal trespass, which he is accordingly charged with, although Judge Soderberg sentences him lightly (a penny per floor). If he gets away with his crime, it is because the judge, whose own son fell during the Vietnam War, cannot entirely condemn an act that he admires, not so much for its athletic boldness as for its symbolic significance : “it wasn’t just an offhand walk. He was making a statement with his body, and if he fell, well, he fell — but if he survived he would become a monument, not carved in stone or encased in brass, but one of those New York monuments that made you say: Can you believe it?” (LGWS 249). For the 21st century reader, this particular walk is all the more eloquent a monument, in the etymological sense of monumentum (‘something that reminds,’ a ‘tomb or memorial

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structure’) since it inevitably points to the unbelievable 9/11 events that turned the Twin Towers into a mass graveyard as well as a memorial space. McCann makes this link quite explicit in his afterword, declaring that “the tightrope walk was an act of creation that seemed to stand in direct defiance to the act of destruction twenty-seven years later.” (LGWS 359).

15 In a sense, then, the novelist uses his characters’ bodies to make a statement that is both artistic and political, carving out a utopian space for human beings to move into, at least imaginatively.14 Nureyev’s request to his sister makes this clear: “tell Mother that her son dances to improve the world.” (D 167). It is quite likely that in this instance the dancer is voicing McCann’s own desire to counter reality’s destructive forces thanks to the fictional pursuit of beauty, something that both dancer and funambulist achieve to perfection by pushing their bodies to the limits, making their “movements defy possibility” (D 193). Of Petit’s driving motivation, we are indeed told that “the core reason for it all was beauty” (LGWS 164), whilst Nureyev admits to his lover, Erik Bruhn, “I want to make a statement about beauty” (D 216). While the latter claim is met with a cynical rebuke by Erik, who does not believe in dance’s moral impact on society, the way in which McCann comments upon Nureyev’s final pirouette leaves little doubt about the faith he holds in the power of art: “that hop is for me one of the most sacred moments of his life. […] In the face of all that horrible human evidence, there is still possibility that you can create beauty.” (Maudet 2014). It is therefore unsurprising to find a very similar observation in the final chapter of Let the Great World Spin, when in 2006, Jaslyn muses over the photograph of the tightrope walk, deeming it an “enduring moment […] still capable of myth in the face of all other evidence” (LGWS 325).

16 Since Proust’s Contre Sainte-Beuve, and even before, with the Greeks’ attribution of the poet’s inspiration to the Muses, a number of critical approaches have steered clear of literary interpretations giving too much onus to the writer’s biographical person, hence Wimsatt and Beardsley’s caveat against intentional fallacy (Wimsatt and Beardsley 1954). My own contention is that a literary text is not autotelic and that a writer like McCann puts much of himself, as a person, in the elaboration of his work, with varying degrees of subjective involvement. Thus direct correlations can be made between the designs of the main protagonists and their creator when the latter, referring to his writing, presents himself as an “explorer” (Maudet 2014) “stepping out into new territory” (Santel 2013). Yet the fact that his characters may partly assume the role of fictional alter egos or mouthpieces does not necessarily guarantee the success of their performance. One might even object that the ploy is too obvious and tax McCann with covert didacticism, but also the present reader with a lack of critical objectivity. In the final leg of this essay, I will focus on the role of feet and hope to show how such pitfalls may be avoided by giving closer consideration to the interdependence of semiotic and somatic experiences when we are in the process of reading.

A Matter of Footing: McCann’s Feet, from Metonymy to Hypertrophy

17 In both Dancer and Let the Great World Spin, feet recur as a motif bearing much weight, whether they are designated figuratively or literally. The former novel’s opening paragraph limns a devastating tableau of the Second World War, tellingly representing its toll through the loss of the soldiers’ toes and closing with the following aphorism:

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“they [the soldiers] could tell a man’s future by the way he walked” (D 7).15 In the same work, a significant juxtaposition is made when President Kennedy receives Nureyev in the Oval Office: “he looked at my feet, said I was a symbol of pure political courage.” (D 183). It seems hardly likely that the President should feel too abashed to look at his host straight in the eye when paying him this compliment. No, we may rather surmise that the juxtaposition is meant to indicate that Kennedy holds Nureyev’s feet responsible for this political role. This interpretation is all the more plausible since, earlier on in the novel, a Soviet officer comes to see Yulia and informs her that right after his defection, “they threw glass at [Nureyev] in Paris” in an attempt to “rip his feet open” (D 150). Evidently, this man’s feet are a momentous issue within the context of the Cold War. Yet even within the boundaries of the Soviet bloc, this officer must beware of the ground he treads, since “one foot wrong could have an effect on the rest of his life too, his wife, his children, his apartment” (D 152).

18 In his description of the funambulist’s first steps between the two Towers, McCann affords us a very concrete understanding of the foot’s crucial importance in maintaining both one’s balance and one’s life: One foot on the wire — his better foot, the balancing foot. First he slid his toes, then his sole, then his heel. The cable nested between his big and second toes for grip. His slippers were thin, the soles made of buffalo hide […] He felt for the curve of the cable with the arch and then sole of his feet. A second step and a third. (LGWS 164)

19 Each detail is of importance, including the fact that the slippers are thin, their soles a second skin. These “slippers” are, of course, an additional tangential point between the two performers (the judge even designates them as “ballet slippers” [LGWS 265]). In both novels, slippers and feet naturally take on a metonymic function. Thus people’s memory of the funambulist’s feat is crystallized by three adjectives — “slippered, dark- footed, agile” (LGWS 242) — and when in Dancer Tom, the shoemaker from Covent Garden, makes ballet shoes (rather than “slippers,” an American term he dislikes), he not only “think[s] of [him]self as the foot” (D 122) but is also able to imagine the life of the individual who has ordered the shoe: “and just by the sketches alone he intuits the life of this foot, raised in barefoot poverty and — from the unusual wideness of the bone structure — barefoot on concrete rather than grass […] then a great violence done by excessive training, all hard angles, but a remarkable strength […]” (D 125). Tom has never met Nureyev, and yet, by the mere observation of his foot’s anatomic features, he is able to trace the main lines of the dancer’s life, those traits that make him unique, among which the “tremendous violence committed on the body” which first attracted McCann to the topic of dance (McCann 2003). Dancer includes six pages on the art of the shoemaker, a painstaking exploration that might remind one of the extensive description that is given of glove-making in Philip Roth’s American Pastoral (1998). In both cases, what shines through is the absolute dedication of the craftsmen to their art, but in Dancer, the presentation of Tom’s craft clearly serves McCann’s empathetic interest. For instance, when describing the damage that the shoemaker must repair, he is making us vicariously sense the various abuses that are made to the body by professional dancers — “the pounding, the destruction, not to mention the tiny incisions, the surgery […]” (D 122). The worker’s dedication thus grants the reader a close, intimate view of a part of the body to which we may all relate. Indeed, the violence made to the foot is something that any person has felt at least once in his or her life, be it a blister, a sprained ankle, an ingrown toenail or a jammed toe. Like

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Whitman’s grass in Leaves of Grass, feet are a common denominator, a democratic motif that grounds McCann’s narrative in a potentially shared somæsthetic16 experience.

20 By insisting on feet, shoes and slippers, and thus yoking together physical and stylistic hypertrophy, he seems to invite his readers to literally put themselves into his characters’ shoes. Thus, when Gloria walks with her opera shoes, which are a half-size too big, her pain is made extremely palpable by dint of successive strokes, each reference burrowing deeper into her wound, her shoes first “cutting the back of [her] heels,” then “cut[ting] a little trench in [her] heels”, “each step [digging] a little deeper” (LGWS 306), the wound becoming more acute with “a small blade of pain sho[oting] through [her] each time [she] step[s],” (LGWS 307), until Claire eventually finds her with a little barrier of blood [that has] bubbled up over the edge of [her] heel” (LGWS 308). We are invited deeper into the characters’ intimacy as they step into the bathroom and Claire’s caring, motherly gestures drive Gloria to somehow feel “that she wanted to dry my feet with her hair”, a compassionate crossing of bodily boundaries that may remind one of Sheona’s desire to take the cold blue feet of her ailing sister in her mouth while she massages them at the end of “Sisters” (McCann 1993: 22). Claire then goes on to lend Gloria her slippers — perhaps those same slippers in which she ran out into the street on that stormy night, when she discovered Marcia’s ad inviting veteran moms to gather. And it is these same slippers that Gloria is wearing when she finally decides to “ste[p] out” (LGWS 322) and save the two orphaned daughters of a prostitute. At this point, the narrative suggests that Gloria is somehow unable to recognize her own body, as though Claire’s slippers had endowed her with magic powers: “I stepped out. It didn’t seem to me that I was in the same body anymore. I had a quickness. I stepped off the pavement and onto the road. I was still in Claire’s slippers” (LGWS 322). This last example further illustrates the importance of interconnection in the novel, since feet, shoes and slippers are very concrete embodiments of the way in which characters coming from very different walks of life are made to converge. 17It is no coincidence that McCann chooses to foreground the semiotic load of the corporeal during the very event which he himself deems “the core image of the novel,” “when two little girls emerge from a Bronx housing complex and get rescued by strangers”(LGWS 363). Indeed, if the reader who has been following Gloria’s trajectory engages somatically with the narrative, then the strong symbolism with which these slippers are finally invested will probably not be interpreted as a merely intellectual and abstract contrivance. In other words, our sensory response to the character’s experience helps us mentally converge with the writer’s semiotic design, inasmuch as mental representation operates in a manner that is similar to direct perceptual stimulation. For cognitive scientists Garbarini and Adenzato, “representation does not consist in a duplication of reality, but in the virtual activation of perceptual and motor procedures — the same procedures that, when actually executed, allow us to recognize objects and interact with them” (Garbarini and Adenzato 2004: 101).

21 May one conclude that pain and empathy necessarily go hand in hand in these narratives, as a typical illustration of the mirror neuron theory propounded by neuroscience?18 One last example might nuance our findings. The final chapter of Dancer features a terse clinical account of Nureyev’s foot ailments: Rond de jambe par terre to see range of motion of joints. Severe restriction. Erratic rolling. Hop is acutely pronounced and bones are jammed. Left foot can hardly brush the floor. Acute pain when metatarsals are touched, even when foot is held at

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central shaft. Key is to move metatarsals like fan, twist from side to side, effleurage gently between rays. Drain blood blisters and immediately remove welt between second and third digit on left foot. (D 314)

22 This crude representation of a god’s physical decline might be compared to the Crucifixion in Grünewald’s altarpiece, one of European tradition’s most remarkably realistic evocations of the Passion of Christ; in both cases, “depiction is pinned to the pain suffered,” in the words of art critic John Berger.19 But whereas Grünewald painstakingly reduced Christ to his ailing fleshiness in order to spur the spectator’s empathy, McCann’s technical jargon and paratactic perfunctoriness create instead a distance between the reader and the dancer’s plight. The latter’s unsentimental preoccupations, and the lack of pathos with regards to a situation that can only be extremely trying, lends this hypertrophy of the foot an unreal quality. Despite the intimacy offered by the form of the diary, the narrative does not actually incite the reader to coincide with the character, be it in terms of sensations or emotions. Even in pain, even physically vulnerable and limited, Nureyev somehow remains a legend, a monument that is both monstrous and sacred.

*

23 In one of the few diary sections in Dancer, Rudi notes that his masseur is able to tell the plot of whatever the dancer is reading “just by running his hands along [his] spine” (D 220). This is an eloquent statement about the ways in which the meanings of words may write themselves onto the flesh, into the reading body’s frame. Likewise, the challenge of articulating the non-verbal art of dance opens fresh possibilities for the fiction- writer: words are shaped into dancing bodies as he choreographs them on the page.20 Within the boundaries of this essay, by studying notably the function and impact of transgressive performance along with heightened somæsthetic experience, I have attempted to show how Colum McCann’s writing engages the human body in the literary process, both as sensitive and sense-making entity. Although readers’ responses may widely vary according to a whole set of contextual criteria — at once social, biological and æsthetic — my contention has been that the anchorage of his fiction in intense physical experience is a powerful motor not only for creativity but also for intersubjectivity, given the ontological continuity that exists between mind and body.21 This approach thus invites a shift in the way in which scholars sometimes perform literary criticism, a practice that, owing to its inherent logocentrism, tends to view with indifference, suspicion, or a certain condescension non-discursive somatic experience. Words do power the punch, but they are also powered by the punch.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Berger, John. Selected Essays. Ed. Geoff Dyer. London: Vintage, 2003.

Bergson, Henri. Matière et Mémoire. Paris: Felix Alcan, 1896.

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Brooks, Peter. Body Work. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1993.

Cahill, Susan. “Embodied Histories: Colum McCann’s Dancer and Anne Enright’s The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch.” In Irish Literature in the Celtic Tiger Years 1990 to 2008: Gender, Bodies, Memory. Ed. Susan Cahill. London: Continuum, 2011. 1-26. DOI: 10.5040/9781472542502.0005. Section of this chapter on Dancer republished as “Choreographing Memory: The Dancing Body and Temporality in Dancer” in This Side of Brightness: Essays on the Fiction of Colum McCann. Eds. Susan Cahill and Eóin Flannery. Bern: Peter Lang, 2012.

Collins-Hughes, Laura. “Thirteen Ways of Looking by Colum McCann.” Boston Globe, 1 October 2015. https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2015/10/10/book-review-thirteen-ways- looking-colum-mccann/sfY9HJ50HHl34YnjUeBfYN/story.html

Flannery, Eóin. Colum McCann and the Aesthetics of Redemption. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2011.

Garbarini, Francesca, and Mauro Adenzato. “At the root of embodied cognition: Cognitive meets neurophysiology.” Brain and Cognition 56 (2004): 100-6. DOI: 10.1016/j.bandc.2004.06.003

Haden-Guest, Anthony. “Philippe Petit’s Moment of Concern Walking the WTC Tightrope”. The Daily Beast, 8 August 2014. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/08/philippe-petit-s- moment-of-concern-walking-the-wtc-tightrope.html

Hatch, F. and Maietta, L. Kinästhetik. Gesundheitsentwicklung und menschliche Funktionen. 2d ed. Munich: Urban & Fischer bei Elsevier, 2003.

Healy, John F. “Dancing Cranes and Frozen Birds: The Fleeting Resurrections of Colum McCann.” New Hibernia Review 4.3 (2000): 107-18.

Jones, Sheila. Literary Geographies: Narrative Space in Let The Great World Spin. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Le Breton, David. Passions du risque. Paris: Métailié, 1991.

Le Breton, David. “‘Ceux qui vont en mer’: le risque et la mer.” In Sports extrêmes, sportifs de l’extrême. Ed. Margareta Beddeley. Geneva: Georg Editeur, 2002. 73-82.

Lennon, Joseph. “‘A Country of the Elsewheres’: An Interview with Colum McCann.” New Hibernia Review 16.2 (Summer 2012): 98-111. DOI: 10.1353/nhr.2012.0015

Maudet, Cécile. “Deux entretiens avec Colum McCann.” Transatlantica 1 (2014). https:// journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/6940

McCann, Colum. Dancer. London: Phoenix, 2003.

McCann, Colum. Fishing the Sloe-Black River. New York: Henry Holt & Co, 1993.

McCann, Colum. “Foreword”. At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing. Ed. George Kimball and John Schulian. New York: Library of America, 2012.

McCann, Colum. Let the Great World Spin. New York: Random House, 2009.

McCann, Colum. This Side of Brightness. London: Phoenix, 1998.

McCann, Colum, and Aleksandar Hemon (Interview). 2003. http://colummccann.com/ conversation-with-sasha-hemon/

Roth, Philip. American Pastoral. New York: Vintage, 1998.

Santel, James. “Funambulism: An Interview with Colum McCann.” Los Angeles Review of Books. 12 June 2013. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/funambulism-an-interview-with-colum-mccann

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Vallas, Sophie. “‘It’s about being connected’: il est sept heures, New York s’éveille: Let the Great World Spin de Colum McCann ou la coïncidence entre un homme et une ville.” Miranda 9 (2014). DOI: 10.4000/miranda.6086

Varela, Francisco. The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991.

Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. London: Penguin Classics, [1855] 1990.

Wimsatt, W.K. Jr., and Beardsley, Monroe C. The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry. Lexington: U. of Kentucky P., 1954.

NOTES

1. As fate ironically has it, McCann was himself the victim of a violent physical assault just two years later. In his victim-impact statement, he describes its traumatic impact as “a series of punches behind the punch.” The first piece of fiction he published since this assault, Thirteen Ways of Looking, has been hailed as an “assertive counterpunch, in nonviolent form” (Collins- Hughes 2015). 2. Page references to these novels will be made using respectively the following abbreviations: D and LGWS. 3. “Kinæsthetics is the study of body motion, and of the perception (both conscious and unconscious) of one’s own body motions” (Hatch and Maietta 2003: 5). 4. As Eóin Flannery has discussed, such appropriation of historical representation may be related to Linda Hutcheon’s concept of “historiographic metafiction” (2011: 134-40). 5. In her study of Dancer, Susan Cahill links this choral structure to the type of “choreographic text” advocated by Jacques Derrida, one that is able to subvert monological discourse (Cahill 2011: 146; Cahill 2012: 99). 6. See in particular Francisco Varela: “Even a change in posture, while preserving the same identical sensorial stimulation, alters the neuronal responses in the primary visual cortex, demonstrating that even the seemingly remote motorium is in resonance with the sensorium” (1991: 93). 7. Paradoxically, because philosophers of the sublime — Kant, Burke, Schopenhauer — consider that the beautiful conveys an aesthetic experience that is less intense than, or at least different from the sublime, which provokes at once awe, terror and attraction. 8. In This Side of Brightness, McCann also associates dance with cranes, which, both as birds and machines, form a recurrent symbol of fragile equipoise, arrested time and lofty grace. For more on this, see John F. Healy (2000). 9. As Marcia explains,“because if he was alive it couldn’t possibly be Mike Junior.” (LGWS 99) 10. An almost identical expression is given to the virtue of love in Let the Great World Spin when Adelita, Corrigan’s beloved, reflects that “the thing about love is that we come alive in bodies not our own.” (LGWS 275). This could lead one to infer that love, literature and empathy are intimately bound in McCann’s mind. 11. Sheila Jones also encourages such a parallel when borrowing one of the expressions used by Lara to evoke her physical experience of the car crash in Let the Great World Spin: “author and reader, connecting with each other and with their cocreated fictional world, together inhabit a ‘body we didn’t know’ […]. The bridging of distance plays an important role in the narrative spacing of McCann’s novel and also, I would suggest, in the event of the novel itself, in which as readers we too can rescue and be rescued by strangers” (Jones 2014: 99). Jones’s reference to the

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body remains metaphorical as it does not aim to exploit the potential somatic implications of the parallel, yet it has some bearing on the issue of empathy that is developed in this article. 12. For more on this topic, see Le Breton (1991). An interview of the real Philippe Petit in The Daily Beast confirms the parallel with the ordalium. Petit indeed refers to himself as an alien, a man totally at odds with modern society (Haden-Guest 2014). 13. “Unscrew the locks from the doors! / Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!” exclaims Walt Whitman in Section 33 of Song of Myself (Whitman 1990). 14. As E. Flannery writes, the fact that the tightrope walker “demands an alternative use of the body in space, an alternative orientation of the body in the public space” is “central to the utopian imagining of this novel” (2011: 215). 15. This truth is implicitly echoed towards the end of the novel, when Nureyev’s declining fortunes are conveyed by his hobbling progress down the beach in Brighton (D 310). 16. Also known as “somatosensory”: sensory perception of bodily feelings like touch, pain, position of the limbs, etc. 17. For another useful study of this anatomic motif, considering other examples, and as part of the overriding theme of coincidence in Let the Great World Spin, see Sophie Vallas (2014). 18. Neuroscience explains the link between empathy, mirror neurons and represented pain by the fact that the activation of mirror neurons does not necessarily require direct perception: semantic understanding and imaginative reconstruction will trigger an equivalent neuromotor simulation. 19. John Berger (2003: 326). 20. I am borrowing her an analogy made by McCann in the above-cited interview with A. Hemon: “for Dancer I started placing words together, choreographing them on the page until it seemed to me that they sounded right.” 21. This notion of ontological continuity, or unity, was developed by philosopher John Dewey, who accordingly coined the neologism “body-mind”.

ABSTRACTS

This article focuses on two novels by Colum McCann, Dancer (2003) and Let the Great World Spin (2009) that place the body in extreme conditions, be it the dancing body of Rudolf Nureyev, the tightrope-walking body of Philippe Petit or the bodies of other characters when pushed out of their comfort zones. By reflecting upon the function and impact of transgressive physical feats along with the heightened somæsthetic experience that is undergone by the novels’ characters and readers, this study aims to show how Colum McCann’s writing engages the human body in the literary process, both as sensitive and sense-making entity. To this end, it brings into play different scientific approaches: Peter Brooks on the correlation between semiotization of body and somatization of story, Henri Bergson on the relationship between the body’s position and its varying perceptions, David Le Breton on the social meaning of risk-taking, as well as various cognitive scientists on the mechanisms at work in kinaesthetic experience.

Cet article se concentre sur deux romans de Colum McCann, Dancer (2003) et Let the Great World Spin (2009) qui placent le corps dans des conditions extrêmes, qu’il s’agisse du corps dansant de Rudolf Noureiev, du corps funambulesque de Philippe Petit ou du corps d’autres personnages poussés hors de leur zone de confort. Cette réflexion sur la fonction et l’impact d'exploits

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physiques d'ordre transgressif et des expériences somesthésiques intenses vécues par le personnage de fiction et le lecteur, se donne pour objet de mettre en évidence la manière dont l’écriture de Colum McCann engage le corps humain dans le processus littéraire comme entité à la fois sensible et créatrice de sens. A ces fins, cette étude met en jeu diverses approches scientifiques, notamment la corrélation entre sémiotisation du corps et somatisation du récit chez Peter Brooks, le rapport entre positionnement corporel et perception chez Henri Bergson, l’enjeu social de la prise de risque chez David Le Breton, sans oublier l’apport de la recherche en sciences cognitives dans l'analyse de l’expérience kinesthésique.

INDEX

Mots-clés: McCann Colum, empathie, intersubjectivité, kinesthésie narrative, ordalie, implication somatique, perception, sémiotisation, corps, métonymie, expérience somesthésique Keywords: McCann Colum, empathy, intersubjectivity, narrative kinæsthetics, ordalium, somatic engagement, perception, semiotization, body, metonymy, somaesthetic experience

AUTHOR

LARA DELAGE-TORIEL Lara Delage-Toriel is associate professor in North-American Literature at Strasbourg University, France. Her publications include two book-length studies involving cross-media analysis, one on A Streetcar Named Desire (Bréal, 2003) and one on Lolita (Editions du Temps, 2009). She co-edited Kaleidoscopic Nabokov: Perspectives Françaises (Houdiard, 2009) and was the founding president of the French Vladimir Nabokov Society from 2010 to 2014. Her current research interests lie in the way in which certain 20th and 21st century American authors engage the body within the creative process. Within various contexts, academic and non-academic, she has also directed and/or performed in a number of intermedial projects involving dialogues between fine arts and literature (“A Guide to Berlin”, 2014), dance, music and literature (“La Friche Mode d'Emploi”, 2008), music and literature (“Lolita”, 2009, “Mademoiselle O”, 2014), soundpainting and literature (“Lolita à 60 ans”, 2015), as well as film and sound documentaries (“A Guide to Berlin”, 2015, “Nabokov in the Classroom”, 2009). Contact: ldelage [at] unistra.fr

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The Physicality of Writing in Paul Auster’s White Spaces and Winter Journal

François Hugonnier

“If it really has to be said, it will create its own form.” Paul Auster (1995: 104)

1 White Spaces is a short matrix text written by the poet, novelist and film-maker Paul Auster in the winter of 1978-1979. This meditation on the body, on silence, language and narration is Auster’s immediate reaction to his “epiphanic moment of clarity” (2012: 220, original emphasis) which happened during a dance rehearsal in New York. Initially entitled “Happiness, or a Journey through Space” and “A Dance for Reading Aloud”,1 this hybrid piece of poetic prose was retrospectively considered as “the bridge between writing poetry and writing prose” (1995: 132), and “the bridge to everything you have written in the years since then” (2012: 224). Consequently it features not only some of the main themes of Auster’s poetry and future fiction, but also early experimentations with the verbal and non-verbal mechanisms of story-telling, as well as with the physicality of writing.

2 In Winter Journal, Auster retrospectively contextualizes this “epiphanic moment”, stating that “Writing begins in the body, it is the music of the body” (2012: 224). Indeed, as early as 1967, he had claimed that “The world is in my head. My body is in the world” (2007: 203), already drafting the outline of a philosophy of language hinging on the interconnection between the body and the world. According to Auster, writing is a silent physical activity propelled by the rhythm of breath, step and heart-beat — a linguistic and spatial motion articulated by the body. Story-telling is channeled through this moving, feeling and communicating apparatus capturing joy, despair and suffering, and ultimately putting them into words like a “faceless scribe” (2003: 378). Emphasizing the inner/outer motion of language itself, White Spaces and Winter Journal underline the fact that in spite of their core silences, stories are meant to be voiced.

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3 In order to tackle the paradoxical journey of Auster’s creative impulse, we will trace his early attempts with the physicality of writing in White Spaces, drawing from the original text, alternative drafts and later insights in Winter Journal. The groundbreaking development of unwords, sentences and paragraphs on the page — in other terms the sudden syntagmatic and lexical mutations inspired by moving bodies — bear witness to the birth of a writer’s organic prose. After analyzing Auster’s binary process from breath, heart-beat and “step to words”, we will highlight his investigation of sensory abilities and limitations through his translations of sound and silence, visible and invisible, contact and loneliness, space and void, breath and death. As Auster’s semiotic dance of the senses makes room for trauma writing and cyclical failure, we will finally address the physical and narrative implications of feeling, falling and failing.

1. From “step to words”: the written body and the body writing

4 Facing the choreographer’s inability to put into words the December 1978 dance rehearsal, Paul Auster, who had “not written a poem in more than a year” (2012: 221), suddenly overcame the inadequacy of language, which had been the vehicle for both his creativity and imprisonment: “the spell / That welds step to words / And ties the tongue to its faults” (“Spokes”, Auster 2007: 27). The next day, he set out to experiment with poetic prose, following the music of silence that led him to embrace — step by step, word by word — linguistic randomness and spatial wandering: Something happens, and from the moment it begins to happen, nothing can ever be the same again. Something happens. Or else, something does not happen. A body moves. Or else, it does not move. And if it moves, something begins to happen. And even if it does not move, something begins to happen. It comes from my voice. But that does not mean these words will ever be what happens. It comes and goes. If I happen to be speaking at this moment, it is only because I hope to find a way of going along, of running parallel to everything else that is going along, and so begin to find a way of filling the silence without breaking it. ([1980], 2007: 155)

5 White Spaces is composed of several paragraphs, preceded by white spaces, whose length increasingly expands, thereby marking visually the birth of Auster’s cross-genre narrative prose. The writing speaks of its own beginning. Each paragraph starts without indentation. This poetic alignment is used again more than thirty years later in Auster’s hybrid memoir Winter Journal. The first eight paragraphs of White Spaces (three of which are quoted above) grow from two to sixteen lines. The “silent” / “voice” and “something” / “nothing” dichotomies, which saturate Auster’s prose from the onset, herald fundamental aspects of his aesthetics. In the first sentence, the commas delineate a central proposition. It is balanced by opposites (“Something” / “nothing”) and figures the author “coming back to life” (2012: 224) through a motion in time and space. This motion surfaces with the unpredictability and desubjectification of an external force (“it begins”). The friction of opposites (“happens” / “does not happen”; “moves” / “does not move”) gives shape and rhythm to the text and imitates the interaction of bodies moving in space. Contrary to the choreographer, Paul Auster does not want to ruin this subtle equilibrium with awkward words (“filling the silence

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without breaking it”). A word-for-word explanation forces meaning into the audience, who should instead infer significance and grace from silence’s non-verbal commands.

6 By claiming that it is “running parallel to everything else”, the narrative voice2 uses the lexical connotations of a flux. A stream of language, comparable to running water or hurrying feet, is produced and commented upon in order to describe, if not the thing seen, at least the way language, as an inadequate tool, might accompany the ungraspable motion of bodies in space. As has often been noted in Auster’s work, writing involves composing with the irreducible difference between sign and object. It is about finding the right direction in repetition: one foot forward, and then the other. It is about listening to the words’ own pace as they stir the writer’s “living hand” (2012: 165).3 This introductory excerpt also implies the need for both writer and reader (or listener) to listen for the undercurrents of speech and, as epitomized in his later novels filled with embedded stories, of story-telling.

7 Just as in a dance performance, the writer needs to use the step as a primary unit. Auster alludes to it more clearly a few pages later in White Spaces, and comes back to it in Winter Journal. Both extracts are quoted below: I remain in the room in which I am writing this. I put one foot in front of the other. I put one word in front of the other; and for each step I take I add another word, as if for each word to be spoken there were another space to be crossed, a distance to be filled by my body as it moves through this space. ([1980], 2007, 158, emphases added) In order to do what you do, you need to walk. Walking is what brings the words to you, what allows you to hear the rhythms of the words as you write them in your head. One foot forward, and then the other foot forward, the double drumbeat of your heart. Two eyes, two ears, two arms, two legs, two feet. That, and then this. Writing begins in the body, it is the music of the body, and even if the words have meaning, can sometimes have meaning, the music of the words is where the meanings begin. You sit at your desk in order to write down the words, but in your head you are still walking, always walking, and what you hear is the rhythm of your heart, the beating of your heart. […] Writing as a lesser form of dance. (2012: 224-25, emphases added)

8 Writing is an outgrowth of physical symmetry and binarity, as discussed and practiced in these passages (“One foot” / “the other”, “One word” / “another” [2007]; “One” / “the other”, “Two eyes, two ears, two arms” [2012]). The form and meaning of the telling are orchestrated by the moving body. A key illustration of this pattern is the “ double drumbeat” of the writer’s heart, as the words simultaneously provide rhythmic and lexical mimicking thanks to a double alliteration in /d/ and /b/. In Auster’s “landscape of random impulse”, such rare moments of linguistic suitability are celebrated.

9 After White Spaces, Winter Journal offers a different narrative entryway into his “second incarnation as a writer” (2012: 224, emphasis added). The act of re-telling Auster’s re- birth further mirrors the multi-faceted doublings. First, we should make out two narrative voices responding to each other (“I” in White Spaces / “you” in Winter Journal), and underline the systematic doublings of the pronouns within given sentences and paragraphs. Second, we need to focus on the flow of writing, which is animated by the sheer force of repetition and variation: a noun, nuanced by an adjective, a comma, the repetition of the same substantive preceded by another adjective. Auster gets to the heart of things by “hew[ing]” language (2007: 39, 91), by picking awkward signs out of the rubble of the post-Babelian era. The binary rhythm and structure (“This” / “that”),

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the doublings (“each” / “each”, “space” / “space”) and the variations also occur at grammatical and syntactical levels (“to be crossed”’ / “to be filled”, “have meaning” / “have meaning”). A similar morpho-syntactic shift occurs at word-level thanks to alliteration (“remain” / “room” / “writing” [2007]; “what” / “walking” / “words” / “ write” [2012]). Repetition and variation allow Auster to test both the appropriateness of each notion and the musical quality of each linguistic sign, step by step, heartbeat after heartbeat (“still walking / always walking”; “the rhythm of your heart” / “the beating of your heart”).

10 The act of writing requires losing oneself in an organic music, as if the words were alive, freely animated and dictated to the writer: “In other words, it says itself, and our mouths are merely the instruments of the saying of it” (Auster 2007: 158). This impersonal view of writing and speaking goes hand in hand with Auster’s belief not in inspiration so much as in “the unconscious” (Busnel). He remains faithful to a natural and physical phenomenon which should not be overloaded, restricted or misled by the intellect, as he told François Busnel upon publication of Winter Journal. Accordingly, the “voice” is a “function” and a “motion” of the body, as well as an “extension of the mind” that reaches out to the other. Its impulse is governed by randomness and the craving for interconnectedness with the world: To think of motion not merely as a function of the body but as an extension of the mind. In the same way, to think of speech not as an extension of the mind but as a function of the body. Sounds emerge from the voice to enter the air and surround and bounce off and enter the body that occupies that air, and though they cannot be seen, these sounds are no less a gesture than a hand is when outstretched in the air towards another hand, and in this gesture can be read the entire alphabet of desire. (Auster 2007: 156)

11 With a chiasmus — yet another trope emphasizing the mirroring processes at work in the act of writing — Paul Auster reproduces the interactive motion of the (inner and outer) self and the (outer and inner) world. Language is presented as an inadequate but substantial means of interaction between human beings, as it travels freely through the air. The loneliness of Auster’s characters, writing in locked rooms (in The New York Trilogy, In the Country of Last Things, etc.), is but the extension of their inner struggle with language (say, Mr Blank in Travels in the Scriptorium). The writer is trapped in his own head with invisible, opaque words, and his walking body is enclosed in a space delimited by four walls. Consequently, the motion of bodies and words might pave the way out of solitary confinement.

12 During the dance rehearsal, Paul Auster was “saved” and “brought back to life” (2012: 220) by the silent motion of bodies and the articulation of their gracious non-verbal sentences in an “alphabet of desire” (2007: 156). The dancers’ bodies traveled through the air in total silence, like words on the page, surrounded by soundless white spaces: “Bodies in motion, bodies in space, bodies leaping and twisting through empty, unimpeded air” (2012: 220). From that moment on, the physical motion of body language enabled Auster to obey his own body’s commands, all the while keeping in mind that his “body is in the world”, and that “the world”, like words and images springing from the unconscious, “is [itself] in [his] head”. Naturally, the silence/speech and inner/outer dichotomies are tackled through the translation of the untranslatable. Within the same eight-page piece, Auster addresses the paradoxes of language by questioning logocentrism and scrutinizing his sensory abilities.

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2. Probing sensory abilities and limitations (from a semiotic dance of the senses to a synesthesia of emptiness)

13 Paul Auster reminds us that the world cannot be put into words because of two factors: “the inadequacy of words” (2007: 161) and the limitation of senses.4 In order to grasp the full extent of the physicality of writing in White Spaces and Winter Journal, we must go back to pre-lapsarian impulses, to the writing body’s process of perception, which precedes (and hopefully parallels) its means of expression. Being “present in the space of this moment” (2007: 156) is White Spaces’ impossible goal, knowing that perception and instant linguistic expression cannot match, as “the words would always lag behind what was happening” (156). This poetic quandary, which is central to both of these pieces of prose, calls for further assessment of the writing body’s sensory abilities and inabilities.

14 White Spaces could arguably be qualified as a poetic and philosophical essay, and it might be insightful to put it to the test of Ezra Pound’s definition of poetry “according to three essential elements: phanopoeia, melopoeia, and logopoeia — the play of image, music, and meaning”.5 White Spaces is concerned with the interplay and representation of these themes and tools, and more precisely with the ways in which they contribute to the creative act of writing. However, in White Spaces, Auster seems to deviate from Pound’s “dance of the intellect among words” (i.e. logopoeia, Pound 25) by creating a semiotic dance of the senses, not of the intellect.

15 In addition to the drive of memory (re-membering is itself considered as a repetitive function of the body and the mind [Busnel]), the organic writing-flow of White Spaces and Winter Journal is stirred by the immediate translation of the body’s perception, or lack of it. Auster’s career as a poet has taught him how to perceive the world through his limited senses before employing his mouth as an “instrumen[t] of the saying of it” (2007, 158). As a result, White Spaces is deep down an attempt at perusing the body’s “naked eye” (157, 161, 162) and its ability to “touch” (159), “feel” (159), “list[en]” (155) and “breath[e]” (160). The object of translation is referred to as a “landscape” of “random impulse”, “space” and “sound” (156). Tentatively, the self-reflexive narrative voice rises at the distance of subjectivity and verbalization (both of which cast a dance of their own in the representation process). With White Spaces as a preliminary inquest, Auster seeks to define the body’s sensory interconnectedness with the world: I walk within these four walls, and for as long as I am here I can go anywhere I like. I can go from one end of the room to the other and touch any of the four walls, or even all the walls, one after the other, exactly as I like. […] Sometimes I touch one of the four corners and in this way bring myself into contact with two walls at the same time. Now and then I let my eyes roam up to the ceiling, and when I am particularly exhausted by my efforts there is always the floor to welcome my body. (Auster 2007: 159)

16 The act of touching the walls repeats the binary process of the writer’s body walking, breathing and pumping blood (“one end” / “the other”, “one after the other”, “I touch one of the four corners” / “bring myself in contact with two walls”). In this extract, Auster probes the spatial limits of the room that surrounds him. The room repeats his corporal enclosure, while walking in the room echoes the cerebral process of linguistic symmetry. Outward limitations are part of the measurement of his subjectivity and

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interconnection with the world through his senses (“touch”, “bring myself into contact”, “I let my eyes roam up to the ceiling”, “the floor to welcome my body”). The walls stand for the entrapment of consciousness within the body, and for the narrative voice’s desire to reach out to the unknown world. In the lines immediately following this fragment, Auster’s speaks of his being ecstatic (“great happiness”) during this metaphysical experiment as he “feel[s him]self on the brink of discovering some terrible, unimagined truth” (159). The lexical connotation of the verb feel (not find) in “I feel myself”, reinforces the sensory exploration at work — feeling oneself and the world is what it takes to understand the human condition.

17 Paul Auster’s sensory journey “in the realm of the naked eye” (157, 161, 162) starts with a purification of the senses derived from his readings of Objectivist poets George Oppen and Charles Reznikoff. Auster’s “naked eye” is an eye freed from the weight of representation and verbalization, a lens through which the world enters the writer’s body without interference from the intellect. Auster’s interest for the Objectivists shows through the following excerpt, where the object of representation (and representation itself as an object), are portrayed with as much objectivity as possible: To say the simplest thing possible. To go no farther than whatever it is I happen to find before me. To begin with this landscape, for example. Or even to note the things that are most near, as if in the tiny world before my eyes I might find an image of the life that exists beyond me, as if in a way I do not fully understand each thing in life were connected to everything, which in turn connected me to the world at large, the endless world that looms up in the mind, as lethal and unknowable as desire itself. (Auster 2007: 157)

18 Inner visions are made of images from the world as well as images from the unconscious and the imagination, allowing Auster to embark on a journey out of the locked room, towards the unknown. The infinitives set off a series of scientific propositions in shorthand, as if getting rid of the syntactical burden of articulated speech: “To say”, “To go”, “To begin”. The sentences are put together by the collision of the outside world with the writer’s semiotic dance. In his Spinozist view of the world, Auster tends to consider that each particle (or in William Blake and Edmond Jabès’s words, each “grain of sand”)6 could potentially hold the world at large. The phrase “ Everywhere, as if each place were here” (2007: 162), whose near chiasmus/anagram visually and orally mirrors the world’s interconnectedness and the body’s urge for symmetry, is but an instance of this linguistic process.

19 Yet, as it gradually surfaces in the examples chosen above, Auster’s translation of the outside world through a pure sensory journey soon takes into account his paradoxical perception of “emptiness” and “silence”, of the “unseen” and nothingness. Auster’s experimentations with prose writing include translating the object seen, felt or heard. They include following the “relentless waves of the real” (159), be they waves of objectlessness and negativity. Simply put, what about the unseen and the unheard? Paying attention to formlessness is a paradoxical venture beyond sensory limitations. Auster testifies to his untranslatable perception of a “silence”, elsewhere linked to whiteness and emptiness, in the following address: “I dedicate these words to the things in life I do not understand, to each thing passing away before my eyes. I dedicate these words to the impossibility of finding a word equal to the silence inside me” (2007: 160).7 The disincarnated object and agent of representation tend to fill in for the paradoxically scarce descriptions of the bodies:

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In the beginning, I wanted to speak of arms and legs, of jumping up and down, of bodies tumbling and spinning, of enormous journeys through space, of cities, of deserts, of mountain ranges stretching farther than the eye can see. Little by little, however, as these words began to impose themselves on me, the things I wanted to do seemed finally to be of no importance. […] Now emptiness is all that remains: a space, no matter how small, in which whatever is happening can be allowed to happen. (Auster 2007: 160)

20 The passivity of writing is here avowed (“the words […] impose themselves on me”). Auster is deprived of will, as if proven wrong by his own writing (“the things I wanted to do seemed finally of no importance”). He is the hands and mouth of a highly sensitive writing machine translating a semiotic dance of its own. Moving away from the illusory “power of words to say what they mean to say” (2007: 158), Auster’s impersonal writing matches the conceptual motion of bodies “dancing to silence” (2012: 222).8 Auster’s initial attempt at speaking of the body has created a music of “emptiness” and interior silence. Before being written down and externalized, the silent music of words is to be found in the body. In the aftermath of the dance rehearsal, Auster did not attempt a linguistic depiction of the bodies’ outer physicality. Instead, he wrote to his inner silence, just as the dancers had danced to their own inner silence.

21 Moreover, “no importance”, “emptiness” and “no matter” contribute lexically to the building of Auster’s aesthetics of impersonality and negativity. Indeed, his unwords fill the page with unprecedented density. Right from the aforementioned first sentence, “it begins” makes speech vacillate from presence (“something”) to absence (“nothing”). “ [N]othing can ever be the same again” (2007: 155) alludes to the act of writing getting started, “propelling” an endless stream of negative words: “silent, silence, no longer, no memory, no less, not impossible, no one, never, no farther, unknowable, invisible, unpronounceable, nothing more, nothing less, no name, nowhere, unimagined, unseen, invisibility, nothing else, impossibility, no importance, emptiness, absence, no matter, no room, not nothing, inadequacy, Never” (155-162). These unwords (not to mention additional nouns made out of privative suffixes) translate the limitations of perception, understanding and speech, while they paradoxically thrive in the course of their own making and unmaking.

22 The method of Auster’s metaphysical exploration of the senses leads to a synesthesia of emptiness, as it testifies to contact and loneliness, sound and silence, visible and invisible, space and void, breath and death (the latter dichotomy being formulated through the final allegory of the arctic adventurer Freuchen, trapped in his tomblike igloo with his own freezing breath [160-61]). Auster’s experimentations with silence and speech underline the failure of language, which is repeatedly associated with confinement and physical fall in his whole body of work. In the final analysis, language registers negativity as indirectly as the body integrates trauma. Triggered in White Spaces, this concept proliferates in his later works of fiction and non-fiction. Taking up his investigations in prose where he had left them in White Spaces and The Invention of Solitude, Paul Auster begins his memoir Winter Journal by conducting a similar sensory research. The return to these questions, enhanced by a complementary approach to body writing, enables him to go further with the body translating and exhibiting the wounds of the past, in other words repeatedly feeling, falling and failing.

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3. Feeling, falling, failing

23 At the end of White Spaces, the few pages collected by the writer in becoming, who feels a sudden appetite for destruction (“The desire, for example, to destroy everything I have written so far” [2007: 161]), are referred to as a composition among others, prone to the rules of contingence and arbitrary making: “there is always another way, neither better nor worse, in which things might take shape” (161). Besides, linguistic creation is reminiscent of the original fall of man: “I find these words falling from my mouth and vanishing into the silence they came from” (158, emphasis added). Falling and failing are natural motions, and cyclical destruction is also at the heart of the creative process. According to Auster, the writer must not attempt to control, censor or guide the narrative voice’s impulse. He must listen to it. He must accept the limitations of language and the arbitrary directions of writing, which are dictated by a larger motion, a motion encompassing the body in space. Falling bodies are subject to the law of gravity. Like falling and failing bodies, writing and speaking are both interconnected and limited, and they register pain and fault in their accidental trajectories through time and space.

24 Thus, White Spaces ends with “A few scraps of paper”, whose fragmented, binary black and white output — literally dark marks on white paper — is mirrored once more by the two-sidedness of the white snow and the “darkness” of the “winter night” (2007: 162). Fascinated by Beckett’s view of artistic creation as the repetition of failure (“Try again. Fail again. Fail better” [Beckett 8]), Auster constantly comes back to these questions, with each new approach a new failure.

