TOM MCCARTHY AND METAMODERNISM, AN UNEASY DIALOGUE.

AN ANALYSIS OF THE NOVEL C AND ITS RELATION TO THE METAMODERN FRAMEWORK.

Rodolfo Alpizar Carracedo Stamnummer: 015002362

Promotor: Prof. dr. Birgit Van Puymbroeck

Masterproef voorgelegd voor het behalen van de graad master in de Taal- en Letterkunde: Engels

Academiejaar: 2016 - 2017

Acknowledgements

‘No man is an island’1 is the first thing that comes to mind when looking at the completed form of this dissertation. As I wait for Alexandra to finish her relentless proofreading of my final draft, I think of all the people and conditions that allowed for this moment to happen.

In what now seems like a decade ago, I was lucky to have a conversation with dr. Birgit van Puymbroeck where the idea to write a dissertation about Tom McCarthy’s work was born. I was interested in those places where literature and philosophy meet, and dr. Van Puymbroeck came up with the suggestion of working with this contemporary enfant terrible. His novel C has all the ingredients of what I was looking for: commitment, challenge, wit and mischief. However, I must admit that in diving into the world that lies under its pages, I would feel at moments like Alice falling down a rabbit hole of infinite doors, with mixture of excitement and anxiety. I must express my deepest gratitude to my promotor dr. Van Puymbroeck for her constant encouragement, and for steadily guiding my research along its many turns.

Only a strongly supportive network of family and friends have kept me from losing all traces of sanity along this road. On the one hand, I am most indebted to my Greek-Belgian family, my wife’s parents and brothers for having accepted me as one of their own, for the care and the interest on my work and for the generous help with the big and small practicalities of life, which granted me enough physical and mental space for my studies.

It is also with the emotional support of my parents, sister, her husband and my incredible nephew that I have been able to navigate the writing of this thesis.

Above all, I express my gratitude to Alexandra, my wife and best friend, for being actively present at all the stages of this road; for coping with the roles of partner and mother of our child and still being able to find the time to be a patient listener and a candid contributor to the ramblings of her obsessive husband; first and foremost, for keeping me human.

1 John Donne, MEDITATION XVII. Devotions upon Emergent Occasions. 1624

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Table of Contents

Introduction ...... 3

Chapter I. Charting Metamodernism. Oscillation and Modernism Inhabited from the Present...... 8

Modernism, Postmodernism and the Problems of Periodization...... 8

Metamodernism ...... 13

Metamodernism in literature ...... 23

Criticism ...... 25

Chapter II. C by Tom McCarthy, a black box of literary ideas ...... 29

Engaging with the mythos of the avant-garde ...... 30

A Trojan Horse ...... 31

Transmission and media ...... 36

A Wolf Man and a crypt. All code is burial ...... 37

Technology and the Death Drive ...... 41

Death as space ...... 44

Failure ...... 46

Conclusions ...... 49

Bibliography ...... 52

20727 words

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Introduction

By the time the novel C by made its way into the bookstores, its author Tom McCarthy was already familiar with being the subject of much heated discussion. Being the founder and General Secretary of an art collective that intended to colonize death as a type of space (INS Founding Manifesto, 1999), and after having published a work of high-flown literary criticism on pop-culture icon Tintin (McCarthy, 2006), it would not come as a surprise that this novel carried within enough thorny ingredients as to polarize its readership. C resists categorization, it plays with genre expectations as it hints to encoded meanings under its many layers. However, at its time of publication it gathered enough recognition as to be shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

McCarthy’s previous novel Remainder had a long tortuous story of finding its way into mainstream publishers. After several rejections, it had been picked up by an obscure art press and distributed at art exhibitions before it eventually caught the attention of the critics. A turning point in its recognition would be the exceptional praise it received from Zadie Smith in an article for The New York Review of Books. Smith labelled Remainder ‘one of the great English novels of the past ten years, [which] clears away a little of the dead wood, offering a glimpse of an alternate road down which the novel might, with difficulty, travel forward’ (Smith, 2008). Among other characteristics, she celebrated Reminder’s full consciousness of the ideas that underpin it, its artistical and theoretical antecedents, together with the rejection of ‘lyrical realism’ (Smith, 2008). Above all, she acknowledged the way Remainder is aware of and attempts to negotiate the limitations of language as a means of representation; its attention ‘to the damaged and the partial, the absent and the unspeakable’ (Smith, 2008). Such high praise raised brought much attention to McCarthy’s work, but it also set a high standard for his following work of fiction to match. C, nevertheless, is a bold way to meet those expectations. For instead of reproducing a style that proved for him to be successful, he decided to deliver a completely different type of text, that nonetheless follows the same conceptual premises that originated Reminder, namely that literature can only be inauthentic (McCarthy, 2012).

It is worth noting that since its publication, C has been either praised for its literary relevance and contribution, or disavowed as a fruitless waste of narrative energy. Its nod to the defamiliarizing practices of the avant-garde and its subtle but ever-present experimental nature renders it inaccessible for a specific kind of reader that may look for deep subjectivity or effortless emotional engagement. From this

3 side of the spectrum, critical accusations have come in many guises2; however, other commentators consider C, and McCarthy’s work in general, as prominent items within the wide range of narrative voices in contemporary English Literature. Among the many instances of this perspective it is worth mentioning Tom McCarthy’s inclusion in the critical study Twenty-First-Century Fiction: Contemporary British Voices by scholar Daniel Lea (2016); the inclusion of his work in literary-philosophical studies such as The Literature of Reconstruction: Authentic Fiction in the New Millennium by German scholar Wolfgang Funk (2015); the seminar "Calling All Agents: A Symposium on the Work of Tom McCarthy," ‘the first academic conference devoted to McCarthy's work, held at Birkbeck in July 2011’ (Nieland, 2012); and in general, the growing body of research that is being conducted on his work.

C is Tom McCarthy’s third work of fiction3, and far from the obscurity of Remainder’s early days, C’s shortlisting for the Booker Prize is evidence of the recognition this author has gathered already in the literary world. As mentioned before, it is a novel that transgresses the boundaries of genre expectations. On the outside, it mimics the structure of bildungsroman by following the life of its hero from his birth in the last decades of the nineteenth-century until his premature death in the first ones of the twentieth- century. However, C offers a protagonist devoid of depth, both physically, for he is unable to see perspective, and metaphorically, for his presence in the narrative is only rendered on its surface. It also disguises itself with a Victorian style as it provides lengthy and detailed accounts of the current technology of the time-span it inhabits. Set against the background of the hightide of European modernism its pages are populated by allusions to personalities and works of the era, as well as it recreates countless modernist motifs. Thus, It would be surprising to consider that to take this novel as a historical piece, (Man Booker Prize, 2010) is not entirely accurate, but even if McCarthy’s attention for detail and his precise descriptions can be fastidious, the apparent realist layout functions as literary bait, covering McCarthy’s intention of elaborating on his fascination with transmission, code, authenticity and his idea of literariness, through an exploration of radio, trauma, incest, psychoanalysis, drugs, sexuality, war, and many other tropes.

2 For some instances of negative assessment of this novel see Our Leading Writers are Inhumanly Cool by Theo Hobson in https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/09/leading-writers-inhumanly-cool/, or in a more nuanced tone Texts for Nothing? On Tom McCarthy by Ben Ehrenreich in https://www.thenation.com/article/texts-nothing-tom- mccarthy/. Both articles retrieved on July 22, 2017. 3 Although Remainder was McCarthy’s first work of fiction to be published, it is in fact his second novel after Men in Space. This first book follows a group of young people in the Check Republic as their lives become entangled in a story of smuggling art-dealers, forgery and death amid times of complex transitions. It was published only after Reminder’s success opened the doors of the editorial world to its author.

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C is a novel explicitly devoted to the historical avant-garde, and as such there are countless instances of intertextuality, homage, allegory and re-enactment of Joyce, Marinetti, Woolf, E.M. Foster, Freud, Mann, etc., but these instances are activated in the text under the gaze of postmodernist’s anxiety about representation and the limitations of language. On this, McCarthy’s position is informed by the likes of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Paul de Man, Lyotard, Bataille, Barthes, and above all, Blanchot and Derrida. These elements are an evidence of the complexity and ingenuity of this work.

By exploring the structure of C against the background of McCarthy’s other literary and artistic commitments, we will attempt to foreground its insertion within a wide-reaching philosophic-aesthetic project which this author has been advancing since his earliest works. This project is attuned to a contemporary interest into the effect of technology and media in our society, the challenge that these phenomena pose to conceptions of the self, what it means to be human, the real or the authentic; although it could be argued that major Western cultural eras have turned around their artists and societies’ ways of dealing with these questions since the Renaissance 4. The way these issues are attended to is relevant to our discussion, for we consider they play an important role in defining the essence of the cultural era when they are negotiated. A topic that concerns this dissertation since it attempts to place C within the context of our current cultural environment.

In order to help to chart the contemporary literary landscape this dissertation will visit the ongoing debate over the periodization of cultural eras, taking into account different positions as to the delimitations of modernism, postmodernism and the competing models for what comes after postmodernism. It is acknowledged here that currently, many important voices in the academia announce the dawn of new a cultural moment, although they differ as to the elements that define it, its relation to past eras, or its projection into the future. We will dedicate an important space in our theoretical discussion to the contemporary discussion about the end of postmodernism, and while the debate about the temporal and spatial boundaries of modernism and postmodernism is an unsettled issue, where some go as far as to discard the pertinence of such delimitations, the arguments presented in this academic exchange can help to advance the purpose of this dissertation.

In defining a structure for our analysis, the discussion will set off from several elements in the collection of essays Supplanting the Postmodern, by editors David Rudrum and Nicholas Stavris which provides a

4 Tom McCarthy considers these issues inhabit literature since the times of Aeschylus (Histories of Violence, 2012)

5 comprehensive account of the discussion about the end of postmodernism and the theoretical projects aiming to supersede it. Each of the authors in this anthology advance different arguments for the causes of postmodernism’s demise. in our view, however, most coincide on a collective theoretical fatigue, where irony and deconstruction seem to have reached their interpretative limits. These authors note common elements such as a renewed interest in accessing reality, diegesis, emotional engagement, and particularly, a revision of modernist tropes and values (Rudrum, David; Stavris, Nicholas, 2015). The approaches in this anthology differ mainly in what elements within our contemporaneity are foregrounded. For example, “automodernism”, “hypermodernism” and “digimodernism”, all pay attention to technology. Other elaborations center their approach on issues of authorship and the new telos of narrative, such as Eshelman with his concept of “performatism” and John Toth with “renewalism”. Nicolas Bourriaud focuses on the new global era and the redefinition of notions of time and space, national borders, cultural dialogue, nomadism, and re-uses the concept of the ‘homo viator’ as it plays with its meanings of “man on a journey” and “man unresolved” (Bourriaud, 2015)”. However, it is with “remodernism” an “metamodernism” that we perceive a more thorough analysis of fundamental subjects such as authenticity, affect, sincerity and community, which are present only in part in other analysis. Besides these two models do not appear constrained by the technical, material and the spatial-specific.

We have centered on the perspective adopted by metamodernism due to its especial attention to a re- appropriation of modernist ideas and attitudes by contemporary artists and writers, and its compelling notion of the ‘nor-neither’ oscillation between modernist and postmodernist poles.

In the light of these arguments, we will establish a dialogue between the most prominent topics in the conceptualization presented by Timoteus Vermeulen and Robin Van den Akker in their “Notes on Metamodernism” and the novel C by Tom McCarthy, in order to gather elements that may help in dealing with the complexity of this author’s work. Such dialogue may help position this novel within the landscape of contemporary practices. it should be added here that, by means of his activities with the Necronautical Society, along with his work of literary criticism, McCarthy has put forward a very personal approach to the subjects that Vermeulen and Akker focus on, namely authenticity, sincerity and affect. He also engages with recurrent topics in a more general discussion about the challenges of contemporaneity such as media, technology, trauma, and human experience of the real and its representation. His stance complicates the relation between his work and current conceptual frameworks, thus eluding the tight parameters of any attempt at categorization. Nevertheless, to establish this dialogue is relevant because despite their differences in approach, C and in the conceptual model of metamodernism do have elements

6 in common. To look into the way in which they manifest and the nature of their relation can shed some light on how these contemporary concerns are negotiated. Thus, the hypothesis advanced here is that a connection can be established between metamodernism and this novel in the manner of a dialogue, which not without tensions opens new ways for apprehending contemporary literary production.

The discussion in the different sections of this dissertation will be focused on charting those points of convergence and departure between metamodernism and McCarthy’s philosophic-aesthetic project as advanced in C. We will explore the connections that can be traced between this critical framework and this author’s avant-gardist practices, and the areas where these practices elude such delimitations.

In order to establish this difficult conversation between C by Tom McCarthy and metamodernism, this dissertation will be structured around three key elements. Firstly, metamodernism as a conceptual approach to contemporary artistic production, its premises and propositions. In the discussion of this critical framework most of the attention will be centered on Vermeulen and Van den Akker’s appropriation and (re)elaboration of concepts such as of structure of feeling, authenticity, irony, post- irony, sincerity, truth, and notions of art as a social practice. It is important to note that these are also elements which are activated within McCarthy’s work. Another topic to be addressed will be both parties’ renewed investment in the modernism as a source of inspiration. Secondly, we will trace the conceptual and formal propositions that McCarthy advances, not only with C, but also in the rest of his literary work, including his essays and activities as a General Secretary of the INS. After establishing the connections and points of divergence between these two bodies of work, we will attempt at providing alternative roads for the areas where metamodernism may fall short in providing means to apprehend this controversial author. Our discussion will be also informed by the current debate about the demarcation of modernism and postmodernism, including reflections on the passing of the latter, since a stance on this subject is relevant to positioning C within the wide spectrum of contemporary narrative. By the end of our discussion, it will be worth pondering what the effects of a novel such as C are on today’s literary production, whether it is an isolated phenomenon or the result of an ongoing trend, maybe an extension of past creative concerns.

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Chapter I. Charting Metamodernism. Oscillation and Modernism Inhabited from the Present.

In a PMLA Journal issue of 2014, there appeared an article by David James and Urmila Seshagiri drawing attention to what they revealed as a new trend in contemporary literature. They claimed that a good number of authors engaging today in experimental writing attempts to expand the limits of the novel by revisiting the main tropes of modernism (James & Seshagiri, 2014). To these critics, a whole generation of authors appear to be driven by a shared image of the early twentieth-century avant-garde. They grouped these contemporary practices under the title of metamodernism, and as an illustrative example they brought forth the novel C by Tom McCarthy.

The claims made by these critics are not uncomplicated, for a few issues that hover over the course of their elaboration are open to discussion. This section will pay attention to the problems concerning their demarcation of modernism and their definition of metamodernism. The analysis presented will also pay a brief visit to the discussion around the subject of periodization in order to establish some working guidelines, and James and Seshagiri’s concept of metamodernism will be revised so as to elucidate points of convergence, continuity and discrepancy with other contemporary approaches. An important part of this chapter will also be devoted to Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker’s elaboration on the concept of metamodernism, and some relevant contributions by other critics to their framework. The chapter ends with an outline of possible points of contact between these two formulations.