25 A few decades down the road of accomplished failure, Auster’s introductory remarks in Winter Journal spark off the recurrence of his feeling-and-breathing creative pattern: “A catalogue of sensory data. What one might call a phenomenology of breathing” (2012: 1). Repeating the hybrid themes and forms of White Spaces, these statements immediately give way to a close examination of the body as a feeling, falling and failing device. Throughout Winter Journal, time itself is a companion object of representation. Interestingly enough, time is apprehended through synesthetic memory. Here, sensory and physical memory is Auster’s point of departure, as past events are carved into his flesh. Soon, “pleasure” gives way to crushing pain, which is arguably the central theme of this interior monologue. Even if the added distance of irony and mythification ostensibly takes into account his reading audience, Winter Journal is Auster’s conversation with himself. A conversation with the myriad of selves that are here one instant, gone the next. Auster is indeed speaking to himself in the second person, knowing that “I” is but the inadequate “dust / of a former self” [“Interior”, Auster 2007: 67]). Auster tells himself about his life through the perspective of past wounds that physically define who he is. Looking at his reflection in the mirror, he sees himself as if from the exterior, as if he were deciphering parchment: The inventory of your scars, in particular the ones on your face, which are visible to you each morning when you look into the bathroom mirror to shave or comb your hair. You seldom think about them, but whenever you do, you understand that they are marks of life, that the assorted jagged lines etched into the skin of your face are letters from the secret alphabet that tells the story of who you are, for each scar is the trace of a healed wound, and each wound was caused by an unexpected collision with the world — that is to say, an accident, or something that need not have

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happened, since by definition an accident is something that need not happen. (Auster 2012: 5)

26 The interaction with the world often takes the shape of a “collision”: writing itself is a series of accidents, as Auster shows in his fiction inspired from reality’s strangest and scariest contingences (Auster 1995: 115). The body bears “trace[s]” and “marks”, as if they were the remaining signs of past events. Scars and words have the same sort of elliptic, superficial quality. The skin can be read, it tells the outward story of who we are. But the inner meaning, the core truth is inaccessible. Like scars, linguistic signs are irrevocably detached from their object of representation. Rather than mere parchment (which used to be made out of goat skin), Auster’s skin evokes an eligible time-layered palimpsest. The carving of these “letters from a secret alphabet” soon binds together writing and bleeding. Paul Auster speaks of writing as scarring, as providing a token for the acknowledgement and remembrance of pain: No doubt you are a flawed and wounded person, a man who has carried a wound in him from the very beginning (why else would you have spent the whole of your adult life bleeding words onto a page?), and the benefits you derive from alcohol and tobacco serve as crutches to keep your crippled self upright and moving through the world. (Auster 2012: 15)

27 But of course, the “wound” is never “healed”, and spreads out through the inadequacy of language, which is itself a prop and a pharmakon, a treacherous medicine. As the young Auster had written, “The fall of man is not a question of sin, transgression, or moral turpitude. It is a question of language conquering experience: the fall of the world into the word, experience descending from the eye to the mouth” (2007: 204). When, as an older man, he remembers his “epiphanic moment of clarity”, Auster repeatedly speaks of a “fall” that is still laden with biblical undertones: [A]t a certain point something began to open up inside you, you found yourself falling through the rift between world and word, the chasm that divides human life from our capacity to understand or express the truth of human life, and for reasons that still confound you, this sudden fall through the empty, unbounded air filled you with a sensation of freedom and happiness […]. (Auster 2012: 223, emphasis added)

28 In Winter Journal, Auster depicts one of the physical and linguistic falls that launched the overwhelming themes of falling and failing found in each and every of his novels.9 The writer needs to accept the fall, to take a plunge into the unknown and compose with the inadequacy of words. Even on the smooth surface of the page, the clear-cut separation “between word and world” is lodged within the words themselves. The “rift” estranging the words word and world is materialized graphically. Itself a scar from the “secret alphabet”, the long letter “l” cuts these otherwise symmetric words like a gash. Or else, the letter “l”, being removed from the word world, symbolizes morphologically the painful loss of representation.

29 After describing the motion of bodies in space in White Spaces, then countless fallen characters, Auster puts himself to the test in Winter Journal. Physical and linguistic falls repeat the biblical fall of Adam and Eve and the collapse of the Tower of Babel. Finally, Auster discloses two major aspects of the physicality of writing at the end of Winter Journal. Writing is a physical activity guided by senses, breath, heart-beat, step and wounds which enables him to testify to his physical experience of the world. But Paul Auster also chronicles the wounds of others, real or fictitious.

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30 Consequently, ever since 9/11, his latest pieces focus on the inscription, or data-storage of trauma caused by personal and collective loss, and especially war-related psychic dysfunction and physical mutilation. Likewise, in Winter Journal, the long passage on his epiphanic moment is actually followed by two others with which it forms a concluding trilogy of personal and collective testimony. The second one is a description of the “Towers […] pulsating in memory” like phantom limbs, revealing the persistence of the 9/11 trauma when crossing the Brooklyn Bridge (225-26). The third one is the haunting memory of an “auditory hallucination” when visiting Bergen-Belsen (226-29).10 All of them are put into words by referring to physical perception and representation, and abyssal falls. Auster’s elliptic prose reflects the enshrined wounds that now and then surface, in seemingly disordered ways, at the level of words themselves. Trauma entails a disorientation of time, memory and narrative, as well as psychic and physical dysfunction such as seemingly extra-sensorial perception, metalepsis, aphasia or impairment, all of which are to be found beyond the deceptive simplicity of Auster’s prose, acquired failure after failure, misstep after misstep.

31 In order to understand the range of Auster’s aesthetics, and his own thematic concomitances, we need to consider falling as a manifold motion from a linguistic, physical, clinical, spiritual, philosophical and artistic perspective. For instance, in the original draft of White Spaces, Auster wrote the following lines, hinting side by side at the fall in Genesis and nursery rhymes, as if discovering the secret universality of falling: “Question: Adam and Eve, the Tower of Babel; Humpty Dumpty; London Bridge. Answer: all fall down. Question: ashes, ashes. Answer: ashes, ashes” (Auster 1979: 35). Admittedly, Auster keeps storing occurrences of falls that might seem unrelated at first sight. But as far as literary creation is concerned, is that not how thematic obsession gradually turns into aesthetics?

*

32 More than thematic obsessions, falling and failing are physical and linguistic motions impelling creation and death. The corpus assessed in this paper, which spans more than three decades of Auster’s literary endeavor, repeatedly puts the body’s functions and failures at the crux of the writing process. From the very beginning, when he was but 19 years old, Auster has stated his belief that “To feel estranged from language is to lose your own body. When words fail you, you dissolve into an image of nothingness. You disappear” (2007: 205). Hence, in 1967, forty-four years prior to the writing of Winter Journal, linguistic failure was already assimilated to a physical fall. This failure has since been repeated through various fictitious avatars and narrative voices. Consistently, Auster concludes his early interview with Jabès by quoting Beckett: “To be an artist is to fail, as no other dares fail” (Auster 1990: 210). “Or else”, in Auster’s own words taken from White Spaces, “to go on. Or else, to begin again. Or else, to go on, as if each moment were the beginning, as if each word were the beginning of another silence, another word more silent than the last” (2007: 161). Ultimately going back to the blank page to embrace silence illustrates Auster’s will to accept non-verbal meditation and linguistic failure. Auster’s art of failure is propelled by an intensely repetitive physical pattern that creates a music of its own. The writer must take a plunge into “the other side of speech” (1990: 202) in order to “discove[r]” whatever “unimagined truth” (2007: 159) the act of writing might translate. In that regard, White Spaces and Winter Journal are

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nothing less than literary and scientific ventures aiming at channeling the unfathomable forces that drive us — physically — into the semiotic dance of speech.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Auster, Paul. Living Hand. Ed. Mitchell Sisskind and Paul Auster. Weston, CT, issue 1, spring 1973.

Auster, Paul. Facing the Music (Poems, Prose & A Dance for Reading Aloud), typed draft, William Bronk Papers. New York: Columbia University (Butler Library, Rare Book and Manuscript Section), October 3, 1979, letter.

Auster, Paul. White Spaces. Barrytown, NY: Station Hill, 1980.

Auster, Paul. The Invention of Solitude. New York: Sun Press, 1982.

Auster, Paul. The New York Trilogy (City of Glass, Ghosts, The Locked Room). London: Faber (1985), 1987.

Auster, Paul. In the Country of Last Things. New York: Viking Penguin, 1987.

Auster, Paul. Moon Palace. New York: Penguin Books, 1989.

Auster, Paul. Ground Work (Selected Poems and Essays 1970-1979). London: Faber, 1990.

Auster, Paul. Leviathan. London: Faber, 1992.

Auster, Paul. Mr Vertigo. London: Faber, 1994.

Auster, Paul. The Red Notebook (True Stories, Prefaces and Interviews). London: Faber, 1995.

Auster, Paul. The Book of Illusions. London: Faber, 2002.

Auster, Paul. Collected Prose (Autobiographical Writings, True Stories, Critical Essays, Prefaces and Collaborations with Artists). New York: Picador/Henry Holt, 2003.

Auster, Paul. Oracle Night. London: Faber, 2004.

Auster, Paul. Travels in the Scriptorium. New York: Henry Holt, 2006.

Auster, Paul. Collected Poems. London: Faber, 2007.

Auster, Paul. Man in the Dark. London: Faber, 2008.

Auster, Paul. Invisible. New York: Henry Holt, 2009.

Auster, Paul. Winter Journal. New York: Henry Holt, 2012.

Beckett, Samuel. Worstward Ho. London: John Calder, 1983.

Bernstein, Charles. “Introduction to Ezra Pound”. Poetry Speaks. Ed. Elise Paschen, Rebekah Presson Mosby (Sourcebooks, 2001). Buffalo: Electronic Poetry Center. http://writing.upenn.edu/ epc/authors/bernstein/essays/pound.html

Blake, William. “Auguries of Innocence”, The Pickering Manuscript. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2004.

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Busnel, François and Paul Auster. “Tout commence avec le corps”. L’Express, March 2013, https:// www.lexpress.fr/culture/livre/paul-auster-tout-commence-avec-le-corps_1224572.html

Hugonnier, François. “Auster’s Narratives of Traumatic Temporality”. Time, Narrative and Imagination: essays on Paul Auster. Ed. Arkadiusz Misztal. “Between.pomiędzy” series, Gdańsk: Gdańsk UP, 2015. 137-164.

Jabès, Edmond. Le Seuil, Le Sable. Paris: Gallimard, 1990.

Pound, Ezra. “How to Read” (1913). Literary Essays of Ezra Pound. New York: New Directions, 1968. 15-40.

Siegumfeldt, Inge-Birgitte and Paul Auster. “Paul Auster appointed honorary alumnus” (reading of White Spaces and interview). 13 May 2011, https://hum.ku.dk/auster/

NOTES

1. Paul Auster, Facing the Music (Poems, Prose & A Dance for Reading Aloud), typed draft with title page and contents (“Nine poems”, “Pages for Kafka”, “The Death of Sir Walter Raleigh”, “ Northern Lights”, “Happiness, or a Journey through Space”), enclosed with a letter to William Bronk. William Bronk Papers, New York: Columbia University (Butler Library, Rare Book and Manuscript Section), October 3, 1979. For a 2011 public reading of (and insightful discussion on) White Spaces, see Inge-Birgitte Siegumfeldt and Paul Auster, “Paul Auster appointed honorary alumnus”, 13 May 2011, http://hum.ku.dk/auster/ (accessed Dec. 2015). 2. The narrative voice is ambiguous as White Spaces is a narrative and autobiographical “bridge” in Auster’s career. Paul Auster is the author of this piece of non-fiction, and to some extent he might also be thought of as the narrator. Nonetheless, Auster explores an impersonal voice, hence the use of the phrase “the narrative voice” in this paper (as if the voice were his and not his, or else as if Auster were speaking at a distance from himself). 3. In Winter Journal, Auster alludes to Keats’s “living hand”: “Looking at your right hand as it grips the black fountain pen you are using to write this journal, you think of Keats looking at his own right hand under similar circumstances, in the act of writing one of his last poems and suddenly breaking off to scribble eight lines in the margin of the manuscript […]. This living hand, now warm and capable” (Auster 2012: 164-65). Auster had originally used the expression “living hand” as the title for the journal he edited with Mitchell Sisskind in 1973 (see Auster 1973). 4. In his 1967 Notes from a Composition Book, Auster had written the following maxim: “But not only are our perceptions limited, language (our means of expressing those perceptions) is also limited” (Auster 2007: 204). 5. Charles Bernstein, “Introduction to Ezra Pound”, from Poetry Speaks, ed. Elise Paschen, Rebekah Presson Mosby (http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/bernstein/essays/pound.html) (Sourcebooks, 2001), Buffalo: Electronic Poetry Center (June 2014). 6. “To see a World in a Grain of Sand” (William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence”, The Pickering Manuscript, Kessinger Publishing, 2004, 15). See also Edmond Jabès, Le Seuil, Le Sable, Paris: Gallimard, 1990. 7. In his introduction to Paul Auster’s Collected Poems, Norman Finkelstein underlines the trauma- related issues at stake when Auster “speak[s] to the silence”: “Thinking now about Auster’s poetry in the light of his essays in The Art of Hunger, and in the light of this poetry’s own unique history, I understand that it is constituted of a solitary voice speaking to the silence. It is a silence that itself has a complex history, often connected to some of the most terrible episodes in modern times. In the end, it takes up residence within the poet and demands to be acknowledged” (Auster 2007: 16-17).

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8. Winter Journal provides a detailed explanation of the “silence” to which the dancers rehearsed in the Manhattan High School gym: “The first thing that struck you was that there was no musical accompaniment. The possibility had never occurred to you — dancing to silence rather than to music — for music had always seemed essential to dance, inseparable from dance, not only because it sets the rhythm and speed of the performance but because it establishes and emotional tone for the spectator, giving a narrative coherence to what could otherwise be entirely abstract, but in this case the dancers’ bodies were responsible for establishing the rhythm and tone of the piece, and once you began to settle into it, you found the absence of music wholly invigorating, since the dancers were hearing the music in their heads, hearing what could not be heard…” (Auster 2012: 222). 9. Characters experiencing noteworthy physical falls include Peter Stillman in City of Glass, Benjamin Sachs in Leviathan, Sidney Orr in Oracle Night and the Zimmers in The Book of Illusions. Other types of falls include physical impairment (August Brill in Man in the Dark), loss of siblings, endangered state of health, monetary deprivation, homelessness (Fogg in Moon Palace, Anna Blume in In the Country of Last Things, etc.) and sin (the incestuous relationship between Gwyn and her brother Adam Walker, whose name obliquely evokes the original sinner/writer thematic of Auster’s first steps as a poet in Invisible). Walt’s levitation in Mr Vertigo is worth noting here, while several instances of falls or vertigo are also found in Auster’s books of prose. What is more, the fall of the Tower of Babel saturates Auster’s poems, and it is also evoked in several of his novels (see especially City of Glass). 10. These trauma-related excerpts are analyzed in detail in my chapter on “Auster’s Narratives of Traumatic Temporality”, in Time, Narrative and Imagination: essays on Paul Auster, Arkadiusz Misztal ed., “Between.pomiędzy” series, Gdańsk, Gdańsk University Press, 2015.

ABSTRACTS

White Spaces is a hybrid piece of poetic prose marking Paul Auster’s literary rebirth. This matrix text, which served as an immediate response to Auster’s “epiphanic moment of clarity” during a dance rehearsal in New York, is an early experimentation with the physicality of writing. Words are steps. Verbs are motions. Facing the choreographer’s incapacity to put into words the December 1978 dance rehearsal, he began — step by step, word by word — to give in to silence, linguistic randomness and wandering. Auster suddenly realized that literary creation springs from physical commands rather than intellectual ones. Thirty years later, in Winter Journal, Paul Auster took up his exploration of the impersonal and tested the second-person narrative voice of his aging self. In both White Spaces and Winter Journal, the repetition of the binary rhythm of steps, breath, heartbeat, and the emphasis on doublings and symmetry widen the scope of Auster’s organic use of language. Speaking and writing require losing oneself to an interior music, as if the words were alive, freely animated and dictated to the writer by his own body. Speech, which parallels the world seen, is propelled by its own flow. Sensory limitations and the inadequacy of language, which had led Auster to a poetic dead-end, are in turn deplored and celebrated. As suggested in Winter Journal, language registers negativity as indirectly as the body integrates trauma. Shifting from pleasure to pain, the body exhibits the wounds of the past. Repeatedly, these cyclical works focus on feeling, falling and failing. Hence the aim of this paper is to highlight Auster’s metaphysical quest and aesthetic obsessions, which put the body’s functions and failures at the core of the writing process.

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White Spaces est une œuvre hybride de prose poétique annonçant la renaissance littéraire de Paul Auster. Ce texte matrice, expérimentation liminaire sur le caractère physique de l’écriture, est une réponse immédiate à un « moment d’illumination épiphanique » qui frappa Auster lors d’une répétition de danse à New York. Les mots sont des pas. Les verbes mouvements. Face à l’incapacité du chorégraphe de décrire la répétition de danse de décembre 1978, il décida de s’en remettre — pas à pas, mot à mot — au silence, à l’erreur et l’errance linguistiques. Paul Auster comprit soudain que la création littéraire surgit de directives physiques plutôt qu’intellectuelles. Trente ans plus tard, dans Winter Journal, Auster reprend ses explorations de l’impersonnel et teste une voix narrative à la deuxième personne, qui est véhiculée par son corps vieillissant. Dans White Spaces et Winter Journal, la répétition du rythme binaire des pas, de la respiration, des battements de cœur, et l’accent mis sur les doubles et la symétrie accroissent l’étendue de son utilisation organique du langage. Parler et écrire nécessitent de s’abandonner à une musique intérieure, comme si les mots étaient vivants, animés librement et dictés à l’écrivain par son propre corps. La parole, qui côtoie le monde observé, est propulsée par son propre flot. Les limites sensorielles et l’inadéquation du langage, qui avaient mené Paul Auster à l’impasse poétique, sont tour à tour déplorées et célébrées. Comme Winter Journal le suggère, le langage inscrit la négativité tout aussi indirectement que le corps intègre le trauma. Du plaisir à la douleur, le corps exhibe les blessures du passé. Ces œuvres cycliques répètent la perception, la chute et l’échec. Il s’agira en conséquence d’élucider ici la quête métaphysique et les obsessions esthétiques de Paul Auster. Se révèleront, au sein du processus d’écriture, les fonctions et les failles du corps.

INDEX

Keywords: Auster Paul, White Spaces, body, dance, prose, poetry, motion, senses, falling, failing Mots-clés: Auster Paul, White Spaces, corps, danse, prose, poésie, mouvement, sens, chute, échec

AUTHOR

FRANÇOIS HUGONNIER University of Angers. Contact: francois.hugonnier [at] univ-angers.fr

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Corpo-real: in situ

Natacha Grimaud and Alexandre Galopin

This media file cannot be displayed. Please refer to the online document http:// journals.openedition.org/angles/1818

ABSTRACTS

This choreographed experimentation was built around the notion of one’s corporeality and how it interacts with its surroundings and the other. How are the outdoor setting’s lines and outlines blend or break with that of the dancers? How do the body and nature contrast and resonate with one another, in harmony or discord, yet seemingly and continuously reaching a status quo where one does not consume the other. She and he, alone with nature, play with its rules and its rights, turning a stable yet fluid space into an extension of themselves. The two distinctive bodies in their shapes, movements and corporeal qualities end up trying to find a balance with each other while maintaining one’s singular corporeality as well as one’s indefectible link with space. The solo becomes a duo, and the duo becomes a trio in which spatial conceptions adjust and become one and the same for the two dancing bodies, turning space into a common place where the imperceptible becomes palpable: a catalyst through which harmonious togetherness can be found and fulfilled.

Cette expérimentation chorégraphique s’est construite autour de la notion de corporalité et de la façon dont cette dernière interagit avec son environnement et autrui. Par quels procédés les lignes et contours du décors extérieur s’entremêlent ou contrastent avec le corps des danseurs ? Comment est-ce que corps et nature se dissocient et résonnent l’un dans l’autre, tantôt harmonie, tantôt dissonance, objets mouvants qui entrent en jeu pour toujours osciller avec un status quo où l’un ne se laisse pas engloutir par l’autre, où l’un existe non pas par rapport mais avec l’autre. Elle et lui, seuls avec la nature, jouent avec ses règles et ses droits, transformant un

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espace à la fois solide et fluide en une extension d’eux-mêmes. Les deux corps distinctifs aussi bien dans leurs caractéristiques, leurs silhouettes, que dans leurs qualités de mouvements et corporelles finissent par se toucher, par s’aborder autour d’un instant d’équilibre où se rencontre la corporéité de chacun tout en y intégrant le lien intime que ces corps entretiennent avec leur espace. Le solo devient duo, et le duo devient trio, moment où les conceptions spatiales se jaugent et s’ajustent pour finalement se superposer. C’est dans cet état d’unisson de ces deux corps dansants, faisant de l’espace un lieu commun où l’imperceptible devient peu à peu palpable, que s’entraperçoit le catalyseur corporéel au travers duquel la communion des entités se ressent et se parachève.

INDEX

Mots-clés: corps, danse, corporalité, nature, corporéité, environnement Keywords: body, dance, choreography, nature, corporeality, environment

AUTHORS

NATACHA GRIMAUD Natacha Grimaud started to study dance at the Paris’ Opera in 1987 before graduating from the Rosella Hightower School of Dance in Cannes in 1994. She then worked with different ballets including the ones of Nice and Karlsruhe before integrating the Ballet du Nord with Maryse Delente in 1996. There she also collaborated on plays with Nils Christie, Paul Taylor or Jean- Claude Gallotta. She left the ballet in 2002 to join the Ballet Preljocaj where she has been a pivotal dancer of the company until 2015.

ALEXANDRE GALOPIN Alexandre Galopin graduated from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et Danse of Paris in 2005, and has, ever since, been working for numerous choreographers. He first worked with Abou Lagraa in Cutting Flat and then for Dorianne Larcher before joining the Ballet Preljocaj in 2006 where he danced for 3 years. He left in 2009 and has worked, notably, with choreographers such as David Drouard, Marco Becherini, Christian Bourigault, François Laroche- Valière and Jean-Claude Gallotta with whom he collaborated for the past 3 years on Daphnis é Chloé and The Rite of Spring.

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‘Bias Cut’

Ailsa Cox

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1 On that same morning she first began to realize that she was losing weight. That very same morning she saw her skin begin to slacken, softly pooling round her belly like ripples from a stream. The rings slipped from her fingers, and her backbone was rattling in the bath tub. For the first time, she noticed the slats of her ribs, and even her feet seemed smaller, sliding sideways in her slippers made of satin. She felt suddenly light and free, as she smoothed the scented lotion on a body that did not belong to her.

2 The dress hung waiting inside its plastic sheath, oyster silk, bias cut, following the contours of the figure, the neckline embroidered with seed pearls. She watched its reflection in the dressing table mirror as the hairdresser lifted the weight of her hair — fine and soft, and still its natural colour — brushing and pinning so briskly her head nodded under its force. Someone else painted her nails, the brush tickling back and forth, and then it was time to colour her face.

3 Women swarmed around her, chattering and kissing. Her mother dressed in poppies and feathers; her four best friends each alike and different, tall and short, pale and tanned, dark and ginger. Her heart beat faster in its house of skin and bone, and as she closed her eyes to take in the scent of roses, her heart suddenly skittered free. That very morning.

4 On that morning, the dress left its hanger for the first and final time. It took its place in the back of the white limousine, and the rain stopped to watch it go by. A churchyard, primroses scattered round the headstones. A robin and a weeping willow. The damp smell of the vestry. A cough, a hesitation, then the striking of the chords, and the entrance through the darkened doorway. Heads turning as the dress began its progress down the aisle, the silk train spilling across the red carpet.

5 No one saw the mouse dart from underneath a pew, to retrieve a tiny seed pearl left behind. When the people were gone and the doors closed again, the mouse took it to her nest built from discarded hymn books, while the dress took the bride’s place on the dance floor, until it was time to be packed away again, in its plastic sheath, oyster silk, bias cut, following the contours of the figure.

ABSTRACTS

‘Bias Cut’ is an original piece of short fiction inspired by the art and writings of Leonora Carrington (1917-2011). It was written for a reading in her honour at the Tate museum, Liverpool, during the exhibition ‘Leonora Carrington: Britain’s Lost Surrealist’ in April 2015.

‘Bias Cut’ est un micro-récit de fiction inspiré par l’œuvre de Leonora Carrington (1917-2011). Il a été écrit pour une lecture organisée en son honneur au Tate Museum, Liverpool, pendant l’exposition ‘Leonora Carrington: Britain’s Lost Surrealist’ en avril 2015.

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INDEX

Mots-clés: nouvelle, micro-récit, Carrington Leonora, surréalisme, flash fiction, fiction britannique, fantastique, écriture féminine, transformation, corps Keywords: short fiction, Carrington Leonora, surrealism, creative writing, microfiction, flash fiction, British fiction, fantastic, women’s writing, transformation, body

AUTHOR

AILSA COX Ailsa Cox’s stories are widely publishing in journals and anthologies including the Warwick Review, Best British Short Stories 2014 and Katherine Mansfield Studies. Her collection, The Real Louise, is published by Headland Press. Other books include Writing Short Stories (Routledge) and Alice Munro (Northcote House). She is Professor of Short Fiction at Edge Hill University, and deputy chair of the European Network for Short Fiction Research (ENSFR) http://ensfr.hypotheses.org/. Contact: coxa [at] edgehill.ac.uk

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Graphic Interlude New Approaches to The Body: Performance, Experimentations

James McLaren, Elaine Constantine and Casey Orr

James MacLaren, Drag Queens in Madrid, 2014

© James MacLaren. http://exileongranvia.tumblr.com/

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James MacLaren, Old woman in Madrid, 2014

© James MacLaren. http://exileongranvia.tumblr.com/

Casey Orr, Ethyl's Hands, from Wool series, 2010

© Casey Orr. http://www.caseyorr.com/

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Casey Orr, Michelle, from Animality series, 2015

© Casey Orr. http://www.caseyorr.com/

Elaine Constantine, Girl on Swing, 1999

© Industry Art. http://www.industryart.com/artists/elaineconstantine/

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ABSTRACTS

This graphic interlude features a selection of photographs which can illustrate the topic of this issue: “New Approaches to The Body: Performance, Experimentations”.

Cet interlude iconographique comporte une sélection de photographies illustrant à leur manière le thème de ce numéro: « Nouvelles approches du corps: Performance, Expérimentations ».

INDEX

Mots-clés: corps, performance, expérimental, photographie Keywords: body, performance, experimental, photography

AUTHORS

JAMES MCLAREN James McLaren is a Scotland-born photographer residing in Madrid (Spain). His street photography, including pictures taken in the streets of Spain, Japan and the USA, can be viewed online: http://exileongranvia.tumblr.com/

ELAINE CONSTANTINE Elaine Constantine is renowned for her ecstatic, colourful portrayal of British youth culture and her documentary-inspired approach to fashion photography in the 1990s and early 2000s. She has contributed to The Face, i-D, W Magazine, Vogue China, French, Italian and US Vogue. Her photographs are held in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in London and have been exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum and Tate Britain. See: http://www.industryart.com/ artists/elaineconstantine/

CASEY ORR Casey Orr is a photographer, researcher and Senior Lecturer at Leeds Beckett University. She considers photography not only as a tool to document but also in its poetical relationship to metaphor in a continually changing world. She is supported by Leeds City Council, Leeds Beckett University and Arts Council England. Her work has been shown in various galleries in the US (Jen Bekman, New York, the University of the Arts, Philadelphia and San Antonio College Gallery, Texas), as well as in galleries, museums and festivals in the UK (the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Look Liverpool International Photography Festival and the walls of the HM Prison Leeds). See http://www.caseyorr.com/

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When Bodies Go Digital

Claire Larsonneur

Figure 1: Claire Larsonneur, Heading towards the digital

© Claire Larsonneur, with permission from the artist.

1 Twenty years ago the adjective ‘virtual’ was on everyone’s lips and widely used to describe the products of new technologies, from videogames to training programmes. What happened beyond the pale of the screen in the depths of computers was labelled ‘virtual’. Because these technologies remained opaque for most people, the word took on connotations of mistrust and awe: ‘virtual’ was the domain of geeks and weirdos, a quasi-synonym for fake, illusory, deceptive, unreal. The conceptual divide between real

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and virtual usually hailed back to Plato’s myth of the cave, keeping us on conveniently familiar grounds. Even more reassuring was the implied distinction between what happened within the computer and what happened elsewhere, in ‘real life’, the screen acting as partition rather than interface. It also neatly matched the distinction between what was material and what was immaterial, understood both in the figurative and the literal sense.

2 The human body became one the most prominent touchstones of this mental divide: it was the ultimate proof of reality, as in “if you pinch and it hurts, then it’s real”. A spate of novels and films exploited the narrative possibilities of the real/virtual strain, incorporating its ambiguities and paradoxes in their plots: typically EXistenZ and Matrix, both released in 1999, build their suspense on the characters’ inability to assess whether their experience was real or virtual.

3 But this changed with the advent of the digital age. Tim Berners-Lee’s invention of the World Wide Web in 1989, the launch of Google in 1998, the massive shift towards e- commerce and e-administration over the last ten years, the recent development of connected objects mean that humans are engaging with software in almost every department of life. In other words, digital technologies moved out of the computer and the reassuring divide between real and virtual is becoming obsolete for many. Smartphones and watches, body-tracking apps (counting calories, counting steps, monitoring sleep, displaying selfies) have entered our daily routine. Paradoxically, although these new technologies tend to be considerably more intrusive than virtual reality, only a few of us object to them; most people willingly, even enthusiastically, partake of a digital world tailored to blend in seamlessly with our activities. I would like to explore here a few contemporary works of art and fiction serving as a magnifying glass and a chamber of echoes of our digital condition. Some, like Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge (2013), focus on our very recent past; others, like David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (2004), Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods (2007), Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005) or Ari Folman’s The Congress (2013), are set in a distant to near future, yet mirror our present.

Perception double and trouble

4 The most striking and often commented feature of our digital condition is the reframing of our perceptions via digital apparatuses. This started with immersive devices such as virtual reality helmets and extended to the reproduction of entire environments, in 2D or 3D. The following excerpt from Bleeding Edge showcases the disorientating sensory experience of Maxine, a fraud investigator who goes browsing through Web Archer, a fictional equivalent of the Deep Web. The Deep Web, an expression coined by computer scientist Michael Bergman in 2001 (Bergman 2001), describes content that is available on the World Wide Web but has not been indexed by standard search engines. Pynchon’s well-researched novel charts the conflation of several momentous events around the turn of this century: the advent of search engines, the attack on the Twin Towers in New York but also the Internet Bubble.1 The excerpt nicely encapsulates the dismay, fascination and paranoia Maxine experiences while navigating parallel worlds: When the picture returns, she seems to be travelling in a deepspace vehicle… there’s a menu for choosing among views, and, switching briefly to an exterior shot,

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she discovers it’s not a single vehicle but more like a convoy […] Inside Maxine finds corridors of glimmering space-age composite, long as boulevards, soaring interior distances, sculptured shadows […] Only code, she reminds herself. But who of all these faceless and uncredited could have written it and why? Popping up in mid-air, a paging window appears, requesting her presence on the bridge, with a set of directions. (Pynchon 339)

5 As online navigation smoothly morphs into deep space travelling for the character/ viewer, Pynchon suggests a series of perceptual doubles: Maxine can switch between interior and exterior shots, corridors equal boulevards, closed space mutates into soaring distances. The reframing of basic spatial frames of reference — inside versus outside, small versus big, short versus long, single versus many — produces at first a feeling of disorientation but the character (and the reader in her tow) soon takes it in as perfectly normal, to the extent she needs to remind herself it is a digital representation. Pynchon reactivates here the familiar sci-fi trope of travelling in a spaceship through hypermodern cities, but he subjects his landscape to a number of variations that are consistent with the use of keyboard commands, such as the commands to drag-and-drop an item or extend and minimize a window. Furthermore, the last sentence of the excerpt points at the interactivity of her navigation: the landscape becomes an interface, prompting Maxine to change her route. It appears that the divide between real and virtual ceases to apply since Maxine is actually navigating through the digital environment her screen displays: mid-screen is mid-air in this digital world.

6 This scene, one of the purple patches of the novel, echoes a widespread trend in contemporary arts where the focus is on the sensory experience of the visitor rather than on the work of art as artefact or representation. Museum exhibitions also increasingly use scopic devices such as VR helmets, magnifying glasses, 3D videos. The spectator’s sensory experience is therefore mediated in ways that would not be possible without those technological devices. I’d like to refine the notion of ‘perceptual doubles’ by examining borrowed and enriched perceptions. Borrowed perception usually takes the form of video shots with miniature Go-Pro cameras. The 17-minute video entitled On Air by Laurent Grasso (2009) offers the viewer a literal ‘bird’s-eye view’ by broadcasting the visual experience of a hawk flying over a desert.

7 The increasing availability of portable cameras at affordable prices and the rise of sharing platforms such as YouTube and DailyMotion means borrowed perception is no longer the sole province of artists, Everyone can now create and broadcast them: some attach the camera to the head of an animal (creating endless hours of “kittycam” footage [Golgowski]), others to their helmets when practising extreme sports. The viewer can access the visual sensations of others, sometimes even simultaneously through live feeds. Some reporters have even started to use 360-angle cameras, broadcasting live images that are the exact replica of their experience on the field (Rémy).

8 Enriched perceptions go further and some artists create hiatuses in our perceptions using digital technologies to recalibrate the interaction between the body and its environment. One of the most spectacular works in this genre is the Rain Room (2012) designed by Random, an arts & design studio co-founded by Florian Ortkrass, Hannes Koch and Stuart Wood. Using custom software, 3D tracking cameras and water sprinklers, Random recreated the conditions of a heavy downpour in a room, water falling from the ceiling all over except above the body of the spectator/participant who

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remains dry. This is made possible because the person’s moves are monitored and relayed to the computer, which then shuts down the sprinklers above him/her. Admittedly one must walk rather slowly but the contrast between the rush of water, the surrounding humidity and the experience of one’s dry body is intended to be both unsettling and exhilarating.

This media file cannot be displayed. Please refer to the online document http:// journals.openedition.org/angles/1856

9 As these disorientated, borrowed or enriched perceptions enter our daily lives, we find that our human bodies increasingly operate through a mix of digital and non-digital environments. One may wonder with Eric Sadin if we are not witnessing “the disturbing apparition of a dual regime of sense making which goes beyond the province of computer science or specific industrial applications to question, even to shatter, a number of categories that had hitherto shaped our humanist modernity” (Sadin 2013: 29, my translation)2. Perceptual trouble indeed.

The logic of compositing and immersion

10 If we go back to Pynchon’s description we may notice Maxine does not just look at her surroundings; she picks options from a menu and the result is called a ‘space-age composite’. Compositing is one of the new digital techniques that enable video engineers to create a single image by superimposing elements from a scene, for instance the facades of buildings or particular shapes of clouds. Most special effects in films come down to this technique, which requires extensive libraries of data but proves very cost-effective in the long run. What it entails is a wholly different approach to the creative gesture, far from the stroke of the painter’s brush or the inspiration of the Muses. Lev Manovich, in The Language of New Media, analyses the organic relation that binds compositing and immersion: “Digital compositing, in which different spaces are combined into a single seamless virtual space, is a good example of the alternative aesthetics of continuity; moreover, compositing in general can be understood as a counterpart to montage aesthetics. Montage aims to create visual, stylistic, semantic and emotional dissonance between different elements. In contrast, compositing aims to blend them into a seamless whole, a single gestalt.” (144). And so it seems that the very digital techniques currently in use work towards blurring the divide between the real and the virtual in a way that redefines our relation to representations. The logic of immersion is paramount, focused on erasing all traces of a creative gesture.

11 The Congress, by Ari Folman, precisely tackles this fantasy of seamlessness along with the fragmentation of representation into menu items. Released in 2013, the film recounts the professional itinerary of a middle-age actress (Robin Wright) who is coerced by a Hollywood studio into full digitization of her body and facial expressions (see Figure 2). Once every possible motion of her body has been recorded and stored as data, she is bound by contract never to appear in any film. All subsequent productions featuring her will rely on the digitized footage and compositing techniques. Fiction here is only a step ahead of what is already going on in the entertainment industry, where filmmakers have been embedding historical footage into new films for some

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time and where they can now revive the figure of dead actresses through holograms (Rigoulet).

Figure 2: The actress being digitized, The Congress (2013), directed by Ari Folman, featuring Robin Wright

All rights reserved. Source: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1821641/mediaviewer/rm3616394496

12 Folman goes further, however, and the film switches, very smoothly and seamlessly, into animation: as Robin drives to a Hollywood party, first the landscape then her reflection in the mirror turn into animated images, followed by her entire self. Not only has the actress been barred from working with her own body, she is made to lose track of her body when she enters the party — an overwhelming, over-reaching dystopia only peopled by avatars. Her struggle to break free from the digitized fantasy then becomes the main focus of the plot.

13 What makes this dystopia so terrifying is precisely the seamless blending of digital and non-digital features, the fact that digital protocols fuse so smoothly with our daily experience of the world. Folman’s animation is very conspicuous, filled with extravagant colours and shapes, and therefore blatantly different from common experience, which alleviates the spectator’s feeling of dismay. More unsettling might be the everyday use of Google glasses, which directly superimpose digital information over our visual field. The glasses operate as transparent screens and are meant to be as unobtrusive as possible. Eric Sadin, in “Google Glass : La privatisation de l’attention” (2014), points out the ensuing shift in paradigm: while tablets, phones and watches are carried, wearable technologies, Google glasses (or combat helmets for that matter) are finely tuned into our bodily experience and could be described as sensory protocols3. The entertainment industries and everyday gadgets no longer focus on producing digital representations but rather on the design of digital environments where real and digital bodies are superimposed.

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Re-engineering the body

14 If most of our environment can be digitized, reframed and redesigned, then it is hardly surprising that people would try to do the same to the human body. Beyond the immediate medical purpose and the fantasy of immortality, genomics and prosthetics (both relying heavily on data and digital computation) can be harnessed to produce ‘better’ bodies by adding or tweaking parts.

15 In Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro showcases the exploitation of human clones, bred and raised to provide organs for their genetic forebears. Apart from the fact that the clones have been designed to be sterile, their bodies remain natural throughout, never departing from their original disposition. Ishiguro’s narrative is meant to trigger empathy: the story is told in the first person by a clone and the focus on its youthful innocence underlines the hypocrisy of a world where ‘donation’ actually means amputation and ‘reaching completion’ implies the clone donor has died. But I’ve gone off a bit. The reason I was talking about all this was because the idea of things ‘unzipping’ carried over from Tommy’s elbow to become a running joke about the donations. The idea was that when the time came, you’d be able just to unzip a bit of yourself, a kidney or something would slide out, and you’d hand it over. (Ishiguro 84)

16 Ishiguro’s story of exploitation does not fully embark on the scientific possibilities opened up by bioengineering, however: it remains closer to the chilling tales of illegal body harvesting. In their sci-fi novels, both Mitchell and Winterson take up an even more disturbing angle: body engineering. The plot of the fifth story in Cloud Atlas confronts humans to clones that have been genetically modified either to fulfil specific tasks or to cater to marketing strategies. For example the waiters of a sordid fast-food outlet have been tailored to draw attention: “The Kyelims were a new attraction: genomed with zoescoped eyes and rabbit teeth, they drew long queues of nikoning fabricant-spotters.” (Mitchell 205). Instead of empathy, the feeling they evoke could be described as a mix of fascination and disgust, fabricant clones being featured as figures of abjection. Kyelims are not the only examples of body engineering in the novel, a process that also affects humans, for instance through ‘facescaping’, i.e. radical plastic surgery, or the use of holograms (Mitchell 334). In The Stone Gods, Winterson goes further and describes a society where everybody has been modified and even ‘fixed’, which means the process of ageing is stopped at a given time, usually mid-twenties for women, mid-forties for men4. ‘Every human being in the Central Power has been enhanced, genetically-modified and DNA-screened. Some have been cloned. Most were born outside the womb. A human being now is not what a human being was even a hundred years ago. So what is a human being?’ ‘You think too much’, said Pink. ‘I’ll get you a drink. It’s obvious — cut me and I bleed.’(Winterson 77)

17 The process bears significant resemblance to the production of chimeras. In Greek mythology the chimera spelt destruction and monstrosity: the compound of lion, snake and goat, found on a number of vases but also cast in bronze as below, was read as a paradoxical mix of nobility (the lion) and baseness (the goat). It offered an improbable and unwieldy composite of body-parts where the tail of the lion morphed into the head of a snake, and thus functioned as a counter-proof of normality.

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Figure 3: Chimera of Arezzo, Etruscan, c. 400 BCE

Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Florence. Source: http://firenzecuriosita.blogspot.com/2011/03/la- chimera-di-arezzo-si-trova-firenze.html

18 Today’s chimeras by contrast are commonplace: scientists have produced scores of them from glowing rabbits (Rojahn)5 to seedless and hairless fruit. Our societies make a lucrative business of creating value through the customization of living creatures, relying again on menu-based libraries of genes. The recurrence of lists in Mitchell’s and Winterson’s dystopias is a narrative trick that exposes the logic of catalogue that prevails over body-engineering: the reader is given access to a full range of ‘products’, with technical sheets detailing their characteristics. Similarly, chimeras as not the one- off exception in our societies: they tend to become everyday commodities. But if we follow that logic, bodies may cease to be the singular instances we are accustomed to, when each person possesses a unique set of physical characteristics. If body parts may be reengineered and sold, then customization and standardisation apply: people may opt for the most popular nose, the eye colour of celebrities, etc. Paradoxically, scientific prowess turns into economic scarcity of choice. For instance, in The Stone Gods, women’s clothes are only manufactured in two sizes and chosen by the computer for the client. ‘I think you’d look good in numbers one, three and six with matching footwear,’ she says from somewhere, nowhere. She is right, of course, because computers are good at matching things — including people and their clothes. Mind you, we all look more or less alike, and there are only two sizes, Model Thin and Model Thinner, it isn’t hard. (Winterson 27)

Continuous body-display and monitoring

19 Tracking and monitoring are the last steps of this commodification of the body. Indeed surveillance techniques feature prominently in our corpus where tracking devices are grafted onto bodies. In Cloud Atlas, humans wear so-called ‘Souls’, tiny metallic eggs embedded in the pulp of their fingers; the clones wear collars like African slaves and carry subcutaneous barcodes, like cattle.

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The Soul implanter was ushered in minutes later. A slite, anonymous-looking man, he xmined Hae-Joo’s torn finger with professional disdain; tweezed a minute speck from a jelpack; bedded it into fresh tissue and sprayed cutane over the digit. I wondered at how such an insignificant-looking dot confers the rights of consumerdom on its bearers yet condemns those lacking one to an xistence of abject servitude or worse. (Mitchell 334-335)

20 These devices function as means of identification, like passports, means of geo- localisation and payment like our smartphones and GPS. Tracking devices participate in a global digital panopticon, a theme whose importance in Mitchell’s work has been analysed by Rose Harris-Birtill (2015). The same logic applies to outcasts in The Stone Gods, condemned to wear taggers: You become an X-Cit, an ex-citizen. There will be no record of you ever having existed. You can’t travel, you can’t buy anything, you can’t register for anything, you can’t plead your case. You can’t use what was your name. When you get out of jail, if you ever get out of jail, you will be micro-tagged for life as an Unknown. You see them sometimes, cleaning the streets, their taggers flashing at fifteen-minute intervals, checked and recorded by the satellite system that watches us more closely than God ever did. (Winterson 30-31)

21 In fiction as in reality, digital surveillance literally frames the self via auto-censorship and a continuous mirroring of oneself onto digital media.6 But tracking is also a social tool, one that enables people to assert their status and promote their performances. One could say that Digital Narcissus is by definition always on stage, as shown by the British mini-series Black Mirror (2011–) named after the description of our screens as black mirrors. Though these works of fiction emphasize the dystopian quality of surveillance by pushing its logic ad absurdum, they may fall short of what is currently happening: in “Students under surveillance”, Helen Warrell from The Financial Times (2015) described how recently-released tracking devices for universities can integrate all digital traces left by students (activity logs on educational platforms, involvement in student forums, personal data and spatial localisation) to predict their academic achievement, under the pretext of identifying more fragile individuals to help them.