Modernism, Postmodernism and the Problems of Periodization

The main proposition advanced in the article by David James and Urmila Seshagiri is that no matter how diluted the idea of modernism has become, the ethos of early twenty-century avant-garde keeps reappearing in the work of contemporary writers. These critics stress the ‘growing number of contemporary novelists -among them Julian Barnes, J.M. Coetzee, Ian McEwan, Cynthia Ozick, Will Self, and Zadie Smith- [who] place a conception of modernism as revolution at the heart of their fictions, styling their twenty-first century literary innovations as explicit engagements with the innovations of early- twenty century writing’ (James & Seshagiri, Metamodernism: Narratives of Continuity and Revolution, p. 87). In other words, it would seem that despite the challenges to the traditional Western canon of modernism, this notion endures in the creative mind of many of the most important contemporary narrative authors; regardless of the many challenges this notion has received from the ongoing debate

8 about geographical, temporal and ontological demarcations of modernism. James and Seshagiri’s article, however, acknowledges the different voices in the criticism of the Eurocentric modernist narrative, starting by Douglass Mao and Rebecca L. Walkowitz, who ‘identified […] “expansion” as the guiding principle of modernist scholarship […] [and] predicted that vertical and horizontal approaches to modernism would reveal the movement’s hitherto obscured layers and contours, dissolving once- entrenched boundaries between high and low culture’ (James & Seshagiri, Metamodernism: Narratives of Continuity and Revolution, 2014, p. 89). The attack on the traditional canon of modernism has been fueled by every possible model of aesthetical, sociological or political studies, from poststructuralism to post-colonialism. It is common currency in this debate to refer to a plurality of modernisms (James & Seshagiri, Metamodernism: Narratives of Continuity and Revolution, 2014, pp. 88,89). As a result, they reach the conclusion that ‘the field of modernist studies is characterized by intense self-scrutiny as well as unprecedented geographical, temporal and cultural diffuseness’ (James & Seshagiri, Metamodernism: Narratives of Continuity and Revolution, 2014, p. 88). In their view, the problem that comes with such lack of specificity is the loss of mobilizing power in terms of formal and meaningful experimentation attached to the idea of the avant-garde. In order to counterbalance the spatial and temporal expansiveness carried by contemporary modernist studies these authors propose a careful periodization that would help explain the manner in which modernism has moved across cultures (James & Seshagiri, Metamodernism: Narratives of Continuity and Revolution, 2014, p. 90).

Given such a wide scope of reference, the premise of the article by James and Seshagiri is startling. David James expands on this subject in the introduction to Modernist Futures, a book that analyses the emergence of a certain view of modernism on the work of six contemporary writers. Here James elaborates on his approach to modernism and regards the emergence of this ideal in experimental writing that ‘takes the novel into the future by looking at its modernist past’ (James, 2012, p. 11). In his opinion, these writers are echoing ‘[m]odernism’s own dialectical relation to tradition: fiction today partakes of an interaction between innovation and inheritance that is entirely consonant with what modernists themselves were doing more than a century ago, an interaction that enables writers to work with their lineage in the process of attempting new experiments with form.’ (James, 2012, p. 2) Further in the text he adds, ‘If I take seriously [Raymond]William’s notion about the way ‘tradition’ can address itself’ to a modern future’, I also take it to the next analytical level -and into a new historical epoch- by turning to novelists who have furthered modernist’s resources in order to meet fresh expectations about the purposes of literary experiment.’ (James, 2012, p. 4)

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This thesis acknowledges the expediency of the approach to modernism by James and Seshagiri when it comes to analyzing Tom McCarthy’s work, although as it will be discussed in the following chapter, this author is interested in some of modernism’s darkest areas, as opposed to most of the other authors included in this group. McCarthy has been vocal about his creative debt to the avant-garde. In fact, James and Seshagiri’s article begins by quoting him on the subject. Notwithstanding, to study McCarthy, and the novel C specifically, taking only into account his investment in modernism would fail to recognize other important aspects of his writing, which are only visible when attention is paid to the postmodernist principles working under the outspoken modernist surface of his work. Moreover, the description of metamodernism provided by James and Seshagiri’s article would benefit from a more careful demarcation among the different authors they claim for metamodernism. Their model could also be expanded with a wider explanation as to the causes and projections of this practice. This absence is mostly felt when their metamodernist framework is set against the proposition advanced by Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker. It could also be argued that James and Seshagiri’s position is informed by an ongoing debate about a demarcation of modernity that challenges some generalized assumptions about periodization of cultural eras. Some notions of this periodization would set postmodernism as a complete break from the project of modernity. However, another line of contemporary discussions would counter the idea of epochal rupture by providing a more nuanced narrative of cultural fluidity (Rudrum, 2015).

The issue at stake here is whether we regard modernism as an ongoing stage of human social, cultural, technological development, or use the term in the sense of James and Seshagiri’s article as a moment of inflection in aesthetic expression brought forward primarily by early twenty-century avant-garde. Also at stake is, whether we consider modernism as a definite moment which resonates to this day and of which every cultural product is but an echo, or we give due relevance, and certain independence, to subsequent moments of artistic, philosophical and literary creation. These distinctions are important when addressing different conceptualizations of metamodernism. This dissertation will follow the notion of modernism as a specific event in Western culture defined by a state of the aesthetic maturity, and of which the historical avant-garde is its most vivid example. Thus, postmodernism should be considered here in a twofold manifestation, on the one side as a reaction to the canonization of modernism, therefore it would develop practices that seek to break from it, and on the other hand it is also a continuation of its predecessor in the sense that it is also triggered by the reflection of modernity on the human conscience. In the latter sense, postmodernism should be considered as an iteration of aesthetic negotiation to a continuous state of ontological and epistemological crisis.

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That having been said, we should look at the different arguments concerning the demarcations of postmodernism. This is no gratuitous effort, since ongoing debates on the mapping of modernism and postmodernism have come to challenge widespread notions of their temporal borders, transitions and succession. How can we use a model (metamodernism or other) proposed to supplant postmodernism when the latter’s very existence is put into question? The essay Note on the Supplanting of ‘Post-’ by David Rudrum may help as a guide through the discussion of this issue. This text appeared as a note of conclusion to a compilation of articles published under the title Supplanting the Postmodern edited by Rudrum and Nicholas Stavris. This book brings together well-established voices of postmodernist critique, which are paired with innovative positions about the end of postmodernism and what comes to succeed it (Rudrum & Stavris, Supplanting the Postmodern. An Anthology of Writings on the Arts and Culture of the Early 21st Century, 2015).

In his closing essay, Rudrum addresses the generalized uneasiness towards postmodernist nomenclature (Rudrum, 2015). He traces positions new and old that have criticized the ‘post-’ in postmodernism on grounds of its poorly defined meaning, lack of critical accuracy or simple originality. More importantly, he makes an assertion in this article that problematizes the entire discussion over the end (or even existence) of postmodernity: ‘[…] at least one possible conclusion to draw from the sheer number of newly prefixed ‘-modernisms’ on offer is that the postmodern thesis about modernity having come to an end was simply false’ (Rudrum, 2015). In order to elaborate on this claim, he advances two main propositions. The first one echoes some critics’ thesis that postmodernity has not yet come to an end, while the second suggests that postmodernism did not happen at all; both arguments carrying their own load of thorny questions.

The first proposition, namely that postmodernism is still in full shape and defining our contemporaneity is discarded in the first paragraphs as pertaining to a rather oversimplifying notion of what postmodernism is and of periodization in general (Rudrum, 2015, p. 334). The focus of the discussion moves thus to the more complex issue of the nature and occurrence of postmodernism.

By analyzing Klaus Stierstofer’s view of the end of postmodernism, Rudrum ponders over two important subjects: ‘first, that since the death throes presaging the demise of postmodernity have been fewer and less rambunctious than its birth pans, it is worth regarding them with some skepticism; and second, that many of the hallmarks of the modernity that postmodernity was said to supplant are in fact disconcertingly intact. The first point may indeed raise the question of whether postmodernity has come to an end. But the latter surely begs the question of whether the explanation for this might be because

11 never really started.’ (Rudrum, 2015, p. 335). However, more than a question around the occurrence of postmodernism, what is shown in this article is that what is flawed is our very conception of postmodernity. Hence, Rudrum also advances a number of possibilities or re-elaborations of his own (ana- , dis-, epi-, etc. each one depending on the point of departure for his analysis), all of them ways to accommodate the complexities that are left out by such an unspecific prefix as post-. The author himself, however, acknowledges that these explorations lead to conclusions that will never be definitive.

Notwithstanding, this dissertation subscribes to the idea, also advanced by Rudrum, that postmodernism was a re-appropriation and self-conscious scrutiny of modernity itself more than a winding down of modernity and its supplanting by something new. Rudrum quotes Lyotard to support this assessment, ‘what then is the postmodern?... It is undoubtedly part of the modern.’ (Rudrum, p. 337). Further on, he elaborates Lyotard’s opinion that ‘postmodernism is not modernism at its end, but in a nascent state, and this state is recurrent’, thus ‘[t]he postmodern, that is, is not an epoch that follows the modern, but a moment of crisis, fissure, or rupture within it, and it is part of the very fabric of modernity that such moment will come back up again (and again)’ (Rudrum, p. 337). This idea of postmodernism as a moment of crisis does not necessarily contradict its very existence or its occurrence as a cultural dominant movement (loose as it may be) for a good length of the postwar period in the twentieth-century, nor can it be denied that as a cultural phenomenon it left an imprint on every form of discourse, and more specifically on literary narrative that is still visible today, even as we move further from its more distinctive moment.

Up to this point, we may summarize by re-stating that our discussion conceives modernism as a moment/event, not only in the temporal, chronological sense, but also as a combination of conditions, actions, ideas, an instant of aesthetic maturity and radical self-reflection, which changed the nature and perception of art, and its relation to society, its context and reality. We take modernism as a reaction to, or result of the challenges posed by modernity: the predominance of urban life, the new social dynamics, the new financial and economic relations, changes in the perception of space, national borders, identity, etc.; all of which is marked by a deep epistemological crisis, triggered by the disrupting effect of technology on conceptions on the self and transcendence, and the failure of theological systems to provide the human individual with tools to achieve a sense of purpose and being-in-the-world.

As such, the crisis mentioned above, which is bound to remain unresolved, for it is intrinsic to the modern condition, produces moments of rupture and continuation in its process of continuous change. In this

12 sense, modernism and postmodernism can be considered as recursive manifestations of how society and individuals deal with the ever-changing facets of modernity, where the latter does not cancel the former, but re-elaborates the structures that the new context renders inoperable. As an example, we highlight postmodernism’s attempts to dismantle modernists grand narratives, those that inevitably lead to, or where complicit to fascism, colonization, exclusion and genocide.

In this sense, if we submit to the conception of the passing of postmodernism, the upcoming wave of creative production (or the new cultural dominant, to use Jameson’s concept5) cannot be conceived without including the fundamental elements of its predecessors. Therefore, metamodernism, along with many other parallel attempts at grasping the essence of the new cultural context, comes as another iteration of this crisis of representation, now within the context of our globalized, ever more technology- mediated contemporaneity.

In keeping with these ideas, it is appropriate now to discuss in detail the main features of metamodernism as a conceptual body, as advanced by Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker. Their view of metamodernism is a comprehensive assessment of contemporary aesthetics. Thus, this framework has been expanded by other theorists into specific fields of culture such as literature, visual arts, music and cinema. One of these collaborations, presented by Seth Abramson, will also be included in the following paragraphs due to the relevance of its focus on literature and the introduction of new concepts, such as simultaneity, that complement or somehow refine the original model.

Metamodernism

Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker elaborate on a term that had appeared before in literary studies, but they endow the concept with new and more specific sense, redirecting the meaning of the prefix meta- which they identify with the notion of metaxis, namely, oscillation (Vermeulen & van den Akker, 2010). These cultural theorists have backed their model with an extensive study of the contemporary cultural and artistic landscape. Their work is not directly related to that of David James and Urmila Seshagiri, for they focus on more general areas of cultural aesthetics. However, their framework pays special attention to key concepts that are otherwise overlooked by the latter’s elaboration, such as

5 For a comprehensive discussion of the concept of “cultural dominant” see Jameson, Fredric, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Duke University Press, 1991.

13 the role of authenticity, representation, sincerity, failure, and affect in the aesthetic programs of the artists and trends they include in their analysis.

Vermeulen and Van den Akker first advanced their conceptualization in the article Notes on Metamodernism (Vermeulen & van den Akker, 2010). Their work in turn prompted the creation of the eponymous website6, which stands as an interactive platform for multidisciplinary criticism. Using their framework as baseline, the articles published on this website have expanded the depth and grip of metamodernism, which by now has become an essential tool in analyzing contemporary artistic production. In 2013, the journal American Book Review dedicated a special issue to metamodernism given its widespread use as denominational marker by artists and critics. In this number, authors such as Dave Eggers, Jonathan Franzen, Zadie Smith, David Foster Wallace and others were identified as metamodern (although it is worth noticing here that it has been mostly the case that critics themselves and not the authors who have claimed their inclusion within this frame). In another example of metamodernism’s increasing prestige in the academia, critic Noah Bunnell has noted in an article about Foster Wallace’s narrative that ‘in the past few years, cultural recognition of metamodernism and its influence has been expanding, and certain authors are being “claimed” by metamodernism.’ (Noah, 2015). The concept has also gained mediatic presence through its appropriation by high-profile contemporary artists. ‘In 2011 and 2012, metamodern artists staged museum exhibitions in New York and Berlin, evincing a wider cultural acceptance of the movement (Noah, 2015). It is important to include London based artist Luke Turner as a good example of high-profile mediatic manifestation. Working together with an artistic collective that counts actor/celebrity Shia LaBeouf as one of its members, Turner claims having embraced the metamodernist concept of oscillation and set it at the front of his Metamodernist Manifesto. We want to bring special attention to the fact that in the body of his manifesto, Turner recreates the confident tone of its historical predecessors without any explicit attempt at parodying them, the closing lines standing as a call for engagement:

We propose a pragmatic romanticism unhindered by ideological anchorage. Thus, metamodernism shall be defined as the mercurial condition between and beyond irony and sincerity, naivety and knowingness, relativism and truth, optimism and doubt, in

6 http://www.metamodernism.com

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pursuit of a plurality of disparate and elusive horizons. We must go forth and oscillate! (Turner, 2011).

With such a remarkable score, it is opportune to elucidate now what metamodernism represents for these artists and scholars; where it comes from and what it proposes.

In the first paragraphs of this section, we introduced an idea of the metamodern as presented by David James and Urmila Seshagiri; however, the connection between their frame and that of Vermeulen and van den Akker’s is not straightforward, nor explicitly made by any of these authors, for they are both concerned with different areas within culture. The latter is a comprehensive take on contemporary aesthetic practices, while the former is more focused on literature, more specifically on narrative. However, both approaches are pertinent to our discussion since many of the elements they include in their analysis, such as the rethinking of modernist ethos and praxis in contemporary aesthetics, are activated within Tom McCarthy’s oeuvre. This combination of approaches is also pertinent in face of this author’s blending of artistic and literary activities.

As a voice within current modernist studies, James and Seshagiri’s definition of metamodernism functions as a comprehensive label for a phenomenon they are set to chart by describing its different manifestations in narrative. In their discussion, metamodernism is used to ‘particularize [a set of] contemporary writers’ active responses to their modernist inheritance’ (James & Seshagiri, 2014, p. 93). According to these authors, the dominant trait of metamodernism is an ‘ambitious aesthetic-historical pursuit which characterizes an otherwise disjunctive connection of writers and novels: to move the novel forward by looking back to the aspirational energies of modernism’ (James & Seshagiri, 2014, p. 93). In their opinion, these heterogeneous voices are unified in their intention to reassess and remobilize narratives of modernism.

The phrase ‘narratives of modernism’ is used here in a twofold sense; the first refers to ‘experimental fiction shaped by an aesthetics of discontinuity, nonlinearity, interiority, and chronological play’7. It could be argued that in this first idea, their conception of metamodernism does not detach itself completely from postmodernism. The novelty of their model is made more evident in its second sense, which

7 Although these characteristics could also be ascribed to postmodernist practices. Such position would be consistent with our understanding of modernism, postmodernism, and the systems that would succeed it as the recurrence of a crisis of representation.