*

22 This last example may trigger a feeling of unease for many. That unease may stem from the new and overwhelming continuum between the logic of media, that of social interaction and that of meaning, which Manovich exposed: In a post-industrial society, every citizen can construct her own custom lifestyle and “select” her ideology from a large (but not infinite) number of choices. Rather than pushing the same objects/information to a mass audience, marketing now tries to target each individual separately. The logic of new media technology reflects this new social logic. Every visitor to a Website automatically gets her own custom version of the site created on the fly by a database. (42)

23 Key to this shift is the fact that our daily interactions with digital devices also affect offline living: one could mention the recurrent operations of selecting, sampling, morphing, reframing and compositing, but also the preference for flow (such as continuous upgrade) over feature or the seamless connexion of representation and life, as witnessed in our analysis of bodies. And so in our digital worlds, the main issue is not whether this or that is feasible but rather who is in control. Art and fiction play a dual role here. They experiment with forms and can push these mental constructs to their

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limits, offering us a distorted but plausible mirror. But they can also trigger disquiet and unease, thus running counter to the smooth digital surveillance and steering of our bodies and lives by corporations and governments. Maybe the best account of this dual process lies in Julia Kristeva’s analysis of abjection. The digitized bodies of clones, borrowed perceptions and bioengineered chimeras all have in common a form of intimacy with us and yet are not us; hovering between the subject and the object, they could be described as ‘abject’, unstable entities that threaten order and the sense of self. It lies there, quite close, but it cannot be assimilated. It beseeches, worries and fascinates desire, which, nevertheless, does not let itself be seduced. […] It is thus not lack of cleanliness or health that causes abjection but what disturbs identity, system, order. What does respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite (Kristeva, 1-4)

24 No wonder, then, that when bodies go digital, dystopia and paranoia emerge, together with the overwhelming desire to reinstate order and control, and the narrator’s itch to write it up.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bergman, Michael K. “The Deep-Web: Surfacing Hidden Value”. The Journal of Electronic Publishing 7.1 (August 2001). DOI: 10.3998/3336451.0007.104

Black Mirror. Created by Charlie Brooker. Channel 4, (2011–).

eXistenZ. Dir. David Cronenberg, Alliance Atlantis, 1999.

Golgowski, Nina. “Kittycam reveals domestic cats' secret double-life as America’s killing machines”. Daily Mail Online, 8 August 2012. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2185622/ Kittycam-collar-camera-reveals-domestic-cats-secret-double-life-Americas-killing- machines.html

Harris-Birtill, Rose. “‘A row of screaming Russian dolls’: Escaping the Panopticon in Mitchell’s Number9dream”, SubStance 44.1 (2015): 55-70. DOI: 10.1353/sub.2015.0007

Ishiguro, Kazuo. Never Let Me Go. London: Faber & Faber, 2005.

Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Trans. Leon Roudiez, New York: Columbia UP, 1982.

Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001. http:// manovich.net/index.php/projects/language-of-new-media

Matrix. Dir. Andy and Lana Wachowski, Warner Bros. 1999.

Mitchell, David. Cloud Atlas. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2004.

Pynchon, Thomas. Bleeding Edge. New York: Penguin Press 2013.

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Rémy, Cathy. “Plongée dans l’info”. Le Monde, 7 May 2015. [archived: https://web.archive.org/ web/20150522034555/http://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2015/05/07/plongee-dans-l- info_4629755_4408996.html]

Rettberg, Jill. Seeing Ourselves Through Technology. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. DOI: 10.1057/9781137476661

Rigoulet, Laurent. “La mort, un business en or à Hollywood”. Télérama. 20 May 2015. https:// www.telerama.fr/cinema/la-mort-un-business-en-or-a-hollywood,126567.php

Rojahn, Susan Young. “Glow-in-the-Dark Rabbits”. MIT Technology Review. 14 August 2013. https://www.technologyreview.com/2013/08/14/15454/glow-in-the-dark-rabbits/

Sadin, Eric. L’Humanité augmentée, Montreuil: Ed L’échappée, 2013.

Sadin, Eric. “Google Glass : La privatisation de l’attention”, Le Monde, 11 novembre 2014. https:// www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2014/11/12/les-google-glass-preparent-l-accaparement-de- notre-attention-par-les-publicitaires_4522156_3232.html

The Congress, dir. Ari Folman, Bridgit Folman Film Gang, 2013.

Warrel, Helen. “Students under surveillance”. Financial Times. 24 July 2015. https://www.ft.com/ content/634624c6-312b-11e5-91ac-a5e17d9b4cff

Winterson, Jeanette. The Stone Gods. London: Penguin, 2007.

NOTES

1. The Internet Bubble or Dot-com Bubble corresponds to a speculative bubble on information technology start-ups covering roughly 1997-2000. Largely centered on the American market, it burst in 2001. 2. The French quote is: “La formation troublante d’un double régime d’intellection des choses qui ne peut rester cantonné au champ limité de la science informationnelle et à des applications industrielles spécifiques, mais qui bouscule ou pulvérise nombre de catégories qui ont jusque là structuré notre modernité humaniste”. 3. “Elles témoignent du franchissement d’un seuil, ne se présentant plus comme des technologies portables, consultables et manipulables de temps à autre, mais comme des protocoles s’adjoignant sans plus de rupture à l’expérience. Elles s’intègrent avec légèreté au visage, exposant, par le biais d’une connexion au réseau, des textes et des images fondus à l’un des deux verres.” (Sadin 2014). 4. The plot of the film Time Out (2011) by Andrew Niccols relies on the same fantasy of “fixing” the body at a given age. 5. The subtitle of the article claims “Glowing bunnies are a successful early step in a project aimed at engineering mammals that produce medicines in their milk.” 6. See Jill Rettberg’s work on self-tracking apps (Rettberg 2014).

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ABSTRACTS

This article intends to investigate contemporary works of art (“Rain Room”, “On Air”), fiction (David Mitchell, Jeannette Winterson, Thomas Pynchon, Kazuo Ishiguro) and films (The Congress, Black Mirror) together with emerging social practices to charter the impact of digital technologies on our relation to the body. Devices such as Google Glasses or Go-Pro cameras prompt a reframing of our perceptions through borrowed and enriched sensory experiences. Digital practices, tailored to blend in seamlessly with our daily activities, contribute to implement further the logic of immersion and compositing described by Lev Manovich in his analysis of new media. Beyond the field of media, digital technologies are also playing a role in the re- engineering of the human body itself. Bodies are being produced, tailored and marketed in a society that thrives on continuous body-display and monitoring, raising political and economic issues. Those digital body-chimeras could be described as unstable entities that threaten our sense of order and of ourselves, echoing Kristeva’s analysis of abjection.

Comment les technologies numériques affectent-elles notre relation au corps ? C’est par l’exploration conjointe de pratiques sociales émergentes et d’un corpus d’œuvres de fiction contemporaines (David Mitchell, Jeannette Winterson, Thomas Pynchon, Kazuo Ishiguro), de films (The Congress, Black Mirror) et d’œuvres d’art (“Rain Room”, “On Air”) qu’on tentera de répondre à cette question. Les conditions usuelles de la perception sont affectées par des objets tels que les Google glasses ou les caméras Go-Pro, lesquelles génèrent des expériences sensorielles inédites, empruntées ou enrichies. Les dispositifs numériques, conçus afin de s’insérer sans heurts dans notre vie quotidienne, participent du développement de la logique immersive, fondée sur la technique de composition d’images, que décrit Lev Manovich dans son analyse des nouveaux médias. Par delà le champ médiatique, les technologies numériques jouent également un rôle dans l’ingénierie corporelle : au sein d’une société de contrôle qui valorise l’exposition et la surveillance permanente des corps, ceux-ci se voient produits, standardisés et mis sur le marché, ce qui soulève de nombreuses questions politiques et économiques. Les corps- chimères numériques ne sont-ils pas des entités instables, susceptibles de mettre en danger la manière dont nous faisons sens du sujet et du monde, relevant de l’abjection telle que la définit Kristeva ?

INDEX

Keywords: digital perception, immersive reality, body engineering, surveillance, abjection, contemporary fiction, digital technology Mots-clés: perception numérique, réalité immersive, ingénierie corporelle, société du contrôle, abjection, fiction contemporaine, technologie numérique

AUTHOR

CLAIRE LARSONNEUR Claire Larsonneur is an associate professor in translation and British litterature at the University of Paris VIII-Vincennes St Denis. Her research focuses on British hyper contemporary fiction (Mitchell, Swift, McEwan, Winterson, Ballard, Chatwin) and on digital humanities (interfaces and digital tools). Supported by the Arts H2H Labex funding scheme, she has co-managed a cross-

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disciplinary quadriennal research project on the “Digital Subject” (2012-2015) and she is currently organising an international conference on “Posthumanity and digital subjectivities” at the conference centre in Cerisy-La Salle in June 2016. She has published and edited a number of articles and essays on digital humanities, among which Le Sujet digital (co-ed.) Dijon, Presses du réel (2015); La Recherche internet en lettres et langues, Paris, Ophrys (2008); “Revisiting Dejima (Japan): from recollections to fiction in D. Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet”, Substance 44, 136 (2015): 136-148; “Mediations: Science and Translation in The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell”, in Études britanniques contemporaines 45 (2013) (co-written with Hélène Machinal); and “Put the blame on? A face off between the neuroscientist and the terrorist”, Le Savant fou, Hélène Machinal ed., Presses Universitaires de Rennes (2013): 419-429. Contact: claire.larsonneur [at] univ-paris8.fr

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The Brain Without the Body? Virtual Reality, Neuroscience and the Living Flesh

Marion Roussel

Introduction

1 “The Brain Without the Body” can strike one as a curious title. It reminds us of the concept of the “Body without Organs” developed by French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1980). I am using this expression to refer to a virtual reality environment project named AlloBrain@AlloSphere that was conducted between 2005 and 2009 by architect and artist Marcos Novak. I experienced it myself in March 2014 at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

2 AlloBrain is an immersive environment modelled from Novak’s brain MRIs and then extruded in the form of a three-dimensional volume. Its aim is to plunge inside the architect’s head, in his cerebral space. Since we all have a brain that is a priori similarly structured, this discovery may be our own as well. However, in this journey beyond the face, we may find it hard to recognise ourselves. What might be familiar and intimate turns out to be, in fact, extremely disturbing and unsettling. Within AlloBrain, I had a strange and particular feeling, an uncanny feeling. The Uncanny, first explored psychologically by psychiatrist Ernst Jentsch and later developed by Sigmund Freud (1919), is a form of anxiety, an uneasiness that relates to familiar things when they appear under a foreign aspect; it emerges when one can no longer recognise what one perceives, when one appears a stranger to oneself; it designates the part of the hidden within us and the fear caused by it.

3 According to Jentsch (1906), the first mark of the Uncanny is a moment of intellectual uncertainty, or the inability to overcome the ambiguity and equivocal nature of meaning. What is this outside meaning that is so disquieting? My aim in this paper is to offer the following hypothesis: the uncanny effect produced by the immersion in AlloBrain may result from the confrontation between a naked brain and subjective

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experience, which seems unable to dispose of a physical body that we inhabit entirely and that inhabits us in return. Thus, what AlloBrain causes may be a real return to the flesh, this lived-in and living flesh, highlighting a proper body that is still foreign to us, because something always resists. Is that thing which cannot be captured by digitisation not the phenomenal “I” itself, the “I” by which we experiment our body and the world? This hypothesis gives us ground to doubt that by uploading our minds in the machine, as some transhuman theorists would have it, we could remain the same.

4 To conduct my analysis, I will first briefly introduce the thoughts that Marcos Novak develops and on which he bases his practice, which is, as we shall see, very experimental. In particular, I will present two virtual reality environments that form the beginnings to AlloBrain, that is to say Dancing with the Virtual Dervish: Worlds in Progress (1991-1994) and Eduction: The Alien-Within (2001). I will then concentrate on AlloBrain. Why did an uncanny feeling seize me when I experienced it? Are we not dealing with a project meant to explain the mind through mere brain matter, not unlike cognitive science or neuroscience? These two questions will structure my analysis, focusing on how this particular virtual reality environment makes us think of the relationships between the mind and the body and between phenomenal consciousness, subjective experience and the physical body. I will address the mind- uploading fantasy, suggesting that it could be seen as a figure of the crisis of inhabitation denounced by Martin Heidegger after World War II. To conclude, I will question the idea of transhumanity and posthumanity, in relation with the (in)definition of humanity.

Dancing with the Virtual Dervish: Worlds in Progress and Eduction: The Alien-Within: preludes to AlloBrain@AlloSphere

5 For past thirty years, Marcos Novak (1957) has been developing an experimental and transdisciplinary practice at the meeting point between architecture, art, science, technology and philosophy, to question the becoming of the digitally-enhanced body. His investigations are both philosophical and critical, “regarding the role and the impact of science and technology on culture,” and empirical and experimental, concerning “artistic horizons opened up by new science technology” (Novak, 2004). He was one of the first architects, if not the first, to theorise virtual reality environments as architectural spaces and to consider virtual reality devices as matrices for potential worlds. According to Novak, virtual reality environments are experimentation spaces that enable us to push the boundaries of the known world, questioning the possibilities offered by architecture and expanding the field of human senses (1992). In particular, what interests Novak is the exploration of the inner worlds of the self, the unknown and foreign territories concealed in the human psyche. Virtual reality environments are considered as projection and externalisation media of the private mental space, like inverted reflections of this interiority. Novak thus refers to them as “esoscopes,” that is to say as viewing instruments, tools to make the invisible worlds hidden within ourselves visible (1996). The virtual environments created by the architect appear both as techniques of dispossession and possession.

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6 In Dancing with the Virtual Dervish: Worlds in Progress, a project conducted between 1991 and 1994, dancers were equipped with head-mounted displays, thereby rendered blind to the outside world. They were plunged into a vision like whirling dervishes, the Sufi mystics who seek to enter a state of trance and to explore consciousness through dance. Dervishes use dancing because it helps promote their motor ability and their mental and emotional unity, allowing them to release the tensions that would otherwise cripple the relationship between mind and body. Dancing with the Virtual Dervish questions this relationship. In this environment, the intention was not to experiment a split between the physical or real body and the mind, rather, the body was established as the true vehicle of exploration. Experimenters dealt with a sensitive, a sensual, even an erotic flesh. Indeed, according to Marcos Novak, in Dancing with the Virtual Dervish, everything hearkened back to incarnation, to the need of the body as first interface and as first medium of any being in the world. For the architect, immersion in virtual reality is not an immersion in a bodiless or disembodied space: it is an immersion which occurs with the body, which cannot be done without the body. However, in the second environment that I will describe, the importance of the physical body appears greatly minimized. This environment is Eduction: The Alien- Within. It was created by Marcos Novak and Marcos Lutyens, a media artist who practices hypnosis.

7 Eduction was presented in 2001 at the 49th Biennial of Art in Venice, in Erice (Sicily) during the second international conference on “Media digitali e psicotecnologie: viaggi nella mente dei mondi virtuali”1 and in Florence. Like Dancing with the Virtual Dervish, Eduction was an “esoscope,” i.e. a tool to explore the unknown territories of the self. The purpose of this environment was to encounter the other that inhabits our inner dwelling, in short, to meet our alter ego, this “extime” to borrow a term from Jacques Lacan (2006: 249), or Freud’s Unheimliche (1919). While in Dancing with the Virtual Dervish we dealt with a true exploring body, here, the issue of the body is dismissed. With Eduction, Novak and Lutyens proposed to submit a volunteer to a state of temporary catalepsy, agnosia and amnesia before projecting him/her in the virtual reality environment. In this experiment, the body was kept almost rigid. It did not move nor occupy the virtual reality space. While Dancing with the Virtual Dervish was based on living flesh — reminding us of Federico Garcia Lorca’s statements about the duende2 (2007) —, where everything recalled the body — experiencing the deep entanglement of flesh and mind as the first place of a being in the world traversed and possessed by life —, in Eduction, the volunteer no longer had control of his/her body, which was made passive. Only with his/her facial expressions did the volunteer “move”, progress, or change the environment through a feedback loop. Facial expressions were captured, translated as data and injected into the virtual reality environment to enable the transformation of this environment.

AlloBrain@AlloSphere

8 Eduction: The Alien-Within is interesting because it is clear that Marcos Novak began to focus his attention not on the body as a whole, but on the head and the face. With AlloBrain@AlloSphere, finally, another step was taken since the architect offered a journey beyond the skin, beyond the face, bringing us directly inside a brain. AlloBrain was developed with the assistance of the Brain Mapping Center of the University of

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California in Los Angeles (UCLA), a neuroscience research center that uses brain imaging to understand the structures and functions of the human brain.3 Its original aim is not to interpret the data produced and projected in terms of scientific results but to explore the perspectives opened in this regard by virtual reality environments. The Brain Mapping Center establishes itself as a parallel way of investigation to hard science in the understanding of cognitive and perceptual mechanisms of the brain. AlloBrain was made from Marcos Novak’s brain MRIs that were extruded in the form of a large-size three-dimensional volume into which one can penetrate.

Figure 1: Marcos Novak, AlloBrain@AlloSphere, 2005

Source: http://cyborglitteraire.com/files/2015/06/ROUSSEL-Marion_Le-cerveau-sans- corps_22.05.15.pdf

9 To engage the audiovisual exploration of this “world,” a remote control allows “immersents” (to borrow Char Davies’ term) to navigate the datascape. Semi- autonomous research agents — twelve in number and represented on the projection surface in the form of small rectangles — are set up, sharing data space with them. These agents are supervised via a second remote that creates a dynamic man-machine interaction interface mode based on pattern recognition and pattern searching. The agents can measure blood flow and their colors change depending on the part of the brain that is being visited, and reports of the data they collect can be sent on request (Wakefield et al., 2009).

10 AlloBrain was the first environment set up for the “AlloSphere” device. Housed at the California Nanosystems Institute building, at the University of California in Santa Barbara, the “AlloSphere” experiment is the result of studies conducted by Professor JoAnn Kuchera-Morin for over 25 years. It is intended for immersion and interaction in stereoscopic and pluriphonic virtual environments. Specifically, it is a 10-meter diameter spherical projection surface suspended in a three-level cube. The projection surface consists of two hemispheres between which a bridge can welcome fifteen people who can experience a full immersion, requiring little or no equipment, in

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digitally recreated environments in which one cannot normally go physically. It is a multi- and transdisciplinary tool that has applications in the fields of physics, nanotechnology and neurotechnology, neurophysiology or cosmology, new materials or new media (see illustration below). Artistically speaking, the “AlloSphere” allows for the exploration of avant-garde, experimentation and development of new forms, modes and genres of expression in the fields of cinema, architecture, music, etc. Presenting it at a conference, Kuchera-Morin announced: Imagine if a team of physicists could stand inside an atom and watch and hear electrons spin. Imagine if a group of sculptors could be inside a lattice of atoms and sculpt with their material. Imagine if a team of surgeons could fly into the brain, as though it was a world, and see tissues as landscapes, and hear blood density levels as music. This is some of the research that you're going to see that we're undertaking at the AlloSphere. (2009a)

Figure 2: View of the AlloSphere

Source: Kuchera-Morin (2009a). http://www.sweetspeeches.com/s/191-joann-kuchera-morin- stunning-data-visualization-in-the-allosphere

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Figure 3: The design of AlloSphere

Source: Kuchera-Morin (2009b).

An uncanny portrait

11 AlloBrain constitutes a very special kind of self-portrait. Rather than a conventional representation of the surface and the skin of the artist, it enables us to plunge directly and physically into the architect’s head. The intention of Eduction was to externalise the mental space of a volunteer to share it with viewers, drawing a movement from the inside to the outside. With AlloBrain, this movement is reversed, permitting to enter a three-dimensional immersive model of a human brain, of Novak’s cerebral space. Thus it is not an “esoscope” as with Dancing with the Virtual Dervish and Eduction: it is an “endoscope”. The aim is not to explore “esospaces”, the spaces of the self, but “endospaces”, that is to say, in this case, the unfamiliar and invisible inner-brain territories. While traditional self-portraits allow the artist to see him/herself as another person sees him/her, to borrow his/her gaze in a doubling by which, and through reflection, s/he can objectify him/herself — that is to say grasp his/her identity in terms of sameness and otherness — AlloBrain operates an “unfacing,” to borrow one of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s expressions: an unveiling or an “un- concealment” of what is hidden behind Novak’s face. If the portrait is “on the edge of a material world and another intangible”, if “it is in between a reality where everything is measurable and the space of a dream in which no aberration is no longer irrefutable” (Bonafoux, 2004: 41), what AlloBrain exposes is the uncovering of a strangeness, an uncanny feeling that invaginates everyone who experiences this immersive environment.

12 Thus AlloBrain exhibits, and this exhibition does not only concern the architect but each of us, since we all have a brain that is a priori structured in the same way. Yet, in this portrait, we do not recognise ourselves or find ourselves. We have to deal with something about unknown territories of the body, about an anonymous and subterranean singularity which is nevertheless present in all of us, something like a monstrous face, a “non-face” which exceeds language. Therefore, in my opinion, AlloBrain is an “explicitation” work in which what is unfolded seems to relate to a particular monstrosity. The term “explicitation,” from the Latin explicare, means “to unfold”, “to unravel”, “to explain” and refers to the act of informing, bringing forward what was kept implied, making known what was unknown while being latent. In Foams, the last volume of the Spheres trilogy, German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk writes that:

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“Not only explicitations make explicit unspoken and underlying assumptions (‘unconscious’, unknown, misunderstood), but they raise ‘realities’ so far hidden in the folds of the latency at the level of apparent existence.” (2005: 184-185). In this perspective, AlloBrain appears to me as a setting in picture of a monstrous Unheimliche because something does not make sense. But what is it that does not make sense? And why did an uncanny feeling take possession of me when I experienced AlloBrain? I would like to answer this question in a summarised, and yet almost obvious, way: because of the way the psyche itself works.

Physicality and the Mind-body problem

13 How is it possible that, out of the brain, out of a material organisation, however complex it may be, something like consciousness may emerge? This question is central to neuroscience and cognitive science, whose project is to give a “materialist explanation of the mind” (Le Blanc, 2014: 102), particularly in its cognitive dimension. For these research fields, a project of the “naturalisation of man” is undertaken, making man “an animal like the others”, as suggested by French philosopher Francis Wolff (2010: 131-132). Through this naturalisation, scientists try to make man fully explainable by his material foundations, any feature that would be owned exclusively by man is erased, any strangeness irreducible to the rest of the living brushed away, which results in the removal of all boundaries between man, animal and, of course, machine. There would be no “ghost in the machine,” in the words of Gilbert Ryle (2002). There would be no enigma or mystery of the mind. As suggested by neuropsychiatrist and neurobiologist Jean-Didier Vincent, physicalism — i.e. considering that absolutely everything in man, as in everything else, is reducible to physical properties, or that nothing exists beyond the material —, “fed successively by pharmacology, molecular biology, neuroinformatics and finally by brain imaging, took the psyche, now lost heart and soul in neural networks.” (2007: 30). In short, consciousness would be merely an emergence of matter organized in a complex manner, whether organic, artificial, digital, or made of silicon.

14 Consciousness would only be a mere epiphenomenon resulting from physiochemical phenomena occurring in the brain, the brain itself being a mere neuron system. For cognitivists, the mind and mental processes could be defined as simple information processing whose matrix is the brain. The brain would function like a computer and the mind would be a software program, a series of algorithms. In his book L’homme neuronal, French neurobiologist Jean-Pierre Changeux argued that “it is enough to say that consciousness is a regulation operating system. Man has therefore nothing to do with the ‘Spirit,’ he only needs to be a Neuronal Man.” (1983: 211) On this new concept of the neuronal man, Wolff declared: [M]an is a natural being, like all the others; it is an animal, no more no less. Not only has man no essence [...], and therefore all barriers that once enclosed him in essence should be abolished, but he even does not have a proper being — that is what constitutes the originality of this new figure. For the first time, science studies man itself assuming that none of its properties fundamentally distinguishes him from other natural beings, or even from some artificial beings. (2010: 131-132)

15 Consequently, one could reproduce the emergence of consciousness in silico. That is the purpose of strong artificial intelligence proponents, which try to provide machines with intelligence, that is to say with the ability to reason logically,4 but also with

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psychological awareness and phenomenal consciousness.5 According to Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist David Chalmers, psychological awareness refers to the ability to know one’s internal states as well as those of one’s environment, while phenomenal consciousness refers to the capacity to experience these states in the first person (“I”) (1996: 25-31). The strong artificial intelligence project is therefore trying to create machines possessing all human behaviours and abilities, or even able to exceed them, leading to the much-talked-about fear of a competition between machines and mankind, which would lead to the latter’s outright extinction. This idea can be found in the notorious transhumanist interviews and texts with Kevin Warwick. According to him, “The way things are going, it is soon [the computer] that will make the decisions, not us. If we want to maintain our edge, we must progress at the same pace. Technology may turn against us. Unless we merge with it.” (Cited in Boltanski, 2002).

Phenomenal consciousness, subjective experience and the living flesh

16 The same idea motivates the mind-uploading project defended by researchers in Artificial Intelligence such as Hans Moravec, Ray Kurzweil or Marvin Minsky.6 For them, the mind or the brain itself, reduced to its content, could be downloaded online or in a computer, ridding it of its flesh and of its finitude. To go back to AlloBrain, it seems at first that we deal with the same reduction as cognitive science operates, describing the mind as a by-product of the brain. But we witness a major shift in the thought of Marcos Novak when we compare AlloBrain to Dancing with the Virtual Dervish. While in the latter project, the architect proposed to recognize the physicality of the mind, that the mind makes the body, questioning the meanders of our interiorities, with AlloBrain the pattern seems to be reversed. Is this not a project trying to explain the mind by mere brain matter? The interior that is given to explore is not that of the mind or the consciousness but, very strictly, that of the brain. Thus, is not interiority in itself erased? What appears to me as properly monstrous is that what is exposed to our view is not phenomenological flesh, living and lived-in flesh, but a brain without a body, without flesh, a bare and digitally-reconstructed inside that appears empty of interiority. Consequently, it is impossible to recognize ourselves in it. Therefore, what is questioned is the impossible, the unspeakable, the indescribable that makes man man, as can be seen and lived only by him.

17 Interestingly, Jean-Didier Vincent states that “the brain is the scream of the flesh!” (Atlan, Droit, 2012: 179), and AlloBrain, as an immersive environment, is indeed a lived environment, and one that is lived in the first person, to boot. This “I,” this phenomenal, subjective and embodied consciousness, goes into ecstasy, suffers, feels disgust and shame, says “no,” exists, resists being reduced to a brain, however complex and what’s more, resists any explanation: If the physical structure of reality — the particle distribution, the force fields in space-time — is logically consistent with the absence of consciousness, so something resists explanation. The presence of consciousness would be a supplement, an extra compared to the world. And on this point, we must recognize that, at present, there is no valid answer. (Atlan, Droit, 2012: 208)

18 Furthermore, according to Francis Wolff, “not only do we not know how to explain [consciousness], but we do not even know what an explanation would be.” (2010: 352).

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Thereby, the uncanny effect produced by the immersion in AlloBrain seems to me to result from this confrontation between phenomenal consciousness and representation in which we are immersed: a digital reconstruction of a material brain that, firstly, is inside us, is ours, but appears to us as strange and bizarre; secondly, that only offers us an “unreasonable silence,” in the words of Albert Camus (1942: 42), that is to say, an absence of response to the question of the “why” of consciousness.

19 Indeed, I think that it is the question of the “why” — and not that of the “how” which neuroscience and cognitive science try to solve — that Marcos Novak explores in this project: the why of interiority, of a psyche, a consciousness that does not make sense with a simple neuron system. Even if they emerge naturally through this complex material organisation, nothing tells us why they actually emerge. This obscurity, this unanswered question, gives rise to the absurd which is not necessarily a dereliction, but rather an amazement, recognising that we still resist, that something like this phenomenal and subjective “I” — that, if inexplicable, is not less than that through which we experience the world, by which we are in the world, by which we exist — is the fact of a life that traverses the body and is totally attached to it, a life of which we certainly know the “how” (biological evolution) but of which the “why” remains indefinite, mysterious. What, then, is the purpose of AlloBrain? What does AlloBrain induce? I think that this environment allows us to return to the physical body, to the lived and living flesh, focusing on a body that nonetheless is foreign to us. For there is always something resisting, and that thing which resists and is not captured by digitisation, the thing that causes the uncanny feeling, may be the “I” itself, the “I” by which we experiment our body as well as the world.

To have a body/to be a body: mind-uploading as an abandonment of the world?

20 Let’s return to the question of mind-uploading. Supporters of this project consider that we could upload ourselves in the computer and still remain absolutely the same. In fact, Marvin Minsky, Hans Moravec and others appear to underestimate — in a quite radical way — how our bodies are involved in the construction of our identities. They consider that economising the materiality of the body does not change who we are. But not only do I have a body like I would have a tool, I am a body! My body is me, entirely. The “I” and the body, the body as Leib, the living flesh, are intimately intertwined, and it is only by this interlacing that I am in the world, that I can experience it, that I can participate in the world and in its life. Thus, when transhumanists talk about abandoning the flesh, this “meat” that is a burden to them, are they not voicing the “fatigue of being,” in the words of Alain Ehrenberg (2000) or Jean-Michel Besnier (2009)? Is not mind-uploading a project that is actually leading to the abandonment of the world? These are rhetorical questions, no doubt. In my view, the mind-uploading fantasy is just one of the latest figures in a crisis of dwelling already denounced by German philosopher Martin Heidegger in 1946 and then by Sloterdijk, among others. This crisis impacts our being in the world as well as our inhabitation of the body, as our being in the world is intrinsically embodied. This story is profoundly linked to that of the disenchantment of the world, going back much further than the twentieth century, and even beyond the three narcissistic wounds identified by Freud.7

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21 Within a disenchanted world, without a stable ground on which to be anchored, the “extremist transhumanists” wish to set sail in the ocean of information, in the immaterial data networks. They want to leave the world and the body by which they have been related to the world, leaving out what made them men, fleeing the human condition. The transhumanist dream is utopian, perhaps even dystopian. Nonetheless, its radicalism is symptomatic. As Fréderic Neyrat argues: “the contemporary subject lives exposed, he does no longer know if he lacks an Outside world or, more cruelly — but symmetrically — an Inside one, an inhabitable interior worthy of the name.” (Neyrat, 2006). Undoubtedly cybernetics has participated in this hesitation, through the denial of interiority that it promoted, and through the development of cognitive science and neuroscience it carried with it, which seem imbued with the same refusal of the notion of insideness. The body “hides a strange depth that is bound up with the unconscious, with the animality that is inside us, with this discharge part that does not find meaning in cybernetics.” (Coulombe, 2009: 44-45). In our digital era, the body, the unconscious and consciousness, all that we traditionally use to define humankind, no longer make sense. But have they ever made sense?

Conclusion

22 A brain without a body: what a strange proposal! In his seminal essay on “The Uncanny”, Freud stated that the spectacle of severed limbs waving in every direction as independent parties, provoked one of the strongest feelings of the uncanny (1919, 2003: 150). AlloBrain goes further. By making us experience the inside of a cerebral space, making us enter it as if we were penetrating a new world, engaging our full bodies, it helps us contemplate one of the most intriguing questions that men have asked themselves, if not one of the most intriguing questions. Why are we what we are? Why are we conscious of what we are, with our flesh, under the sky and on the ground of this world, saying “I”, living in the first person? Here lies the uncanniness of a project such as AlloBrain@AlloSphere. If the human condition can be absurd, let’s dare to make one last statement: we are human because we have and are a body. That is not to say that by uploading our minds or our brains in networks we will no longer be human. It would be disregarding the fact that, as Henri Atlan said, “nobody really knows what [t]he idea of Man, with a capital M, refers to,” (in Atlan and Droit: 78-79) or, in the words of Atlan and Droit: [T]he only worthwhile definition [of the human being] is known, and it is not going very far. It essentially says that man is a blank page, the only living being to build, to confront the void that constitutes him and in which he has to write a story that is known by no one, and certainly not by him, before he invents it. (2012: 10)

23 This is why I believe the issue of posthumanity is entirely based on an illusion. The idea of an end of the human, indicated by the prefix “post-,” of an exit of the human species or a rupture with it, suggests that there is a humanity which it would be possible to transcend. If there is no longer such a thing as Man but only a “becoming human,” the danger is not that of a disappearance of humanity but of inhumanity, which is consubstantial to man, “the human species proper” according to Atlan (2007: 22-23). Transhumanists are looking towards posthumanity, but at the end of the road, there is no posthuman, only the inhuman.

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Atlan, Monique, and Roger-Pol Droit. Humain : une enquête philosophique sur ces révolutions qui changent nos vies. Paris: Flammarion, 2012.

Besnier, Jean-Michel. Demain les posthumains : Le futur a-t-il encore besoin de nous ? Paris: Hachette, 2009.

Boltanski, Christophe. “Kevin Warwick, l' Homo Machinus”. Libération, 11 May 2002. https:// www.liberation.fr/week-end/2002/05/11/kevin-warwick-l-homo-machinus_403267

Bonafoux, Pascal. Moi ! Autoportraits du XXe siècle. Milan: Skira, 2004.

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Changeux, Jean-Pierre. L’homme neuronal. Paris: Fayard, 1983.

Coulombe, Maxime. Imaginer le posthumain, sociologie de l’art et archéologie d’un vertige. Québec: PU de Laval, 2009.

Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. Capitalisme et schizophrénie 2 : Mille Plateaux. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1980.

Ehrenberg, Alain. La Fatigue d’être soi. Dépression et société. Paris: Odile Jacob, 2000.

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Garcia Lorca, Federico. “Theory and Play of the Duende” (1930). Trans. A. S. Kline. Project Gutenberg Self-Publishing Press, 2007. http://uploads.worldlibrary.net/uploads/pdf/ 20121106215225lorcaduendepdf_pdf.pdf

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Jentsch, Ernst. On the Psychology of the Uncanny. Sl: sn, 1906.

Kuchera-Morin, JoAnn. “Stunning Data Visualization in the AlloSphere”. TED2009: The Great Unveiling, February 2009a. https://www.ted.com/talks/ joann_kuchera_morin_stunning_data_visualization_in_the_allosphere/transcript?language=en

Kuchera-Morin, JoAnn, Xavier Amatriain, Tobias Hollerer, and Stephen Travis Pope. “The AlloSphere: Immersive Multimedia for Scientific Discovery and Artistic Exploration”. IEEE MultiMedia 16.2 (April-June 2009b). 64-75. DOI: 10.1109/MMUL.2009.35

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Lestel, Dominique. “Des enjeux de la tentation posthumaine”. Technocorps : La sociologie du corps à l’épreuve des nouvelles technologies. Ed. Brigitte Munier. Lormont: François Bourrin, 2013. 145-170.

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Lutyens, Marcos. “Eduction Erice, Italy, 2001”. Marcos Lutyens, 2001. [archive: https:// web.archive.org/web/20170624051156/http://www.mlutyens.com/dr-cold-weather,-jaus- gallery,-santa-monica,-ca-2012.html#.WU30ofLgpTY]

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Novak, Marcos. “Alloaesthetics and Neuroaesthetics: Travels through Phenomenology and Neurophysiology”. ArtBrain, Journal of Neuro-Aesthetic Theory, 2005. https://www.artbrain.org/ alloaesthetics-and-neuroaesthetics-travels-through-phenomenology-and-neurophysiology/

Novak, Marcos. “2004 World Technology Awards Winners & Finalists”. The World Technology Network, 2004. https://ftpwtn.b.civicrm.ca/2004/bio212.html

Novak, Marcos. “Dancing with the Virtual Dervish: Worlds in Progress”. Immersed in technology, art and virtual environments. Eds. Marie Ann Moser and Douglas Macleod. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1996. 303-8.

Novak, Marcos. “Liquid Architectures in Cyberspace”. Cyberspace: First Steps. Ed. Michael Benedikt. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1992 (1991). 225-254.

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Taleb, Mohamed. “Crise des sciences, retour au mythe et appel de l’Être. Entretien avec Anne Perol.” Sciences et archétypes, Fragments philosophiques pour un réenchantement du monde. Ed. Mohamed Taleb. Paris: Éditions Dervy, 2002. 139-168.

Turing, Alan M. “Computing machinery and intelligence”. Mind 59.236 (1950): 433-460. DOI: 10.1093/mind/LIX.236.433

Vincent, Jean-Didier. Voyage extraordinaire au centre du cerveau. Paris: Odile Jacob, 2007.

Von Neumann, John. The Computer and the Brain. Yale: Yale UP, [1958] 2000.

Wakefield, Graham, et al. “The AlloBrain: an Interactive Stereographic, 3D Audio Immersive Environment”. International Journal of Human Computer Studies 67.11 (2009). https:// www.mat.ucsb.edu/Publications/08_Wakefield_SIDCHI_AlloBrain.pdf

Wiener, Norbert. The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society. London: Free Association Books, 1989 (1950).

Wolff, Francis. Notre humanité. D’Aristote aux neurosciences. Paris: Fayard, 2010.

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NOTES

1. This conference was held at the Villa San Giovanni, 28 June - 1 July 2001. More information is available online at: http://www.psychiatryonline.it/node/2580. 2. In Spanish mythology, the duende is a fairy or goblin-like creature. According to Lorca, it is a spirit which is revealed in the practice of dance, song, recited poetry, flamenco or tauromachy. (2007) 3. More information on the Brain Mapping Center is available online at: http:// www.bmap.ucla.edu. 4. From Latin intellegere, intelligence means the faculty of understanding, of discerning or of forging representations and manipulating them logically, that is to say reasoning. For the pioneers of artificial intelligence (John von Neumann, Norbert Wiener, Claude Shannon, Alan Turing, Herbert Simon, Marvin Minsky, etc.) — a research field developed in the 1950s — intelligence, reasoning faculty, has been reduced to a calculation (“reason” comes from the Latin ratio, which means “calculation”), to a program that can operate regardless of its support, organic or made of silicone. The pioneer, Alan Turing published in 1950 the article “Computing Machinery and Intelligence”, in the journal Mind, exposing the experiment called the “Turing test”. In 1951, he also gave a conference for the BBC entitled “Can Digital Computers Think?” 5. Strong artificial intelligence project differs from the soft artificial intelligence one in that the latter produce machines or computer programs roughly simulating intelligence, acting as if they were intelligent. 6. Interestingly, the idea of mind-uploading was already present in the thought of the famous father of cybernetics, Norbert Wiener. In The Human Use of Human Beings, he wrote: “It is amusing as well as instructive to consider what would happen if we were to transmit the whole pattern of the human body, of the human brain with its memories and cross connections, so that a hypothetical receiving instrument could re-embody these messages in appropriate matter, capable of continuing the processes already in the body and the mind, and of maintaining the integrity needed for this continuation by a process of homeostasis.” (1989: 96) A few pages later, he added: “the fact that we cannot telegraph the pattern of a man from one place to another seems to be due to technical difficulties […]. The idea itself is highly plausible.” (1989: 103-104). 7. “The disenchantment of the world, the loss of standards and the decline of the sense are not to me unavoidable consequences of scientific progress in itself but the result of a much older renunciation of the whole by man. This same denial is the cause of forgetfulness of Being. By his creative will, which was simultaneously a rupture, somehow man extracted himself from the world; he has lost its place and its base within it. This is what it means to forget the Being: losing place in the harmony of the world. It was probably the condition of its entry into history, the price to pay for this wonderful adventure of domination, and somehow in the best case, the conscious creation by man of the manifested world. But now, weaned off forces of life, deaf to the voice of nature, contemptuous of the energy of dreams, man is divorcing with his original world and thus deprived of real reasons to live in it.” (Perol, in Taleb, 2002: 157)

ABSTRACTS

Since the early 1990s, the architect and artist Marcos Novak has been developing an experimental and transdisciplinary practice at a point of convergence between architecture, art,

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science, technology and philosophy, questioning the becoming of the digitally-enhanced body. With AlloBrain@AlloSphere, a virtual reality environment developed between 2005 and 2009 with the support of the Brain Mapping Center (University of California, Los Angeles), Novak proposes an immersive exploration of our brain spaces. AlloBrain is modelled from brain MRIs, extruded in the form of a three-dimensional volume. The experience offered is that of an immersion inside our heads. However, in this way of looking beyond the face, we find it hard to recognise ourselves. Projections or exteriorisations of a hidden interiority, the showing of these unknown territories of the body, of this anonymous and subterranean singularity, arouse an uncanny feeling in us. The explored interior is not that of the mind or of consciousness but, very strictly, that of the brain, more precisely that of a brain without a body, without flesh, a bare and digitally reconstructed enclosed space that yet appears empty of interiority. Are we dealing with a project that tries to explain the mind by mere brain matter, similar to the cognitive sciences or neurosciences? Still, the effect of uncanniness produced by the immersion in AlloBrain seems to result from the confrontation between this “naked brain” and our subjective experience, which seems unable to dispose of the physical body we inhabit and that inhabits us, too. Thus, what AlloBrain causes is a real return to the flesh, a lived-in and living flesh, highlighting a particularity that is nonetheless alien to us, because in reality something always resists. It not the thing that cannot be captured by digitisation the phenomenal “I” itself, the “I” by which we experience our body and the world? Such a hypothesis would give us ground to doubt that by avoiding the materiality of the body, by uploading our minds in the machine, we could remain the same.

Marcos Novak, architecte et artiste, développe depuis trente ans une pratique expérimentale et transdisciplinaire au point de rencontre entre architecture, art, sciences, nouvelles technologies et philosophie, interrogeant les devenirs du corps augmenté par le numérique. Dans l’environnement de réalité virtuelle AlloBrain@AlloSphere (2005-2009), élaboré avec l’aide du Brain Mapping Center de l’Université de Los Angeles en Californie, Novak propose une exploration immersive de nos espaces cérébraux. Environnement immersif modélisé à partir d’IRMs cérébraux extrudés sous la forme d’un volume tridimensionnel, l’expérience d’AlloBrain est bien celle d’une plongée à l’intérieur même de notre crâne. Dans cette percée au-delà du visage, nous peinons cependant à nous reconnaître. Projections ou extériorisations d’une intériorité dissimulée, la monstration de ces territoires inconnus du corps, de cette singularité anonyme et souterraine, éveillent en nous le sentiment d’une inquiétante étrangeté. L’intérieur qui nous est ici donné à explorer n’est pas celui de l’esprit ou de la conscience mais celui, très proprement, du cerveau, plus encore d’un cerveau sans corps, sans chair, un dedans dénudé et numériquement reconstruit, un espace qui, s’il est bien intérieur, semble vide d’intériorité. N’avons-nous pas là affaire à un projet d’explicitation du mental par la seule matière cérébrale, similaire à celui des sciences cognitives ou des neurosciences ? Quoi qu’il en soit, l’effet d’étrangeté que produit l’immersion dans AlloBrain nous semble résulter de la confrontation entre ce cerveau nu et l’expérience subjective, laquelle paraît ne pouvoir se départir d’un corps physique, corps que nous habitons autant qu’il nous habite. Ainsi, c’est un véritable retour à la chair, cette chair vivante et vécue, que provoque AlloBrain, soulignant un propre qui nous est pourtant étranger. Car toujours, quelque chose résiste. Cette chose-là, cette chose qui ne peut être saisie par la numérisation, n’est-ce pas le « Je » phénoménal lui-même, ce « Je » par lequel nous faisons l’épreuve de notre corps comme du monde ? N’y a-t-il pas là de quoi mettre en doute qu’en nous téléchargeant dans la machine, qu’en faisant l’économie de la matérialité du corps, nous puissions rester les mêmes ?