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‘describes fictions – overtly experimental or otherwise – plotted around the very creation and reception of modern art and letters’ (James & Seshagiri, 2014, p. 89). This second type of manifestation is vital in understanding how those contemporary authors are dealing with ‘dynamically [reflect] on modernism’s aesthetic prerogatives in order to mobilize innovations of their own’ (James & Seshagiri, 2014, p. 94). Thus, Tom McCarthy’s work could be examined from this perspective, reflecting as he has in modernism’s ethos and tropes in order to set an aesthetical foundation from where to launch his own creative efforts. In fact, James and Seshagiri highlight the fact that McCarthy’s fiction ‘captures this logic of innovation through retrospection—reassessing modernism as a seismic event for narrative form as well as an epochal episode for modern culture’ (James & Seshagiri, 2014, p. 94).

It is relevant to add here the different manifestations that these scholars indicate as modes in which contemporary narrative engages in the practice of metamodernism:

1. As a tribute to modernist style 2. By inhabiting the consciousness of individual modernist writers 3. By detailing modernism’s sociopolitical, historical and philosophical contexts 4. By giving modernism center stage in fiction that aggressively examines the very idea and ethos of modernist artistry. 5. In some cases, the idea of modernism plays an equally formative role as an absent or vanishing referent in novels where overt influences are less visible. (James & Seshagiri, Metamodernism: Narratives of Continuity and Revolution, p. 93) They highlight the fact that these contemporary writers ‘collectively perpetuate a notion of modernist art’s capacity for dissenting unfamiliarity, for resisting the whole phenomenology of recognition by which readers apprehend and assimilate a new work within existing frames of generic references and evaluation’ (James & Seshagiri, Metamodernism: Narratives of Continuity and Revolution, p. 93). It could be argued, however, that attempts at defamiliarization on the part of the author as a narrative device cannot be held as a unique and distinctive feature of modernist writing, nor can ‘an aesthetics of discontinuity, nonlinearity, interiority, and chronological play’ (James & Seshagiri, 2014, p. 89) be considered as exclusively belonging to early twentieth-century avant-garde, for the very same features are also intrinsic elements of postmodernist works. In a more general sense, these tenets could be said to be embraced by all avant-gardist manifestations new or old. However, it can also be considered as a matter of perspective regarding in terms of the critical model that is being used to assess these features.

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At first glance, it comes as a surprise in this study by David James and Urmila Seshagiri on metamodernism, that there are no references to Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker’s elaboration of the concept. The absence can be striking, provided that both interpretations coincide in describing it as a new aesthetical configuration, or as a movement that poses itself as a succession to outmoded postmodernist practices. Both views also concur in circumscribing metamodernism mainly within the first decades of the first century. This seemingly paradoxical issue could be interpreted as a result of the difference between the cultural fields these positions are attending to, and their insertion in parallel, but not necessarily conjoint ongoing studies of the aesthetic aspects of contemporaneity. In other words, James and Seshagiri’s investment in contemporary narrative comes as an outgrowth of both these critics’ professional engagement with the field of modernist studies. In addition, they do not pay especial attention to the etymology of the prefix meta-; whereas Vermeulen and van den Akker project their conceptualization from their position as philosophers and cultural theorists, whose assessment is primary concerned with more general aesthetic tendencies, mainly in the field of the visual arts. These authors do provide for a new interpretation of the very meaning of the term metamodernism by presenting their notion of metaxis. Their framework is also relevant for the present discussion, for presenting a number of topics especially relevant to the discussion of McCarthy’s project; apart from the fact that their theory has been expanded by the contribution of other scholars, with special attention to literary criticism.

As it has been mentioned before, the work of Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker on metamodernism appeared first in 2010 in the Journal of Aesthetics and Culture. Their article begins by sketching the socio-cultural environment of the twenty-first century, a landscape that the authors claim can no longer be described as postmodern (Vermeulen & van den Akker, 2010). Their approach is one of many attempts at filling the theoretical gap opened in the wake of postmodernity. An endeavor that other cultural theorists, such as Linda Hutcheon and Ihab Hassan had encouraged from as early a moment as the last decade of the past century (Rudrum & Stavris, 2015). The approach made by these two eminent scholars express some of the most important ideas generally held by the many voices in the debate over the end of postmodernism. Hutcheon’s much quoted phrase ‘Let’s just say: it’s over’ summed up the critical consensus on the passing of a model that had lost its power as a conceptual means to address contemporaneity. By then, postmodernism had not only lost the capacity to generate a model of understanding, but it had been institutionalized as well as some ‘kind of generic counter-discourse’ (Hutcheon, 2015, p. 3). From a different perspective, Ihab Hassan would address the epistemological crisis that postmodernism itself had generated with deconstructive techniques and the generalized attacks to

17 any claim to truthfulness. In his article “Beyond Postmodernism: Toward an Aesthetic of Truth”, Hassan stresses that ‘[h]ype and hyperbole, parody and kitsch, media glitz and ideological spite, the sheer insatiable irrealism of consumer societies all helped to turn postmodernism into a conceptual ectoplasm’ (Hassan, 2015, p. 15). He would be one of many scholars claiming the need for literature to return to some sense of truth and trust, by suggesting its return to ‘some form of realism in order to do justice to the ethical claims of our increasingly complicated and fraught world’ (Rudrum & Stavris, 2015, p. 14)8.

Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker take up Hutcheon’s encouragement to assess this new context and provide new conceptual tools, while also noting a novel trend in contemporary aesthetics that seems to resonate with Hassan’s claims. Thus, in “Notes on Metamodernism” they propose to ‘relate to one another a broad variety of trends and tendencies across current affairs and contemporary aesthetics that are otherwise incomprehensible (at least by the postmodern vernacular), by understanding them in terms of an emergent sensibility we come to call metamodern (Vermeulen & van den Akker, 2010). What is most interesting in this thesis on metamodernism as defined by Vermeulen and van den Akker is that rather than focusing on one aspect of contemporaneity such as the effect of technology (digimodernism, automodernism, hypermodernism) or globalization (altermodernism), or a re-emergence of theism (performatism) they seek to grasp a new sense in aesthetics in a way that includes these other conceptualizations (Vermeulen & van den Akker, 2010). Their understanding of modernism encompasses within the scope of aesthetics the response to (and practical manifestation of) most of these concerns. Another valuable element of metamodernism is the idea of continuity with some characteristics of postmodernism that it proposes, instead of a full-blown break from its predecessor. This idea is shared also by the model presented as “renewalism”, another attempt at grasping the new ethos of the present; namely ‘the view that many tendencies traditionally associated with postmodernism linger on in contemporary culture, literature, and the arts, in ways that are problematic for any attempt to define or name that which follows the postmodern’ (Rudrum & Stavris, 2015). However, metamodernism and renewalism differ in their appropriation of former aesthetic strategies, the former claiming a return to romanticism (a view that will be discussed later in more detail) and the later with a focus on new forms of realism.

8 For an insightful discussion of different ideas about the end of postmodernism and the context of the new era see Toth, J. (2010) The Passing of Postmodernism: A Spectroanalysis of the Contemporary. SUNY Press. This author also proposes the idea that the effect of bringing so much debate about postmodernism’s demise is its lingering as an ‘specter or ghost’ (Rudrum & Stavris, 2015, p. 207).

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Furthermore, Vermeulen and van den Akker define metamodernism as a new structure of feeling emerging after postmodernism. They engage with this notion, advanced by Raymond Williams, as an explicit attempt to grasp the diffuseness of the present. Williams presented his vision of structure of feeling thus,

[A] general change, rather than a set of deliberate choices, yet choices can be deduced from it, as well as effects […] a particular quality of social experience and relationship, historically distinct from other particular qualities, which gives the sense of a generation or a period[…] They are changes of presence (when they are being lived this is obvious; when they have been lived it is still their substantial characteristic) […] although they are emergent or pre-emergent, they do not have to await definition, classification, or rationalization before they exert palpable pressures and set effective limits on experience and on action.[…] Methodologically, then, a ‘structure of feeling’ is a cultural hypothesis, actually derived from attempts to understand such elements and their connections in a generation or period, and needing always to be returned, interactively, to such evidence. (Williams, 1977).

This reading of Williams’ concept underscores the eminently transitional nature of metamodernism that these authors continuously promote. In several interviews, they have addressed their framework as a ‘work-in-progress’. As an extension, their online platform, which allows for the publication of different perspectives on metamodernism, leaves a door open for multidisciplinary contributions, in this way, leaving space for the evolution of the framework and the expansion of its scope. Thus, metamodernism has been considered not as a new cultural era, but as an appropriate labeling for an ongoing stage of transition in contemporaneity’s move beyond postmodernism (Rudrum & Stavris, 2015). Williams’ elaboration on the choice of feeling is also very suitable for the connection that Vermeulen and Akker make between metamodernism and neoromanticism, and their pointing towards the emergence of a new form of affect. According to Williams, ‘‘feeling’ is chosen to emphasize a distinction from more formal concepts of ‘world-view’ or ‘ideology’. […] we are concerned with meanings and values as they are actively lived and felt, and the relations between these and formal or systematic beliefs are in practice variable (including historically variable), over a range from formal assent with private dissent to the more nuanced interaction between selected and interpreted beliefs and acted and justified experiences’ (Williams, 1977).

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“Notes on metamodernism” summarizes in its introduction the different ways postmodernist cultural phenomena have been engaged with, namely as the ‘transformation in our material landscape; distrust and consequent desertion of metanarratives; the emergence of late capitalism, the fading of historicism, and the waning of affect’ (Vermeulen & van den Akker, 2010). These embodiments share, they claim, an ‘opposition to “the” modern – to utopism, to (linear) progress, to grand narratives, to Reason, to functionalism and formal purism, and so on’ (Vermeulen & van den Akker, 2010). The conclusion is the drawing of two poles, a distinction made between ‘postmodern irony (encompassing nihilism, sarcasm, and the distrust and deconstruction of grand narratives, the singular and the truth) and modern enthusiasm (encompassing everything from utopism to the unconditional belief in Reason)’ (Vermeulen & van den Akker, 2010).

As a response to the waning of postmodernism, Vermeulen and Akker note how the cultural industry has changed its strategies abandoning pastiche and parataxis for myth and metaxis, melancholy for hope, and exhibitionism for engagement. As opposed to modernist fanatic or naïve positions, and postmodern apathetic or skeptic attitudes they declare that contemporary artists bear what they call some kind of informed naivety or pragmatic idealism. Their most powerful argument is how metamodern discourse consciously commits itself to an impossible possibility, which embraces the Kantian idea of “negative” idealism, summarized as “as-if” thinking, that is ‘to view human history as if mankind had a life narrative which describes its self-movement towards its full rational/social potential […] That is to say, humankind, a people, are not really going toward a natural but unknown goal, but they pretend they do so that they progress morally as well as politically’ (Vermeulen & van den Akker, 2010). In this sense, they claim that metamodernism attempts, in spite of inevitable failure, ‘to seek for a truth that it never expects to find’ (Vermeulen & van den Akker, 2010). About this feature of metamodernism, Rudrum and Stavris comment that it ‘describes a process of searching for authenticity in contemporary art and literature, all the while knowing that this is an impossible act’ (Rudrum & Stavris, 2015, p. 306). This stance is directly related to the idea advanced before, of a rekindling of a romantic spirit within metamodernist practice, of which the image of failure on the process of attaining the impossible is a key element. It is valid to note here that the idea of failure deeply resonates with Tom McCarthy’s work; although it should be added that his conception, if also related to attempts to overcoming the impossibility of reaching transcendence and authenticity, rejects heroic or romantic traits by drawing its inspiration from Beckett, in a notion also informed by Blanchot, Nietzsche and Heidegger, in contrast to metamodernist’s Kantian influences. This topic will be expanded in the following chapter.

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The image used by Vermeulen and Akker to better describe the essence of metamodernism is that of a pendulum oscillating between innumerable poles, negotiating between the modern and the postmodern. ‘Each time the metamodern enthusiasm swings towards fanaticism, gravity pulls it back toward irony; the moment its irony sways towards apathy, gravity pulls it back towards enthusiasm’ (Vermeulen & van den Akker, 2010). They consider this to be a “both-neither” dynamic, meaning that it is at once modern and postmodern and neither of them; something they consider best illustrated by the term metaxis. As a conclusion, it is asserted that ‘metamodern is constituted by the tension, [or] the double-bind, of a modern desire for sense and a postmodern doubt about the sense of it all’. They carefully establish a difference between the “both-neither” dynamic of metamodernism and a postmodern “in-between (a neither-not)”, since they agree that both ‘turn to pluralism, irony, and deconstruction in order to counter a modernist fanaticism’. These oppositions differ in that while metamodernism counters modernist idealism through negotiation, postmodernism would attempt at cancelling it out (Vermeulen & van den Akker, 2010). Metamodernism is thus grounded in a generational optimism towards the future. Artists engaging in it believe in the possibility of commitment and construction, which can coexist with irony and deconstruction without cancelling each other.

Metamodernist strategies

In their exposition of metamodern practices, Vermeulen and van den Akker offer a variety of artistic strategies and styles. They integrate other critics’ approaches to contemporaneity as personifications or instances of what they regard as the generalization of the praxis of metamodernism’s in the contemporary cultural landscape.

They start by enlisting German theorist Raoul Eshelman’s concept of “performatism”, which he describes as ‘the willful self-deceit to believe in -or identify with, or solve- something in spite of itself’ (Vermeulen & van den Akker, 2010), a proposition that this author connects to a revival of theism in the arts. Vermeulen and van den Akker use Eshelman’s own text to elaborate on this topic.

Performatist works are set up in such a way that the reader or viewer at first has no choice but to opt for a single, compulsory solution to the problems raised within the work at hand. The author, in other words, imposes a certain solution on us using dogmatic, ritual, or some other coercive means. This has two immediate effects. The coercive frame cuts us off, at least temporarily, from the context around it and forces us back into the work.

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Once we are inside, we are made to identify with some person, act or situation in a way that is plausible only within the confines of the work as a whole. In this way performatism gets to have its postmetaphysical cake and eat it too. On the one hand, you’re practically forced to identify with something implausible or unbelievable within the frame – to believe in spite of yourself – but on the other, you still feel the coercive force causing this identification to take place, and intellectually you remain aware of the particularity of the argument at hand. Metaphysical skepticism and irony aren’t eliminated, but are held in check by the frame (Eshelman quoted in (Vermeulen & van den Akker, 2010)).

This feature of metamodernism should also be read in relation to Tom McCarthy when we draw attention in the next chapter to the exegesis he makes of his own fiction by means of his works of literary criticism and the many parallel publications within the artistic collective he directs.

Another practice of metamodernism listed in “Notes to Metamodernism” is the reference to a new attitude in artistic production that engages with the work as an act of serious belief despite its evident shortcomings. Vermeulen and van den Akker mention exhibitions by young artists that seem to follow the logic of ‘I know that the art I’m creating may seem silly, even stupid, or that it might have been done before, but that doesn’t mean that isn’t serious’ (Jerry Saltz quoted in (Vermeulen & van den Akker, 2010)).

Another expression of how artists embrace metamodernist practice is what cultural critic Jörg Heiser calls “romantic conceptualism”. According to this article, Heiser’s concept is opposed to postmodern deconstruction in a new concern for reconstruction. Through this new trend rational conceptual art is replaced by sentimental abstractions; concrete simulacra by the creation of illusion that are unable to materialize; the obscene by the increasingly obsolete; and the critique of subjectivity by the celebration of the felt heterogeneity of identity (Vermeulen & van den Akker, 2010).