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INDEX

Mots-clés: corps-esprit, réalité virtuelle, inquiétante étrangeté, expérience subjective, conscience phénoménale Keywords: mind-body, virtual reality, uncanny, subjective experience, phenomenal consciousness

AUTHOR

MARION ROUSSEL Marion Roussel is an architect an a PhD in architecture. She is also a member of the steering committee of DNArchi.fr, a publication website about digital culture and digital architecture. Her recent publications include: “De l’androïde à l’avatar : chairs étranges du cinéma de science- fiction au XXe siècle”, in Les représentations troublées des corps au cinema, eds. Sophie Walon, Jérôme Bloch and Benjamin Flores, Paris: L'Harmattan (forthcoming in 2016); “L’architecture évolutionnaire. De la génétique en architecture”, DNArchi, May 2014. http://dnarchi.fr/culture/ larchitecture-evolutionnaire-de-la-genetique-en-architecture/; “Habiter l’immatériel ou l’architecture du cyberspace”, in Les Cahiers Européens de l’Imaginaire 6 (2014): 264-5; “Devenir- liquide, devenir-alien. Des devenirs-autres des corps dans l’architecture de Marcos Novak”, Le Philotope 10 (2014): 149-153. Contact: roussel.marion [at] hotmail.fr

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The Body of Los Angeles, Between Commodity and Identity

Charles Joseph

1 How the body fits within the city and cityscape has been the starting point of some thinking in 20th century philosophy,1 but the writings resulting from these reflections did not, for the most part, take into account both the urban and socio-cultural particularisms of the manufactured environment in which the body had to find its place. Whether stemming from the conceptualization or spatial structuring of the city, the timeframe of its construction, its population, its codes and cultural legacy, these factors influence how the inhabitants consider themselves among the others but also how they place themselves in these unique urban spaces. In Los Angeles, all of these components are peculiar, and if we now also find them in most megalopolises around the world, it was first in Los Angeles that they appeared and took roots. The postmodern city par excellence proceeds from a singular combination of geographical, socio-economic, historical and cultural elements which ultimately led to the city’s nonstandard status and development. Central to all of these aspects, the inhabitants had to find their place but also had to build a corporeal integrity that would suit and resonate with the unprecedented morphology of the city. Cityscape and urban bodies thus find themselves engaged in a reciprocal relationship in which they influence each other, both growing more complex and intertwined with the other. In this dialog mediated through the body, something could emerge, a link between the city and the corporeal self that, in its ongoing dynamics, should inform both how a city works and how a city feels… The body and the city become co-dependent, as if starting a symbiosis, and they have never been so intertwined as in Los Angeles, be it in terms of form, purpose or ideology.

2 The theoretical approach favored in this article is firmly grounded within the field of cultural studies as it enables a transdisciplinary approach, as well as a transmedia one. The body in Los Angeles has served as an image from the very creation of the city and it has always been depicted, exposed or exhibited on cinema and TV screens, in art galleries and street billboards. Adjoined to an already complex emerging urban grid, these corporeal models have been an additional layer of representation the inhabitants

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have had to take into account while already trying to maintain a grasp on an ever- expanding cityscape. It is when these different spatial conceptualization of the body and the city collide that a sense of ‘psychasthenia’ emerges. Defined as a disturbance in the relation between self and surrounding territory, psychasthenia is a state in which the space defined by the coordinates of the organism’s own body is confused with represented space. Incapable of demarcating the limits of its own body, lost in the immense area that circumscribes it, the psychasthenic organism proceeds to abandon its own identity to embrace the space beyond. It does so by camouflaging itself into the milieu. This simulation effects a double usurpation: while the organism successfully reproduces those elements it could not otherwise apprehend, in the process it is swallowed up by them, vanishing as a differentiated entity. (Olalquiaga 1-2)

3 Celeste Olalquiaga, who coined the term, thus links directly psychasthenia with simulation, a process which Jean Baudrillard has associated intimately with Los Angeles in Simulacra and Simulation: “Los Angeles is surrounded by these imaginary stations [Disneyland, Enchanted Village, Magic Mountain and Marine World] that feed reality, the energy of the real to a city whose mystery is precisely that of no longer being anything but a network of incessant, unreal circulation — a city of incredible proportions but without space, without dimension.” (Baudrillard 1994: 13). The LA school of thought revolving mostly around Edward Soja and his Postmodern Geographies are precisely based on postmodern philosophical approaches such as the ones of Baudrillard or Henri Lefebvre, and Soja followed in their footsteps, opening geography to transdisciplinarity.2 Soja thus took into account the cultural aspect of the city but in mostly geographical terms such as architecture, and left popular culture detached from any spatial considerations. But the body is the receptacle of both physical and representational spaces and when dealing with the corporeal bridge that is the Angelino body, one must find a way to link these combining discourses.

4 Following Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding strategies (Hall 90-103) seems appropriate when trying to understand the psychasthenic mechanisms at play in a city such as Los Angeles. Even though Hall intended his seminal essay mainly to discuss television, the “mixture of adaptative and oppositional elements” of the decoding process he analyzes could very well apply to the body in Los Angeles, and the various levels of influence it is submitted to. The body, however, in its various Angelino iterations and uses, is highly mediatized and Hall’s perspective is rather fitting when engaged in the process of deciphering its origins, applications and results. To understand Angelino psychasthenia, the city’s urban particularities should be taken into account, as well as the city’s emblematic productions of body representations — whether in films, art exhibits, popular cultural practices, advertisement, or TV series —, and decoding their implications could shed some light on how the city and the body have been interlocked from the start.

Decentered city / Decentered body

5 The very morphology of the city and its singular conception of space impacted the inhabitants’ corporeality, integrating aspects of the city’s spatial conceptions in corporeal behaviors, but the city’s peculiar form also triggered corporeal mechanisms to counteract its destabilizing effects. Los Angeles was developed horizontally and continued its urban spread laterally ever since its inception, resulting in the

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polycentric urban sprawl its inhabitants have now grown accustomed to. The very limits of the city of Los Angeles are invisible and the many different municipalities forming the greater Los Angeles area are merged into one another to create an unending urban landscape where boundaries are the man-made freeways or man-dug river. Scholar Richard Sennett listed, in his essay “The Power of the Eye,” three fundamental rules to create a more human cityscape with his third and most challenging principle being one of finding and defining a clear center because, to “strengthen that sense of touch and contact, an urban design has […] to focus on the edge as a scene of life” (Sennett 68-69). For Sennett, a clear urban concentric point is essential for a city identity to emerge but also for the inhabitants’ corporeal well-being. But how can one define a center in a polycentric megalopolis such as Los Angeles? It was built and created as a polycentric area relying on the initial impulse of the real- estate boosters who proclaimed themselves city planners. As soon as the city was attached to the rest of the American territory after the 1848 treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which ended the Mexican-American war, rich investors perceived an opportunity to make money and bought extensive parcels of land immediately. Tired of the congestions and growing density of eastern cities, the boosters’ main sales pitch was the ideal of the individual house and garden and coupled with the Gold Rush fever of the 1850s and the novelty of this newly acquired territory. Eastern Americans came rushing to the land of eternal sunshine as soon as the transcontinental railroad reached Los Angeles in 1869, contributing to the fast emergence of what was then considered as the “garden city”. Before becoming the fantasy of the newcomers, however, the detached house was first and foremost the ideal of the realtors and promoters given that the customers’ growing demand had to be addressed quickly. As explained by Carey McWilliams in Southern California: An Island on the Land (McWilliams 1973), the “California house” was the best way to address vast numbers of immigrants pouring into the city, a California house that already questioned the visible boundaries of inside and outside space.3 This California house that “was definitely subordinated” (McWilliams 357) to the landscape it was built in already denoted the territory’s power over human creations, blurring from the start the dialectics of public and private space which would resonate decades later with the Angelinos’ corporeality.4 These bungalows were built quickly all over the vast area of the Los Angeles basin without any particular urban planning to guide the construction — a disorganized development which contrasted drastically with the classic monocentric model and which contributed to creating the first American polycentric city.

6 The other centers of Los Angeles did not grow after one had emerged, rather, they all emerged simultaneously, making it impossible to specify which one should be the city center. Even more so, the very notion of center became very negative in Los Angeles because it became synonymous with imprisonment.5 Indeed, the actual geographic center of this urban sprawl has been associated with poverty and violence after the shifts of social classes after WWII. Compressed from each side by an ever-growing urban mass, Watts and South Central exploded into racial riots in 1965 and 1992, concentrating the worst failings of the city at its core. Entrapped within the city’s unending sprawl, these neighborhoods’ inhabitants proved how literal and social inertia would become defining factors of the social unrest.

7 The ability to move within the LA cityscape has become synonymous with life and freedom, while inertia has become associated with failure and poverty. It should thus

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come as no surprise that the body of these open-air inmates of the city condensed such apathy to turn it into movement, to transform it into motion. Thus, in order to experience freedom, they have grown to rely on their only inalienable property, their bodies. They have experimented and explored new means to express their ongoing frustration to finally reach a body language of their own, a trance-like corporeality that triggers escape. This cultural phenomenon was retraced in the 2005 documentary Rize directed by American photographer David LaChapelle (2005) (see Figure 1, and video below). The director/photographer focused on the cultural scene of South Central and the rise of a new dance style called krumping, a dance which finds its origins in the trance-like movements of African shamans. Instead of falling into gang violence and the drug business of the ghetto, the young African Americans but also Asians and Hispanics participating in this hip-hop movement expressed, through their moving bodies, their anger and frustrations, experiencing the freedom they were denied outside their turf.

Figure 1: Rize by David LaChapelle (still)

This image is one of the 15 photos that compose the album related to the film on the director’s official website Source: http://www.davidlachapelle.com/film/rize/?ss=images [no longer accessible].

This media file cannot be displayed. Please refer to the online document http:// journals.openedition.org/angles/1881

8 The athletic bodies and colorful outfits of the dancers are striking under LaChapelle’s lens, and for the first time outside the field of erotica, the black bodies of these real ghetto kids that are usually criminalized in the news media are actually glorified, celebrated. The director is able to show how disenfranchised populations in Los Angeles manage to experience freedom in a closed space and under very bleak socio- economic circumstances, the very conditions which the city’s morphology tended to accentuate.

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9 Because of the city’s ever-growing dimensions, Los Angeles became, during the first half of the 20th century, what Jeremiah Axelrod labeled “Autopia”. After the massive urban works of the late 1930s which built the country’s largest freeway network, the city encouraged car ownership by reducing considerably its railroad network, and after WWII, public transportation was reduced to a minimum in Los Angeles. The car became the indispensable tool to move around the city and, in doing so, influenced the inhabitants’ conceptions of the body. The car became vital and, decade after decade, grew into an extension of one’s body. It is as if, upon entering one’s car, the driver/ inhabitant suddenly expanded his/her body limits to superimpose that of the car’s body. The cars express one’s identity, and the popular Angelino saying “you are what you drive” is verifiable on the freeways of Los Angeles.

10 One can be displaying craftsmanship around the license plate (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Decorated license plate

All these photographs of license plates were taken by the author during various trips in Los Angeles between 2002 and 2013. Source: Charles Joseph.

11 Or one’s consumers’ habits with stickers (in Figure 3, an Apple computer enthusiast).

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Figure 3. Stickers on cars denoting driver’s consumer habits

Source: Charles Joseph.

12 One can also brand the car through the license plate with hints of social habits or social behavior, thus superimposing one’s identity with the car’s official identification (“BEACHN7”) (Figure 4).

Figure 4: License plate hinting at the driver’s social habits

Source: Charles Joseph.

13 Drivers also display personal history and patriotism on their windshields (“Our son is serving in the Gulf”, Figure 5).

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Figure 5: Patriotism prominently displayed on a car’s windshield

Source: Charles Joseph.

14 They put forward their political beliefs as well (“We are occupying Los Angeles”) (Figure 6).

Figure 6: “Occupy” supporter in L.A.

The sign reads “We are occupying Los Angeles”. Source: Charles Joseph.

15 And finally, cars can display thoughts and opinions about how the drivers feel about Los Angeles (“Don’t Follow Me / I’m Lost” — with an additional play with an internet error code: 303, which is used for pages which have been moved elsewhere to redirect browsers) (Figure 7).

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Figure 7: Humorous license plate: “I’m lost, error 303”

Source: Charles Joseph.

16 These habits, now common throughout the United States and the world, originated in Los Angeles, and car customizing is a business that also started in the city. For people to display these personal markings on their cars is no longer specific to Los Angeles but it still remains the most noticeable habit taken up by most of its inhabitants contrary to other cities.6 The purpose of these visible and added marks on the cars can easily be paralleled with that of tattoos, without the aesthetic choices of the latter. The “Don’t Follow Me, I’m Lost” framing the license plate and the other numerous personalized cars go on to show that the car and the “I” in the driver’s seat are now one and the same. The official identification of the car can be custom-made to parallel that of the driver’s habits or personality with one-of-a-kind license plates. The cars become metallic extensions of the drivers’ bodies, extending one’s personal space and body limits, with one crucial loss: that of the sense of touch.

17 Los Angeles is often described as a dehumanizing space because of its massive scale, but it is because of the city’s size and the automobile habit it triggered that this dehumanization became palpable, with Angelinos slowly starting to feel estranged to one of their bodies’ five senses. One of the main characters of Paul Haggis 2004 academy award-winning film Crash opens the movie on that same note: Graham: It’s the sense of touch. Ria: What? Graham: In a real city, you walk you know. You brush past people. People bump into you. In L.A. nobody touches you. We’re always behind this metal and glass. I think that we miss that touch so much that we crash into each other just so we can feel something. […] You don’t think that’s true? Ria: Graham, I think we got rear-ended, I think we spun around twice, and somewhere in there, one of us lost our frame of reference. I’m gonna go look for it. (Haggis 2004)

18 What Haggis’ film ultimately shows is that Los Angeles is a city not so much made of individuals as of infinite individualities. The sense of community has been greatly lessened in Los Angeles since its inhabitants have been used to being untouched, either in their single detached houses or in their cars, comfortable in a space that is solely their own. What is even more striking is the mechanics at work when fear comes into play and one no longer feels safe in this sacred and expanded individualistic space. The ever-expanding space, and the new dimensions it implies, impacts the everyday life of Angelinos with large sidewalks even though no one actually walks on them or very wide cinema seats which are now sometimes clearly separated from one another, as if

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comfortably settled in an independent armchair, just like at home. Individual private space becomes a norm that can be echoed in Los Angeles and its massive-scaled public space. Collective spaces have taken into account these enlarged personal space dimensions, reinforcing the corporeal autarky experienced in Los Angeles and also explaining how touching someone, even inadvertently, is perceived first as an aggression before being perceived as a natural occurrence.

19 Influential work about the Los Angeles’ cityscape by Reyner Banham, professor of the history of architecture, also informs the correlation between corporeality and the built environment. In Los Angeles: Architecture of Four Ecologies (Banham 2009), he lists four different types of ecologies that he systematically links with a matching architecture. We thus find the following pairs structuring the book’s chapters: Ecology 1: Surfurbia; Architecture 1: Exotic Pioneers; Foothills/Fantastic; The Plains of Id/The Exiles; Autopia/The Style that Nearly…, and so on. The analysis favored by Banham is one based on a systemic approach, one that puts the body of the city and its inhabitants to the forefront. As recalled by Joe Day in a foreword, Banham’s work “is concerned with systems: of transit, building, communication, retail and enjoyment.” (Banham xxvii). Banham deals with ecologies, not environments; he deals with spaces in which men already have their place and have already transformed the territory, giving a palpable, perceptible body to the city: “Such a very large body of first-class and highly original architecture cannot be brushed off as an accident, an irrelevance upon the face of an indifferent dystopia” (Banham 226). He refers to the body of the city earlier in his book to discuss the second architecture, “Fantastic”, addressing issues of architectural symbolism that have later been discussed by Robert Venturi, Denise Brown and Steven Izenour in Learning from Las Vegas (1977) or Louis Marin in Utopics: Spatial Play (1973). Banham explained how representational architecture developed in Los Angeles, turning new buildings into gigantic recognizable signs: The towers of Watts are as unique as they are proper in Los Angeles, for the going body of architectural fantasy is in the public, not private, domain, and constitutes almost the only public architecture in the city — public in the sense that it deals in symbolic meanings the populace at large can read. (Banham 114)

20 For Banham, the Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, the Watts Towers or the Randy’s Donuts sign all stem from the same “symbolic packaging” which he perceives as “the only gesture of public architecture that matches the style and scale of the city” (Banham 116).

21 Angelino photographer Allan Sekula also helped to put into perspective the relationship between the cityscape and the body of its inhabitants in symbolical terms during the second half of the 20th century through his art but also through his texts, notably in his essay “The Body and the Archive” (Sekula 1986). What becomes striking in Sekula’s creative process is how he questioned the many interconnections between the body and the city in several of his exhibits. The most compelling is also one of his first, the 1973 exhibit entitled Aerospace Folktales (Sekula 1973), which focuses on his family. His father was working at the Lockheed corporation in Burbank and Sekula took several photographs of his father’s workplace and more of his home with his mother and sister. If Los Angeles is not an immediate or apparent focus in Sekula’s work, space, on the other hand, is. Being brought up in Los Angeles from a very early age, he integrated this space as his own, but his parents, who moved to Los Angeles, struggled with the city’s amorphousness. Two pictures from Sekula’s exhibit positioned next to

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one another are particularly revealing (the photographs in the exhibit were untitled) (Figures 8 and 9).

Figure 8: Allan Sekula, Aerospace Folktales (1973)

Generali Foundation Collection, Permanent Loan to the Museum der Moderne Salzburg. Photo: Werner Kaligofsky. Source: http://foundation.generali.at/typo3temp/pics/7ddbc66872.jpg

Figure 9 : Allan Sekula, Aerospace Folktales (1973)

Generali Foundation Collection, Permanent Loan to the Museum der Moderne Salzburg. Photo: Werner Kaligofsky. Source: http://foundation.generali.at/typo3temp/pics/ea4484401d.jpg

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22 What becomes visible in the second photograph is the map of Los Angeles which is stuck to the cupboard door. The residual body of the photographer’s mother is visible with the open cupboard, yet the viewer’s gaze is also drawn simultaneously to the organized cupboard on the left and the city map on the right, creating a parallel in which the actual body does not fit, only its residual corporeality. Space, even domestic, familiar, homely, suddenly turns outwards into a vaster strange space. What is also striking is the mere fact of having a map of the city in the kitchen even though the family moved to Los Angeles more than a decade ago. It reveals how hard it was for them to be able to visualize the urban maze that is Los Angeles and ultimately to understand how to fit in the city. This ongoing questioning becomes even clearer upon reading the photographer’s essay accompanying the Aerospace Folktales exhibit: so i have written down some things so you will understand what i am talking about so you won’t think i’m documenting things for the love of documenting things obviously i am not national geographic looking for native customs or alligators i’m not trying to discover my self i am not trying to present you with a record of my anguished investigations this material is interesting only insofar as it is social material i do not think that i can provide you with an object with no relation other than an art relation to your world… (Sekula 1973)

23 This work by Sekula shows firsthand what Fredric Jameson explains in Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Not only does the American scholar consider Los Angeles as one of the notable starting points of postmodernism through architecture (Jameson 38-45) and cityscape, but he also discusses how one’s corporeal relationship to its built environment tackles issues that go far beyond one’s immediate surroundings: So I come finally to my principal point here, that this 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. It may now be suggested that this alarming disjunction point between the body and its built environment — which is to the initial bewilderment of the older modernism as the velocities of spacecraft to those of the automobile — can itself stand as the symbol and analogon of that even sharper dilemma which is the incapacity of our minds, at least at present, to map the great global multinational and decentered communicational network in which we find ourselves caught as individual subjects. (Jameson 44)

24 The absence of a very clear and linear reading of the city creates a certain confusion for the people who must inhabit it, who must situate themselves and project into it. Such a vast amorphous space with redundant-looking neighborhoods constantly crawling with people ends up feeling anthropomorphous, and what was once experienced as freedom becomes anxiety. The horizontal city is no longer a refuge but becomes a compression machine where the absence of structure turns the hive into an agitated crowd without any perceptible unity. This lack of centrality, of visible boundaries, of height, of density too, leads to what could be perceived as a new state of enslavement, one to a complex space, difficult to understand and apprehend, where the inhabitants’ physical integrity diminishes. As personal space expands beyond the body’s reach to adapt to the city’s massive scale and habits, the body becomes porous to the objects which constitute its new limits such as the car, the seats, the home, etc.

25 Encouraged by the peculiar conception of space on which Los Angeles is built, the body has become gradually de-personified, as if the unprecedented polycentric urban form

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that was born from marketing strategies had simultaneously brought about an ideological shift superimposing corporeality with commodity. In Los Angeles, the urban matrix becomes chimerical and amorphous, virtual even, and the flaws of the city are reverberated onto its inhabitants’ mental images and projections but are more importantly felt through their bodies. The body becomes too frail and consistent, too centered (if not central) and cannot rival with the decentered postmodern urban grid that Los Angeles itself instituted. Because the body as a subject cannot position itself clearly in Los Angeles, it cannot find its place and it does not belong anywhere, whereas the body as an ideal seems to fit perfectly both in the ungraspable materiality of Los Angeles but also in the polished image that the city is so eager to sell.

Desirable city / Desirable body

26 If taken solely on the urban scale, the city seems to suffer from a sort of a-corporeality, but on a more cultural level, the city has motivated an objectification of the body which has become intrinsic to the territory and its identity. The exponential growth of a highly mediatized society where images are displayed on billboards, covers of magazines, cinema, television, computer or telephone screens comes into play as well, especially when dealing with Los Angeles which has upheld images as key historical instruments, and which has transformed them component into a leading world industry. The city’s influence has been linked with how the body has been represented on any and every media surface from the early 20th century, and this needs to be taken into account not as an exclusively cinematographic influence but as a more general trend. Indeed, Hollywood’s cinematographic hegemony gave Los Angeles a tremendous momentum, but the body conceptions the city has put forward were already in motion within LA’s earliest history. As such, what are now known as Hollywood canons refer not only to the cinematographic industry but also to what Gilles Lipovetsky and Jean Serroy have called “The Global Screen” (Lipovetsky and Serroy 2007), one that transcends place, time and media forms. This “global screen” emphasizes the growing blur between photography, cinema and television, explaining how images have become pervasive in contemporary societies, but also how they have sped up and sustained globalization. Hollywood canons thus do not refer to a clearly delimited industry but to the original space from where this body-centric conception originated. To try to pinpoint the beginning of the prominence of body image in Los Angeles, one simply needs to go back to the boosters’ early attempts to make money from the land they had bought in Los Angeles. Tom Zimmerman retraces in Paradise Promoted the mechanics of the strategies real-estate promoters put in motion, showing in his heavily illustrated book how images came into play in their ads. Zimmerman opens his book with an illustrated brochure of the city in which a sentence is associated with an image and which reads as follow: Los Angeles: a city where […] all the men retained their vigor […] all the women were beauty queens […] everybody took pictures […] Hollywood stars exercised right by their bungalows […] and even the oil fields had palm trees […] and where absolutely everybody had his own car. (Zimmerman 2-9)

27 In these images and slogans he took up from early boosters’ campaigns, the body is central. Beauty is one non-negligible aspect that was put forward with the beauty queens and Hollywood stars, but also a place and lifestyle that would get people into shape and stay healthy. We can see a young actress exercising, and the picture

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associated with “all the men retained their vigor” shows an old man skipping rope. The body and its beauty and health became a sales’ argument from the start in Los Angeles. The question of well-being is not expressed because such subjective assumptions could ostracize people who did not condone or agree with this lifestyle. By staying on a very factual level, people could project more easily on the city, and the beauty canons already in place in America suddenly became a visible and powerful norm through the rising media formats to which Los Angeles became home. Moreover, the space of the beach itself, also associated with the city, became a sales argument that appealed unconsciously to carnal desires.7

28 The overall Californian myth thus banked from a very early phase on a healthy body in a wholesome environment. In a favorable and luxuriant climate, one could find slim women showing more skin than anywhere else in the United States, as well as muscular men who became physical heralds in terms of fitness and bodybuilding. The newfound Eden of the “Garden city” needed its bodily idealized Adams and Eves, and by hinting at this original myth, boosters hoped that it would appeal to the masses — and it did. This advertising ideal started a process explored in This Side of Paradise (Watts and Bohn- Spector 2008). In this illustrated publication, Sophie Bohn-Spector and Jennifer Watts comment on how body and landscape relate to one another in Los Angeles photographs and also discuss their evolving dynamics. In a chapter entitled “Lust in the land of sunshine,” Bohn-Spector analyzes how images of the body became central to Los Angeles and its narrative: The exaltation of Southern California’s physicality, with all its attendant racial and ethnic prejudice, helped spawn a pervasive body culture that firmly took root in Los Angeles in the 1920s, aided by the camera as its promulgator and eager amanuensis. Over time, gorgeous physiques, bronzed skin, and an infectious sex appeal became virtually synonymous with Southern California, fostering increasingly lustful interpretations of both the city and the landscape itself. (Watts and Bohn-Spector 62)

29 Heather Addisson’s book Hollywood and the Rise of Physical Culture (2003) bolsters Bohn- Spector and Watts’ arguments and explores the beginning of the Hollywood film industry, analyzing how the body became the most capitalized-on goods in the city, but also how Hollywood became prominent in setting new canons and standards in terms of beauty and attractiveness. Addisson perceives an obvious correlation between the development of the city and its widespread imagery found in the many films of the same era, motion pictures in which the territory’s propaganda was inextricable from an elaborate image of the body. Once shown or broadcasted, this ideal sold to the masses became the ideal to which one should conform, providing the city’s ever-growing audience with a goal. The reasons why people uprooted themselves and moved to Los Angeles took form and reality once they had finally made it there. Therein lies Los Angeles’ biggest power: the images of these ideals became reality through the sheer allure of the fantasy the city was able to create, because these ideals were appealing, desirable. The same mechanism was at play in the “muscle beach” gyms that opened on the Santa Monica seafront in 1934 and on the Venice seafront in 1951.8 From very early on, these institutions were created as spaces where athletes worked out under the sun, to perfect their already imposing muscle structure. In exposing themselves this way, half-naked, hard-muscled and sweaty, these athletes both focused the gazes and triggered desire in the passers-by, thus contributing to the implementation of an athletic figure strongly associated with the city and its industry. Actors on the silver

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screen or on television gradually became more and more muscular throughout the 20th century, helping to anchor these beauty canons of masculinity. Aspiring actors and actresses knew that they had to conform to these athletic canons and spent time perfecting their bodies in order to 'get the part. Many fitness centers opened in Los Angeles in the late 1950s because of the surge of aspiring movie stars (Addison 37).

Figure 10: Open-air gym on the beachfront, where passers-by can admire the bodybuilders’ physique

Source: Charles Joseph.

30 The same thing can be said of women, of course, but the ongoing canons perpetrated through Hollywood have been either highly reinforced or greatly amended by fashion magazines and women’s press in general. Fashion magazines, especially, built a competing canon, reflecting the rivalry between New York’s high fashion and Los Angeles’ screen canons. Slim models took the upper hand and voluptuous Hollywood actresses suddenly had to be thinner as well in the late 1980s and early 1990s. One could thus compare two representative icons of the time, opposing buxom Pamela Anderson and petite Kate Moss, two physiques at opposing ends of a spectrum. Yet, as stated in the 2011 exhibit Beauty CULTure, which took place at the Los Angeles Annenberg Space for Photography, located 2000 Avenue of the Stars, these competing norms are not actual rivals (see https://www.annenbergphotospace.org/exhibits/ beauty-culture/). They are, on the contrary, quietly dovetailing to create an even greater constellation of canons that are usually in tune with the place they emanated from, contributing to Lipovetsky’s “global screen”. Yet, the exhibit also put forward the unparalleled ability of Los Angeles to bend its rules and to shift its canons in order to appeal to the masses. Because the city’s history is irrelevant in mediatized perspectives, it is easier than anywhere else to adapt the canons to demand. As one of the centerpieces of the 2011 exhibit, the question of plastic surgery was evoked in a very

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thorough documentary directed by photographer and filmmaker Lauren Greenfield who wanted to show how the body became the primary expression of identity for girls and women, but also how all these canons were interconnected.9 The fact that this exhibit was commissioned for a Los Angeles-based gallery made it all the more fitting since in Los Angeles, more than anywhere else, conforming to the canons has become an industry of its own.

Figure 11: Advertisement for the Beauty CULTure exhibit (2011)

The ad is above a street sign for the Figueroa Corridor lined with palm-trees. Source: Charles Joseph.

31 Plastic surgery boomed earlier in Los Angeles than anywhere else in the United States, if not the world. Actresses were always increasingly pressured to remain as young and beautiful as possible, which pushed them to resort to plastic surgery. Other aspiring actresses also started to turn to plastic surgery to conform to the existing beauty canons of their time in order to maximize their chances of “making it” in the business. The porn industry also fueled plastic surgeons’ practices with more and more models and actresses. Over time, men also started to resort to surgery. Everywhere else in the country, plastic surgery boomed for those wishing to conform to the beauty canons to feel desirable or beautiful. In Los Angeles, plastic surgery is a means to a professional end, it is part of the job to first ‘look the part’. Given the city’s image close association with carnal qualities, transformative reality TV programs showcasing plastic surgery makeovers take place in Los Angeles, using the city’s inherent glamour as the perfect set to emphasize spectacular physical transformations.10 The beauty cult which the exhibit Beauty CULTure insisted upon is more palpable in Los Angeles than elsewhere because some of Los Angeles’ most lucrative businesses depend on the craving bodies it harbors. In The Consumer Society, Baudrillard reminds us that the body is “the finest consumer object” (Baudrillard 1998: 129) in a chapter with the same name; the

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philosopher also reasserts that “the body is a cultural fact” (129). This idea reinforces how plastic surgery developed, particularly in Los Angeles, since its endemic culture required it. For Baudrillard, “the body sells. Beauty sells. Eroticism sells” (Baudrillard 1998: 135), and he goes on with what he calls the “narcissistic reinvestment” which implies a process of sacralization of the body as exponential value, of the functional body — that is to say, the body which is no longer ‘flesh’ as in the religious conception, or labour power as in industrial logic, but is taken up again in its materiality (or its ‘visible’ ideality) as narcissistic cult object or element of social ritual and tactics — beauty and eroticism are two major leitmotivs. (Baudrillard 1998: 132)

32 The very notion of narcissism is also something Gilles Lipovetsky commented in The Era of Emptiness in a chapter entitled “Narcissus or the strategy of emptiness,” articulated around the body: The body is no longer the meaning of an abjection or a machine, but it shows our most profound nature which is no longer a matter to be ashamed of and which can, from that moment on, be exposed naked on the beaches or on stage in all its natural truth. As a person, the body gains dignity; one must respect it, implying making sure of its proper functioning, fighting against its obsolescence, battling the signs of its degradation through a permanent recycling that can be surgical, sporty, nutritional, etc.: “physical” decrepitude has become a turpitude. […] Narcissism, through the meticulous attention it pays to the body, through its permanent worry to have it function at its most optimal level, breaks down the “traditional” obstacles and makes the body available for any and all experimentations. […] Nothing less than the level zero of the social, narcissism proceeds from an hyper-investment of codes and works as an unprecedented type of social control over souls and bodies. (Lipovetsky 87-91)

33 Lipovetsky expands greatly from the notion of narcissism and on the role it held in terms of social control, yet this analysis resonates particularly with Los Angeles’ city space. When one walks in Los Angeles, one does so in a space where bodies are to be shown. People do not instinctively walk the streets, they drive in avenues. As far as the trivial activity of walking is concerned, showing-off is never far off… People walk on the seafront in Venice or Santa Monica, where muscular men are topless and slim- waisted women are in bikinis. People also walk when they are going out at night, cruising Hollywood or Sunset Boulevard where people go to see and be seen. The body thus integrated in a social context where people are actually interacting with one another needs to fit in the established canons in order to be deemed desirable and thus, acceptable. Moreover, this notion of narcissism is spread everywhere over Los Angeles where bodies are exposed tanning at the beach, cruising in the streets, placated on billboards and exercising behind bay windows of gyms or fitness centers. Promoted at every city corner, this athletic visibility of the body cult is itself praised to the skies and helps to build up a lifestyle as much as an idealized conception of the body. In her book on the social construction of the body, Christine Detrez retraces the appearance of what British sociologist Bryan Turner called the “somatic society” (Turner 1984) which would not be concerned with people’s well-being in terms of emotions but of body sensations and projection. For Detrez, many different factors can be isolated to explain this sudden concern solely devoted to the body, but the most important one would be “the shift from a production society to a consumption society, and the simultaneous transformation of society into one of leisure and consumerism” (Detrez 190; translation mine). The emptiness associated with Narcissus by Lipovetsky prefigures how, in Los Angeles, the hollowness of the car contaminates the body, sustaining its ever-growing

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objectification, identity is not measured upon social interaction but upon social projection.

34 When referring to the transition from a commercially conceptualized ideal into reality, the process leading from one to the other is not one of realization per se, but one of simulation as Baudrillard has repeatedly argued. Television has been the most profound revolution of the past two century given the considerable impact it has had on the world’s population but also the more subliminal one that was orchestrated through decades of programming which all lead to a hegemony of the body image. In The Consumer Society, Baudrillard argues that “the ‘message’ of TV is not the images it transmits, but the new modes of relating and perceiving it imposes, the alterations to traditional family and group structure.” (Baudrillard 1998: 123) What differs in Los Angeles is that mimetism and simulation become one and the same since being in the city that serves as a setting for blockbusters or TV series changes the mimetic relationship drastically. In Los Angeles, mimetism is no longer a sense of integration of movements or attitudes, it is a sense of material immateriality that surges all at once. Mimetism still remains in practice, and seeing pictures of people standing with their feet in the Pacific ocean as in the earliest photographs taken in Los Angeles proves how enduring these images still are. Simulation suddenly appears when people are taking pictures of themselves posing at a lifeguard’s cabin they saw when they watched Baywatch in the comfort of their homes. The same can be said of people posing in front of other famous shooting locations, such as the house of the Halliwell sisters of Charmed, the house of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or of Sidney Bristow in Alias. The TV screen suddenly shatters, and the body becomes the vector through which this transition is operated. The advent of Turner’s somatic society takes its full grasp in the Simulacra and Simulations by Baudrillard where the body becomes the central motif of reality’s sliding. When the body, material property par excellence, throws itself headlong into hyperreal society, what can be done to keep up appearances?

35 It is perhaps in the dark side of Hollywood, or as Legs McNeil and Jennifer Osborne put it, in “the other Hollywood” (McNeil and Osborne 2005), one which solely rests on the body, that one could find the best example of this gradual prominence of fantasized body images in everyday life.

36 Los Angeles is known as the porn capital of the world, and the biggest world studios of pornography are all located in Los Angeles, notably in the San Fernando Valley, in the north-west portion of the city. This very lucrative business found in Los Angeles an endless supply of young disillusioned actors and (mostly) actresses who fell in the trap of the adult film industry. It heralds the most extreme objectification of the body which stages men and women overexpressing a natural, sentimental and primal impulse, for significant sums of money for one day of shooting. Once in the easy-money cycle, by choice or by necessity, these actors and actresses came to embody the Hollywood canons of beauty spending their days either eating protein shakes and working out or sun-bathing in remission after having had breast implants. The city thus overflows with body-objects and becomes the pool of an industry of the absurd whose very presence maintains the territory under an artificial light and turns Los Angeles into a city of forgery which then broadcasts them all around the world, an unforeseen yet globalized side effect of mass media. In his chapter entitled “Stereo-porno” in Seduction, Baudrillard explains how pornography has matured into a symptom of postmodernity which considers the body as already hyperreal:

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One sees from up close what one has never seen before; to one’s good fortune, one has never seen one’s genitals function from so close, nor for that matter, from so general a perspective. It is all too true, too near to be true. And it is this that is fascinating, this excess of reality, this hyperreality of things. The only phantasy in pornography, if there is one, is thus not the phantasy of sex, but of the real, and its absorption into something other than the real, the hyperreal. Pornographic voyeurism is not a sexual voyeurism, but a voyeurism of representation and its perdition, a dizziness born of the loss of the scene and the irruption of the obscene. (Baudrillard 1990: 28-29)

37 Art has sometimes received similar critiques when the use of the body was obscene, but because it was intended to be so. The Hollywood industry, whether empirical or pornographic, does not revolve around artistic or political considerations, its intents are all directed towards profit. Hollywood, no matter how aware of its influences, is more entertainment than culture as what matters most is profitability, not the messages or canons it could represent. Los Angeles’ culture, crushed under Hollywood’s omnipotence, has become known for its inconsistency, and the city has come to be associated with a cultural wasteland or an intellectual blackhole no matter how vibrant its artistic scene. It has also been considered as such because Angelinos have been more often identified as bodies than as people, or even as body parts or body doubles. The Angelino agency named “Body Parts Models” speaks for itself. It is one of the only agencies in the world that is specialized in hiring actors to stand in a frame to replace an actor that would be uncomfortable showing his behind on camera, or an actress that would not want to show her stomach on film because it is not as flat as the canons would expect. It is also the same industry that becomes the standard-bearer for new corporeal building methods implying conformation or transformation.

Cannibal city / Carnival body

38 A perfect illustration of a city where excess rules unconditionally is a local celebrity, Angelyne, who could be seen as the personification of the afore-mentioned obscenity. Angelyne is famous in Los Angeles for the numerous billboards displaying her persona. She started out as an actress and was hired as an extra in several films in the late 1970s, but it was in the middle of the 1980s that she became widely known with the dozens of billboards appearing throughout the city (Figures 12 and 13). She thus became known as the “billboard queen” of Los Angeles and was suddenly famous for being famous. Who paid for these billboards remains a mystery, and Angelyne remains elusive about the identity of the mysterious patron who helped kickstart her career. In fact, few details of Angelyne’s life are known, and the contradictory pieces of information disseminated throughout the years make it even harder to separate wheat from chaff, but what is clear is that her persona and her physique are one and the same. Angelyne as a character was built simultaneously as her body was exposed, and while she claims to represent Hollywood and the mystery that glamour should induce in every star, her body now speaks for herself as much as it speaks for itself.

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Figure 12: William Reagh. [Painted billboard of Angelyne on building], 1986

Source: https://csl.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/view/delivery/01CSL_INST/12136452470005115

Figure 13: Anthony Friedkin. “Angelyne in a bikini”, 1997

Source: https://tessa.lapl.org/cdm/ref/collection/photos/id/3706

39 Because she became so popular and integrated in the city’s landscape, she inevitably became and remained an icon of the city.11 When asked in the 1996 documentary

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Boulevard of Dreams what role she would like to play, her answer was that of a “perfect beautiful doll […] coming to life” (see video below).

This media file cannot be displayed. Please refer to the online document http:// journals.openedition.org/angles/1881

40 But if Angelyne could, at some point in Los Angeles history, be considered as inherent in Hollywood glamour, canons changed and shifted over the years while Angelyne remained the same. The persona followed the Los Angeles 1990s trend of “porno chic” with her massive breast implants, and the way that Angelyne dressed made her look more like a pornstar than an actress. Sexy can be part of Hollywood glamour, but her sex-imbued looks now ostracize her from the glamour she so desperately wished to represent, stripping her from the star qualities she hoped to acquire. While Angelyne sees herself as an extension, if not a personification, of Hollywood glamour, what she truly represents is Hollywood celebrity. In the words of Elizabeth Wilson, glamour and celebrity are different notions: Glamour is primarily an attribute of an individual. It is an appearance, including the supernatural, magical sense of that word — as in apparition. The appearance of glamour resides, though, or is created in combination with dress, hair, scent, and even mise en scène. Its end result is the sheen, the mask of perfection, the untouchability and numinous power of the icon. Celebrity deconstructs all this, displays everything in bits, the inside, the mess, the clothes apart from the person, the naked greed, the genuine suffering, the painful excess. The celebrity is desperate for our attention. (Wilson 105)

41 The deconstruction that Wilson associates with celebrity is consistent with the atomization of bodies which appear not as unalienable property, but as dispensable tools. When Pamela Anderson decided to step out of the “porno chic” trend in the early 2000s, Angelyne kept going in the same direction, even if it meant maintaining an image that did not fit with her aging body or with the evolving canons of the new era. This growing gap between how Angelyne saw herself and how she intended to represent herself turned her into the pathetic figure of a starlet craving visibility, yet it also made her a representative of how Los Angeles takes hold of bodies. She still wears the same body-tight pink garments she wore when her first billboards appeared in Los Angeles, and even though Angelyne still appears in TV shows and interviews on Youtube channels, she now covers her face with a fan (Ring My Bell, see below) or appears from behind, her back to the camera (The Red Booth, see below).

This media file cannot be displayed. Please refer to the online document http:// journals.openedition.org/angles/1881

This media file cannot be displayed. Please refer to the online document http:// journals.openedition.org/angles/1881

42 The pathos of Angelyne is reinforced by her desire to live up to an image that died out long ago, and her unwavering will to be surrounded by images of her former beauty and billboard glory reinforces this phenomenon. The porno chic trend still exists and David Lachapelle still contributes today to this aesthetic movement while Angelino clothing companies such as the widely-known American Apparel brand hire real porn actresses to promote their lingerie line. Angelyne was born from that exclusively visual

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culture and this image which she desperately attempts to maintain intact is now what brings about an entirely different reaction from the onlookers: what was once desirable has turned into the exact opposite. The Angelino ideology glorifying the body as the canvas of identity ended up turning against itself, as one’s identity cannot shift as easily as trends and canons. This superimposition of body image over identity thus creates time-trapped freaks who seem incapable of keeping up with the city’s changing appearances. In Carnaval et Cannibale, Jean Baudrillard retraces the same mechanism and perceives it in the political life of Southern California with the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California: With the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California, we are deep in the masquerade, when politics is only but a game of idols and fans. It is a tremendous step towards the end of the representative system. And this is the fatality of politics today — that everywhere, he who invests in the spectacle shall perish by the spectacle. This is true for the “citizens” as well as for politicians. It is the immanent justice of the media. Do you want power through image? Then you shall perish by the feedback image. The carnival of image also means the auto- cannibalization through image. (Baudrillard 2008: 23-24; translation mine)

Figure 14: Cover for Time Magazine, 18 August 2003

Source: http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20030818,00.html

43 A 2003 cover of Time Magazine illustrates Baudrillard’s point with the gubernatorial candidate posing in a posh suit with the ironical “Ahhnold!?” title emphasizing the discrepancy between the political aspirations of the man and the actor he simultaneously embodies (Figure 14). Image could be the downfall of those who invest in the spectacle, and the media treatment of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s gubernatorial candidacy showed just that. This idea is reminiscent of Guy Debord’s “Society of the Spectacle” but Baudrillard is not attached to show how the spectacle works and comes

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into effect, but wishes to show how the dynamics surrounding the spectacle affects socio-political as well as socio-cultural mechanisms. As if to assert once more the power of images over our bodies, Baudrillard uses the notion of “auto-cannibalization”, as if our bodies were now, first and foremost, images of ourselves, if not, to keep with Baudrillard’s terminology, simulations of ourselves. We could thus consider the “selfie” phenomenon which has taken over the internet and social media as an extension of this idea. Are we not simulating a paparazzi-like interest in our daily lives by taking and posting such pictures, staging bodies to trigger interest? Are we not trying to emulate the Hollywood stars that fill the celebrity’s news sections of the press, celebrities who, for the most part, live in Los Angeles? When Baudrillard explains the third and ultimate order of simulation which seals the hyperreal era, he relies on the presence of Disneyland in Los Angeles to exemplify how the advent of the imaginary became reality’s killing stroke: Disneyland exists in order to hide that the “real” country, all of “real” America that is Disneyland (a bit like prisons are there to hide that it is the social in its entirety, in its banal omnipresence, that is carceral). Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, whereas all of Los Angeles and the America that surrounds it are no longer real, but belong to the hyperreal order and to the order of simulation. It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology) but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus saving the reality principle. (Baudrillard 1994: 12-13)

44 As people take physical possession of these imaginary spaces with all their might and faith, they become part of a reality in which bodies have become derealized. The same strategies occur when one indulges in the city’s corporeal conceptions and beauty canons. Attractiveness is key to social status and opportunity in a city that values bodies as a means to an end. Bodies’ appearances need to simulate success in order to be successful, images precede identity. This game of make-believe is supported by the illusion which Los Angeles fosters onto people. The same idea is brought forth by Louis Marin in his Utopics: Spatial Play, in a chapter entitled “Utopic Degeneration: Disneyland” in which he details how Disneyland’s conception was symptomatic of a degenerating over-signified spatiality which became gradually integrated by architects and city planners from Los Angeles and beyond (Marin 239-258). Yet because these imaginary spaces were so appealing, they became compelling as well in terms of how bodies take place within them. Stepping into an idealized and imagined Los Angeles opens the possibility of conforming to its expectations infusing bodies with fantasized objectives of corporeal alterations. Such an instrumentalization of the imaginary is also evoked by Michel Foucault in The Utopian Body as he explains that: It may very well be that the first utopia, the one most deeply rooted in the hearts of men, is precisely the utopia of an incorporeal body. The land of fairies, land of gnomes, of genies, magicians — well, it is the land where bodies transport themselves at the speed of light; it is the land where wounds are healed with marvelous beauty in the blink of an eye. It is the land where you can fall from a mountain and pick yourself up unscathed. It is the land where you’re visible when you want, invisible when you desire. If there is a land of fairy tales, it is precisely so that I may be its prince charming, and that all the pretty boys there may turn nasty and hairy as bears. (Foucault in Jones 229)

45 This description of the land of fairies given by Foucault seems rather fitting compared to Los Angeles. Bodies there do not transport themselves at the speed of light, because there is traffic congestion. The land where “wounds are healed with marvelous beauty” is portrayed in TV shows such as Miss Swann or Extreme makeover where men and

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women considered ugly and greatly suffering from it are operated on by a team of plastic surgery experts to be revealed anew a few months later, more beautiful than ever and finally in tune with Hollywood’s canons of beauty. It is in such TV reality series mostly set in LA that the body really is deconstructed into millions of pixels, where the obese turns thin, where ugly becomes pretty, as if suddenly sublimated by the inherent glamour of the city. Los Angeles is literally the land of people falling from mountains and picking themselves up unscathed; they can jump over a volcano, fall from a plane, fight evil monsters or entire armies of aliens, go jogging during an earthquake or swim during a tsunami and walk away without a scratch. Los Angeles is a fairy-tale land and the irremediable superimposition of body image and identity seals it once and for all. This conclusion parallels that of Henry Jenkins in Convergence culture in which he believes that “the power of the media producer and the power of the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways.” (Jenkins 270). The convergence becomes fully realized in the city that was nicknamed appropriately “LA-LA Land,”12 where surrounding canonized bodies stand as constant reminders of a now perennial conceptualization process of beauty, desire and attractiveness but they also appear as the unexpected masochistic guardians of a process that objectified them excessively.