Ultimately, Vermeulen and van den Akker connect the practices listed above by emphasizing their common unsuccessful negotiation between opposite poles, an oscillation that tries to fulfill a mission these artists ‘know they can never, and should never accomplish’ (Vermeulen & van den Akker, 2010). These theorists justify the essence unifying all these practices by identifying metamodernism with what they call a surge of neoromanticism. They had already advanced this notion through their mobilization of Heiser’s romantic conceptualism. In their exposition, they expand on the nature of this relation to

22 romanticism, which they consider as the ‘attempt to turn the finite into infinite, while recognizing that it can never be realized […] oscillating between attempt and failure […] between a modern enthusiasm and a postmodern irony’ (Vermeulen & van den Akker, 2010).

The notion discussed here should be extended with the insight on metamodernism’s manifestation through neoromanticism provided by Niels van Poecke in the online platform Notes on Metamodernism. This critic would argue that metamodernism’ investment on romanticism lies in the latter’s capacity for donning the individual with the capacity of creating a meaning of its own, and to ‘envision anew the outlines of future possibilities’ (Van Poecke, 2011). He illustrates this assessment by drawing attention to a new generation of music artists who ‘come to terms with an uninhabitable present, while dreaming of a future ‘which blueprint has yet to be drawn’. In and through their fascination with nature, the imagination of the child, the camaraderie of community life we are shown the vague outlines of future possibilities that may never be realized, yet have to be strived for’ (Van Poecke, 2011). In this sense, through neoromanticism, metamodernism represents a creative answer to the ontological, economic, and ecological crisis of the present.9

Metamodernism in literature

American poet and journalist Seth Abramson has contributed to the prominence of the concept of metamodernism focusing mainly in its manifestation through literature. Writing for The Huffington Post, this critic has published a series of articles charting metamodernist practices and strategies in contemporary American experimental literature. His insight in the article Ten Basic Principles of Metamodernism is particularly relevant, for besides acknowledging several elements of contact with Vermeulen and Akker’s proposition, some elements are expanded and other newly incorporated. In his view, metamodernism is based on:

9 For reasons of space and in order to maintain the cohesion of an analysis centered on the connection between metamodernism and Tom McCarthy’s work, this discussion will not include metamodernism’s relation with the concepts of New Sincerity and Post-Irony. For a detailed exposition of these subjects see Kelly, A. M. (2010). David Foster Wallace and the New Sincerity in American Fiction. In D. Hering (Ed.), Consider David Foster Wallace: Critical Essays. (pp. 131-46). Austin, TX: Sideshow Media Group Press.

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A negotiation between modernism and postmodernism

Dialogue over dialectics

Paradox

Juxtaposition

The collapse of distances

Multiple subjectivities

Collaboration

Simultaneity and generative ambiguity

An optimistic response to tragedy by returning, albeit cautiously, to metanarratives

Interdisciplinarity (Abramson, 2015)

Some particularly valuable elements of Abramson’s approach are his elaboration on the collapse of distances, the experience of multiple subjectivities, collaboration and interdisciplinarity. In the case of collapse of distances, he considers two major elements implicit in the original formulation of metamodernism, that is, metamodernism’s relation to technology and its reflection on identity. In Abramson’s opinion, metamodernism embraces the uncertainty of the self that is caused by the saturation of voices, ideas and beliefs swirling in the internet. This connects to his case for multiple subjectivities, which claims that metamodernist subjects are able to embrace different subjectivities at different times, even when they may seem contradictory. More specifically, he adds that ‘experiencing multiple subjectivities means having the right to reject or deemphasize permanently a subjectivity one would normally be thought to associate with, switch subjective positions as feels emotionally and/or logistically appropriate, tune out certain subjectivities temporarily in order to collaborate with others, or create entirely new subjectivities that have more meaning to one than do the received categories of difference

24 that currently dominate public discourse’ (Abramson, 2015). Within this description, the collaborative and interdisciplinary nature of metamodernism are closely related. Collaboration is encouraged between different interests, which can find ‘areas of generative overlap’ and work for common undertakings. Thus, dismantling given ‘structures’, new combinations find fertile ground to evolve, new ground is found for creativity and previous unrelated actors come together within the umbrella of new interdisciplinary projects. The feature stressed here is the predominant empathy of metamodernist subjects.

The description provided above will be linked in the following chapter to Tom McCarthy’s understanding of the notion of the self, and his embracing of a form of subjectivity that is “dividual” (McCarthy & Critchley, 2012) rather than unified. However, there will also be space to discuss how he also complicates the idea of empathy through his novel C.

As a last note, we note here another interesting expansion made by Abramson in his article. He substitutes ‘oscillation’ for ‘simultaneity’, and suggests that ‘the metamodern self does not move between differing positions but in fact inhabits all of them at once’ (Abramson, 2015). In his opinion, by considering an oscillation among different poles previous postmodern dichotomies are preserved. We need to imagine these different poles as being inhabited at the same time.

Criticism

In academic terms, metamodernism is a relatively new concept, but it has gathered already a remarkable body of work. It has been embraced with enthusiasm by many critics and artists as a versatile methodological tool for exploring contemporary culture. In our attempt to chart the most relevant elements of this model, we have encountered very few instances of in-depth analysis of its shortcomings. Those cases can be generalized around three main issues. First, the seemingly oversimplifying gesture of setting postmodernism and modernism as opposite poles; followed by the probability of having discarded postmodernism somewhat too quickly; and last, the uneasiness that arises from metamodernism’s identification with romanticism.

To some, the main problem of metamodernism lies on setting two poles of oscillation which have never been so clear to begin with (Rudrum and Stavris 2015). Vermeulen and van den Akker’s elaboration seems to overlook the debate, already visited in this chapter, concerning the boundaries and meaning of these elusive moments; including the ideological complexities and the heterogeneity of the voices that inhabited them. The representation of these two cultural paradigms as extreme opposites also appear to

25 ignore the instance of fluidity and continuation that we have echoed in our discussion. Ultimately, by conceptually constraining modernism and postmodernism to a closed set of practices or motifs they may be deprived of their capacity to engage the creative energies of contemporary authors, such as those presented by David James and Urmila Seshagiri’s analysis.

It has been discussed here that metamodernism acknowledges the permanence of postmodernist traits (such as irony and detachment) within its system, but these are claimed to be cancelled out by a surge in [modernist] enthusiasm and engagement. However, it could be argued that using this conceptualization as a template for the assessment of cultural artifacts may exclude those works produced today that still challenge the mainstream aesthetic canon from an eminently postmodern embrace of deconstruction and through the refusal of expressionist explorations of subjectivity, such as the case presented by Tom McCarthy’s novels. A matter to be considered is that the demise of postmodernism as a cultural era could be a more nuanced phenomenon than what these theorists propose. For instance, postmodernism’ commitment to dismantling hegemonic narratives by means of deconstruction is not an issue that can be written off by acts of sheer aesthetic will without assuming the risk of reproducing the very same construct that is been challenged.

The risk of dangerously reproducing obsolete narratives is part of the problem with identifying metamodernism with romanticism. This practice implies affectively engaging on the (re)creation of self- assembled mythologies as alternatives to the disenchantment with the globalized neoliberalist model, as a way to negotiate the pervasive identity crises that accompanies it. Such is the case of the New Weird America10, or the renewed interest on authenticity and the real (which we could also consider manifested through the ecologically conscious trends of consuming organic food, free range animals or veganism)11,

10 See the examination of this neoromantic movement by Niels Poecke in the site Notes on Metamodernism. As a way to describe the movement’s ideological response to contemporaneity he states: ‘The contemporary rise of the New Weird America – the third romantic folk music revival in western history –must be situated just after the 9/11 terrorist attacks at the Twin Towers, New York. As a kind of mini-Woodstock of the 21st century, the Brattleboro Free Folk Fest was ‘an attempt to make space for an alternative American narrative […] irreconcilable with the prevailing neoconservative vision of the “New American Century”’. As much as it was a new musical genre, [it] was a political reaction against George W. Bush’s ‘war on terror’ and the hyper-capitalist and hyper-individualist system his government proudly represented for eight years […] A strategy to cope with, or an alternative to, decades of Neoliberalism.’ (Van Poecke, 2011) 11 Due to its prominent place within McCarthy’s project, the next chapter involves a discussion about related aspect of authenticity. Notwithstanding, for an insightful exploration of contemporary society’s relation to authenticity see Potter, A. (2010) The Authenticity Hoax: How We Get Lost Finding Ourselves, Scribe Publications. For a discussion of authenticity in contemporary literature Funk, W. (2015) The Literature of Reconstruction: Authentic Fiction in the New Millennium, Bloomsbury Publishing Inc.