Figure 15: LA-LA LAND, at the Venice Beach seafront

Source: Charles Joseph.

46 This enchanting place is indeed Los Angeles, a city-décor overtly used as such without many alterations, precipitating the city in a globalized collective imaginary. When one’s own personal image does not conform to the canons, to displace oneself into an imaginary land facilitates the resolution of any crisis. It also allows transformations to be made, following a logic similar to that of the mass media, forming the endless basis of the fantastic Angelino illusion. Yet it is thanks to those resisting the LA sirens, to those challenging the current Hollywood canons that the city becomes intelligible.

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Concluding her essay “Moving in place”, Jennifer Watts writes that “it is in the interstices between the everyday city of fact and the mythic city of mind that the truth of Los Angeles lies” (Watts 58). These interstices, as Watts puts it, are indeed where the truth of Los Angeles lies, but they are nowhere as visible as on bodies. The truth of Los Angeles’ corporeal, or rather, corpo-hyper-real conception becomes readable and somewhat obvious on resisting or displaced/misplaced bodies. Angelyne is out of place because she claims to represent a city that now promotes a brand new aesthetic… Schwarzenegger seemed misplaced in the gubernatorial race because he represented the body culture that brought him to Hollywood in the first place. Angelyne, Schwarzenegger and many more, despite their (sometimes vivid) differences, are nevertheless all united around an act of resistance they display through their bodies. This can also be said about the African-American dancers of David Lachapelle’s 2005 documentary. The cinematographic object is in opposition with what Hollywood stands for, but its focus is in opposition with Hollywood’s corporeality. The industry established white skin as the ultimate beauty canon, and there are still today many controversies regarding the “whitewashing” of blockbusters.13 Black bodies in LA are mostly represented in the evening news segment dealing with local crimes; showing Angelino black bodies differently is, in itself, an act of resistance.

*

47 Ever since it was attached to the United States, Los Angeles has managed to encode the body within its history like no other city has done before, a code all the more easily integrated by the inhabitants as they were already struggling to decipher the physical reality of this strange emerging urban space. There were thus two competing corporealities that the Angelinos had to take into account. The ever-changing corporeal relationship with an unprecedented urban space as well as the corporeality that was mediatized within the urban space. If any indication, the massive bibliography dealing with Los Angeles’ urban history and its evolution shows how destabilizing the cityscape can be, and thus how difficult it is to ground a comfortable corporeal link for newcomers or passersby. This instability generates the most fertile ground for the mediatized corporeality associated with Los Angeles to take hold, because as the latter relies exponentially on image, it suddenly feels like a code that can be made sense of. First the boosters used the body as a sales’ argument, mens sana in corpore sano, creating a healthy and desirable lifestyle associated with Los Angeles, one that has ever since been relayed through television or Hollywood. This original link between the city and the body that propelled Los Angeles as a model of the ideal American way of life generated a mediatized form of corporeality that slowly but surely led to Olalquiaga’s “psychasthenia”. Image being a simplistic code in comparison with Los Angeles’ complex cityscape, it became much easier to apprehend it through image rather than physical contact. Thus, experiencing this peculiar urban space through its image has been both held as the right way as well as the most comfortable one compared to an unknown physical journey in the middle of a limitless urban sprawl in order to develop a corporeal relationship on one’s own. In his conclusion of Los Angeles, Reyner Banham asserts: It is hard to laugh at the need for beauty and romance. It is indeed, especially face to face with the physical reality. The distant view, processed through morality and photography, erudition and ignorance, prepares us, as Nathan Silver rightly

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observed, for almost anything except what Los Angeles looks like in fact. […] At its most extreme it can become a naïvely nonchalant reliance on a technology that may not quite exist yet. But that, by comparison with the general body of official Western culture at the moment, increasingly given over to facile, evasive and self- regarding pessimism, can be a very refreshing attitude to encounter. (Banham 224)

48 The disruption between what Los Angeles looks like and what Los Angeles feels like becomes a sensory experience of its own, which is part of the Los Angeles’ experience. This dialectic focused solely on the human body is perceptible on native and temporary Angelinos alike, implicitly and relentlessly requiring their compliance to an illusory mediatized corporeality. As boosters and investors of early Los Angeles encoded the body in idealized terms at the very core of Los Angeles, it resulted in the substitution of collective history by a collective imaginary, paving the way for the city’s drift into what Baudrillard calls hyper(corpo)reality.

49 Yet there are times when the homogenous code is challenged, when the reality of the city becomes perceptible and the veil lifts. There are many Angelino authors who have confronted this issue without being heard, as they remained invisible, suffocated by the omnipotence of the Hollywood industry. They have gained visibility and recognition, however, with the help of the internet, but they are still not the ones who are perceived as being able to fight against the hyperreal Los Angeles. It is on the field of the image that the fight seems to be the fiercest. Visual artists, filmmakers or public figures show and challenge the mediatized corporeal coding. They depict people who stand where they are not wanted, not expected, out of place but mostly out of line, as they intend to reclaim the rights to their own physicality from the one authority that controlled it unabashedly. In order to understand how the body of Los Angeles works, one must simply locate those who do not seem to belong. These resisting bodies exhibit how, like the city itself, the decentered Angelino body became atomized in pixels/parcels that did not seem to fit with one another. How then can one make sense of these parts, how can one decode portions that appear as detached from the whole if not by exposing the codes? It is precisely these free electrons that are materializing disruptions as they show how the mediatized corporeality does not match with the physical reality it is trying to address. These competing corporealities are not only perceptible in physical terms as they are also becoming visible in cinematographic narratives as well. Elizabeth Bank’s Meghan Miles in Walk of Shame (Brill 2014), Mia Wasikowska’s Agatha Weiss in Maps to the Stars (Cronenberg 2014), Ryan Gosling’s unnamed character in Drive (Winding Refn 2011), Laura Dern’s Nikki Grace in Inland Empire (Lynch 2006), Jake Gyllenhaal’s Lou Bloom in Nightcrawler (Gilroy 2014), the driving duo in Michael Mann’s Collateral (2004), the father-daughter duo in Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere (2010), the improbable cast of Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales (2007) or the overall plot of Starz comedy series Party Down (Enborn et al. 2009-2010) and HBO comedy-drama series Togetherness (Duplass et al. 2015) and The Comeback (King and Kudrow 2005; 2014) all challenge the established fantasized corporeal canons and show how irrelevant they have become. These displaced mediatized bodies, real and imagined, demonstrate how, like the city itself, the fabricated Angelino corporeal canons mix commodity and identity toward one single purpose: seduction.

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NOTES

1. We could mention here among many others, the work of Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (1964), Pierre Sansot and his Poétique de la Ville (1988), Claude S. Fischer with The Urban Experience (1976) or Richard Sennett’s Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization (1994) as well as most of Henri Lefebvre’s and Edward Soja’s bibliography. 2. In his introduction to Thirdspace, Soja writes: “My objective in Thirdspace can be simply stated. It is to encourage you to think differently about the meanings and significance of space and those related concepts that compose and comprise the inherent spatiality of human life: place, location, locality, landscape, environment, home, city, region, territory, and geography.” (Soja 1). 3. “Around the turn of the century (19th century), however, experience with the environment had produced a new and livable home, the California bungalow. In part the bungalow was an outgrowth of what had earlier been called “the California house”: a simple structure built of rough redwood boards. But, as finally developed, it was based upon the bungalow originally built by Englishmen for use in tropical countries. British officials had found the bungalow to be a reasonably comfortable home in a tropical environment and, being inexpensive, it appealed to them, for their residence was, in most cases, temporary in character. It was precisely the qualities that appealed to newcomers in Southern California. A low, spacious, airy house, the bungalow could be built by people of moderate means and informal tastes, who were not quite sure that they intended to remain in Southern California and therefore did not want to invest a considerable sum in a home. The great merit of the bungalow was that it minimized the distinction between the exterior and interior walls, that it tended to merge the house with the landscape to which it was definitely subordinated” (McWilliams 357). 4. A similar idea is developed by Dana Cuff in her book Provisional City: Los Angeles Stories of Architecture and Urbanism (2000), in which she analyzes how Los Angeles’ constant urban shifts are in tune with the fast-paced socio-economic history of the city, leading to a terminological fracture between the home and the roots. Home becomes transitional and the refuge it once represented does not apply so well in Los Angeles. 5. This idea was developed in parts by Stéphane Degoutin in his chapter “No-Go Areas vs Nogoland” in his book Prisonniers Volontaires du Rêve Américain (Degoutin 2006: 261-286). 6. More regarding how Los Angeles differs from other great American metropolises concerning its relationship with cars can be read in Scott Lee Bottles book Los Angeles and the Automobile: The Making of the Modern City (1987). 7. Work by Elsa Devienne, including her PhD on Beaches in the city: a social and environmental history of Los Angeles coastline (1920-1972), hints at some of these issues and shows the evolution of legal considerations on the body, and how it should be displayed or covered on the city’s beaches. See https://northumbria.academia.edu/ElsaDevienne. 8. More information can accessed through the muscle beach website: https:// www.musclebeach.net/new/. 9. Lauren Greenfield gave an interview about her documentary: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=gEor9yS9RCE. 10. We can mention, among other shows, Extreme Makeover (2002-2007), Bridalplasty (2011), Botched (2014-?), The Swan (2004), Dr. 90210 (2004-2008). All of these plastic surgery reality TV programs were or are based in Los Angeles, relying on the glowing reputation of the plastic surgeons of the city who are considered among the best on the planet given who they operate on, using celebrity names as both references and catalogs…

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11. Many recent articles and interviews still appear about Angelyne: https://www.vice.com/ en_au/topic/angelyne, https://la.racked.com/2014/7/22/7585553/angelyne-exclusive-interview 12. The nickname entered in the Oxford English Dictionary in 2011. The definition reads as follows: “La-la land (n.) can refer either to Los Angeles (in which case its etymology is influenced by the common initialism for that city), or to a state of being out of touch with reality — and sometimes to both simultaneously” https://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2011/03/la-la-land-now- the-dictionary-definition-of-los-angeles.html 13. For example, Chadwick Boseman, who plays Toth in the upcoming film Gods of Egypt, was very vocal regarding the whitewashing of the Egyptian gods. https://www.comicbookmovie.com/ black_panther/black-panther-actor-bluntly-addresses-the-gods-of-egypt-whitewashing- controversy-a127768#gs.93fqqh

ABSTRACTS

Los Angeles has mostly been studied in geographical or urban terms for the past fifty years in order to try and decipher a cityscape that had never been encountered on American soil before. Stemming from these studies, the LA school led by Edward Soja and his Postmodern Geographies experimented on new theoretical tools for this unprecedented space to be made sense of, tools that propelled the inhabitants to the center. Soja structured his thought according to his “trialectics of being” which is composed equally of spatiality, historicality and sociality (Soja 71). In doing so, the cultural factor became inherent to the analysis of urban environment, a posture which is the starting point of this paper. Focusing on the body in Los Angeles is a bilateral task as the body influenced, if not built, Los Angeles, while, the city, once established, shaped the body of its inhabitants on a physical and representational level. Taking into account emblematic cultural productions or practices rooted in Los Angeles, this paper intends to explore and analyze the closed-circuit generated between the Southern Californian megalopolis and the body in urban, corporeal and representational terms.

La ville de Los Angeles a été, dans la littérature scientifique qui lui a été consacrée ces cinquante dernières années, étudiée au travers d’approches géographique, urbaine ou architecturale afin de déchiffrer un type d’espace qui n’avait encore jamais pris forme sur le sol américain. Prenant appui sur ces différentes études, l’école de Los Angeles menée par Edward Soja et ses Postmodern Geographies, a cherché des modèles théoriques d’analyse applicables à cet espace sans précédent afin d’en faire sens, outils qui se concentrent sur l’habitant, l’usager de ces espaces et non leurs concepteurs. Soja a ainsi structuré son approche à l’aide de sa « trialectique de l’être » composée à part égale de spatialité, d’historicité et de socialité. Ce faisant, le facteur culturel est devenu inhérent à toute analyse de l’environnement urbain, posture qui constitue également le point d’entrée de notre article. Cependant, se concentrer sur le corps à Los Angeles s’avère être une tâche double puisque d’une part le corps a influencé, sinon construit, Los Angeles tandis que d’autre part la ville, une fois bien établie, a profondément influencé le corps de ses habitants aussi bien sur un plan physique que représentationnel. En s’appuyant sur des productions et pratiques culturelles emblématiques ancrées à Los Angeles, cet article se propose d’explorer et d’analyser le circuit fermé qui s’est formé entre la mégalopole californienne et le corps, en des termes à la fois urbains, corporels et représentationnels.

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INDEX

Mots-clés: corps, Los Angeles, représentation, pratiques culturelles, études urbaines, études culturelles Keywords: body, Los Angeles, representation, cultural practices, urban studies, cultural studies

AUTHOR

CHARLES JOSEPH Doctor in American Studies, my research focuses on the territories of Los Angeles and Southern California, their history, their culture, their singular operating mechanisms as well as the different levels of influence that such iconic places produce. My PhD dissertation entitled “Being and writing (from) Los Angeles: Wanda Coleman” (carried out under the supervision of Hélène Aji, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, and Éliane Elmaleh, Université du Maine, defended in June 2014) is situated at one of the many converging points between literature and territoriality and examines the complex and evolving relationship between the work of the African-American author and the city that harbored her birth, life and death. Symbolism and representation cannot be ignored when dealing with Los Angeles and its many facets, and I consequently developed an interest in the implications and practices of the entertainment industry based in the city. The TV series business is deeply rooted in Los Angeles and its history, and exploring this specific form has become a useful research tool. Because of its increasing power within the Hollywood industry, I also investigate the super-hero genre. Discussing the comic genre and commenting on its different levels of apprehension/adaptation is a growing research activity which I intend to pursue in the years to come. I am, for the time being, a teaching assistant at the University of Tours, France. Contact: charlesjoseph [at] outlook.fr

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The Actors’ Bodies in TV series LOST

Sylvaine Bataille and Sarah Hatchuel

This media file cannot be displayed. Please refer to the online document http:// journals.openedition.org/angles/1893

Transcript:

1 Au début de Lost, série diffusée sur ABC entre 2004-2010, un avion s’écrase sur une île du Pacifique. Une quarantaine de passagers échappent de peu à la mort. Perdus dans une zone inconnue du globe, ils découvrent que l’île n’est pas inhabitée et que d’étranges phénomènes s’y produisent. Dans ce qui s’apparente d’abord à une Robinsonnade, comment la série a-t-elle pensé et mis en pratique sa relation aux corps des acteurs et actrices ? Lost présente deux originalités : adaptation du script aux acteurs dans un premier temps, évolution narrative laissant libre cours à l’évolution du jeu dans un second. La prise de risque au moment du choix des acteurs se trouve atténuée, et même mise à profit, par le caractère foncièrement collaboratif de l’écriture sérielle. En retour, la prolifération narrative, poussée à l’extrême dans Lost, permet aux acteurs d’utiliser leur corps pour explorer toutes les nuances de leur rôle, jamais figé ni monolithique.

2 A travers un casting souple, dynamique et réactif, le récit de Lost s’est retrouvé subordonné à la réalité physique et au charisme de chaque acteur et actrice, choisis pour leurs différentes personnalités et leurs talents spécifiques. Dans la première esquisse du script, Hurley, Sayid, Jin et Sun n’avaient pas été imaginés ; d’autres personnages étaient encore très flous : le rôle de Charlie était à l’origine prévu pour être celui d’un vieux rocker has-been, quant à Sawyer, il devait être un arnaqueur sophistiqué du Nord-Est des États-Unis. Plusieurs acteurs qui ont été auditionnés pour le rôle de Sawyer ont finalement eu un rôle « sur mesure » : c’est le cas de Jorge Garcia, pour qui le personnage de Hurley a été expressément créé, c’est aussi le cas de Dominic Monaghan, pour qui le rôle de Charlie a été adapté. L’acteur Josh Holloway, qui a passé toute sa jeunesse en Géorgie, a changé la donne pour le personnage de Sawyer, qui a été transformé en homme du Sud1. Les acteurs et leur persona ont ainsi été placés au centre du dispositif : ce fut au script de s’adapter à leurs contours, y compris physiques, un mode de casting qui inversait les pratiques habituelles.

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3 Les personnages de Lost ont été adaptés à la persona des acteurs, apparue dès les auditions. Cette porosité entre personnage et acteur a été facilitée par le fait que les acteurs étaient, dans leur grande majorité, inconnus du grand public occidental, et n’étaient pas marqués par des rôles importants au cinéma ou à la télévision. Hervé Glevarec, dans son ouvrage sur La Sériephilie, souligne que ce manque de notoriété préalable est un point souvent remarqué et apprécié des amateurs de séries télévisées (Glevarec 2012: 98). Lost a poussé cette logique très loin : non seulement les acteurs n’étaient pas connus et pouvaient créer une identité fictionnelle forte, crédible et quasi autonome pour leur personnage, mais le rôle a été construit autour de et pour leur personnalité, facilitant ainsi leur entrée dans une identité moins « autre » qu’à l’accoutumée, entre rôle fictif et personnalité d’origine2.

4 Ce mélange des notions de rôle (qui s’insère normalement dans une structure dramaturgique), de personnage (qui s’insère dans une structure fictionnelle) et d’identité (en lien avec une supposée personnalité « réelle ») est à l’origine de remarques intéressantes sur les forums de discussion. Sous la vidéo Youtube de l’audition de Josh Holloway3, on peut lire « Sawyer does a GREAT Josh Holloway », dans une inversion révélatrice et métadramatique des rôles. Sawyer, personnalité cynique aux cheveux longs, devient ici l’individu réel (tant les six saisons de Lost lui ont apporté substance et complexité), qui jouerait à être un Josh Holloway pré-Lost, aux cheveux courts et en brosse, que les amateurs connaissent beaucoup moins bien que le personnage de fiction. Cette persona du personnage affecte le comédien, sa carrière, sa réception par le public, et notamment les publicités tournées par les acteurs.

5 Dans l’épisode 16 de la Saison 2, diffusé le 22 mars 2006 aux États-Unis, Jack, interprété par Matthew Fox, sort de la douche et est surpris de trouver Locke (joué par Terry O’Quinn) en train d’occuper la salle de bain et de se raser devant le miroir. Locke explique son intrusion en lui disant que « la vapeur permet d’ouvrir les pores »4. Ce contexte très métrosexuel où deux hommes prennent soin, en même temps, de leur petite personne et se donnent des conseils, s’est reflété dans la publicité tournée par Matthew Fox pour Men Expert, crème hydratante de L’Oréal, publicité diffusée internationalement en 2007, juste un an après l’épisode en question5. En France, la Saison 2, programmée un an après la diffusion américaine, a même été sponsorisée par Men Expert de L’Oréal6 : la publicité a donc été vue avant l’épisode de la douche et a contribué à construire rapidement Jack en personnage anti-macho – sensible, responsable et prévenant.

6 En janvier 2010, Josh Holloway tourne à Hawaï (lieu où la série est également filmée) la publicité pour Cool Water de Davidoff7 : La publicité est une reprise de deux séquences de Lost : dans la première, Sawyer sort de l’eau devant Kate dans l’épisode 8 de la Saison 1 (diffusé le 10 novembre 2004)8. La deuxième séquence qui a inspiré la publicité est celle où Sawyer regagne la plage, sous les yeux de Juliet, après avoir sauté de l’hélicoptère en pleine mer dans l’épisode 14 de la Saison 4 (diffusé le 29 mai 2008). Mais la publicité de Cool Water n’est pas une simple reprise. Elle a aussi inspiré une séquence du dernier épisode de la série diffusé le 23 mai 2010 où Sawyer saute d’une falaise en pleine mer pour rejoindre l’avion de Frank Lapidus9. Les productions diégétiques et extra-diégétiques sont ainsi entrées en interaction et en résonnance. Le slogan de Davidoff, « The power of cool », s’appuie sur l’identité fictionnelle de Sawyer, directement influencée par la persona d’Holloway, alliant cynisme débonnaire, détachement amusé et conscience réjouie et assumée de son pouvoir de séduction. Si la

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série a adapté ses personnages aux acteurs qui les jouaient, le script a ensuite permis à ces mêmes acteurs d’évoluer. Lorsque Sawyer vit une histoire d’amour avec Juliet, dans le passé de l’île en Saison 5, c’est même son regard qui en vient à changer, empreint d’une douceur que l’on n’avait encore jamais vue.

7 Lost développe une narration complexe en intégrant flashbacks, flashforwards, récits parallèles et voyages dans le temps qui viennent multiplier les trames narratives. Si le récit linéaire permet l’évolution du jeu des acteurs sur le long terme, les récits connexes leur offrent la possibilité d’explorer différentes facettes de leur rôle, lorsqu’ils sont amenés à jouer leur personnage à un moment différent de sa vie, dans un contexte tout autre que celui de l’île.

8 La narration de Lost utilise le corps des acteurs, soit en modifiant leur apparence, à l’aide de perruques ou de barbes postiches, soit en exploitant des particularités physiques. Ainsi les tatouages de l’acteur Matthew Fox10 ont inspiré un récit en flashback qui révèle dans quelles circonstances Jack a été tatoué (3.9). Dès la première saison (1.6), Kate fait remarquer que les tatouages sur le bras de Jack ne correspondent pas à l’image qu’elle se fait d’un neurochirurgien. Cette remarque peut être interprétée comme un commentaire auto-référenciel, une forme d’ironie malicieuse de la série sur son propre casting : en pointant le décalage entre le corps du personnage et son rôle social, le script semble pointer du doigt ce qui pourrait paraître à première vue comme une inadéquation entre le corps de Matthew Fox et le personnage pour lequel il a été choisi, comme une erreur de casting. Bien sûr, les multiples récits connexes consacrés à Jack viennent fournir la preuve, s’il en était besoin, que Matthew Fox était le bon choix, et que ses tatouages, loin de décrédibiliser son rôle, contribuent à l’épaisseur et à la complexité du personnage.

9 Le corps en pleine croissance du jeune acteur Malcolm David Kelley, qui jouait un garçon de 10 ans, Walt, dans la première saison a posé davantage de problèmes à la production, car il n’y a pas d’homochronie entre le récit des événements sur l’île et la diffusion de la série : le temps qui s’écoule sur l’île au fil de chaque saison ne dure que quelques dizaines de jours pour les personnages. L’acteur a donc grandi trop vite par rapport à son personnage et n’a fait que de brèves apparitions après la saison 1, soit dans des plans larges dans lesquels son apparence était modifiée numériquement pour qu’il semble plus jeune11, soit dans des scènes censées se dérouler plusieurs années après le crash de l’avion.

10 La narration a pu en revanche exploiter le passage du temps sur les corps des acteurs adultes. Différentes apparences physiques ont été créées pour marquer différentes périodes dans la vie des personnages, et parfois aussi pour symboliser divers états psychiques. Lorsque Claire réapparaît après trois ans d’absence dans la diégèse, la chevelure ébouriffée de l’actrice Emilie de Ravin signale immédiatement que le personnage a radicalement changé, et suggère qu’elle a vécu dans un environnement sauvage, à l’écart des micro-sociétés qui peuplent l’île. Le désordre des cheveux de l’actrice symbolise aussi le désordre mental du personnage, désormais « infectée » par une mystérieuse maladie.

11 Les flashbacks, les flashforwards et les flashsideways constituent d’épisode en épisode les pièces d’un puzzle narratif : la présence ou non de certaines particularités physiques fournit un indice aux spectateurs, qui, en faisant appel à leur mémoire ou à leur sens logique, l’associent à une période de la vie du personnage et peuvent ainsi situer temporellement les événements racontés. Ou du moins, ils croient pouvoir le faire, car

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la série multiplie les surprises et les fausses pistes. Par exemple, deux éléments dans l’apparence de Terry O’Quinn permettent de distinguer différentes périodes de la vie de Locke : le fait qu’il se déplace en fauteuil roulant ou non indique si la scène se passe avant ou après son accident ; la présence ou non de cheveux sur son crâne, est bien sûr un indicateur de son âge. Le flashback consacré à Locke dans l’épisode 13 de la Saison 3 joue sur les conjectures des téléspectateurs en présentant tout d’abord Locke assis dans un bureau devant une fonctionnaire qu’il est venu voir au sujet d’une allocation d’invalidité. Vu le contexte, nous avons tout lieu de penser qu’il est déjà handicapé. Mais la scène déjoue nos attentes dans un clin d’œil au tout premier flashback consacré à Locke. Celle-ci mettait en scène une situation assez similaire d’échange autour d’un bureau pour nous révéler, au moment où Locke quitte la pièce, qu’il était en fait assis sur un fauteuil roulant. Cette fois-ci Locke se lève et on saisit finalement que l’invalidité dont il était question était en fait son état dépressif. Les modifications apportées à l’apparence physique des acteurs sont ainsi tout autant des repères temporels que des éléments de surprise ou de brouillage.

12 Un autre exemple est la barbe de Matthew Fox dans les flashforwards consacrés à Jack, qui apparaît plus ou moins fournie dans le récit proleptique et contribue à nos interrogations concernant le moment où sont censés se dérouler les événements : nous n’avons encore jamais vu le personnage sous cet aspect, que ce soit sur l’île (où il parvient apparemment à se raser) ou dans les flashbacks, et nous ne pouvons donc pas relier son apparence avec une période déjà identifiée. Ce que nous pouvons saisir, en revanche, c’est la dimension symbolique de cet excès de pilosité, le signe du désordre qui règne dans la vie de ce Jack suicidaire. Ce n’est qu’à la toute fin du flashforward que nous pouvons identifier ce récit comme une prolepse, lorsque Jack retrouve Kate hors de l’île et tente de la convaincre qu’ils doivent y retourner.

13 C’est dans la dernière saison que la diégétisation de cette tension entre rôles sur mesure et rôles évolutifs prend toute sa force : à travers le procédé narratif du flashsideways et ses effets de miroir, qui ramène le script à son point de départ tout en offrant une vision alternative des rôles, la série reconfigure le travail des acteurs, donnant du « jeu » au jeu.

14 À la fin de la Saison 5, les personnages propulsés dans les années 70 tentent de changer le cours du temps en faisant exploser l’île grâce à une bombe à hydrogène. Si l’île n’existe plus, ses perturbations magnétiques ne pourront plus affecter le vol 815 en 2004, l’avion ne s’écrasera plus et la vie des personnages pourra suivre un autre chemin, ouvrant donc une autre ligne temporelle à partir de la disparition de l’île. C’est cette idée qu’explorent, à première vue, les flash-sideways dans la sixième et dernière saison, où le vol Oceanic 815 ne s’écrase pas sur l’île mais se pose sans problème à l’aéroport de Los Angeles. Ces séquences exposent la vie des personnages si l’île n’existait plus à partir de 1977. Les flash-sideways transforment la réalité en l’un des innombrables mondes possibles et créent le spectre d’un univers qui « aurait pu être » et qui ne cesse de hanter tous les autres. Les personnages ont vécu d’autres expériences, ont suivi une autre voie. Ces séquences parallèles donnent ainsi l’occasion aux acteurs de montrer une autre facette de leur jeu, comme s’ils préparaient leur reconversion dans d’autres rôles après la fin de la série et intégraient à l’histoire des tests de casting pour d’éventuels producteurs.

15 Le dernier épisode révèlera en fin de compte que les flash-sideways n’étaient pas des embranchements temporels alternatifs mais une construction onirique imaginée

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depuis l’au-delà par les personnages eux-mêmes pour se retrouver, mais ces séquences nous laissent penser que le cours du temps peut être modifié (Devlin 2011: 39). La série pense ainsi l’altérité, la possibilité de changer de vie, de changer le monde, et fait apparaître un autre univers, qui semble tout aussi réel que le premier. Tout au long de la Saison 6, qui oscille entre deux mondes en miroir, cette obsession des personnages quant à leur « réalité » et à leur statut fictif se traduit à l’image par des séquences réflexives où Jack, Sawyer ou Locke se dévisagent, scrutent leur corps dans une glace, dans des plans où l’on ne sait plus si on voit la personne ou son reflet. L’image dédoublée, parfois fragmentée, reflète la double réalité du rôle et de l’acteur, et évoque le reflet en miroir dans lequel les spectateurs se projettent et s’identifient.

16 Jack, confronté à l’idée de sa mort, met au jour son statut de personnage de fiction joué par un acteur et s’interroge lui-même, comme Hamlet face au suicide, sur son essence fictionnelle – « Être ou ne pas être ». Dans le tout dernier épisode de la série, les flash- sideways offrent des signes clairs de la mort de Jack, tel ce bref plan en forme de memento mori où, dans son rôle de médecin, il scrute la radio d’un crâne. Le plan superpose le crâne et le visage de Jack (vu en transparence), présentant ce dernier comme un spectre, tout en le transformant en figure (méta)théâtrale par excellence, nouvel Hamlet tenant son célèbre accessoire.

17 Si les acteurs ont fait Lost, il est évident que Lost a également façonné, transformé et exploité le corps des acteurs et donné aux comédiens un espace de liberté et d’expérimentation que peu de séries offrent. Dans son rapport aux acteurs, comme dans son rapport à la diégèse, la série réconcilie distance et sincérité, dans une déconstruction paradoxalement toujours émotionnelle de la fiction.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Credits

Video essay: The actors’ bodies in TV series LOST

Text: Sylvaine Bataille, (ERIAC, Université de Rouen) and Sarah Hatchuel (GRIC, Université du Havre) in the context of the GUEST-Normandie research programme (Groupe Universitaire d’Etudes sur les Séries Télévisées basé en Normandie). This essay was first presented during the “Actors in TV series” workshop organized by Christian Viviani (LASLAR) at the University of Caen (2 February 2013) and the “Bodies in TV series” seminar organized by Florence Cabaret and Odette Louiset (ERIAC) at the University of Rouen (5 June 2015).

Voice, Editor and Subtitles: Sarah Hatchuel

Music: Michael Giacchino

Copyrights (pictures and excerpts): ABC/Bad Robot. All rights reserved.

December 2015, for ANGLES.

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Selective bibliography

Baridon, Laurent, and Martial Guédron. Corps et arts, physionomies et physiologies dans les arts visuels. Paris : L’Harmattan, 1999.

Burdeau, Emmanuel, ed. Tours de rôles – acteurs et actrices d’un film à l’autre. Saint-Sulpice-sur- Loire : Association des cinémas de l’Ouest pour la recherche, 2007.

Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”. Routledge: New York, 1993.

Cohan, Steven, and Ina Rae Hark, eds. Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema. London: Routledge, 1993.

Devlin, William J. “Imaginary Peanut Butter: The Puzzles of Time Travel in Lost.” In The Ultimate Lost and Philosophy: Think Together, Die Alone. Ed. Sharon Kaye. Hoboken : John Wiley & Sons, 2011. 32-46.

Dyer, Richard. Stars. London: BFI, 1979.

Damour, Christophe, Christian Gutleben, Hélène Valmary and Christian Viviani, eds. Généalogies de l'acteur au cinéma : Échos, influences, migrations. Cycnos, 27.2 (2011). http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/ index.html?id=6755

Dureau, Christian. Acteurs de séries et feuilletons. Le Dictionnaire. Paris: Didier Carpentier, 2008.

Glevarec, Hervé. La sériephilie : Sociologie d'un attachement culturel. Paris: Ellipses, 2012.

Hatchuel, Sarah. LOST : Fiction vitale. Paris: PUF, 2013.

Sepulchre, Sarah, and Eric Maigret, Eds. Décoder les séries télévisées. Brussels: De Boeck, 2011.

Thiellement, Pacôme. Les Mêmes yeux que LOST. Paris: Léo Scheer, 2011.

Viviani, Christian. Le Magique et le Vrai : L'acteur de cinéma, sujet et objet. Aix-en-Provence : Rouge Profond, 2015

NOTES

1. Selon Lindelof, « He was not at all that guy but he was so watchable, we were like ‘OK, forget that he is a proto-suit-wearing sleek guy, this guy is more of a fearo, Southern, equally intelligent but a different kind of guy entirely, so let’s rewrite the character around him ». 2. Glevarec parle du « statut entre-deux de l’acteur de série, incarnation d’une identité fictionnelle plutôt que d’un rôle » (Glevarec 2012: 100). 3. Voir https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQAuzBEple8. 4. Voir la séquence ici : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iADoSDN1Oc. 5. Voir la publicité en versions anglaise et française : https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=pRx8NoN2D5s et https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooAvXH_3XQ0. 6. Voir la vidéo promotionnelle ici : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au5gnixzOTo. 7. Voir l’article de Style News du 15 janvier 2010 : https://people.com/style/exclusive-behind-the- scenes-at-josh-holloways-sexy-cool-water-shoot/. La publicité de Cool Water peut être vue ici : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB4wiadGLLs. 8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9EOQmRrt2Q. 9. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K62-P2IdrLI.

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10. L’acteur avait des tatouages avant de jouer dans la série (voir par exemple : http:// www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/7187894/Matthew-Fox-interview.html ou encore « Season 2 Podcast – 19 » : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YLu26yjvU8. 11. Voir à ce propos le commentaire audio de S4E13 et S4E14 sur le DVD de la saison 4, retranscrit sur Lospedia. «Carlton Cuse : It's something we struggled with the course of the show. How do we use Walt, when in fact the actor has grown up and gotten older? When in fact, in island time, each season maybe only lasts an average of, like, you know, or 30 days. So... Damon Lindelof: People asked, how are you gonna deal with the fact that he's growing older? Our solution season one was to have him be abducted by the Others. And at the end of season two, he looks older, but you don't see enough of him as he goes sailing off with Michael. And then we basically sort of had to bench Walt, you know, until now. You do see him briefly at the beginning of season four, about midway through Meet Kevin Johnson, he looks up at the window, and you see a younger version of Walt. That's supposed to be taking place in 4. And that's an effects shot. Mitch Suskin basically lifted a shot of Malcolm back from season one, and put him in that window. Carlton Cuse : But here now you actually get to see Walt at his actual age. It really worked well for the scene. We love the poignancy of Walt in this scene, asking about the fate of his father.”

ABSTRACTS

This video essay explores the way TV series LOST (ABC, 2004-2010) dramatized its relation to the actors’ bodies and included a reflection on the actors’ performances within the story itself.

Cet essai-vidéo se propose d’analyser la manière dont la série LOST (ABC, 2004-2010) a pensé et mis en pratique sa relation au corps des acteurs et actrices et de montrer comment le programme a diégétisé sa relation au jeu des comédiens.

INDEX

Keywords: Lost, TV series, body, actor, audition, commercials, Fox Matthew, Holloway Josh Mots-clés: Lost, série télévisée, corps, acteur, audition, publicité, Fox Matthew, Holloway Josh

AUTHORS

SYLVAINE BATAILLE Sylvaine Bataille is a Lecturer in the English department at the University of Rouen, a member of ERIAC and the head of GUEST-Normandie, a research program on TV series. She works on the questions of appropriation, adaptation, translation and reference in 16th and 17th century English literature and in today’s popular culture, with a focus on screen adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays and drama TV series. Recent publications include: “Battlestar Galactica et l’héritage gréco- latin”, in L’Antiquité dans l’imaginaire contemporain, Fantasy, science-fiction, fantastique, dir. Mélanie Bost-Fiévet et Sandra Provini, Paris, Classiques Garnier (2014_ and “‘Domestic fury and

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fierce civil strife/Shall cumber all the parts of Italy’ : la guerre civile à l’écran dans Julius Caesar de Joseph L. Mankiewicz”, in La Guerre civile: représentations, idéalisations, identifications, Cahiers de l’ERIAC n° 6, dir. Claire Gheeraert-Graffeuille et Emmanuel Dupraz (2014). http:// eriac.univ-rouen.fr/author/sylvaine-bataille/. Contact: sylvaine.brennetot [at] univ-rouen.fr

SARAH HATCHUEL Sarah Hatchuel is Professor of English Literature and Film at the University of Le Havre (France), President of the Société Française Shakespeare and head of the ‘Groupe de recherché Identités et Cultures’. She has written extensively on adaptations of Shakespeare's plays (Shakespeare and the Cleopatra/Caesar Intertext: Sequel, Conflation, Remake, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2011; Shakespeare, from Stage to Screen, Cambridge University Press, 2004; A Companion to the Shakespearean Films of Kenneth Branagh, Blizzard Publishing, 2000) and on TV series (Lost: Fiction vitale, PUF, 2013; Rêves et series américaines: la fabrique d’autres mondes, Rouge Profond, 2015). She is the general editor of the CUP Shakespeare on Screen collection (with Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin) and of the online journal TV/Series (with Ariane Hudelet). Contact: sarah.hatchuel [at] univ-lehavre.fr

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Broke House by the Big Art Group: Queer Transgressions on the Contemporary New York Stage

Xavier Lemoine

Figure 1. Heather Litteer in Broke House

Photo by Ves Pitts. Source: http://bigartgroup.com/work/broke-house/

1 Queer performances explore how transgressive bodies rearticulate gender, sexual, racial and social norms of representation into complex subjectivities especially through the issue of the mediatization of the body. The Big Art Group deploys this queer art by deconstructing theater and questioning mimetic forces as they unfold in the time and space of a play. Broke House, performed at the Abrons Arts Center in the Lower East Side

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in New York City in January and April 2012, staged the theatrical body through cyber performance. This piece relies on technological and theatrical effects that blur the lines defining the normative body and rework the codes of representation. As in most of their previous shows, Jemma Nelson and Caden Manson, the creative couple of the Big Art Group, intertwined two main plots establishing narratives designed to structure a chaotic world that gradually collapses with a view to reaching a new perception of spaces, stories, and bodies. Indeed, by turning to Chekhov’s Three Sisters, the artists take on the self-destructive Russian family, realism, and its bodily constraints not so much to liberate the subject but to probe into contemporary norms and show they are as demanding as regards the performance of a coherent body. The second plot elaborates on a zany mythical world where semi-gods fight and love each other in Day-Glo colors. These fictional worlds create the opportunity for the audience to experiment with fluid identifications and disidentifications. Yet, failed representations and identifications would describe more accurately the transgressive intent and esthetics of Broke House.

2 Grappling with normative forces, such as theatrical realism or heteronormativity, the artists display a queer perspective through fantasized, campy, and distorted embodiments. The artists partake of the experimental New York performance art scene by combining multimedia and queer theater.1 Bending theater and performance, they break down the bodily limits of realism through cams and screens, glam and sci-fi. We can wonder, then, to what extent the Big Art Group manages to point at the unstable nature of the body through queer subjectivities and technological performances.

3 By looking at the composition of the performance, especially the plots and the multifarious stage design, we can unpack how the Big Art Group tries to transgress theatrical and bodily codes through a subversion of mimetic representation. Their queer camp style generates variations of failed embodiments and interpretations that change the traditional norms of corporeal productions.

Bodily Transgressions

4 Broke House sets up modes of transgressions based on the establishment of distinct perimeters the limits of which can be transgressed, blurred, and redefined. This is made possible by the practice of a theatrical performance that relies on a game involving narrative and representational codes. The Big Art Group can be understood as developing what Josette Féral (2011) called “performative theater”.2 Performative theater deals primarily with presentational acting while not denying the production of meaning and interpretations. The clash between mere corporeal presence and symbolic embodiment is articulated in Broke House. That’s why Broke House questions mimetic representation and representational codes. Indeed, magnified mimesis and bodily distortions come to disturb conventional acting and realistic embodiments of plots and characters.

Film in Theater: Mimetic Blur

5 The general structure of the piece first displays an identifiable narrative pattern even though borrowing from postmodern principles such as hybridity, fragmentation, and non-linearity. Broke House develops two main plots that frame the bodies on stage within a recognizable theatrical tradition. Simply put, the first narrative is based on

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Chekhov’s Three Sisters and the second one is a mock sci-fiction webfilm. As is common with the Big Art Group (Gallagher-Ross 2010),3 both plots become increasingly intertwined to the point of disintegration, disorder, and final chaos. First, Three Sisters was used as a basis for improvisational work that led to the writing of a new script. In this rehearsal phase, the troupe also worked with a 1975 film documentary, Gray Gardens dealing with a mother and daughter living in a decaying mansion. From these sources resulted the first hybrid plot that brought together a sister and a brother who are pursuing unrealistic goals in an inherited house they can no longer pay for. Manny (David Commander) and his sister Irena (Heather Litteer) invite documentarist Dave (Edward Stresen-Reuter), to film their work on their sci-fi webfilm (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Manny and Irena invite Dave to film their work

Pictured: David Commander, Matthew Nesser, Edward Stresen-Reuter. Photo by Ian Douglas. Source: http://sfbgarchive.48hills.org/sfbgarchive/2012/01/17/way-out-east/

6 Mocking the trend of reality TV, the intruder quickly prefers to focus on their private life, including their assistant and two drag queens, and the foreclosure of their house rather than on their art work. As spectators, we get to see snippets of this webfilm that turns out to be fully staged moments in the performance, thus providing a second main plot. This sci-fi plot is performed in dark light with the same actors performing with masks sprayed with fluorescent paint (Day-Glo). As a result, the audience enjoys a double plot with two clear illusory theatrical spaces performed on the exact same stage and magnified on the same screens above it (see Figure 3). There is an undeniable pleasure in the mastery of the performers to conjure up these worlds and to play with such physical transformations. However, this device might, above all, serve as a metanarrative reflection on how theatrical representations mix with performance art and alter the perception of the body on stage. As performance studies professor Peggy Phelan pointed out: “Performance and theatre make manifest something both more than and less than ‘the body.’” (Phelan 3). Here, the back and forth between plots, universes, and registers of presence (stage and video) redefine the ontological perception of the body.

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Figure 3: Magnifying screens

Source: http://spankartmag.com/archives/10467 [not archived]

7 First, they borrow from the well-known meta-theatrical device famously staged in Shakespeare’s Hamlet of the “play-within-the-play.” Here, it becomes a kind of “film within a play” but, unlike the Wooster Group’s Hamlet (Callens 2009; Lemoine 2008) that based its acting on a cinema version of the play, the Big Art Group directly theatricalizes film techniques which produce simultaneously a performance on stage and on screen. Within the first plot, we see on the large screens above the stage, the (live) footage of the making of a documentary film of a “making of” of the webfilm that we see performed both on stage and on screen. The images on screen are mainly the result of the acting on stage, despite some pre-recorded images. Beyond the many parodic effects, this scenographic design could be understood as an attempt to capture the contemporary mechanisms of performance whereby self-reflections are offering a way of questioning codes of representations and interpretations while producing them. It questions the meaning of images in the hypermediatized world and the role of the body in that process. This staging makes clear that our bodies are determined by their relationship with the mediatized — or at the very least cannot escape it. As the actors perform both for the audience and for the cameras, including those of the fictional filmmaker, they multiply the levels of fiction — maybe to the point of exhaustiveness. This raises the question as to whether multimedia acting alters the quality of the body. It also highlights the issue of stage and film editing, that is to say, the very construction of knowledge: how do the stage director and the filmmaker select their frames and angles, which, in turn, produce specific conditions to decipher the body? Can the acting body resist this epistemological framing? How are we, the audience, ever sure about the origins of those images? And, as a result, how are we to understand our own bodies — their origins, their meanings?

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8 This interrogative process is what Broke House stages. Initially, the clear separation between the two plots helps show how different types of illusions work, and especially how narratives are used to invent fictional spaces. During that phase, both spaces seem to have very different visual codes, almost based on binary oppositions. Abrupt changes of lighting make the point: the sci-fi film is unfolding in the dark, while the Three Sisters plot is bathed in crude lighting. It is literally day and night, reality and fiction. The bright light of the makeshift house sharply contrasts with the dark light used to make Day-Glo Bauhaus-like costumes stand out. But gradually the illusion of clear-cut worlds supported by radically different bodies (overexposed fleshy ones as opposed to underexposed hidden ones) crumbles. The makeshift mythical costumes of the sci-fi movie start to fall off as underexposed bodies become visible while the overexposed bodies of the family home are crowded by objects.

9 This keeps narrowing the gaps between the fictional plots and the reality of the performance. Various levels of referents keep interacting, creating a dizzying sense of perception and interpretation that conjure up mimetic mechanisms only to make them stall. The vertigo of a baroque spiral feeds on the destabilized bodies that question the division between art and life. How the body incorporates the real4 to flesh out characters, and even the mere presence of the actors, is highlighted by the video devices and the screens that build up narratives both concrete and virtual.

Figure 4: Performing bodily absence

Clockwise: Edward Streser-Reuter, David Commander, Matthew Nesser, Heather Litteer. Source: http://bigartgroup.com/work/broke-house/

Blurring Spaces and Bodies

10 Right from the beginning, both spaces encroach on each other through narrative and staging. After all, the filmmaker mediated between the two worlds from the start, since he came to Irena and Manny’s house to document how their sci-fi folly was created. As Dave’s project collapses, turning his camera on the family home (since he wants to know more about Irena and Manny’s private lives), the war taking place in the Day-Glo

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world becomes a reflection of the tensions in the house. By the end of the play, the skeleton house is literally taken apart, while the illusory division between the two spaces is abandoned to show how deeply both worlds are enmeshed. What is at stake is the effort to erode the mimetic mechanisms, to extenuate the illusion not only of fictitious worlds but also of real ones. As in the end of Dead Set (“Void” 2007), the Big Art Group creates a nihilistic final image as the house is turned into a huge pile of waste which is then taped together to form a gigantic ball, a small planet of debris. The final props of illusion are discarded. Similarly, the sci-fi battle spills over into the audience when red and green laser beams flash through the auditorium putting an end to the realistic theatrical frame sealed in the black box theater.

Figure 5: Heather Litteer, Matthew Nesser, Edward, Edward Stresen-Reuter

Photo by Big Art Group. Source: http://bigartgroup.com/work/broke-house/)

11 The end is only part of a process that can be witnessed throughout the play which aims at breaking down walls between various fields of representation. The theatrical action mixes with the cinematic one. The fact that the screens themselves, placed above the stage, are architecturally serving as proscenium reveals as much. The screens also suggest how the distinct fictional spaces in the play are always already blurred by the fact that they are displayed on those same screens from the beginning. Ultimately, this signals the impossibility of the binary logic that pretends to produce a knowable essentialized body. The instability of the autonomy of the spaces, foregrounded by this tension between screen and stage, questions our perceptions. At best, then, there is an epistemological exploration of how this articulation captures the imaginary processes through a dematerialized corporeality. At the same time, it signals how corporeality is co-extensive with its environment echoing the phenomenological apprehension of the body. As Anna P. Foultier, a Swedish philosopher who analyzes the dancing body, puts it to explain Merleau-Ponty’s definition of the body: the body-proper is not given once and for all, as the sum of a range of organs attached to one another and animated, but is instead a meaningful unity, whose

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significations are dependent on a natural, cultural as well as personal situation. (Foultier 67)

12 This understanding of the body leads Merleau-Ponty to highlight how a new act of perception can be obtained. This effort to produce a reflection on our perception of the body as it is defined by ontological questions (desire, gender) but also structural ones (technology) is at the heart of Broke House.

Figure 6: Broke House, Jan. 2012

Pictured: Willie Mullins, Matthew Nasser, and Edward Stresen-Reuter. Photo by Ves Pitts. Source: http://bigartgroup.com/work/broke-house/)

13 By pitting the actor’s body against the screens, the play strives to show how bodies are affected by contemporary technology. Which is more real: the acting body hampered by obstacles of all kinds (thin walls, cameras on tripods, spotlights, etc.) on stage? Or its image on screen? The answer might lie in the secrecy of each spectator’s reception, but what is clear is that such interrogation cannot be shunned by audience nor performers. The Big Art Group does not seek to erase the live body while working at debunking basic binary oppositions such as between live and mediatized. As Jemma Nelson makes clear: I think the challenge for us, having worked with technology for a while, is how to keep it organic. Keeping the focus on live and what is live, and what is that liveness- feeling. (Barker 2012)

14 As the body becomes mediatized, it exists in a double register of presence/absence. It relies on the immediacy of performance but also on the mimetic devices of abstraction — the cinematic body appears to stand for the absent live body. The tension between the two is theatricalized, as we can see the original body on stage being turned into a dematerialized image. The process of erasure of the carnal body is shown in various ways; or, rather, the coexistence of these two bodily expressions is turned into a performance. Hence, bodies are shaped by contemporary technologies. Yet, the power of technology is not to be radically opposed to liveness, as performance scholar Philip Auslander explained in his book Liveness, theater and technology have become

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intrinsically linked: “As the mediatized replaces the live within cultural economy, the live itself incorporates the mediatized, technologically and epistemologically.” (Auslander 1999: 39) This is what the confrontation of the live and the digitalized body(ies) create in Broke House. It is simultaneously a singular and plural body — the same body and, at least, two different bodies. This complex corporeality results from the technological environment, but is connected to the continuous process of embodiment. After all, in Broke House the material is destroyed, the house falls apart, not merely as a nihilistic gesture but also to better determine what kind of new house needs to be rebuilt and how to redefine the bodies that can inhabit it. Interestingly, these interrogations echo Chekhov’s critical view of an agonizing Russian bourgeoisie in Three Sisters soon to be destroyed by the Bolshevik Revolution. Yet, the Big Art Group offers more questions than answers which directly address the contemporary audiences who are heavily plunged into the growing omnipresence of technology. The ubiquitous use of smartphones, including in theaters, highlights an inescapable link between what is happening on and off stage. The audience, then, is involved in the shows’ production to the extent that they keep manipulating their environment and bodies with identical technologies, through selfies, tweets and global chatting, thus collaborating to the construction of meaning (or lack of) between the production and the reception of the play.

15 In the end, the actors’ bodies do not dissolve in their images. The back-and-forth between an anthropophagous image and the bodies they feed on creates the unstable performance. The contemporary bodies grow and live through such tensions, yielding energy and destruction. The actors must disappear to reappear in imaginary constructions and be reconfigured in terms of fluidity, openness, and co-creation or “inter-corporeality.”5 It is a quest to describe the individual’s body but also the social body. Indeed, the bodily crisis was not disconnected from the US social crisis at the time of production as made clear by the show’s program: Beyond the topical symptoms of foreclosure crises, credit crises, occupy movements and extremist rhetoric, we suppose that the metaphorical heart of the country has been suffering, and perhaps has decided to rebuild the body that surrounds it.6

16 In Broke House, everything crumbles and the walls of the house are torn apart like the relationships among the performers. Yet screens and new relations might rebuild bodies and try to address a social reconstruction through the potential interpretations of the audience. The questions remain nonetheless whether it is a Faustian pact to trade a live body for a mediatized one. Is it a path to reconstruction or destruction? Are the screens redeeming the live or condemning it?

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Figure 7: The walls of the house are torn apart

Photo by Ves Pitts. Source: http://bigartgroup.com/work/broke-house/

17 What is striking is Jemma Nelson and Caden Manson’s effort to create a network of layers not only based on the stage design but also reflected in their acting method based on a theory of spaces.7 As mentioned earlier, they mix references and have improvisational sessions with the actors and the technology from the start: When we say rehearse and improv and stuff like that, it’s with all the gear from the get-go, from the beginning. All the language is being developed at the same time. (Barker)

18 The bodies are embroiled in classical theatrical references (Three Sisters), cinematic influences (such as the documentary Gray Gardens), site-specific art by Gordon Matta- Clark (Manson and Nelson, 2015),8 and queer performance artist Jack Smith (Rothkin 2012). Furthermore, as the artists explain, there is a sense of fluidity that emerges from their constant editing: “A lot of it is exploring the inability to cope, and a constant kind of breakdown. So we built it on trying to remember things. The script was first improvised for about four weeks, and then we’ve taken that — I edited it then Jemma started to change it more.” “Doctored it,” Nelson corrected. “Doctored it!” Manson added with a sardonic chuckle. “It’s very doctored now!” (Barker)

19 All this suggests a multiplicity of partial spaces which echo Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the body stemming from a “polymorphous space” (quoted in Foultier 70) and vice versa. The actors’ bodies co-create new spaces. A series of new worlds — on screen and on stage — keeps appearing and falling apart. In the end, it is clear that this is linked to the new status of the human body interacting with everyday technology. As Jemma explains in detail: “Our first technology is the actors themselves,” Nelson made clear, “and it’s the way that we train the actors, and that’s really the foundation about which all this orbits. It’s interesting that people often look at us as a heavy tech company, when what we mostly try to use is consumer grade electronics and things that are

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available to everyday street users. And we’re really talking about the ways we use technology every day, in which we are facile in manipulating our own images and sending our images to other people and receiving them back. So it’s that language around technology, it’s the use of it — that’s where we’re quite heavy.” (Barker)

20 Although the Big Art Group might not be about transcendent revelation, there is a sense that they explore the idea that the virtual body is not yet detached from the body itself. The ontological body creates its mediatized version, yet it is transformed by this very process. The giant faces on screen cannot exist without the real face of the actors, but maybe we cannot see the “real” face without the video. In order to grapple with these new realities and spaces the Big Art Group plays with transgressive desires which could be traced to a queer style, in the sense that they try to derail a normative body that would remain within the constraints of a mimetic representation. As Phelan suggests in generalizing and psychoanalytical terms: As an art form whose primary function is to mediate on the threshold that heralds between-ness, theatre encourages a specific and intense cathetic response in those who define themselves as liminal tricksters, socially disenfranchised, sexually aberrant, addicted, and otherwise queerly alienated from the law of the father. (Phelan 16)

Queer Esthetics?

Technological Camp

21 Broke House, much like Big Art Group’s other shows, toys with many grotesque forms of queer desires that could be expanding the tradition of camp. Barker summarizes the complex networks of queer camp desires in the plots: Just as they collectively mediate their own desires through the invention of imaginary worlds through low-budget web films, the main characters find their hopes and dreams mediated through various technologies. One sister, played by Heather Litteer, is somewhat comically taken in by romantic Nigerian-email scams; Matthew Nasser’s perennially unpaid handyman is smitten with Litteer’s character, and hopes to convince her to go into making more profitable online films (to be euphemistic about it) to get them the money to escape their perverse situation they’re in; and finally David Commander, who plays Litteer’s brother, longing for romantic engagement, convinces himself the documentarian’s in love with him. (Barker)

22 This emphasis on the multiplicity of non-normative desires was at the heart of the seminal camp film Flaming Creatures (1962) by Jack Smith, as well as in his New York performances. The camp tradition was developed more specifically on the 1960s and 1970s New York stage by the Theater of the Ridiculous, and later by Charles Busch. Although the Big Art Group is not, strictly speaking, connected to the latter, they stage drag queens whose acting relies on exaggeration, and spice it up with technology. Two long-legged drag queens, one African-American, one Caucasian, appear in Broke House, hinting at the supermodel spin of camp cross-dressing, interlinking with the New York drag scene encountered in gay clubs, the Wigstock festivals, and even the mainstreaming of drag queens like Ru Paul.

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Figure 8: Camp cross-dressing in Big Art Group's Broke House

Photo: Ian Douglas. Source: http://bigartgroup.com/work/broke-house/

23 In the controversial “Notes on ‘Camp’” by Susan Sontag, we can already read that “[t]he androgyne is certainly one of the great images of Camp sensibility.” (Sontag 279)9 Cross-dressing was further explored in the anthropological study Mother Camp by Esther Newton (Newton 1972/1979) and famously theatricalized by Charles Ludlam’s embodiment of Camille in a production of The Ridiculous Theatre in 1973.10 In addition to many other clues, this is why we can argue that the Big Art Group revisits the camp tradition by enrolling drag queens, asking such questions as: how does cross-dressing work with technology? Is there a new multimedia queer camp style suggesting new body politics? It seems that the power of the camera to rearrange the construction of one’s body is parodied in the drag queen’s inflated yearning to be filmed. These drag queens wish to enter the world of images at all cost as they ostentatiously, or should I say campily, prepare for their close-up. Thus, they reveal how bodies in general are contaminated by their desire to be filmed and are always already transformed by the promise of the camera (whether this promise is fulfilled or not.) Paradoxically, the promise of a close-up ontologizes the body of the drag queen, which is based on a drive to escape its ontological sex, or, at the very least, to denaturalize it. As Judith Butler has suggested, there is an inescapability of the body, even in the drag performance: “What is ‘performed’ in drag is, of course, the sign of gender, a sign that is not the same as the body that it figures, but that cannot be read without it.” (Butler 237). Similarly, in Broke House all bodies on screens have a digital essence, maybe no essence at all, in the sense that by being filmed they acquire their intentional identity — a queer identity based on gender manipulations and transformations — while maintaining the relevance of the body. It is maybe thanks to their proliferating presence on stage and on screen that they fully perform their becoming drag queen, and more generally a becoming of the body. Indeed, the camp exaggeration11 of drag queens on stage becomes mediatized by the sheer size of the screens blowing up the bodies caught by the camera. This mechanism is then a suggestion of how all mediatized bodies can potentially become

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camp in the eye of the camera — at the cost of losing the stability of the norm. Indeed, this technological camping is taken up by all the characters of the Three Sister plot but also by the characters of the sci-fi fantasia where the bodies are first displaced in a world of images, as the masks they wear suggest, and are, then, displaced by the camera.

24 Furthermore, the sexual desires of all those characters parody the seriousness of the sexual norms that define the body as well as gender. Both brother and sister fall in love with people that they can only access through technology (the phallic power of the camera of the documentarian for Manny, and the deterritorialized phantasy of the internet for Irena). But both relationships are illusory and conspicuously impossible. The camp nature of desire triggers laughter and might highlight a call for more direct relationships or at least show the folly of sexual desires in the limiting frames of technology. The final apocalyptic destruction of the house might be a call to break down the houses of norms and end the control of spaces, be they technological or social. Camp ambivalent humor is also clear in the sci-fi skits evoking mythological gods obsessed with war and sex. As they go to war, they also experiment sexual trios creating a clash between high-minded discourses of conquest and animalistic carnal desires. This mix of high and low styles, the use of psychedelic Day-Glo effects, all conjure up a highly camp moment where a sense of beauty is mocked but, nonetheless, still raises a number of serious questions on representations, framing, and social life.

25 Such technological campiness addresses the transgressive queer sexuality and how it can redefine our contemporary subjectivities caught between flesh and flux. A sense of danger surfaces as we wonder whether this technology traps bodies in a self- destructive isolation instead of unleashing productive desires and multiple connections. The ambivalence toward the effects of technology can be extended toward language and interpretation itself. Resisting any simplistic classification of their work, the Big Art Group tends to reject labels that would foreclose interpretations or eschew contextual elements. Nelson then reflects: Lately, the use of the terms ‘camp’ and ‘trash’ aimed at our work have aligned us somewhat with Smith’s legacy. But these terms are tainted or changed nowadays — for ‘camp’ by Sontag’s essay (with which I disagree totally), by renewed homophobia in the American landscape as well as political changes in queer visibility. Camp is such a contextual term, we have been thinking about creating a panel on it in New York. There seems to be a basic misunderstanding or refusal of queer politics, of queerness in performance, in NYC at this moment. (unpublished interview of the author 2015)

26 Although we can understand this caveat in the context of an economic crisis, it might be necessary not to throw the baby with the bathwater. The fact that the performance addresses this issue seems to inscribe contextual traces that might help us not fall prey to gross misunderstandings. On the contrary, by harnessing camp to queer and technology we might make sure we fully address such issues without impoverishing such concepts. Similarly, the notion of “trash” within the queer tradition started by Jack Smith can be understood as a significant element of the show.

Camp Set

27 The set of the house is basically an elaborate junkyard in the shape of a skeleton house. The overall effect creates a sense of beauty reminiscent of Stefan Brecht’s description

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of Smith’s performances under the title “The sheer beauty of junk”12 in his book Queer Theatre. In keeping with queer politics, this sense of esthetics does not suppress but, on the contrary, highlights the political consciousness of the housing crisis due to the 2008 subprime meltdown. Houses have been turned into mere disposable objects defined by a short-lived consumer cycle. Human bodies seemed to be trapped in this lethal capitalist destiny. Bodies and their images can be traded and discarded once they have served their ephemeral purpose. The staging turns everything into a wasteland, including bodies.

Figure 9: Trading bodies and their images

Broke House Showing, Jan. 2012. Source: http://bigartgroup.com/work/broke-house/

28 The set made of plastic bits, crates, scotch tape, paper walls, and plywood conveys a sense of chaos that affects the bodies. If the body is made of its relationship with its environment, the trashy objects become trashy bodies. As for the cat that Manny gives to Dave — a reminiscent prop already present in other Big Art Group performances, the animals are turned into plastic. By the end of the play, the bodies are altered as the siblings lose their house because of the mortgage and symbolic foreclosure. They are turned into improbable human snails carrying on their backs a giant ball of trash. This camp house is also a burden that crushes the bodies, threatening their livelihood. The body becomes a piece of trash as well, obliterating its humanity. How can one survive this catastrophe? By being marginalized, as in the process of abjection experienced in queer subjectivities — the play thus raises the question of political activism as an understanding of what queer means.13 It creates a post-apocalyptic hope for something new, a potential for re-imagining and re-appropriation close to the re-signification practice of queerness into a criticism of normative sexuality. Butler explains the reversal through a practice of citation that mobilizes the power of queerness: “This kind of citation will emerge as theatrical to the extent that it mimes and renders hyperbolic the discursive convention that it also reverses.” (Butler 232) This could, after all, redefine the camp style of exaggeration by making it clearly political, moving away from Sontag and coming closer to a notion of queer camp that might better suit the Big Art Group.

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Figure 10: Economy vs. Empathy

Broke House rehearsal, Jan. 2012. Source: http://bigartgroup.com/work/broke-house/

29 The desire for political agency is suggested by the Brechtian images on the screens: “Economy vs Empathy,”14 but nuanced by another phrase: “The De-Realization of Politics.” This might point out that there is a direct question addressed to the world of performance as defined by the logics of perspective and its vanishing point as a capitalist economy of insatiable desire through endless accumulation (Schneider 66-72). The objects on stage are thus already resisting this quality of desirable goods in the late capitalist cycle of consumption. Moreover, the set must disappear entirely so as not to fall into an overly symbolic interpretation of the performance and resist appropriation. As this set is continually (at least for the duration of the show) rebuilt and destroyed for each new performance, what matters is the process, not the final product — there is not really one, just the idea of one. Illusory acts can be fun, but they must be done away with, much like normative identifications, as they only reify the performance and the body. The Big Art Group clearly states their effort to open up spaces and deconstruct normative constructions that restrain and restrict the body into congealed images or commodification. By recycling high and low culture in a queer camp expansion, they show the powerful contradictory fluxes that run through the body and hopefully contribute to raise productive esthetic and political interrogations. They position their art on the crises that reopen economic, political, and esthetic questions to offer a de-centered or queer vision of the world.

Embodied Reception/Deception

30 Reception is an important part of the meaning of art, as it can help us conclude that performance today in New York City and in a computerized world is quite frail. Broke House was performed for the first time at the American Realness festival from January 5 to 15, 2012 (Avila 2012), and, then, an additional run took place in April 2012; both were in the same space in the Lower East Side.15 As space plays a part in the processes of bodily definitions, it is worth noticing that this space is historically located in what we

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could call the underground performance triangle between Soho, the East Village, and the Lower East Side. Revealingly, Smith also performed on Grand Street in the Lower East side, although not in the same exact location. This marks this area as a transgressive one which welcomes transgressive performances.

31 On the night I attended the show, transgression was as much on — as off — stage with an artsy audience, including queerly marked bodies. This created a uniquely congenial atmosphere where a potential for communion between the stage and the theater was to be expected and enjoyed. The strong connections between openness toward many forms of bodily appearances belied a slight discomfort, however. The theatre was half empty, to begin with. Some earlier bad reviews might have been the culprits. Nelson felt that the negative criticism was due to the critics’ inability to deal with the troubling issues they touched on: I think the ‘trash’ term, which recently Time Out New York attempts to use against us as a slur, is interesting — because it brings up so many issues that Americans just seem to refuse to deal with — intentional blind spots — issues about class, about economic production, injustice, environmentalism, something that really stabs at the heart of the American character. (author’s unpublished interview 2015)

32 How can transgression become attractive to a larger audience? Conversely, can queer bodies be queered further? Can social bodies be redefined individually and willingly? Clearly, a number of New Yorkers think of these issues and enjoy experiencing challenging theater. The more positive reviews underlined as much. But this might not be enough as a transgressive bodily representation might be intrinsically designed to fail to find a larger audience — if transgression is possible at all.16 Others, like the Wooster Group, have experienced a similar struggle to maintain the audience’s interest. At this stage, it is premature to assess accurately the meaning of lower turnout and decide whether the American experimental trend to which the Big Art Group’s political and artistic concerns belong is a failure or a success. What can be said is that, through collage and fragmentation, Manson and Nelson strenuously explore the materiality and immateriality of theater in order to see through the haze of technological immediacy and normative deceptions. The multiple queer identifications through a multimedia camp style provide leads to figure out how the corporeal is redefined by the stage today. By blurring a univocal perception, the Big Art Group circulates the multiple meanings that shape the body and make it, more than ever, a fluid concept. Hence, at best, the Big Art Group’s queer and technological perspectives help us experience the mutations of our digital age, rethink our relationship to the codes of representation, and initiate a corporeal political resistance.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Foultier, Anna Petronella. “Toward a Phenomenological Account of Dancing Body: Merleau-Ponty and the Corporeal Schema.” In Material of Movement and Thought: Reflections on the Dancer’s Practice and Corporeality. Eds. Anna Petronella Foultier and Cecilia Roos. Stockholm: Firework Edition, 2013. 51-71.

Gallagher-Ross, Jacob. “Image Eater: Big Art Group Brings the Noise.” The Drama Review 54:4 (T208) (Winter 2010): 54-80. DOI: 10.1162/DRAM_a_00024

Kaufman, David. Ridiculous! The Theatrical Life and Times of Charles Ludlam. New York: Applause, 2002.

Landrin, Ophélie. “A New York, le Big Art Group est encore absolumment underground, Caden Manson.” UBU Scènes d’Europe 40-41 (April 2007): 91-94.

Lehmann, Hans-Thies. Le Théâtre postdramatique. Paris: L’Arche, [1999] 2002.

Lemoine, Xavier. “Spirales baroques : quand le Wooster Group tourne et retourne Hamlet.” In Théâtre Anglophone. De Shakespeare à Sarah Kane : l’envers du décor. Eds. Coulon and March. Montpellier: L’Entretemps, 2008. 61-73.

Ludlam, Charles. The Complete Plays of Charles Ludlam. New York: Harper & Row, 1989.

Manson, Caden, and Jemma Nelson, eds. Contemporary Performance Almanac 2013. New York: Contemporary Performance, 2014.

Manson, Caden. Unpublished interview with Xavier Lemoine, December 2008.

Manson, Caden Unpublished interview with Xavier Lemoine, May 2015.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Le visible et l’invisible. Paris: Gallimard, [1964] 2015.

Munoz, Jose E. Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. Minneapolis & London: U. of Minnesota P., 1999.

Newton, Esther. Mother Camp: Female Impersonation in America. Chicago and London: U. of Chicago P., [1972] 1979.

Parker-Starbuck, Jennifer. Cyborg Theatre: Corporeal/Technological Intersections in Multimedia Performance (Performance Interventions). New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Phelan, Peggy. Mourning Sex: Performing Public Memories. New York and London: Routledge, 1997.

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Meyer, Moe, ed. The Politics and Poetics of Camp. New York & London: Routledge, 1994.

Rothkin, Andrew. “Broke House” [review]. nytheatre.com. 6 April 2012. [archived: https:// web.archive.org/web/20130807092253/http://www.nytheatre.com/Review/andrew- rothkin-2012-4-6-broke-house]

Shank, Theodore. Beyond the Boundaries: American Alternative Theatre. Ann Arbor: U. of Michigan P., [1986] 2002.

Schneider, Rebecca. The Explicit Body in Performance. London and New York: Routledge, 1997.

Sontag, Susan. “Notes on ‘Camp’.” Against Interpretation and Other Essays. New York: Picador, 1961. 275-293.

NOTES

1. See Aronson (2000) on American context of performance, especially 144-204. Or the revised edition of Beyond the Boundaries: American Alternative Theatre by Theodore Shank (2002). For multimedia see, for instance, Parker-Starbuck (2011). 2. (Author’s translation.) We prefer this term to the widespread “postdramatic” label that fails to clearly acknowledge these tensions; see Lehmann (2002). Manson and Nelson’s work on producing a reference book on performance art worldwide illustrates their active participation in this art scene. 3. See https://vimeo.com/118450251 for clips of their previous shows and examples of their Real time technique. 4. We have in mind the questions raised by the reflections on the body developed by Merleau- Ponty’s phenomenology. See Bernard (1995: 17-71) and Foultier (2013). 5. See Merleau-Ponty, Le visible et l’invisible, Paris: Gallimard, 1964, 172-204, quoted in Bernard (1995: 53). The notion of “reversibility” that allows a “metamorphosis” of perception seems the most apt here to account for the experience of the body on stage. See Auslander (1999). 6. “Big Art Group’s “Broke House” at Abron’s Arts.” Posted on 12 April 2012 by Jeremy M. Barker; https://www.culturebot.org/2012/04/13035/big-art-groups-broke-house-at-abrons-arts/. 7. “In the RTF technique of House of No More, for example, the stage represents and maps several different spaces: what we refer to as Work, Constructed, and Hybrid Spaces.” (Manson and Nelson, 2015). 8. Gordon Matta-Clark 1970s “anarchitecture” clearly relates to the construction/destruction of the house. 9. It is worth noticing that Nelson strongly opposes Sontag’s definition of camp. 10. The script of the play is in Ludlam (1989: 221-251). For a detailed account of the production of the play see Kaufman (2002: 185-194). For a queer reading of camp see Meyer (1994: 1-22), and especially on Camille (Meyer 1994: 137-141). 11. If we agree with Sontag’s idea of camp as based on artifice: “Indeed the essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration” (Sontag 275). A similar idea of the completion of the drag queen’s becoming thanks to film is argued by Butler about the documentary film Paris Is Burning (Butler 135). 12. Stefan Brecht wrote about “The sheer beauty of junk” when he described Smith’s performances in June 1970 (“Withdrawal from Orchid Lagoon,” June 21) and January 1971 (“Claptailism of Paloma Christmas Spectacle,” January 2; “Gas Station of the Cross Religious,” January 30) underlined this notion of trash (Brecht 10). 13. See Butler explained in an interview “‘queer’ is the name of a political movement against identity politics” (Duverger 86; translation ours).

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14. This could be connected to Smith’s criticism of the capitalist system and especially its inability to provide food and shelter to the people. Smith used to talk about “landlordism.” 15. Smith performed many shows in the East Village just above First Avenue, not far from the Lower East Side in Manhattan where Broke House was performed, precisely at 466 Grand Street (cf. posters in Hoberman & Leffingwell 9). This geography included the network of queer performance spaces on East 4th Street in the 1980s with the WOW Café. Today, Bushwick in Brooklyn seems to be the latest neighborhood where queer venues have mushroomed. 16. See Schneider’s discussion of transgression that takes to task the claim that the appropriating power of late capitalism makes transgression impossible (Schneider 3-4).

ABSTRACTS

The Big Art Group has joined the New York performance scene since 1999, exploring primarily with the effects of multimedia on stage. They developed acting techniques combined with video, called Real Time Film, offering fresh questions about performing in the 21st century. In Broke House (2012), Jemma Nelson, Caden Manson and their actors continue the exploration on the meaning of the body by mixing two plots and modes of representation. The show, based on improvisations around Chekhov’s Three Sisters and a documentary film, among other things, derails normative codes of reception and helps us question the instability of the meaning of the body, which is criss-crossed by shifting epistemologies. The result is a performance that stages fluxes of non-normative desires constantly oscillating between embodied subjectivities and evanescent illusions of the body. The powerful visual quality of the play, enhanced by huge screens, clashes with the makeshift scenery and hyperreal acting in order to reveal the violence that underpins the redefinition of the body on stage in our neoliberal, digital age. By looking closely at the structure of the piece and its scenography, I chart how the flesh and the digital interact through cinematic and theatrical tricks. Further, I highlight how the Group delineates a corporeality embroiled in social, esthetic, and phantasmatic structures and patterns by arguing that they deploy new forms of queer representations. Ultimately, I want to suggest how a phenomenology of the technological body helps grasp how the theatrical corporeality becomes illusory and elusive through queer technology and queer camp practices.

Depuis 1999, la troupe newyorkaise Big Art Group explore principalement l’impact de la performance multimédia sur la scène théâtrale. Elle a plus particulièrement développé un travail sur le jeu de l’acteur et son rapport à la vidéo grâce à leur technique du Tournage en Temps Réel, en posant de nouvelles questions sur la pratique des arts de la scène au XXIème siècle. Dans Broke House (2012), Jemma Nelson, Caden Manson et leurs comédiens prolongent leur exploration des significations du corps en mêlant deux intrigues et deux modes de représentation. Ce spectacle, créé à partir d’improvisations autour des Trois sœurs de Tchekhov et d’un film documentaire, fausse les codes normatifs de la réception et nous permet de nous interroger sur l’instabilité des significations d’un corps traversé par des mutations épistémologiques. Il en résulte un travail qui met en scène les flux de désirs non-normatifs oscillant entre l’incarnation de subjectivités multiples et d’une corporalité illusoire et évanescente. La puissante qualité visuelle de cette pièce, magnifiée par les gigantesques écrans sur scène, se heurte à un décor fait de bric et de broc et au jeu hyperréaliste des acteurs afin de mettre au jour la violence implicite qui préside à la redéfinition du corps scénique à l’ère digitale et néolibérale. Ainsi en m’intéressant plus

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particulièrement à la structure et à la scénographie de ce spectacle, je tente de cartographier la façon dont la chair et le numérique interagissent à travers des procédés cinématographiques et théâtraux. En outre, je cherche à éclairer dans quelle mesure la troupe dessine les contours d’une corporalité embranchée dans les écheveaux sociaux, esthétiques et fantasmatiques grâce au déploiement des nouvelles représentations queer. En dernier ressort, je tiens à suggérer comment une phénoménologie du corps technologisé aide à saisir la façon dont la corporéité scénique devient illusoire et insaisissable à travers une pratique camp et technologique du queer.

INDEX

Keywords: performance, United States, multimedia, queer, screen, technology, representation, camp, theatre, cultural studies, body, Big Art Group, phenomenology Mots-clés: performance, États-Unis, multimedia, queer, écran, technologie, représentation, camp, théâtre, études culturelles, corps, Big Art Group, phénoménologie

AUTHOR

XAVIER LEMOINE Xavier Lemoine is an Associate Professor at the University of Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée where he teaches American studies. He wrote his PhD dissertation on Queer Theater in the United States. He is a member of the research group LISAA. His research focuses on postmodern identities and representations (sexuality, gender, race, class, multimedia, hybridity, etc.) mainly in contemporary theater and performance. He worked as an assistant director (Paris theater schools and Théâtre du Soleil) and translator (Baltimore Waltz by P. Vogel). His latest publications include articles on Tennessee Williams (in Tennessee Williams and Europe, Intercultural Encounters, Transatlantic Exchanges. Ed. John S. Bak. Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, 2014; Miranda 8, 2013), underground cinema (Cinémaction, 154, 2015). He also co-edited Understanding Blackness Through Performance: Contemporary Arts and the Representation of Identity with Anne Crémieux and Jean-Paul Rocchi (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). He is currently furthering work on multimedia performance and queer African-American ethnographic performances by E.P. Johnson. Contact: xavier.lemoine [at] u-pem.fr.

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‘Anthropologists of our own experience’: Taxonomy and Testimony in The Museum of Innocence and The Virgin Suicides

Clare Hayes-Brady

1. Lovers

1 Talking about his 2008 novel The Museum of Innocence, Orhan Pamuk noted that “the desire to gather objects is central to the human heart” (Pamuk 2015). Pamuk’s heartbroken, obsessive protagonist spends decades amassing a collection of small objects associated with the lover — now dead — whom he gave up during his engagement to another woman. The wealthy Kemal, who has opened a museum to his doomed love consisting of these objects, recounts their brief affair and his subsequent descent into harmless but certain obsession with his cousin, Füsun. The narrative is couched as a kind of museum tour, with the story related by reference to the objects on display. Pamuk has actually opened a physical Museum of Innocence in Istanbul, blurring the boundaries further between the fictional Kemal and Füsun and the real Istabul in which their narrative unfolds. In Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides, a similar affect is displayed: the collective voice of a group of adolescent boys who have grown into a desultory, unsatisfying (but, importantly, well-to-do) adulthood describes their confusion and trauma following the suicides of their neighbours, the five Lisbon sisters, over the course of just over a year. This narrative is also bedded into a collection — albeit a much less formal one — of objects associated with the girls, which the boys — now men — display as evidence of their search for meaning in the girls’ deaths. Like Pamuk’s later novel, The Virgin Suicides positions a fictional coming-of-age story against the backdrop of a radically changing social landscape, engaging with the real social change of the time through the narrative operation of the texts. One of the primary sites of this engagement is in the changing attitudes of young men to the young women

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upon whom they focus their stories, and particularly how the deaths of the girls in question comes to reflect a social loss of innocence.

2 Written almost two decades apart, the novels have a number of central features in common. Both narratives use material objects as both narrative touchstones and as totems of their various beloveds. Both focus on reminiscences by middle-aged men of a youthful infatuation turned into a lifelong obsession, culminating in a material memorialisation of the dead. The narrators are wealthy and from “good” families, and the object(s) of affection are part of their social circle, but socioeconomically inferior to them. Both novels chart the decline of their surroundings as a backdrop to their love affairs, specifically Detroit’s industrial decline in the 1970s and the Istanbul coup of 1980. Most relevant for the purposes of the present essay are three things: the curious absence, shared by both novels, of interiority in the girls; the fact that the deaths of the young women are by suicide (this is adverted to in The Museum of Innocence, although it is much less definite than in The Virgin Suicides, which has implications for our discussion here that will be explored later), and the remarkably passive behaviour of the boys throughout their relationships with the girls. Key to any comparison of the two texts is the nature of the material testimony of both narrators and what it suggests about the relationships of subject and object in the novels. Grounded in Baudrillard’s theory of the nature of collection, this essay examines the ways in which the male protagonists — and they are the protagonists, notwithstanding the obsessive foregrounding of their love — use these everyday objects to try to fix the memory of their lovers as still, tractable images, arguing that this use of proxy objects signals a desire to possess rather than to love. Further, I argue that these forms of memorialisation and their narration privilege the body as both object of desire and site of memory, occluding the subjectivity of the young women memorialised, especially by their association with physical rather than metaphysical touchstones. By offering a post-mortem memorialisation of this kind, the narrators appropriate the image of their beloved(s), re-presenting them as objects among objects, albeit still the object of mystery and obsessive fascination. The fundamental narcissism of the protagonists is made clear by the use of imagery, particularly the language of film, to describe the girls, a narcissism that reflects an inability to see the female as anything other than object. In this respect the essay draws on the work of Butler, Cavell and Nussbaum in their investigations of the meaning of recognition and objectification, and the cataclysmic othering of the female. Lastly, the essay explores the narrative strategies used by both authors, and separately by the narrative voices, that draw the reader, positioned as witness, into the position of voyeur, devolving the responsibility of testimony on to the interlocutor, the “you” of both narratives. This devolution inculcates the reader in the uncomfortable but inevitable narrative occlusion of the female subject, challenging common representations of romantic love, particularly adolescent love. The reader’s operational complicity in the narrative construction develops into an ethical complicity in seeing the girls as the narrators see them, perpetuating their position as objects among objects, fixing their bodies as their essential sites of meaning, and robbing them of agency and will.

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2. Collectors

3 The figure of a lovelorn swain who becomes attached to a mundane object — a pencil, a scarf, a cigarette butt — because he associates it with his beloved is a common one, too common to draw a conclusive picture of here. This is a stalwart of the romantic tale: knights going to battle hold their ladies’ favours dear; Heathcliff seeks to attain Catherine after her death by collection; poor Harriet Smith attaches herself to a pencil and a length of bandage that has been in the hands of the man she fancies herself in love with; there is the horrible Hollywood cliché of the item of clothing discarded or abandoned by the departed beloved. In Le Système des objets [The System of Objects], Baudrillard writes on the nature of collection, drawing a distinction between objects to be utilised and objects to be possessed. “Possession cannot apply to an implement, since the object I utilise always directs me back to the world. Rather, it applies to that object once it is divested of its function and made relative to a subject” (Baudrillard 7). In other words, the abstraction of an object from its utilitarian to its sentimental purpose fundamentally alters the nature of the object, making it a symbol in the subject’s own relationship to himself, or as Baudrillard puts it, “his personal microcosm”. Collecting, according to this description, is fundamentally narcissistic, self-directed, motivated by the desire for individuation rather than by any inherent regard for the objects. This is relatively uncontroversial when applied to the kind of collection Baudrillard is describing — philately or lepidoptery, phillumeny, arctophily — the list of harmless attachments goes on. However, it becomes a little more complicated when we begin to talk about collections associated with people. Also familiar in contemporary culture is the image of the stalker, male or female, or even the (usually male) killer, who takes items associated with, belonging to or literally from the (usually female) object of focus as trophies. This more sinister element of collection exists along a spectrum, sharing its roots with the concept of possession — and right to possession — that underlies much of what is termed rape culture; the idea that the female body exists for masculine access and control, iterated at varying levels of intensity from relatively mild (women being chided for not smiling) to serious aggression and violence.

4 Writing about sexual objectification, Nussbaum highlights the importance of context, pointing out that while the denial of subjectivity and autonomy inherent in the objectification of the other can lead to violation, fungibility and radical ownership, it need not. Her example is of lying in bed with a lover using his stomach as a pillow, which she judges to be morally “not at all baneful”, provided that it does not cause him pain and that it is done “in the context of a relationship in which he is generally treated as more than a pillow. This suggests that what is problematic is not instrumentalisation per se, but treating someone primarily or merely as an instrument” (265). The boundaries of problem in this area form the remainder of Nussbaum’s thoughtful essay — and indeed it is important to keep in mind that abusive or problematic objectification is possible even with good intentions; while the protagonists of the novels in question are not violent, nor overtly hostile to feminine subjectivity, their blindness to the agency and desires of their beloveds is contextually deeply problematic, since, as Nussbaum warns, it involves the girls being primarily or merely instrumental to the protagonists’ self-images. To put it another way, the positively-inflected form of objectification is still another point on this same spectrum of control, the misogyny of the pedestal. The use of mythic language, the collection of

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talismanic objects and the memorialisation of the body all serve to dehumanise the girls, reducing them to a collection of symbols for interpretation. The memorial or testimonial collections of the two novels exist as a kind of key to knowledge of the girls, both sexual and metaphysical, with that knowledge functioning as a kind of possession; by collecting these objects, the male protagonists seek to know and thereby possess the memories of their deceased lovers. In this way, the collections are indeed a kind of adolescent sexual narcissism, a reflection of their own desires rather than associated in any meaningful way with the real lives of their subjects. Indeed, the collections of the two narrators are both associated specifically and explicitly with the sexual and romantic attachment of their younger selves, and particularly with the burgeoning sexual agency of the young women. It is notable, for example, that many of the items mentioned are associated with the body — cigarette butts, toothbrushes and tampons being some examples. Interestingly, while Kemal collects cigarette butts initially belonging to Füsun, he moves on to collecting discarded cigarette butts in general, symbolising waste and the passage of time, but also highlighting the discardability of the actual, bodily Füsun to his symbology of narcissistic identification. This fixation implicitly places Füsun — or her body, at least — within this system of transactional relations, a systematisation further highlighted by the consistent narrative focus on Füsun’s physicality. The collections that memorialise the dead — Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence, and Eugenides’ Record of Physical Evidence — are ways of shaping their physical absence. The male narrators have no access to the interior lives of the women they profess to love, and do not particularly seem bothered by this. Kemal’s Museum is almost explicitly a museum to himself; he mourns not the loss of his lover but the loss of a particular vision of himself, and refers to himself and those similarly engaged in memorial as “anthropologist[s] of [our] own experience[s]” (Pamuk 2010: 39). The process of memorialisation is specifically reflective and constitutive of the memorialising subject, not the object of memorial. The boys, grown into men, do not want the Lisbon sisters back; they want to understand, to explain and demystify their actions in order to shed light on their own adolescent confusion. It is the idea of these girls that haunts the men, nothing of the girls themselves. The girls are characters rather than actors, loci of projection and reflection.

5 The male protagonists in both texts show the same taxonomic tendency during the lifetimes of the girls, seeking to bring them into a logical system characterised by commerce. Garofalo argues that “sexual desire and commodity culture speak to the same logic” (2) noting particularly the use of gifts as a form of communication between lovers. Kemal showers Füsun with gifts throughout the long aftermath of their affair, which are never reciprocated and very seldom even acknowledged; she does not need to give him gifts, as he is already emotionally bound to her. Hyde notes the broader cultural function of gifts as an exchange of obligation; we might consider Kemal as what Hyde rather uncouthly terms an “Indian giver” — that is, one who gives in order to bind the receiver in a relationship of obligation, which Hyde ascribes to the Native- American population. Similarly, in The Virgin Suicides, when the boys are permitted to take the Lisbon sisters to a school dance, only Lux is identified as a specific individual, to be escorted by Trip Fontaine. The other four sisters, an indistinguishable — or at least undistinguished — collective, are divided up among the remaining boys, with the pairings decided by the presentation of corsages: “whichever Lisbon girl a boy pinned became his date” (118). On the one hand, it is by presenting a gift that the relationship of obligation or connection is established, but on the other hand, there is a

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deliberateness to the phrasing of this that suggests something more — “whichever girl a boy pinned”. The use of the term pinned is evocative of collecting — we might think of butterflies pinned to a board by a lepidopterist. Furthermore, the phrasing robs the girls of any vestige of subjectivity, fixing them as objects for manipulation and display rather than as partners in a relationship, however fledgling. The Lisbon girls and Füsun are relegated by these gifts to objects in a transaction, rather than subjects with desires and autonomous will: they become embodied objects, prizes rather than people.

3. Watchers

6 Both novels are recounted to a (mostly) silent interlocutor as a nostalgic story of youth, and the positioning of the girls as objects of memory is the most obviously distancing strategy, but it is clear that the process of turning the girls into objects of collection begins long before there is a death to mourn, and operates at several different levels throughout the text. The interactions of the boys with the girls in both texts are formulaic and unreflective, with the primary object being sex — achieved in The Museum of Innocence and mostly unmanaged in The Virgin Suicides, with the exception of Trip Fontaine’s hurried encounter with Lux. Indeed, the primary sense in both narratives is sight. In both texts, male sight is closely linked with both sexual knowledge and restrictive control, while female sight is destabilising, emasculating and surprising. The visuality and physicality of the narrative descriptions, as well as the consistent bodily focus of the characterisations of the girls, clearly marks the narrative objective as sexual rather than romantic: “all lace and ruffle, bursting with their fructifying flesh” (6), they are not presented as human girls so much as living dolls. The boys do not wonder what the girls are thinking; it does not appear to occur to them that the girls might be thinking at all, in a kind of pre-mirror stage failure to recognise object permanence.

7 It is common in criticism of The Virgin Suicides to discuss the constitutive male gaze — Cardullo notes of the Lisbon sisters that “their existence is conferred on them only by the male gaze” (4) and Shostak comments on “the male gaze turned on beautiful, doomed females” (809). The voyeurism of the very concept of the Museum of Innocence is heightened by the persistently visual descriptions of the young Füsun, descriptions of light and shadow rather than flesh and blood. One of the recurring plotlines in the story is the use of advertising in Muslim culture, specifically the use of a beautiful woman’s image in the sale of the first locally produced soft-drink, a shorthand for Westernization. Kemal’s friend Zaim owns and advertises Meltem fruit soda, and may or may not be romantically involved with the German model, Inge, whose image is used to advertise it. Inge herself disappears around page 126, but mentions of her image persist throughout the novel up to page 505, and the advertisement itself is a significant element of Kemal’s collection. Inge symbolises the loose, available Western woman and/or market, by contrast with the supposedly chaste, elusive Turkish woman. Inge’s ad challenges Turkish self-imagination: she is an absolute object — merely an image of a woman — but the directness of her returned gaze hints at the possibility of subjectivity, by contrast with the more traditional practice of a demure averted gaze. The fact that the returned gaze most commonly referred to in the novel is both a Western woman and a facsimile of a gaze doubly distances her from Kemal’s reality, troubling him little but emerging at moments of voyeurism or shame in the text,

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disrupting his imagination of his own masterful gaze. Füsun, the object of Kemal’s affection, is censured by Istanbul’s elite for entering a beauty contest; his mother asks “can there be anyone in this country who doesn’t know what kind of girl, what kind of woman, enters a beauty contest?” Kemal muses “It was my mother’s way of suggesting that Füsun had begun to sleep with men” (9). Opening oneself up to the gaze of others, then, is equated with threatening sexual agency.

8 The Virgin Suicides is also a strikingly visual text, predicated on small-town voyeurism. Interestingly, though, despite the constant references to watching and seeing — “we watched him. We watched Cecilia Lisbon watching” (17) — the boys seem genuinely surprised to find, late in the narrative, that the girls have been “looking out at us as intensely as we had been looking in” (119), that their “surveillance had been so focused we missed nothing but a simple returned gaze” (193). Like Kemal, the boys are untroubled by the notion that the girls may have the agency to return a gaze; the sisters exist as flattened images, not as autonomous subjects. The girls are repeatedly described in photographic or cinematic terms, distanced from the real. Early in the text, the narrative voice recalls “the two parents, leached of color like photographic negatives, and then the five glittering daughters” (8). On the novel’s first page the paramedic grumbles “This ain’t TV folks” (1). Cecilia’s death is described as a tableau, and central to the Record of Physical Evidence presented by the boys are the family photos, which they took from the house. The coroner’s report, reporting on “deaths as unreal as the news” wrote of the girls’ bodies as “‘like something behind glass. Like an exhibit.’” (216) Especially striking is the perpetual use of the language of popular culture, in general, and film, in particular, to describe the girls in both novels. Television reporters become “custodians of the girls’ lives” (219). The night of the triple suicide that leave Mary the only surviving sister, the television in the house is described as sitting “at an angle, with the screen removed” (203), and the girls’ bodies are positioned in attitudes familiar from films — Bonnie’s legs coming into view, disembodied, Lux in the car, Therese with her head in the oven. The dawn of Mary’s suicide, the final one of the novel, as the boys leave the debutante ball that marks their tentative ascent to adulthood, is described as “a bleachy fade-in, overused through the years now by the one-note director” (231), the town as an “overexposed photograph” (237). Mary herself, dead of an overdose in the house, “had on so much makeup that the paramedics had the odd feeling she had already been prepared for viewing” which “reminded some people of Jackie Kennedy’s widow’s weeds” (232). The final procession “called to mind the solemnity of a national figure being laid to rest” (232); these memories are mediated through televisual culture, the flattest kind of objectification.

9 Similarly, in The Museum of Innocence, relationships are subordinate to images of relationships; Kemal’s relationship with Füsun after her marriage is predicated on his investment in her husband’s screenplay, with Füsun as the putative star. Füsun’s somewhat doltish husband is an unpromising but dedicated screenwriter and Kemal agrees to invest in his film, only because it legitimises his time with Füsun. The time they spend together is also centred around television and film, from the evenings in her parents’ house watching television, which is used as the pretext upon which Kemal spends virtually every evening for eight years in this way, to the trips to the cinema and meditations on the state of Turkish indigenous filmmaking, including discussions of censorship, the moral status of actors and the political dimensions of national cinema. Mostly, though, Füsun is described as looking like or being taken for a film star, a term used so often it seems to have its own definition within the novel. Indeed, at one

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point, two young boys ask Füsun if they have seen her in a film, and the narrator observes that this is a common form of romantic approach in the Istanbul of the time. Tellingly, Füsun harbours specific ambitions around stardom, implicitly viewing it as a means of independence, which ties her once again to the threatening, Western Inge. Füsun, then, is implicated in a complex desire for the constitutive male gaze, which could be either complicit or rebellious, but which is only fleetingly alluded to; this developing individual spirit is couched in terms of Westernisation throughout the text. Although this movement is expressed at various points in the narrative, it is not clear to the narrator, who sees her stardom only in terms of his management and curation of it, again claiming ownership of her body’s image and actuality. Despite Füsun’s developing subjectivity, Kemal continues to see only her objecthood; he looks at an object, but he does not see a subject.

10 In this regard, Shostak draws on Peter Brooks’ concept of “the body as an epistemophilic project” (5) in modern Western narrative, in which he contends that “the body furnishes the building blocks of symbolization” (xiv). Discussing the body “defined radically by its sexuality”, Brooks argues that “representation of the body in signs endeavours to make the body present, but always within the context of its absence” (8), which offers a useful description of the curatorships of both novels: the absent bodies of the girls, symbolised and signified into abstraction, are brought under the control of the signifying subjects — the male protagonists — and what Brooks calls “the subtending dynamic of stories and their telling becomes oriented towards knowledge and possession of the body” (8). A psychoanalytic reading of these two novels is certainly tempting — Brooks takes as axiomatic that the desire to possess and the desire to know are “intermingled, sometimes indistinguishable” (11), and argues that in Western discourse at least, “Man as knowing subject postulates woman’s body as the object to be known, by way of an act of visual inspection that claims to reveal the truth — or else makes that object into the ultimate enigma” (97). However, Brooks confuses the matter here a little; the implication of that final clause is that if the bodily object cannot be known it must be mythologized, which is a nicely blame-free reading. There are a number of non-Western commonalities between the novels that challenge this idea. The distinctions between forms of gaze in The Museum of Innocence differentiate the modesty of Turkish girls and the vulgar display of Western and Westernised femininity. In The Virgin Suicides, too, the men recollect that whenever they saw the Lisbon sisters, “their faces looked indecently revealed, as though we were used to seeing women in veils” (5). Trip Fontaine recalls Lux as “the most naked person with clothes on he had ever seen” (75), and finally after the girls’ death, their bedrooms are described as a “sacked seraglio” (222), a specifically non-Western term for the sequestered female living quarters of Ottoman households. The seraglio as a cultural signifier conjures up images of mystery and secrecy and in particular hidden, veiled or unknowable women. It is also associated with sexually active women, but sexual activity that is condoned and permitted by controlling masculinities. The seraglio, like the image of the veil, fetishizes the unknowability of the feminine. In Pamuk’s novel, the returned or invited male gaze speaks to fallen modesty; to be knowable is to be diminished, worthless. After Trip has sex with Lux on the football field he loses interest in her immediately. Kemal’s passion for Füsun is predicated on her unavailability, initially because of his engagement and thereafter because of her marriage. Contrary to Brooks’ Freudian epistemophilia, the men in these novels do not want to know the girls. Freudian epistemophilia is presented as fundamentally unattainable and actually

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undesirable. Conceptually, the epistemophilic project frees the masculine subject from culpability, because if the desire to possess is predicated on a desire for knowledge it is not specifically, but only coincidentally, misogynistic. The culpability is redirected to the feminine, which is dismissed for not rewarding the epistemophilic project with knowledge. But the masculine subjects in these two novels specifically occlude the feminine, resisting any notion that the objects of their affection might be any more than objects in general. By appropriating and curating the minutiae of the lives of these women, and later by restricting the access of other subjective gazes to these artefacts, the male protagonists position themselves as controlling subjects and the women as objects of collection and possession, but not of knowledge. Instead, the inaccessible feminine is reified and venerated, used as a mirror in which the boys can admire their own fidelity and sigh over the mystery of the female mind, in which they patently do not believe. The taxonomic projects at the heart of these novels are fundamentally narcissistic appropriations of power, the women ciphers of masculine self-projection, and a useful frame to add at this point is the distinction between what Cavell terms “knowing” and “acknowledgment” in his work Knowing and Acknowledgment. If we allow the body as an epistemophilic project, with knowledge being fundamentally unattainable, it is the absence of Cavellian acknowledging that makes the protagonists culpable here. In other words, the narrators seek to know the bodies of their beloveds in their absence through objects of association, but fail to acknowledge the subjectivity of the embodied individuals in question, because to acknowledge such would be to liberate the self from the status of object. The epistemophilic project, then, is a valid paradigm, but only for certain values of the term knowledge, and acknowledgment undermines this form of knowledge, as subjectivity and interior life defy objectification.

4. Actors

11 Interestingly, though, while neither narrative voice acknowledges the interiority of the girls, their struggling subjectivity seeps into the narrative at various points, nonplussing the narrators. Perhaps the most obvious example of this intrusion is the final point of contact between the novels: the manner of the girls’ deaths. The very title of the novel The Virgin Suicides invites the reader to focus on this death, on the vacation of the girls’ bodies, and so in a sense to focus on the bodies themselves, a focus that increases the sense of narcissistic appropriation. While the narrative voice continually laments the boys’ ignorance of the girls’ suffering, and their inability to rescue the girls, the focus on the manner of the girls’ death undercuts this apparent (and apparently sincere) regret. Tellingly, late in the novel, the narrative concludes “We had never dreamed the girls might love us back […] Thinking back, we decided the girls had been trying to talk to us all along, to elicit our help, but we’d been too infatuated to listen” (192-3). The decisive association here between affection/infatuation on the part of the boys and presumed silence and passivity on the part of the girls clearly positions the object of affection as an object in its whole sense. The bodily focus that persists throughout the boys’ discussions of the girls, particularly clear in their admission that they had never differentiated between the sisters, positions love as a form of ownership or desired ownership. In this respect, the boys’ relationship with the girls is indeed one of collection, and their memorial one of curatorship, and the girls’ suicides moves them from one category to the other without altering the relational stance of the boys in any

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significant way. The girls’ deaths are rationalised in a range of ways through the novel’s lens, both mythological and mysterious. The boys enact the external focalization of Genette’s narrative perspective, “in which the hero performs in front of us without our ever being allowed to know his thoughts or feelings” (Genette, 190). In the case of The Virgin Suicides, the boys are not the hero, but the lens; that is to say, they follow the girls like a camera, and always know less than the objects of their gaze, which lacunae translate to the audience too. This accounts in part for the intense visuality of the narrative, and for its relative success as a film adaptation (Coppola 1999).

12 On the one hand, the boys continue to reject the concept of the girls’ agency, with both the boys and the town at large puzzling over their decisions. The last sister, Mary, is deemed to display “no evidence of a psychiatric illness”, and in fact to be “a relatively well-adjusted adolescent” (227). This diagnosis takes place after the suicide of Mary’s four sisters and is uttered by the same doctor who found no evidence of distress in Cecilia, the first of the girls to die. As such, it rings distinctly false, as do the repeated avowals by the narrative voice in the novel’s present, and the boys and the town’s older citizens in the remembered past that the suicides were unaccountable. There is a continued refusal to see the girls as agents, an intense and intentional mystifying of their actions, which grows steadily into a collective imagination of victimhood, the mythologizing of their fate (and it is a distinctly singularised fate; the three dates of suicide may as well be one — indeed, in the film version it is shortened to two, heightening the conflation of their identities). Late in the novel the girls are explicitly cast as mythical figures, harbingers of suburban decline: “Something sick at the heart of the country had infected the girls […] The Lisbon girls became a symbol of what was wrong with the country” (226), and later “Everyone we spoke to dated the demise of our neighbourhood from the suicides of the Lisbon girls […] the girls were seen not as scapegoats but as seers” (238). Nearby in the text are references to “clairvoyance” (238), “decadence” (238), “the whited sepulchre” (239). In the closing pages the girls are called “too powerful to live among us, too self-concerned, too visionary, too blind” (242). Interestingly, in the film adaptation, these references are made at the beginning, which casts the whole film as emerging in the shadow of this mythology. In both the novel and the film, the boys dismiss the vitality of the girls, flashes of which are visible in their behaviour throughout the narrative. By removing them from the realm of the living, the imperfect, the active, the narrative pinions the girls as objects of myth and mystery. The use of mythic language to objectify the girls grows more pronounced in the later parts of the novel, but its resonances are present from the beginning. The novel’s title, The Virgin Suicides, operates in a number of symbolic paths. In the world of the novel, the title is taken from a song by the fictional band Cruel Crux, about the loss of virginity. However, even within the text, that already fictional connection is further destabilised, as it is not in the boys’ Record of Physical Evidence, nor mentioned in any of the musical scenes. Instead, it is reported as part of the “research” conducted by Linda Perl, a reporter who broadcasts a story on the deaths, and subsequently writes a book about them. The narrators are dismissive of Perl and the media in general, and her “research” (presented in scare quotes in the text) is treated as sensationalism, so the status of the song is at best murky, positioning the title as itself contested. Most obviously, the association of the girls with purity, clairvoyance and nature, as well as recurrent images of light and flame, align the symbolic virgins of the title with the Vestal Virgins, guardians of the Delphic oracle (which is consonant with Eugenides’

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widespread use of classical Greek imagery elsewhere in his work). Indeed, the mythologizing force of the narrative works to make the sisters aggregate virgins, as it were, robbing Lux of even the renegade bodily autonomy she tries to lay claim to through her sexual activity, as if virginity were a function of (male) perception rather than action. In mythic or archetypal terms, the sisters are also associated with death not just through their own suicides but through the various deaths and sickening in the town, from the fish flies that mark Cecilia’s first suicide attempt through the outbreak of Dutch Elm disease that claims the town’s trees and the poisoning of the town’s lake, figured grotesquely in the Asphyxiation-themed coming-out party at the novel’s close, but also encompassing also the rather more unnerving cemetery workers’ strike that delays burials during the whole process of the suicides, beginning four weeks before Cecilia’s first attempt. The girls become part of this thanatic system, again imagined as objects of physical decay rather than active or desiring subjects. Associatively linked with the natural and economic decline of the area, the girls function as objects in a memorialising collection, brought under the controlling gaze of the adolescent male citizens.

13 While the suicides of the Lisbon sisters occupy almost the whole of the novel, Füsun’s death is much less of a narrative focus. Her death occurs late in The Museum of Innocence and may be suicide, although it is slightly less clear-cut than the Lisbon sisters’ deaths. Füsun’s death is less dominant in the narrative of The Museum of Innocence than the five suicides in The Virgin Suicides and is, in the end, only a short passage. Of note, however, regarding the brief scene of her death is the language in which it is discussed. Kemal recalls that “driving at 105 kilometers an hour, headed for the 105-year-old plane tree, she seemed to know exactly what she was doing” (488). A few lines later, though, he recalls “Füsun knew she was about to die, and during those two or three seconds she told me with her pleading eyes that she didn’t really want to, that she would cling to life as long as she could, hoping for me to save her” (488). Needless to say, he does not save her, but it is interesting to note that even after she drives her car into a tree with all the appearance of destructive intention, Kemal cannot conceive of Füsun having sufficient agency to commit suicide. Rather like the boys of The Virgin Suicides, Kemal works hard to rationalise or deconstruct the evidence of her agency, repositioning her as a victim instead of an originator of destructive action; an object can suffer harm but cannot cause it. From the accident report that follows, Kemal’s memory of Füsun’s dying appeal also seems improbable, since her skull was crushed by the impact. Importantly, though, the text goes on to note that “all the rest of her beautiful being — her sad eyes; her miraculous lips; her large pink tongue; her velvet cheeks; her shapely shoulders; the silky skin of her throat, chest, neck and belly; her long legs, her delicate feet, the sight of which had always made me smile; her slender, honey-hued arms, with their moles and downy brown hair; the curves of her buttocks; and her soul, which had always drawn me to her — remained intact” (489). Like the coroner’s report in The Virgin Suicides, Kemal’s reduction of Füsun to her body parts, location of her soul within that list and relation of her essence to his appraisals of it reduces her to an absolute object, subjected to his gaze and constitutive of his own self-identification. Evocative of the long poetic tradition of a lover celebrating the body of his beloved, Kemal’s enumeration is rendered taxonomic and rather sinister — more the listing of trophies than the praise of a living creature — by the juxtaposition of Füsun’s bodily attributes with her violent death, and by the unrelieved fragmentation of his description, mirrored in the fragmentation of Füsun’s body in the accident. By this reckoning,

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Füsun’s is not a mournable life as Butler conceives it; she is not recognisable as a subjective actor, but constitutive only of the subjecthood of her mourner, which is to say that she is mournable and memorialised not as a person but as a body. Kemal survives the accident and mourns Füsun as the embodied loss of his innocence. The Grosse Point boys grow up into indifferent adulthood and keep the girls, veiled, unknown and safely circumscribed by and into objects.

5. Conspirators

14 The novels both deal quite clearly with the objectification and silencing of the feminine subject by the men and social structures around them. Beyond this, however, the novels also interrogate the complicity of the bystander, specifically in the operations of text. In this respect, and by way of a conclusion to this essay, the dynamics of power involved in reading merit attention. The complex curatorial and taxonomic positions discussed here reflect hierarchies of power and subjectivity, hierarchies that are also at play in the relationships between reader, writer and text. The position of the reader throughout both narratives is a particularly contested one, although the authorial identity is notably compromised in Pamuk’s novel. In discussing these dynamics, we might usefully invoke the triad of addressees proposed by Phelan and Rabinowitz (2008), distinguishing between the often-overlapping authorial audience, narrative audience and narrattee. In The Virgin Suicides, all three are one, because the narrattee is unidentified and implicitly embodied in the reader. This position is further complicated by the novel’s film adaptation, which puts the viewer in a decidedly voyeuristic position by refusing to allow the viewer’s perspective to widen beyond the narrative’s voyeurism of the girls. While in the novel, the mediated sense of a guided exhibit positions the reader as witness to the gaze of the narrators, on the screen, the reader is part of that gaze. In The Museum of Innocence, the same overlap is functionally in place through most of the narrative as the addressed “you” moves between collective visitors to the museum and a particular individual, later identified as the writer himself. This shift in the latter part of the narrative destabilises the reader’s complicity, where the consistent direct address of The Virgin Suicides further implicates the reader in the narrative distancing of the sisters. For readers and viewer of The Virgin Suicides, the sense is unavoidable that one has been manipulated into the position of voyeur, constantly aware of the aporetic cracks in which the Lisbon sisters might have told a different story. The discomfort of this voyeurism is heightened by the persistence of voyeuristic imagery at an operational level in both the novel and the film — the constant references to and images of the boys watching the girls and the neighbours watching each other, all of which combine to create a suffocating atmosphere of surveillance — and the reader’s complicity is highlighted by various direct addresses and appeals to look. Having said that, the novel also gestures beyond its own borders, referring to information unavailable to the reader with such phrases as “as you can see in this school photograph” (Pamuk, 6), which of course the reader cannot see, and numerous similar references throughout the novel. In ways, this works to ease the sense of being both the reader and the conspirator. By contrast, in The Museum of Innocence, the reader is narratively exculpated from Kemal’s objectification of Füsun by the appearance of the writer in the text, but then becomes part of a separate kind of memorial, characterised by both narrative access to Kemal’s recollection and physical access to his curation of Füsun’s physical effects. This physical access is two-fold, given

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that it is fictional within the reading of the novel (one would not of course read the novel in the Museum), but actual in the sense of the Museum’s physical existence. This duality blurs the boundaries of the reader’s responsibility, then, in a way that The Virgin Suicides does not, because the reader in the real world is simultaneously distanced from Kemal’s problematic memorialisation and invited to his actual memorial. In this way, the reader is invited to become complicit in perpetuating the narcissistic appropriation of a woman’s life and death. The Virgin Suicides, then, offers the uncomfortable sense of being trapped into voyeuristic epistemology of the body as object, while The Museum of Innocence presents the arguably more discomfiting option of choosing or rejecting it. Pamuk’s permeation of the boundaries between writer, text, reader and world invite a consideration of the liminality of moral culpability in the dismissal of subjectivity — to what extent is his refusal to accept Füsun’s agency a contributing factor in her death? — while Eugenides, though not implicating the boys in the girls’ deaths as such, imagines the dangerous temptation of adolescent nostalgia and emotional stasis. While Kemal is cast as potentially complicit in the death of his beloved, the problem with the obsessive memorialisation of the Lisbon sisters is that it impedes the adult development of the boys. The two novels offer different aspects of the same cataloguing instincts —– dangerous to others, and dangerous to the self. The taxonomic projects at the centre of these novels are a taxonomy of absence, a project that seeks to categorise rather than to understand. The testimonies of the curators are remarkably self-focused, pointedly incurious about the interior lives of their objects, interested only in the girls’ effects on their own developing masculine subjectivities. Both novels portray the desire to turn a person into a collection, to turn a life to sentimental purposes and engage with the world from a narcissistic, even solipsistic perspective. Both novels, in the end, examine the ways in which memory and testimony as we see them here can become another means of controlling the unruly bodies of girls growing into women. Knowing their minds is much less important than possessing their bodies, literally or figuratively, and the memorialising of a beloved becomes an excavation of one’s own adolescent self, a project of anthropology of our own experience.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baudrillard, Jean. “The System of Collecting”. In The Cultures of Collecting. Eds. John Elsner and Roger Cardinal. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1994

Brooks, Peter. Body Work: Objects of desire in modern narrative. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1993.

Butler, Judith. Frames of War: When is life grievable? London: Verso, 2009.

Cardullo, Bert. “Of Virgin Suicide, Human Bondage, and Male Indulgence”. The Hudson Review 53.4 (Winter 2001): 639-648. DOI: 10.2307/3852631

Cavell, Stanley. Must We Mean What We Say? Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1976.

Coppola, Sofia. The Virgin Suicides. 1999. Film based on Eugenides’ novel.

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Eugenides, Jeffrey. The Virgin Suicides. London: Fourth Estate, [1991] 2013.

Garofalo, Daniela. Women, Love, and Commodity Culture in British Romanticism. Surrey: Ashgate, 2012.

Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse: An essay in method. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1980.

Hyde, Lewis. The Gift. London: Vintage Books, 1983.

Nussbaum, Martha. “Objectification”. Philosophy and Public Affairs 24.4 (October 1995): 249-291. DOI: 10.1111/j.1088-4963.1995.tb00032.x

Pamuk, Orhan. The Museum of Innocence. Trans. Maureen Freely. London: Faber and Faber Ltd., [2008] 2010.

Pamuk, Orhan. “The Best of Outlook Arts”, BBC Outlook. 3 January 2015. https://www.bbc.co.uk/ programmes/p02fnlhm

Phelan, James, and Peter J. Rabinowitz, eds. A Companion to Narrative Theory. Oxford: Blackwell, 2008.

Shostak, Debra. “‘A story we could live with’: Narrative Voice, the Reader, and Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides”. Modern Fiction Studies 55.4 (Winter 2009): 808-832. DOI: 10.1353/ mfs.0.1642

ABSTRACTS

The narrators of Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides (1991) and Orhan Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence (2008) spend their time obsessively gathering, curating and categorising objects associated with the objects of their affection. Talking about his novel, Pamuk argued that “the desire to gather objects is central to the human heart”, and in both of these novels, the male narrators react to the deaths of their beloveds by memorialising them in the form of object collections. The collections — one a group of “exhibits” and one a catalogue of the contents of a museum — serve both as a reminder of the beloved(s) and as a narrative aid, and are displayed to the unspecified “You”, the witness of the boys’ investigation in The Virgin Suicides and the museum visitor in The Museum of Innocence. In both cases, the collections are held up for investigation by the reader as proof of the narrator’s love. Both narrators obscure the subjectivity of their beloveds by confining them to the sum of the objects collected, presenting an essentially narcissistic projection of the self on to a muted, virginal other. I argue that the obsessive need for testimony demonstrated by both narrative voices reflects a fundamental incapacity to see the female other as a subject, drawing the reader, as witness, into the position of voyeur. By offering a post-mortem memorialisation of this kind, the narrators appropriate the image of their beloved(s), re-presenting them as objects among objects, albeit still the object of mystery and obsessive fascination. Exploring the use of visual touchstones (fictional in The Virgin Suicides, but real in The Museum of Innocence, which opened in Istanbul in 2009), I take Stanley Cavell’s idea of acknowledgement and Judith Butler’s theory of mournable lives to discuss memory, subjectivity and power in the recollection of the beloved dead.

Les narrateurs du roman de Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides (1991), et du roman de Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence (2008), passent leur temps à réunir, classer et exposer des objets en lien avec des êtres aimés. En parlant de son roman, Pamuk a dit que « le désir de réunir des objets est au centre du cœur humain ». Dans les deux romans, les narrateurs masculins réagissent à la mort de leurs aimées en les mémorialisant à travers des collections d’objets. Ces collections, l’un constituant un ensemble d’« expositions », l’autre un catalogue d’objets dans un musée,

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permettent de se souvenir de l’être aimé et servent de soutien narratif ; elles sont exposées au regard d’une personne non spécifiée (« You »), témoin de l’enquête des garçons dans The Virgin Suicides, et un visiteur du musée dans The Museum of Innocence. Dans les deux cas, les collections sont données au lecteur pour qu’il les étudie comme autant de preuves de l’amour du narrateur. Les deux narrateurs obvient la subjectivité de leurs aimées en les réduisant à un ensemble d’objets collectés, présentant une projection d’un Moi essentiellement narcissique sur un Autre virginal réduit au silence. Cette contribution montre que le besoin obsessif de témoigner de la part des voix narratives reflète une incapacité fondamentale de percevoir l’autre féminin comme un sujet, invitant le lecteur, comme témoin, à adopter la position d’un voyeur. En proposant ces mémorialisations post-mortem, les narrateurs s’approprient une image de leur aimée, et les représentent comme objets au sein d’objets, même si elles demeurent néanmoins un objet mystérieux, provoquant une fascination qui les obsède. En explorant des points de référence visuels (fictionnels dans The Virgin Suicides, réels dans The Museum of Innocence, qui a ouvert à Istanbul en 2009), cet article s’appuie sur la notion de reconnaissance (« acknowledgment ») développée par Stanley Cavell et la théorie de Judith Butler sur les vies dont on peut porter le deuil, afin d’analyser les questions de mémoire, de subjectivité et du pouvoir du ressouvenir des êtres aimés disparus.

INDEX

Mots-clés: corps, objet, sujet, mémoire, mémorial, genre, sexualité, mort, suicide, Pamuk Orhan, Eugenides Jeffrey Keywords: body, object, subject, memory, memorial, gender, sexuality, death, suicide, Pamuk Orhan, Eugenides Jeffrey

AUTHOR

CLARE HAYES-BRADY Clare Hayes-Brady is a lecturer in American Literature at University College Dublin. Her PhD focused on communication in the work of David Foster Wallace. Other research interests include the interaction of literature with film; transatlantic cultural heritage; performative sexuality (both normative and queer), resistant gender modes and the history of burlesque; digital humanities and modes of transmission; adolescence in contemporary fiction, and dystopian narrative. She has published and presented widely on aspects of contemporary American literature, with a particular focus on gender identity and voice. Her monograph on Wallace, The Unspeakable Failures of David Foster Wallace, is forthcoming (Bloomsbury Academic, February 2016). Contact: Clare.hayes-brady [at] ucd.ie

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Varia

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And: A Complex Little Word at the Heart of Janet Frame’s Language

Wilfrid Rotgé

1 My starting point is the shortest story in The Lagoon and Other Stories, a collection published in 1951 by New Zealand writer Janet Frame. The 337 word-long story is “The Birds Began to Sing” — it can easily be found on the Internet. The following lines are taken from the beginning of the story, and make up approximately one-third of the text: The birds began to sing. There were four and twenty of them singing, and they were blackbirds. And I said, what are you singing all day and night, in the sun and the dark and the rain, and in the wind that turns the tops of the trees silver? We are singing, they said. We are singing and we have just begun, and we’ve a long way to sing, and we can’t stop, we’ve got to go on and on. Singing. The birds began to sing. I put on my coat and I walked in the rain over the hills. I walked through swamps full of red water, and down gullies covered in snowberries, and then up gullies again, with snow grass growing there, and speargrass, and over creeks near flax and tussock and manuka. (Frame 1997: 157-58)

2 At the heart of this text is the little connecting word and. This in itself is not surprising, considering how often basic coordinators are used in every language around the world. According to the Oxford English Dictionary and based on the Oxford English Corpus, which contains over a billion words, and is the fifth most common word in the English language, following the, be (in all of its conjugated forms), to and of.1

3 It can thus be claimed that and is at the very heart of the language. What is more surprising, however, is to find so many instances of and in a literary text, particularly one with very little dialogue.

4 Given the widespread use of and in every type of discourse, one might surmise that this little word is semantically as well as stylistically unimportant. I will attempt to demonstrate that there is an underlying complexity beneath this apparent simplicity.

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1. Simplicity at the heart of Janet Frame’s language

5 What are the stylistic characteristics of this story? As it is very short, the reader may get the impression that it was not written for the adult reader, or that it may even have been written by a child — as it happens, Janet Frame has been criticized for writing ‘like a child’.

1.1. A childlike style

6 The vocabulary is simple, apart from two words that refer to nature (tussock and manuka, a plant native to New Zealand) and one borrowed from the field of music (vivace andante). It is quite visual and describes the narrator’s immediate environment (rain, hills, house, hand, head, body, sing, walk).

7 This childlike style is also reflected in numerous repetitions: the phrase the birds began to sing appears three times (not including the title of the story); the five words that make it up, each pronounced three times, add up to 15, or nearly 5% of the 377 words that make up the story.

8 The verb sing is used 14 times, the noun song 5 times, for a total of 19 occurrences of sing/song out of 377 words, or over 5% of the story. Three pronouns are used in abundance: I, we and they (39 occurrences not including my, your, them, or over 10% of the words); introductory there (there was/were) is used three times, two of them being there were four and twenty of them singing.

9 One sentence — which is actually a whole paragraph — actually begins with and: And I said (2nd paragraph). This is contrary to the stylistic rule that English-speaking adults, particularly writers, are supposed to abide by, which is: “Don’t start a sentence with and”. The reasoning behind this ‘rule’ is that this coordinator is supposed to be more structural than cohesive.2

10 Anthropomorphism in the story (the birds reply to the narrator’s query) reinforces the impression of a childlike atmosphere, coupled with a heightened level of subjectivity, resembling that of children, reflected in the construction and I, which is used eight times throughout the narrative. The narrator systematically repeats I after and, wherever such a repetition is optional: I put on my coat and I walked… / I sat on the stairs in the front and I listened. The pronoun is more often not repeated (I put on my coat and walked…) in English than it is repeated, unlike French, which expects the repetition of the pronoun.

11 Furthermore, the story has only two actants: the birds and I, and I is the implicit or explicit subject of nearly half the verbs.

1.2. A childlike syntax

12 At the heart of Frame’s language we also find childlike syntax. Several of the sentences follow the “Subject Verb Object/complement” order, as for instance: I put on my coat / They were blackbirds / I saw a pine tree on top of a hill.

13 The adult reader is sometimes compelled to mentally re-insert commas, as in the sentence I like to see vivace andante words by music by performed by written for, which is more easily read: I like to see vivace, andante, words by, music by, performed by, written for.

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14 Clauses are mainly connected by the coordinator and, which is used 25 times to connect two clauses, compared to seven non coordinating markers, to which we must add two instances of inter-clausal but. There are very few cases of syntactic embedding and few logical connectors (two buts and one although).

15 And is used 20 times to link clauses, but there are 35 occurrences of and overall. In the remaining 15 occurrences, and connects noun phrases, prepositional phrases and cardinal numbers. The proportion of ands compared to the rest of the text is very high (35 occurrences in 377 words, or a little over 9% of the text), which also confirms that it is at the heart of the story. We can compare this to the findings of a study carried out by Jean-Rémi Lapaire (2005) on ten works of fiction3 published between 1888 and 1922, in which the coordinators and, or, but and nor account for only 4% of the text.

16 The total number of coordinators (including 2 occurrences of but) make up roughly 10% of the story (37 out of 377); and and represents nearly 95% of the coordinators (compare with the figures put forth by Lapaire [2005], which vary between 68% and 80%). This very high proportion is also in keeping with a childlike style, in that and is the first conjunction to appear in language acquisition.

17 The author uses 141 different words in this 377-word story. Of the first 377 words of Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs Dalloway, there are 199 different words. The quantitative difference turns out to be less that what one might have expected. However, the types of words used vary greatly between the texts — highly referential, descriptive vocabulary in the story; vocabulary associated with meditation and thought, feelings, and assessment, alongside cabbages, cauliflowers and creaking doors in the novel.

1.3. A childlike universe

18 Another characteristic of the story is borrowings from nursery rhymes, as can be seen in: • the archaic expression four and twenty (There were four and twenty of them singing); • the explicit echo of the nursery rhyme Sing a song of sixpence (also called Blackbirds in a pie), in which we have the four and twenty blackbirds and the birds began to sing: “Sing a song of sixpence a pocket full of rye, / Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie. When the pie was opened the birds began to sing”4

19 This echo of the nursery rhyme, and thus of a literary genre meant for children, is unmistakable in Frame’s story, which clearly presents us with a childlike universe using a child’s words.

20 What I’m interested in now is the nature of the relationships that the coordinator and creates, as well as the illusion of a simple, unequivocal meaning of and. When two units are connected in this way, even by children, the resulting relationship is rarely as simple as merely adding a clause (Q) to another (P). In Janet Frame’s story, the reader has to map the logical connections between the two clauses him/herself. One might get the impression that the reader is expected not to be fooled by what appears to be simple juxtaposition or addition, to look for the complexity behind the simplicity, even if that means reassessing his/her judgment of the narrator’s apparent childlike, ingenuous and transparent style.

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2. And at the heart of Janet Frame’s language: a simple heart?

21 Is and a simple word meaning nothing more than P and Q, Info 1 (= P) and Info 2 (= Q)? This is unlikely, as the linking of two units by way of a marker, albeit a neutral one, impels us to look for a meaning beyond that of simple syntactic juxtaposition.

22 Grammar descriptions in use at university level often simply view and as a term linking words belonging to the same category (Swan 2005), or adding information (Hewings 2005). Even Leech and Svartvik (2002) only talk about the syntactic properties associated with and (category of P and of Q; possibility of omitting and; correlative coordination), and distinguish between “meaning-links” and “positive links” realized by and (2002: 191). Van Dijk (1979: 450) considers it to be a well-known fact that and can have a neutral and vague meaning.

2.1. The transparency of and

23 A relatively simplistic, transparent meaning can be identified in the way and is used when it first appears in Janet Frame’s text: four and twenty. It can be paraphrased here by the mathematical sign “+”: four and twenty = four + twenty, even though the two units are not equivalent. The expression is archaic in the context of the short story; it is Germanic in origin, although not archaic in German (vierundzwanzig), while “four + twenty” corresponds to a mathematical sum whose product is twenty-four. The sum four and twenty can be expressed as either four plus twenty or four and twenty, and there is no risk in contemporary English of confusion with the archaic cardinal.

24 Just like in nursery rhymes, it can be argued that in the phrase four and twenty here, and simply realizes an addition, with no further level of meaning. However, such usage, whereby and bears a resemblance with the sign “+”, is actually infrequent. Moreover, the addition is not mathematical, in which case the two units could be reversed (4 + 3 = 7 can be reversed: 3 + 4 = 7). In language, P and Q can rarely be reversed: there were four and twenty of them singing is not equivalent to there were twenty and four of them singing, which does not mean “24” but “20 and 4”. Therefore, even when and seems “neutral”, the order P and Q cannot be placed on a par with Q and P.

25 In all day and night, which features in the second sentence of the text, and can also be glossed by “+”: all day + all night (with the repetition of the determiner all). However, in this instance, P and Q can easily be reversed: what are you singing all night and day is grammatically correct (even though it is less frequent than all day and night).5 There is therefore the temptation to stop at a basic meaning for and in all day and night, “P and Q” — i.e. Q is what comes after P, and not to search for a second, indirect meaning. This would, however, be forgetting that, in language, word order construes meaning, and that order engenders another type of meaning, which would, in this case, be indirect.

2.2. Salience in P and Q

26 According to the conceptual metaphor identified by Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 128-32), CLOSENESS IS STRENGTH OF EFFECT, that is, proximity produces a stronger link, the relation is stronger between the verb singing and all day (= P) than between singing and all night (=

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Q). Singing all day and night suggests that the singing occurs more often in daytime than at nighttime, precisely because of the textual proximity, or at least that it occurs more naturally during the day. In addition, the most obvious element is often stated first and the most surprising last. The order P and Q hence has a raison d’être and is far from neutral.

27 It can also be noted that in the construction “P and Q”, P is salient6 compared to that of Q. All day and night does not have the same meaning as all night and day. Once P is asserted (day), the existence of Q (the opposite of P, therefore night) goes without saying. The salience can of course be modified by intonation: all day AND night or all day and NIGHT.

28 The salience placed on P with respect to Q varies. It is clear in I listened with my head and my eyes7 (P my head includes Q my eyes); it would be even clearer in you and I (the speaker is more self-effacing, compared to the addressee) or the king and I.

29 It is less clear in I walked […] over creeks near flax and tussock. What type of meaning needs to be reconstructed in flax and tussock, compared to tussock and flax? It can either be assumed that nothing more is said apart from 1. flax; 2. tussock, or it can be posited that a field of vision is established: P is viewed first, or P is what is recalled first, in which case P proves salient. In this case, a quantitative salience distinguishes the referents: what appears in higher quantity is placed more easily in the position of P. Our vision is focused on what is termed in cognitive theory the figure or trajector, as opposed to the ground or landmark (Langacker 2008). In other words, transitory and mobile elements are noticed more than stable elements. If a cat is seen on a roof, our attention will be drawn to the cat more than to the house. Similarly, it is easier to say I saw a house and a cat than I saw a cat and a house, precisely due to the salience of the house.

30 Logically, such salience disappears when the same lexical item is used in P and Q: we’ve got to go on and on (see the beginning of the short story) or I stood on a hill and looked and looked (see the middle of the short story). The segment I looked and looked cannot be understood simply in terms of 1. I looked; 2. I looked; it calls for interpretation, that of the intensification expressed by Q. To translate the intensification into French, the adverb encore could be added: “J’ai regardé et regardé encore” or even more likely “J’ai regardé encore et encore”. What comes to mind here is another of Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980: 127-28) conceptual metaphors: MORE OF FORM IS MORE OF CONTENT, that is, an additional verbal form (repetition of the verb) signals continuity,8 as in I looked and looked.

2.3. Reaching closure with and

31 If and clearly serves to link elements, the linkage is underscored by an initial dissociation between P and Q. Unification endorses the difference between two units; and therefore also works to separate and differentiate (Lapaire 2005). The differentiation underscored between P and Q leads to another value, which linguists do not always identify: linking both dissociates, and brings to a close. In P and Q, Q is interpreted as the last element. Another meaning can therefore be established for and: its ability to end a list, which is generally made up of two units. This ability can be associated with the “Oxford comma,” i.e. the use of a final comma before and in a list of

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things. It is commonly used in “The Birds Began to Sing” (as in in the sun and the dark and the rain, and in the wind…).

32 In what are you singing all day and night, Q (night) signals the end of a temporal list reduced to two items. Uttering and Q hence triggers an additional semantic layer to the structural link between P and Q.

33 Polysyndeton, i.e. the accumulation of ands when it is not grammatically required, gives rise to another interpretation. This stylistic device is another characteristic of Janet Frame’s short story, as in the example partially quoted above: I listened with my head and my eyes and my brain and my hands. Out of 35 instances of and, 12 involve polysyndeton — a particularly high proportion, equating to one third.

34 In French, polysyndeton can affect P — “J’ai écouté et avec ma tête et avec mes yeux et…” — but not in English: ? I listened and with my head and my eyes. In French, such an example would be considered highbrow and literary. However, in Janet Frame’s short story, polysyndeton confirms the childlike style. Hence the appearance of another value, that of accumulation, in P and Q and Z. After and Q, the list should have drawn to a close, but is reopened as there is not only and Q, but also and Z.

35 Once again, the idea of a simple, initial and neutral meaning for and is undermined. And serves a purpose. This small word engenders many interpretations, which are not mutually exclusive, such as addition, emphasis, salience, accumulation, textual proximity, closure, etc.

36 When and links two clauses, other interpretations can be envisaged, as we shall see hereafter.

3. Clausal coordination at the heart of Janet Frame’s language: a heart to be grasped

3.1. Clausal coordination vs. asyndetic coordination

37 Clausal coordination (i.e. linking two clauses) is illustrated by the second and third instances of and in the extract: There were four and twenty of them singing and they were blackbirds. And I said, what are you singing all day and night.

38 Out of the 35 instances of and, 15 involve clausal coordination (42%), a high rate in a literary text. However, such a frequency is hardly surprising in Frame’s writing. As noted earlier, her style is simplistic, and extremely oral. In general, coordination of words or phrases is more frequent in writing, while coordination of clauses more typical in speech (Leech and Svartvik 2002: 15).

39 In clausal coordination, it would be difficult to defend the hypothesis that the meaning of and could be reduced to its additive value, as if it were written (first line of the story): There were four and twenty of them singing + they were blackbirds.

40 In asyndetic coordination9 (There were four and twenty of them. They were blackbirds), the additive value may be defended, interpreted as Info 1: There were four and twenty of them; Info 2: They were blackbirds, but structural juxtaposition is generally understood to be a mental link (temporal, causal, contrastive, Q justifying P, etc.), which can, surprisingly, pave the way for more types of interpretation than coordination based on and (Radden and Dirven 2007: 54). For example, in There were four and twenty of them singing. They were

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blackbirds, P serves as “ground” and Q “figure”, hence allowing for a contrastive link: Q (They were blackbirds) takes on a value of counter-expectation with relation to P; Q is stressed more without and than in P and Q. The effect is more dramatic without the coordinator.10

41 I consider that coordination is not merely a syntactic phenomenon but also reflects a thought process. This position differs from typical descriptions whereby and possesses mainly syntactic properties and is discussed first and foremost in relation to clausal coordination rather than conceptual coordination. I would like to argue that coordination provides not only a syntactic construction but also a vision.

42 Clausal and conceptual coordination are inseparable: structural juxtaposition relies on mental connection (Lapaire 2005, building on Langacker 1991). Radden and Dirven (2007: 54-55) also use the term “conceptual” to describe the link between P and Q in “P and Q” (“The conceptual link between situations that are coded by means of co- ordination”), but they reduce the conceptual link to temporal or causal relations. This raises the question of the difference between subordination and coordination, at least when dealing with coordination between two clauses. The problem is, of course, absent from coordination of the type N and N — e.g. tussock and manuka —, given that the coordinator cannot be replaced here by a subordinator.

3.2. Interpreting inter-clausal and

43 A value of commentary can be observed in the first inter-clausal and of the story: […] of them singing, and they were blackbirds. The commentary bears on the left-hand context and is reinforced by the comma, which creates emphasis: there were four and twenty of them and on top of that / not only that but they were also blackbirds. Here, the colloquial conjunction plus springs to mind: plus, they were blackbirds, where the value of addition conferred by this item (plus = “+”) has been muted into a commentary of the type on top of that, which proves that adding one segment of text to another one is hardly neutral.

44 A negative or positive interpretation of the commentary will depend on the mental image that the co-utterer has of blackbirds. In British culture, blackbirds are associated with a melodious song (exemplified in the poem by Edward Thomas, Adlestrop, or R.S. Thomas’s A Blackbird Singing),11 an association confirmed in Janet Frame’s story. This first inter-clausal and sets up an intimacy with the reader, as well as an additional interpretation along the lines of “you know what to expect”. The second inter-clausal and of the short story reflects a more typical usage: And I said, what are you singing all day and night. And coincides with a clear distinction between two event types, i.e. between the description of the birds and the dialogue with them, hence discounting a cause- consequence interpretation for and. The mental link here is that of consecution, which can be glossed by and then.

45 Sentence-initial and is used far more frequently than certain style guides would have us believe. Its use here can be justified by the way it softens what would otherwise be an abrupt move between the two events: 1. Description of the birds; 2. Interaction between the characters (the narrator and the birds). It reduces the hiatus between two distinct levels of discourse. Thanks to and, the narration appears natural, in cue with reader- expectation, which corresponds to an interpersonal, modal commentary between narrator and reader (Rossette 2013). The first event therefore acts like a natural precursor for the second.

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46 The repetition of and in the story, particularly in sentence-initial position, guarantees flow, and also operates an intrinsic link between events, suggesting that things could not have been otherwise. This type of and can therefore be interpreted stylistically and is in no way gratuitous or superficial. Here again, and cannot be reduced to an additive value of the type P + Q. The relation marked by and gives rise to an interpretation that excludes the reversibility of the processes, which we would have in 2 and 3 is 5, which can be inverted: 3 and 2 is 5.

47 Consecution is frequent in clausal coordination, as in So I went back home… and I sat on the stairs in the front and I listened or I saw a skylark dipping and rising, in which the order P and Q reflects the order of events. In each instance, and can be interpreted as and then. Asyndetic coordination, as in So I went back home. I sat on the stairs in the front. I listened would not result in the same type of mental relation, due to the absence of a marker which would indicate a structural link, even when the marker is reduced in speech to the phoneme /n/, and the dissociation between events would normally be stronger. And renders the progression between events more fluid. The value of consecution is hardly surprising in the context of this story, where clause relations are above all chronological, a trait typical of Frame’s writing, where causality is relatively absent.

48 Causal links are only suggested, again via and, as in the cause-consequence relation in I am a human being and I read books, which can be understood as and so I read books.

49 In the story, conditional relations are not realized directly by the marker if, even less by unless. They are not absent however, and are either implicit or construed thanks to and: tell me [what the name of the song is] and I will write it, which can be interpreted as If you tell me the name of the song, I will write it. In this utterance, P and Q proves semantically close to subordination.

50 The difference between coordination based on and, and subordination based on if, lies in the fact that, in the first case, the meaning must be construed by the reader. The meaning also presents itself as a form of negotiation. Such an indirect meaning goes hand in hand with a greater degree of syntactic rigidity. The order of the clauses is more of a key component in coordination than in subordination: if P and Q are reversed, the condition completely changes (I will write the song and you tell me its name is understood as If I write the song you tell me its name). Conversely, in subordination, the order of the clauses is more flexible: I will write it if you tell me the name of the song corresponds to If you tell me the name of the song I will write it, even if there are certain differences between the two utterances, for example from the point of view of informational salience. This type of utterance proves the limits of the difference between coordination and subordination.

3.3. Unfathomable and

51 The interpretation of P and Q in the last sentence of the story raises several issues: So I said what is the name of the song, tell me and I will write it and you can listen at my window when I get the finest musicians in the country to play it, and you will feel so nice to hear your song so tell me the name. They stopped singing. It was dark outside although the sun was shining. It was dark and there was no more singing. (ADD REF)

52 In this instance of coordination, the reader may detect a double indirect meaning, and therefore a true sense of false naivety in the writing style, as some sentences can only

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be understood thanks to the other sentences of the context. At the end of the story, another level of naivety may be at stake: that of the reader, a reader who may be slightly condescending, having picked up on the simplistic use of coordination instead of the more complex and subtle use of subordination.

53 Indeed, an initial reading of It was dark and there was no more singing may result in the identification of a causal link: because it was dark, there was no more singing, or: It was dark, and so there was no more singing. This first reading is negated by the previous discourse. First of all, the notion of darkness is ambiguous, due to the preceding sentence: it was dark outside although the sun was shining. The darkness is atypical: vision is obscured by what is not dark (due to the sun shining).12 In addition, the causal link “darkness implies no more singing” is negated by what are you singing all day and night, in the sun and the dark, and also, although to a lesser extent, by We are singing and we have just begun, and […] we can’t stop, we’ve got to go on and on. Singing. It is therefore not the darkness that prevents the birds from singing, as opposed to what could be gathered from a hasty first reading. Basic ornithological knowledge confirms this: blackbirds sing at night.13

54 In fact, what puts an end to the song of the blackbirds is the narrator’s wish to give a name to the song, to confine it by way of a label, and simultaneously to imprison it within a script, within sheet music, and therefore to strip it of any freedom and/or spontaneity. To the symbolic death of their song, the birds prefer silence. The end of this free, non-scripted song produces in the narrator an obscure vision (even if there is no real darkness) and at the same time she notes that there was no more singing.

55 The causal value of and is hence eliminated. Should it therefore be deduced that and has a simple additive value here? Does this utterance read as: 1. There is darkness; 2. There is no more singing? This remains a possibility, but another, more complex interpretation may prove more appropriate, that of an emphatic relation, emphasizing Q as opposed to P: Not only was it dark, but there was also no more singing/ It was dark and on top of that there was no more singing.

56 This reading is rendered moot, however, with the preceding text: They stopped singing. It was dark outside although the sun was shining. It was dark and there was no more singing. In other words, Q [there was no more singing] is already contained in They stopped singing and P is a literal repetition of what precedes [It was dark].

57 Another interpretation could be that of contrast, with and equivalent to but or and yet: It was dark and yet there was no more singing. This would suggest that the birds sing more generally in the darkness, which is not the case, as they sing “all day and night”, with the first element, day, particularly salient.

58 After having ruled out the potential values of causality, emphasis and contrast associated with and, we come back to its initial meaning, that of addition: Q is placed after P, and P and Q are interchangeable: There was no more singing and it was dark. Let us recall that the interchangeability of P and Q in clausal coordination is rare. It can be posited that, in this final stage of the story, the narrator wants to play on the multiple interpretations synonymous with and, on the ambiguity of the relation between P and Q, in order for the reader to concede that, after several detours, there is a necessary return to an original, simple uninterpretable value, that of strict juxtaposition. Such an inter-clausal and, which is designed to help the text flow, to iron out the hiatus between two events, ends up reinforcing it, as at the end of the story there is a juxtaposition of

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two events, like two images: 1. It was dark; 2. There was no more singing. This last instance of and, which provides closure at two levels, blatantly expresses the disarray of the narrator who finds herself confronted with this state of affairs.

59 Hence we can grasp the false naivety associated with Janet Frame’s style. The narrator would not have been able to play with the reader to the same extent if she had used a subordinator, such as because or as (as it was dark there was no more singing).

Conclusion

60 After reading Janet Frame’s short story “The birds began to sing”, we may have the feeling that the narrator, with her false naïve style, might be playing with the reader and his/her desire to interpret the quantitatively most important word of the story, namely the coordinator and. At the core of the short story, the word and may actually suggest that everything we read is somewhat like P and Q: it invites several possible interpretations. In fact, all the short stories that make up The Lagoon and Other Stories may strike us as being simplistic or naïve, but they also invite us, like the lagoon, to look beyond the surface of things or rather: words.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bazin, Claire, and Alice Braun. Janet Frame, The Lagoon and Other Stories: naissance d’une œuvre. Paris: PUF, 2010.

Bussman, Hadumod. Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics. Trans. and eds. Gregory P. Trauth and Kerstin Kazzazi. London, New York: Routledge, 1996.

Chametzky, Robert. Coordination and the Organization of a Grammar. Chicago: U. of Chicago P., 1987.

Dik, Simon Cornelis. Coordination. Its implications for the theory of general linguistics. Amsterdam: North-Holland Press, 1968.

Fauconnier, Gilles, and Eve Sweetser. Spaces, Worlds and Grammar. Chicago: U. of Chicago P., 1996.

Frame, Janet. The Lagoon. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1997 [1951].

Givón, Talmy. English Grammar. A Function-Based Introduction. Vol. 1. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1993.

Givón, Talmy. Syntax. Vol. 2. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2001.

Halliday, M.A.K., and R. Hasan. Cohesion in English. London: Longman, 1976.

Hewings, Martin. Advanced Grammar in Use. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005.

Huddleston, R., and G.K. Pullum. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002.

Jakobson, Roman. Langage enfantin et aphasie. Paris: Minuit, 1969.

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Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980.

Lakoff, Robin. “If’s, and’s, and but’s about conjunction”. Studies in Linguistic Semantics. Charles J. Fillmore and D. Terence Langendoen, eds. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971. 114-49.

Landragin, Frédéric. “Saillance physique et saillance cognitive”. Cognition, Représentation, Langage (CORELA) 2.2 (2004). DOI: 10.4000/corela.603

Langacker, Ronald. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Vol. 2. Descriptive Application. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1991.

Langacker, Ronald. Cognitive Grammar. A Basic Introduction. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008.

Lapaire, Jean-Rémi. “Coordination et cognition”. Etudes anglaises 58.4 (2005): 473-495.

Lapaire, Jean-Rémi, and Wilfrid Rotgé. “And, or et but”. Linguistique et grammaire de l’anglais. Toulouse: PUM, 1991.

Leech, Geoffrey, and Jan Svartvik. A Communicative Grammar of English. London: Longman, 2002.

Oirsouw, Robert R. van. Deletion Processes in Coordinate Structures in English. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1981.

Oirsouw, Robert R. van. The Syntax of Coordination. London: Croom Helm, 1987.

Radden, Günter, and René Dirven. Cognitive English Grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2007.

Rossette, Fiona. “And-Prefaced Utterances: From Speech to Text”. Anglophonia 34 (2013): 105-135. DOI: 10.4000/anglophonia.234

Swan, Michael. Practical English Usage. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005.

Sweetser, Eve. From Etymology to Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990.

Van Dijk, T. “Pragmatic connectives”. Journal of Pragmatics 3.2 (1979): 447-456.

NOTES

1. Archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20160314215542/http://oxforddictionaries.com/ words/the-oec-facts-about-the-language 2. “The ‘and’ relation is felt to be structural and not cohesive, at least by mature speakers; this is why we feel a little uncomfortable at finding a sentence in written English beginning with And, and why we tend not to consider that a child’s composition having and as its dominant sentence linker can really be said to form a cohesive whole” (Halliday and Hasan 1976: 233). 3. Lady Windermere’s Fan, An Ideal Husband, The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde), Jacob’s Room, The Voyage Out (Virginia Woolf), Peter Pan (J.M. Barrie), A Room with a View (E.M. Forster), The Italian Hours, The Europeans, The Reverberator (Henry James). 4. The nursery rhyme continues: “Oh wasn’t that a dainty dish to set before the king? / The king was in his counting house counting out his money, / the queen was in the parlour eating bread and honey / The maid was in the garden hanging out the clothes, / When down came a blackbird and pecked off her nose!” 5. A casual Google search elicits almost 6 million references for all night and day, and more than 17 million for all day and night. 6. “A salient item is what first comes to mind, and what captures our attention. This property […] applies to discursive entities boasting certain lexical, syntactic, and semantic characteristics, as well as specific phonology and prosody in oral discourse or layout and font in written discourse. The notion of salience therefore involves a figure which detaches itself from a background,

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whether it be due to physical aspects of the spoken or written word, or more semantic or cognitive aspects to do with the interpretation of the utterance. That is why physical salience and cognitive salience can be distinguished, in order to grasp phenomena which come into play in the construction of similar meanings or antonymic meanings.” (Landragin 2004; my translation). 7. Here is the context from which the quote has been taken: “I wasn’t singing. I tried to sing but I couldn’t think of the song. / So I went back home to the boarding house where I live, and I sat on the stairs in the front and I listened. I listened with my head and my eyes and my brain and my hands. With my body. / The birds began to sing.” 8. Reduplication applied to verb indicates continuation or completion (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 128). 9. Asyndetic coordination is the omission of coordinators from constructions in which they would normally be used, as in: “Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils, / Shrunk to this little measure?” (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 1). 10. At least this is the case when and is used instead of asyndeton, which is not always possible, as in I listened with my head and my eyes and my brain and my hands. With my body, as the segment With my body corresponds to a hypernym here with respect to the previously mentioned notions (head, eyes, brain, hands). It would therefore be difficult to place and in front of With my body. 11. “It seems wrong that out of this bird,/ Black, bold, a suggestion of dark / Places about it, there yet should come / Such rich music, as though the notes / Ore were changed to a rare metal / At one touch of that bright bill.” R.S. Thomas. 12. All the biographies of Janet Frame underline her schizophrenia. The sentence It was dark outside although the sun was shining can be interpreted as the trace of a schizophrenic vision of reality: the contradiction marked by the subordinated although does not generally bear on complementary notions. Therefore, the bird is black although it is red is just as surprising, and delirious (in the psychological sense) as darkness in broad daylight. In contrast, It was dark outside although it was noon is not delirious: here, there is no contradiction, but rather a concession as regards logic because normally it is not dark at midday. 13. The reader may also have in mind the Beatles’ song Blackbird: “Blackbird singing in the dead of night,/ Take these broken wings and learn to fly/ All your life, You were only waiting for this moment to arise.”

ABSTRACTS

The aim of this paper is to provide an explanation of Janet Frame’s short story “The Birds Began to Sing” through a detailed study of the grammatical marker “and”, using concepts borrowed from cognitive grammar and the “theory of enunciation”. It also attempts to show how linguistic theory can be applied to a literary text, which is not used just as a linguistic corpus but analyzed in its literary specificity. The coordinator “and”, which is often perceived semantically as well as stylistically as unimportant, lies at the heart of Janet Frame’s short story. It gives it meaning and reveals an underlying complexity beneath the short story’s apparent simplicity and ultimately false naivety.

Le but de cet article est de proposer une explication à la nouvelle de Janet Frame intitulée « The Birds Began to Sing », grâce à une analyse détaillée du marqueur grammatical « and », en

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utilisant des concepts empruntés à la grammaire cognitive et aux théories de l’énonciation. Il tente également de montrer comment la théorie linguistique peut s’appliquer à un texte littéraire, utilisé non pas simplement comme un corpus linguistique, mais analysé dans sa spécificité littéraire. Le coordonnant « and », qui est souvent considéré comme étant sémantiquement et stylistiquement peu important, se trouve au cœur de la nouvelle de Janet Frame. Il lui donne un sens et fait apparaître une complexité sous-jacente à la simplicité apparente de la nouvelle, et finalement une fausse naïveté.

INDEX

Keywords: Frame Janet, short story, literature, linguistics, cognitive grammar, coordinator, conjunction Mots-clés: Frame Janet, nouvelle, littérature, linguistique, grammaire cognitive, coordonnant, conjonction

AUTHOR

WILFRID ROTGÉ Wilfrid Rotgé is Professor of linguistics and phonology at Paris Sorbonne University. He directs CeLiSo (Centre de Linguistique en Sorbonne), a research group that focuses on the grammar and phonology of English, Germanic and Slavic languages. Contact: rotge [at] wanadoo.fr

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An A to Z of Diasporic Life

Françoise Král

A

A is for amnesia

1 Emotional erasure of a place left behind in haste. A few belongings packed in a bag, a few mismatched items of clothing thrown together in a suitcase and some photos of a past one aches to part with. Sometimes a gramophone playing a few notes from a bygone era of pre-exilic bliss, drifting up to unresponsive ears and cold indifference, a jarring Masala of sounds and tones.

2 In the rearview mirror, the last glimpse of a motherland the exile fears he or she will forget while the economic migrant secretly longs to return; the coastline receding towards the horizon, its smells becoming more distant, its inhabitants like specks of dust on a line. A ‘line of flight’, a long list of incipits leaving the Distant shore behind; a Final Passage, a Voyage in the Dark…

3 Amnesia as collective amnesia and the need to nurse the dissolving bond with other diasporians once the umbilical cord with the homeland has been severed.

4 Structural amnesia, imposed by colonization, its crushing political structures forced upon the people, its language yoked to a reality it fails to fully capture and render, its history annihilating that of the country it was made to take over and whose children’s heads are emptied and then filled with the long lists of the glorious deeds of their Gaulish ancestors.

5 And in the end, the long-term amnesia of a country crushed by colonial history: total erasure, a blank slate, a point of no return.

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B

B is for body

6 Bodies deprived of their nourishment, forced to get used to foreign tastes and flavours; bodies craving the food of the nurturing land.

7 Culinary memoirs, weaving generations together over the years, a continuum of smells and textures, an exuberant garishness of subtle flavours, passed on from generation to generation, from mothers to daughters, bringing the home alive.

8 Mnemonic shrapnels encysting the memory of the diasporian, triggering bouts of melancholia or desperate attempts to recreate a flavour, a texture long lost and frozen in the atemporal bliss of childhood memories. Namesakes and ersatz of Indian cakes translated into the culinary grammar of spices made available on a global scale.

9 The body of the group at last as a ghostly presence and performative figure in a post- departure life; a need to connect, to bond, to cling together, through language and habits, through a commonality of experience.

10 Starving bodies, the bodies of those who drown, of those who never make it to the Distant Shore and whom the Distant Shore lets down.

11 Bodies of oblivion, the drowned, the diseased, the forgotten precarious lives lost in migration, hopelessly scattered and never to return, lives hardly mourned and never remembered, bodies adrift without a gravestone to remember them by. Liquified bodies of grief peopling our oceans to global indifference or intermittent focus, eyed suspiciously.

12 B is for ‘bodyscape’, visual landscapes of faces and features, made more familiar over the years, through photos and films, free-floating images making foreignness less foreign. And yet, laid out on the page, overexposed in lights too bright not to blink, the ‘other’ gazes back, equally opaque if not more so, despite repeated exposure, shrouded in multi-layered coats of discursive nonsense — brightness leading to more obscurity.

B is for Sonia Boyce, British artist of Guyanese origin (1962– )

13 Her vocal paintings denouncing missionary positions of power and Western scopophilia, the unlimited peeping at the disempowered, the noxious collusion of cognition and exploitation, climaxing in uninvited intrusions. Peep, an exhibition, a statement, forcing us to embrace and assume the role of peeping toms, up on our toes or bending forward to sneak a peek, as if through a keyhole, at the artefacts shrouded in paper. The West, framed and forced into the picture, forced to go through the looking-glass and stare back at its unhealthy curiosity; ugly monsters of perversion in disguise.

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C

C is for cut,

C is for caesura,

14 C sections of emotional pain as the migrant is uprooted from the nurturing land. The unbridgeable gap widening by the hour, the impossible return to a homeland whose receding line of flight progressively goes out of focus, while the migrant continues to follow his/her course away from it, hovering away in mock oblivion and imperfect remembrance, shrouded in misty recollections of Imaginary Homelands.

15 Still, the separation is real, the return impossible and the past on its way to being forgotten.

16 C is for cut, C is for caesura — the fantasized host country versus the reality, the myth — the promised land of unkept promises, of hopes deceived, a land of loneliness, a cold embrace for a heartless welcome, a sea of blind faces blinding him in return, leaving him staggering, his qualities unnoticed, his life unlived, his story untold.

D

D is for diaspora,

17 Diaspora, dia speirein, a scattering of fragments left to disseminate, yet longing to reunite into an aggregate, a whole, a body of others, resedimenting the past in a foreign land, fossilized fragments seeking refossilization in foreign territory. Historical diasporas which continue to haunt the citizen of the 21st century, the Jews, the Armenians, but arguably other diasporas whose sense of group identity and national filiation has resisted the passing of time and the blow of distance and estrangement, to continue to look back and see this façade of a home they long to return to.

D is for Ernest Dyche (1887–1973) Birmingham-based photographer,

18 his portraits a photographic chronicle of the changing face of Britain; new faces, new figures, West Indians sporting their uniforms as nurses or bus drivers, South Asians posing confidently in their Sunday best. Racial others no longer relegated to the margins of popular iconography but coming centre stage, confident, empowered, a pictorial revolution by means of commercial portraiture, leaving behind the feminized figures unmanned by orientalist painters, frozen in an atemporal stasis — horses standing still, movement coming to a halt, a surreal space from which time has been banned.

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E

E is for exile

19 A more radical form of diaspora, wrenching one from the beloved bosom of the homeland often for quite some time, possibly forever. The fear of leaving for good and never to return, the need to forget and fight off the urge to remember and grieve. Exile, exiled, hopefully a temporary stage, a station of the cross, the better to return.

E is for exhibitions

20 — forced displays of commodified bodies belonging to individuals whose consent has not been sought; Hottentot Venuses — their bodies, coveted in the name of science and cognition, eyed and handled without any precaution, dissected, desecrated, disposed of.

E is for eclipse,

21 The eclipse of the body in 20th century art, a strange irony of art history. A body aching to return and bear witness to the horrors it has been through. Bodies of ‘others’, bodies of evidence, evidently absent. Eclipsed by new fads, a swing of the pendulum, a strange coincidence, the black body steps in, exit the white body, exit the body in the great invisibilizing shift to abstract art — Mirzoeff’s blinding truth.

F

F is for fences,

22 Boundary lines of shame barely containing floods of people — ribbons of human silhouettes, expanding and shrinking, and then stretching to breaking point, snaking in and out of a pitch black tunnel in the hope of a luminous exit.

F is for fractus,

23 the unredeemable break, a permanent cut — before and after, home and away, and then the polarities are swapped. Hovering back and forth for years, the home becomes foreign and the foreign land is tamed, in check, under control.

F is for fractal,

24 a large-scale disaster of gaping inequities getting worse by the hour, unfair, unfairer, as the rich get richer and the poor poorer. No longer going West, they all have to go South, where the rents are low and the purchasing power high, purchasing power, poor chasing power, deterritorialized puppets entangled in rhizomatic roots, pawns on the global chessboard wiped off the board by the Kings, Queens and Bishops of global capitalism.

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G

G is for Ghost

25 Ghostly presences haunting our memory, ghosts lingering on well past their move out date. Invisible presences showing us the way back into the past, a move forward a step backward.

26 Gothic forms of textual subversion.

27 Gory details relegated to the footnotes of official history,

28 Ghosting the archives, lurking in the Dark of Heartness.

G is for geographies, imaginary geographies,

29 a blurred global landscape of shifting lines firmly cutting across the land. Virtual territories superimposed on existing nations, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes: the new realities of a market-colonized world. Pockets of wealth and pockets of poverty side by side, a distended archipelago where the various units have ceased to interface. Islands drifting apart, a fractal geography of pain, a fractal geography of loss. And everywhere huddled masses lost in the chaos-world, marching on, stomping a march of global dissonance.

G is for Edouard Glissant (1928-2011)

30 and his polyphonous mapping of a chaos-world; the jarring ensemble chartered in his Poétique de la Relation; visionary statements seen through a Caribbean lens, a rich complexity as entry point into the Tout-Monde, a call for a polyglossic world of thriving heteroglossia, read and told in all the languages of the World.

H

H is for home,

31 A transient shape caught in the rearview mirror. S/he tries not to look back, turns a blind eye on the face of grief, concentrating hard on what looms ahead, a façade of a new home, like a mirage in the desert, hazy and out of reach. A ghostly shape calling us, compelling us to go nearer.

32 Icarus’s myth, played out over and over again. Yet s/he marches on, no pain, no gain.

33 Home, the prospective façade, the light ahead without which the progress would come to an end, the necessary milestone which makes collective dreams seem possible.

H is for home,

34 real homes, cosy homes, not makeshift camps with tin roof huts and no lavatories.

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H is for Home,

35 Mona Hatoum’s installation, featuring a set of metallic kitchen utensils laid out on a table, encased in an open space fenced in by electric wires making sizzling noises; home turned into an open space, up for grabs and unprotective, yet enclosed in its inexistent cosiness, its coldness, its sense of danger and precariousness. Home as cold rather than cosy, sharp rather than soft, a space, not a place, where there is no respite : buzzing sounds keeping you awake, artificial humming where there is no homing in; the open space of exposure, a shocking absence of privacy, bodies exposed, transient, unrooted, unmoored, cordoned off but unable to settle, take root or spread their wings and escape the constricting borderlines of horror. Inspired by an exilic trajectory of the twice displaced, a country not fully bidden farewell to and yet left behind for good, a life rerooted in a safe haven, but an ethical need to expose the ongoing horror of displacement and exile.

I

I is for in-between

36 The in-betweenness of the migrant, eternally moored to the homeland whilst casting new roots in a new land.

37 In-between languages, his mind inhabited by foreign idioms and hard-wearing turns of phrase, linguistic weeds constantly reappearing, rhizomatic, rippling around an epicentre of pain. A lingering presence casting a disturbing shadow on a reborn self.

I is for islands,

38 disseminated fragments, autonomous entities, separate units in a world gone global, a world of un/commonwealth, an ugly archipelago of ill-matched fragments, a messy quilt. Jarring atoms of an irredeemable future, drifting apart, ever-apart.

J

J is for Gish Jen, Chinese American novelist;

39 her Mona seeking a Promised Land. Mona and other typical Americans finding their way through the changing geography of the city, constantly on the move, catchment- hunting, social climbing. Models of integration fitting into the mold of the model minority, melting into the melting pot, a vortex of different ethnicities, all absorbed in their own time into the core of the nation, a morphing core, a changing sense of nationhood.

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K

K is for Kempadoo, Roshini Kempadoo, Black British artist casting new light on colonial oppression

40 — digitalized scenes of Sweetness and Light (1996-7), staging the internalized subservience of the doubly crushed — women, ancestors, mothers and daughters, depositories of a legacy of convenient commodification, objects of desire, objects, objectified, curious specimen eyed with unconcealed greed; rotating figures on display, aligned, up for grabs.

L

L is for loneliness,

41 the solitude of unmoored lives floating adrift, the Lonely Londoners and their Inheritance of Loss, doubly alienated by unwelcoming hosts and scornful fellow countrymen.

42 L is for loneliness — liberating as well — room for reinvention with limited luggage instead of trunks full of trinkets cramming a home hardly settled.

43 Light luggage — a gunny sack — or no luggage at all, the better to reinvent oneself — freely melting into the liquid modernity of our contemporary lives.

44 Light-footed female footprints tiptoeing their way into the world outside, into Brick Lane and further afield, the Nazneens, Ashimas and Jasmines of this world.

M

M is for migrants — not emigrants, not immigrants — but migrants,

45 doomed to migrancy, ever to migrate — a transitory stage turned into a status — a no man’s land for life, bounced back, kicked out, short-term acceptance with a proviso, roots with no room to reroot, lives hanging by a thread, dangly puppets dropped in the ocean and drowning.

46 Media coverage, intense but intermittent, fleeting, flimsy silhouettes, they frazzle out of focus dissolving into the one word: Migrant.

47 Migrant, an awkward present participle creeping into common language — citizens and fellow human beings, wake up to the horror — the horror the horror!

M is for museums and their archaeology of the past,

48 the compulsive archiving and displaying without self-examination. The relentless race for more artefacts leaving African villagers aghast and traumatized, Dakar expeditions and their cultural ethnocides.

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N

N is for Notes,

49 compulsive note-taking of the first explorers, keen to note and order, telegraphic style for a fact-based study parading as science, parading as knowledge.

N is for Mira Nair and her insights into Indian life and its diasporas,

50 Masalas and other hybrids, cultural mixes rerooted and always on the go — Indians in Kenya, kicked out and doubly diasporized, twice subalterns.

O

O is for oblivion,

51 tentative, imperfect, yet obligatory, a wilful quest to mute the past and prevent it from choking the shrill cries of joy of the rerooted, rerouted subject.

P

P is for Palimpsest

52 In lieu of a tabula rasa — under the surface, a subtext of pain written in bright indelible ink — scratching the surface, laying it bare, the pain lies there, unerased, irreducible.

53 Linguistic palimpsests inscribed upon the body, words scarring an immaculate skin, Measures of Distance laid bare for all to see, the body exposed in all its honesty.

P is for partition,

54 an ugly scar for an unhealed wound — a legacy of pain scarring the land, marring the surface, cutting into the flesh of the country — a symbolic dismemberment, two halves of a name cut in two, useless corridors leading up to a wall, rooms without a door to enter or exit the shadow lines of pain; for who does the bell toll? For Midnight’s children awaiting in the womb.

55 Partition trains taking their bloodied cargo of sacrificial victims home, a line of impossible flight, a line of shame tearing families apart, and among the victims, women, wives or sisters, mothers or daughters parted by partition.

P is for Piper – Keith Piper – Black British artist and figurehead of the BLK movement,

56 Piper’s Still for the Fictions of Science, a subtle visual palimpsest, a side view of a man, a black man, “negroid type”, freely framed; measuring devices, a silent hymn to poor Saartje. And definitions, craniology; a name one can barely make out and whose boundaries are not clear, the bare bones of human ignorance parading as science. A

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line, a hazy line, science and pseudo-sciences, craniology, phrenology, a quantum of nonsense followed by an infinity of pain. Science beware thy destructive hubris.

P is for Phillips – Caryl Phillips

57 — a Kittitian-originated journey for a transatlantic œuvre, an inveterate diasporian relentlessly mapping the complex cartography of his Atlantic Home, penning plots about forced displacement, charting invisible trajectories of pain — the uncharted lives of the great invisible — spectral presences of Lost Children lost in migration. Phillipsian trajectories of pain leaving emotional footprints, haunting voices caught in an echo chamber of textual entanglements cazually weaving their way into criss-crossing yarns while his reader learns to tune in to the Atlantic Sound.

Q

Q is for quest

58 — the alpha and omega of the diasporic tale, a quest for a better life, seeking more, seeking better, hoping to make it big in the land of failed promises. A quest turned into a request, an unheard one lost on deaf ears.

R

R is for Larry Rivers

59 — I Like Olympia in Black face; not a negro teamster nor a corked figure made to entertain the white spectator, but a vocal response to Manet’s Olympia and its black figure fading into the dark background. The black female coming centre stage, a daring nude venturing into taboo territory; a respectful take for a crafty artwork cunningly playing with the codes of 3D artwork, the curvaceous body lying flat, the erotic power neutralized, and all that there is left are shades of blackness, shades of whiteness, a healthy hybrid, not a decadent monster of our fearful imaginations. Ironic inversions.

R is for Rose, Tracy Rose, South African artist (1974–)

60 Rose’s bodies of hope in a newly reconciled society, luscious entanglements of love, Rodin revisited, A Kiss, Just a Kiss. Apartheid brought to an abrupt end in an embrace.

R is for return, the impossible return, yet always on the horizon

61 Impossible: How to go back and admit defeat¸ intense weariness, the pain of unbelonging, the agony of repeated pretense. Return? Impossible, for it would mean admitting to flaws at the heart of the promised land, a fake myth, its streets not paved with gold. Return? Impossible, home is no longer home, they have moved on while part of him has stayed the same, a fossilized fragment seeking refossilization.

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R is for Donald Rodney, Black British artist (1961–1998)

62 In the House of My Father (1997) a disturbing sculpture made with the artist’s own flesh, a strange exhibit, tiny, delicate, disturbing, held in the palm or his hand, the skin, strangely translucent, black yet not really black. A question of light, a question of exposure, blackness relativized. An ode to the body, a work exposing art’s tentative attempt to transcend death. An unreasonable promise unkept.

S

S is for surprise

S is for shock

63 Stepping out of the boat on a frigid morning, finding one’s way out of the train station on a foggy day — Shocking truth behind the myth: no promised land in sight but dingy streets and bleak façades, streets to the left, streets to the right, streets and alleys, none of them paved with gold. Hopping on a double-decker with a vague goal in mind, heading for the job centre.

64 Tales of the two Cities, the real and the imaginary, the promised land flanked by its pathetic Dopplegänger.

S is for Selvon

65 — Sam Selvon’s insightful chronicle of the impossible move: Moses Ascending, Moses Migrating. Moses unsettled, seeking a land of milk and honey, seeking solace back in a homeland that’s no longer a home.

66 Sea crossings made by the first explorers as a prerequisite for later expansion, appropriation, colonization. Sea crossings, slaves huddled in overcrowded slave ships, travelling in the dark, malnourished, cold and sick, sometimes ill, dying, dead, thrown overboard, and forgotten until the big awakening, too late, too mute, too focused and not performative enough to avoid the new deaths at sea.

S is for silence,

67 silenced testimonies and untold stories, silence of the polyglot whose voice is trapped in the sonorities of a linguistic straitjacket, uttering sounds thought of as gibberish, seeking the right shade of meaning, speaking the same language in a foreign tongue, struggling to translate jokes or simply to express himself, his voice lost in translation. His untranslated self has stayed home while an ersatz has made the journey.

T

T is for Turner’s Slavers throwing overboard the Dead and Dying,

68 slaves thrown overboard to secure insurance money, dying an unnatural death, a bloodied cargo, an unethical gamble, slaves drowning and sinking to the bottom of the

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sea while the ship moves on, making hasty progress towards its fatal end¸ sky clouding into dark layers of ominous clouds announcing judgment day. The two lives of the painting, a mild welcome on British soil, a sea of criticism in the land of freedom, a feast of bad faith as all eyes are focused on the floating manacles awkwardly defying gravity. Lives vanishing without so much as a place of Memory to remember them by, greedy fish ready to eat the remains. A good dose of poetic license forcing us face to face with a conveniently invisible outcome had gravity done its job. The manacles would have conveniently drowned and the corpses would have been invisible instead of floating up to remembrance. And they went on to be remembered, by poets, from Marlene Nourbese Philip’s Zhong! to David Dabydeen’s sequel to Turner’s painting.

69 Slaves, invisible shapes of D’Aguiar’s novel Feeding the Ghosts.

U

U is for unlearning

70 — unlearning a life, a language and a place, a former self left behind.

U is for unmooring,

71 letting go of one’s bearings and beliefs, stepping out in the open and venturing onto shaky ground.

72 Utopia, impossible, incorrect, a gross caricature that no one dares to denounce, so they march on, seeking the cold embrace of its Distant Shore, a dystopic truth of numbing hideousness.

V

V is for vortex

73 — Anish Kapoor’s tantalizing installation Descension in the gardens of Versailles

74 A bubbling liquid vortex facing the grand canal

75 An Awe-inspiring spiral of liquid energy threatening to engulf the viewer

76 Death by water, death at sea — a chain of images, a haunting presence of liquid deaths

77 From the men who drowned in the marshland for Louis’s grandeur to castaway slaves thrown overboard in haste.

78 Death at sea, no sea change, floods of migrants dying in the sea.

79 Vortexes of absorption into the melting pots of modern nations, blending in, fitting in or simply drowning in a sea of sameness.

80 The Sea is History, Walcottian rewriting of an untold past, free-floating memory, unmoored, unarchived yet indexed to ethical relapse.

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W

W is for wheelchair

81 as in Mona Hatoum’s compelling artwork featuring a wheelchair whose handles are two blades; a strange mix of adverse emotions, sympathy empathy and fear. An empty chair as an ode to an absent body, dead, dying, or gone never to return, a symbol of frailty turned into a weapon, a strange interplay of adverse emotions. A fine line, a cutting line, bringing the viewer’s face to face with the reality of traumatic diasporas, the unchosen move to save one’s life.

W is for weavers,

82 Hatoum’s installation at the Béguinage Ste Elizabeth, Kortrijk; a large room, abandoned, deserted but not empty; balls of hair scattered on the floor, an ode to a long gone community of weavers, a remote presence, an invisible footprint leading to a forgotten past — a short sense of intimacy.

W is for Wilson, Fred Wilson (1954– )

83 His provocative rewriting of American history in the form of museum installations, or rather in the form of insidious juxtapositions in official collections. Refined crockery marred by manacles, a strange coming together of brutality and refinement, a metaphor for history, American slavery, a success story of capitalized wealth based on triangular oppression.

W is for Williams — Bert Williams — black American entertainer at the turn of the 20th century.

84 Famous and rich, rich but lost, famous and lost; corking his face to please white audiences, giving them what they wanted to see until they wanted to see him no more.

X

X is for xenophobia as the point of departure and the finishing line,

85 a long-drawn journey of stormy mishaps across oceans for a disappointing finding… looping the loop of human exclusion.

Y

Y is for yonder, the ever-moving line of a long journey;

86 receding further and further afield like all the other promises immigration had in store for him. Wealth……… yonder……… fame……… yonder………… success…………… yonder…………. better life…………. just about.

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Z

Z is for Zhong — notorious slaveship

87 — floating grave of the 132 slaves thrown overboard by slavers. Rescuing cargo money from probable death by epidemics, pushing them overboard to certain insurance- covered hazard — DEATH — death at sea, death by drowning. Lives that do not count, lives that no one cares about, lives freely disposed of, haunting us, from Turners’ slaves ship to literary tributes, a polyphony of humane voices responding to the cold orders uttered by heartless slavers.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ali, Monica. Brick Lane. New York: Scribner, 2004.

Bauman, Zygmunt. Life in Fragments. Essays in Postmodern Morality. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995.

Butler, Judith. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London/New York: Verso, 2004.

Ghosh, Amitav. The Shadow Lines. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1988.

Gilman, Sander L. ‘Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-Century Art, Medicine, and Literature.” Critical Inquiry 12.1 (Autumn 1985): 204-242. DOI: 10.1086/448327

Glissant, Édouard. Poétique de la Relation. Paris: Gallimard, 1990.

Glissant, Édouard. Traité du Tout-Monde. Paris: Gallimard, 1997.

Jen, Gish. Mona in the Promised Land. London: Granta Books, 1997.

Král, Françoise. Critical Identities in Contemporary Anglophone Diasporic Literature. New York/ Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

Král, Françoise. Social Invisibility and Diasporas in Anglophone Literature and Culture: The Fractal Gaze. New York/ Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Lahiri, Jhumpa. The Namesake. New York: Houghton/Mifflin, 2003.

Memmi, Albert. Portrait du Colonisé, Portrait du Colonisateur. Paris: Corréa, 1957.

Mirzoeff, Nicholas. Bodyscape. Art, Modernity and the Ideal Figure. New York: Routledge, 1995.

Mukherjee, Bharati. Jasmine. New York: Grove Press, 1989.

Phillips, Caryl. The Final Passage. London: Faber & Faber, 1985.

Phillips, Caryl. A Distant Shore. London: Secker and Warburg. 2003.

Nourbese Philip, Marlene. Zong! Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 2008.

Rhys, Jean. Voyage in the Dark. London: Penguin 2000 [1934].

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Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things. London: Flamingo, 1997.

Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children. London: Jonathan Cape, 1981.

Rushdie, Salman. Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981-1991. London: Granta Books, 1991.

Said, Edward. Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. London: Penguin Books [1978] 1995.

Marangoly George, Rosemary. The Politics of Home.: Postcolonial Relocations and Twentieth-Century Fiction. Berkeley: U. of California P., 1999 [1996].

Selvon, Sam. The Lonely Londoners. London: Penguin, [1956] 2006.

Selvon, Sam. Moses Ascending. London Heinemann, [1975] 1984.

Selvon, Sam. Moses Migrating. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2009 [1983].

Vassanji, M.G. The Gunny Sack. Toronto: Anchor: 2005 [1989].

Walcott Derek. ‘The Sea is History’. Collected Poems, 1948-1984. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1986.

List of art works

Boyce Sonia. Missionary Position II, 1985. Watercolour, pastel and crayon on paper. 1238x1830mm (48 ¾ x 72)

Peep. Exhibition, Brighton Museum’s Collection of non-Western art and ethnography, 1995.

Kapoor Anish, Descension. Installation, whirlpool of black water. 2014.

Kempadoo, Roshini. Sweetness and Light. 1996-7.

Hatoum, Mona. Home. 1999. Installation. Wooden table, steel, kitchen utensils, electric wire, 3 light bulbs, software and audio.

Hatoum, Mona. Measure of Distance. 1988. Colour video, 15 min.

Lewis, Dave. ‘Untitled’, Haddon Photographic Collection, Cambridge University Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, 1985.

Lewis, Dave. https://www.vidaimage.co.uk/

Lewis, Dave. http://www.focaalblog.com/2015/08/03/dave-lewis-field-work/

Piper Keith. Still from the Fictions of Science, 1996.

Piper Keith. http://www.keithpiper.info/

Rivers, Larry. I Like Olympia in Black Face. 1970. Oil on wood and plexiglas, 182x194x100cm.

Rodney, Donald. In the House of my Father. 1997.

Tracey Rose. The Kiss, 2001.

Turner, William J.M. Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and the Dying – Typhon coming on. 35 3/4x48 ¼. 1840. Oil on canvas.

Films

Nair, Mira. Mississippi Masala. SCS Films, 1992. US 118 min.

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ABSTRACTS

‘Diaspora’ often rhymes with nostalgia for reasons linked to the very nature of diasporic living, from the original moment of ‘unmooring’ from the homeland, to the process of rerooting of diasporic populations in the host country. The shaping of the collective memory of a diaspora, which marks the specificity of diasporas as opposed to other forms of migrations and their more individual trajectories, takes various forms: the forced erasure of history in formerly colonized countries (Memmi) often leaves an indelible mark which the trauma of loss and the sometimes dramatic contexts of diasporic unmooring reinforce. Memory builds up in a rhizomatic way, randomly weaving together fragments of different contexts, creating a storebank of jarring polarities. The following text seeks to evidence the constitutive iteration of the diasporic psyche from the initial moment of uprooting and displacement which signals the start of diasporic living. It revolves around the forming of a collective memory, passed on and transmitted to younger generations, and which holds the members of the diaspora together. The form of the A to Z imposes strict formal constraints, which the free-floating associations seek to challenge. The following ABC is by no means an exhaustive presentation of diasporic experience as a whole — how could it be — but a personal take on contemporary diasporic writers and artists mainly from the West Indies and South Asia through references and allusions to their works.

L’expérience diasporique est souvent associée à la nostalgie tant la séparation, la perte et le désarrimage sont au cœur de la trajectoire diasporique, au terme de laquelle le sujet replante ses racines dans une patrie d’accueil. La constitution d’une mémoire collective est essentielle car constitutive de la diaspora en tant qu’entité. C’est notamment cette mémoire collective qui distingue l’expérience diasporique d’autres types de migrations aux trajectoires plus individuelles. Cette mémoire collective peut prendre plusieurs formes et aller de l’amnésie forcée, qui est souvent le lot des populations issues des pays anciennement colonisés (Memmi), à une amnésie liée à la perte et au trauma et qui continue de marquer les membres d’une diaspora. Cette mémoire collective se forme tel un rhizome poussant au gré des entrelacs arbitraires et s’agrège à partir de fragments issus de différents contextes qui se côtoient en une cacophonie stridente. Elle perdure au gré de transmissions successives, de génération en génération. Le texte qui suit cherche à mettre en évidence l’itération caractéristique de la psyché diasporée, depuis le moment du ‘désarrimage’, qui marque le début de l’expérience diasporique. La forme de l’abécédaire pose un certain nombre de contraintes formelles que les associations libres tentent de repousser. Ce texte ne prétend pas à l’exhaustivité — comment d’ailleurs le pourrait-il — mais se veut être un hommage à des écrivains ou artistes contemporains originaires de l’Inde ou de la Caraïbe.

INDEX

Mots-clés: Boyce Sonia, Glissant Édouard, Hatoum Mona, Lewis Dave, Nair Mira, Phillips Caryl, Piper Keith, Rhys Jean, Rushdie Salman, Selvon Sam, Walcott Derek Keywords: Boyce Sonia, Glissant Édouard, Hatoum Mona, Lewis Dave, Nair Mira, Phillips Caryl, Piper Keith, Rhys Jean, Rushdie Salman, Selvon Sam, Walcott Derek

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AUTHOR

FRANÇOISE KRÁL Françoise Král is Professor of English and Postcolonial studies at the University of Caen Normandie (France). Her publications include two monographs in the field of diasporic studies, Critical Identities in Contemporary Anglophone Diasporic Literature (Palgrave, 2009) and Social Invisibility in Anglophone Diasporic Literature and Culture: The Fractal Gaze (Palgrave, 2014). She has co-edited two books: Re-presenting Otherness: Mapping the Colonial ‘Self’ /Mapping the Indigenous ‘Other’ in the Literatures of Australia and New Zealand (2004) and Architecture and Philosophy: New Perspectives on the Work of Arakawa and Gins (co-edited with Jean-Jacques Lecercle, Rodopi, 2011) and guest-edited an issue of Commonwealth, Essays and Studies, Crossings (37.1 autumn 2014). She had published many articles in the field of postcolonial literature and diasporic studies and is co- organizer of the ‘Diasporic Trajectories’ seminar series (IASH, University of Edinburgh 2015-2016) which focuses on diasporic studies viewed through the dual lens of Anglophone and francophone diasporas. Contact: fmkral [at] gmail.com

Angles, 2 | 2016