26 these seemingly liberating practices carry within the potential to perpetuate the very same mechanisms they intend to eradicate (as in the creation of exclusivist communities, ideological radicalization, or the emergence of companies that profit from new market niches).

Another aspect of this problematic relation is pointed out by Rudrum and Stavris, who remark that ‘[such] alliance is suspicious, because modernism often defined itself in stark opposition to the aesthetics of romanticism. -indeed, this is arguable the founding gesture of modernism’ (Rudrum and Stavris 2015). This assessment comes also as a challenge to the definition and demarcation of modernism by throwing us back into the discussion on periodization and the essence of this movement. If the explicit rejection of romantic ideals is present in foundational documents of modernism such as the Vorticist Manifesto (Lewis, 2010), to reduce this movement to this opposition, and in so doing to overlook the way some features of romanticism are re-elaborated through modernism, would fall into the same type of oversimplification we have argued before. That having been said, we do not deny the fact, however, that the cohabitation of modernism and romanticism within a single aesthetic model could be considered problematic at best. It is the position of this dissertation that on this subject, the field is still open for the discussion of how these ideas can be negotiated.

As a conclusion to this chapter, it is important to highlight that metamodernism is not a movement, nor a cultural program launched by an artistic collective of individuals. Metamodernism is conceived mainly as a conceptual framework to better understand and address contemporary cultural landscapes in the wake of postmodernism. As it has been discussed above, David James and Urmila Seshagiri’s formulation of metamodernism has a few points of contact with that of Vermeulen and Akker, and it provides new elements from a different approach; all of which is useful in examining Tom McCarthy’s work. The former can be considered as a ramification of a larger stem of modernist studies, while the latter sets out to elaborate a new set of theoretical tools to address contemporaneity. Both are concerned with modernism, but whereas the article in PMLA is interested on modernism in itself as a source of inspiration for contemporary writers, the other view of metamodernism is concerned with modernism in as much as it establishes a dialogue or an interaction with postmodernism. Both propositions provide us with a referential framework that can be used as a point of departure in coming to terms with the novel C and its place in the context of contemporary fiction.

The main question arising after this exploration of metamodernism is whether McCarthy’s novel C can be properly approached from this conceptual frame. In the course of our discussion we have advanced

27 already some points of interaction, such as engagement with modernism, interest on authenticity and representation, instances of uneasy coexistence, simultaneity, and multidisciplinary practices, to mention some. However, in the next chapter we should see how these points of contact are never uncomplicated. With this elements at hand, and in the light of the forthcoming analysis we will attempt to delineate a possible space for this novel within contemporary literary practices.

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Chapter II. C by Tom McCarthy, a black box of literary ideas

In the previous chapter, our discussion attended to the debate about the end of postmodernism and the many attempts at labeling what is thought to supersede it. It was noted there that among the many takes on conceptualizing a new contemporary cultural paradigm, metamodernism stands out as one of the more comprehensive and generally endorsed conceptual frameworks; although it is not entirely exempt from criticism. Its success as conceptual model is due mostly to the fact that rather than assuming a total disconnection with the previous culturally dominant paradigm, it aims to redirect its focus. Thus metamodernism, as advanced by Vermeulen and van den Akker, describes an oscillation between the irony of postmodernism and the passion of modernism, what they call metaxis (Vermeulen & van den Akker, 2010). Some critics, however, question the validity of their claim on grounds of its presenting an over-simplifying model of its poles and axis of oscillation (Rudrum & Stavris, 2015). Resonating with the complexities of these arguments, the novel C by Tom McCarthy moves through a space where tensions within postmodernism and modernism are continuously at play.

C explicitly engages with the idea of modernism as a specific event in Western Culture that continues to send shockwaves through decades of cultural production. The narrative follows the life of its protagonist from his birth and childhood in the last decades of the nineteenth-century to his premature death in 1922, the year that witnessed the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses and T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, but also the year of the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb’s, Egypt’s independence, and the start of the BBC. Set against this background, the novel operates as a complex network of intertextual connections, enmeshed through clever re-workings and re-enactments of (mostly) modernist tropes and literary landmarks. In this way, Tom McCarthy builds an intricate network that acts as a resonating device, producing echoes and interference, broadcasting mutilated or mutated literary signals, which stands for McCarthy as a metaphor for literature is self. Therefore, with C this author attempts at bringing forth in narrative form his ideas about the essence and meaning of literature. These notions he has brought forward through a vast parallel body of narrative, literary criticism, and as performative artist. The text itself is inhabited by technology, radio transmissions, war and encryption, and haunted by the specters of death, trauma, taboo and failed mourning. These elements are picked up as modernist tropes and embedded in the novel to generate something new.

In this chapter, the discussion will be centered on examining key literary and theoretical elements in C by Tom McCarthy in the light of a metamodernist framework. In order to provide a context for a

29 comprehensive understanding of how these elements function within the text, it is imperative to dedicate some space here to McCarthy’s own extensive critical work and artistic engagements. Mainly, we will attend to this author’s interest in authenticity, trauma, encryption, transmission, technology, space, and failure of transcendence.

Engaging with the mythos of the avant-garde

It is a common consensus that the historical avant-garde, and the idea of modernism in general, has been enshrined in cold marble tombs and that its spirit has dried up. It has become a set of tools which, after continued dismantlement and re-assembly by artists and critics, has lost traction to the point of becoming commonplace. By the second half of the twentieth-century, the avant-garde had been extensively assimilated into the commercializing paradigms of capitalism. In a study of the appropriation of modernism by the advertising industry, scholar Jesse Matz observe that ‘Salvador Dali sells Volkswagen; montage becomes an advertising format; and modernist abstraction becomes the pattern for the corporate logo; […] Mayakovski’s futurist poetics enable Yevtushenko’s “aesthetic advertising”; and modernist anomie is put on for kicks when (as Raymond Williams put it) “the lonely bitter, sardonic and skeptical [modern] hero takes his ready-made place as the star of the thriller”.’ (Matz, 2006, p. 299)

Although as suggested above, the practices and techniques of the avant-garde have formally fallen into the class of the ready-made, and the idea of modernism has been expanded as to lose any sense of spatial or temporal center, David James and Urmila Seshagiri note a renovated interest of contemporary narrative on visiting a lingering idea of Euro-centered, turn-of-the-century-modernism from a plurality of literary styles (James & Seshagiri, 2014). One of such cases is Tom McCarthy, whose commitment to the modernism stands out as a key element within his rich and versatile work. He has publicly claimed this engagement in several interviews and through his work as artist and literary critic. In a much-quoted interview by James Purdon from The Guardian, McCarthy stated that ‘the task for contemporary literature is to deal with the legacy of modernism. I'm not trying to be modernist, but to navigate the wreckage of that project.’ (Purdon, 2010). As a result of this stance, some critics have proclaimed his writing to be the ‘future of the avant-garde’ (Nieland, 2012, p. 569); however, McCarthy rejects any suggestion of simply mimicking or parodying a mode of creation, since his project is not interested on ‘aping, [or] even upgrading the mannerisms of a previous vanguard movement’ (Hart, Jaffe, & Eburne, 2013, p. 680). Other

30 critics highlight how ‘McCarthy's work stands not as the empty resuscitation of an avant-garde idiom but as its crypt, as a way of presiding over modernism's death by reenacting it traumatically, by lingering in the remains of its most fecund catastrophes, which are also those of the twentieth-century itself.’ (Nieland, 2012)

It is in the context of such complex relation to modernism that C stands as a wide-ranging intertextual map of the avant-garde. In this novel, modernist tropes are not only revisited with a post-modernist twist, but names, titles, and historical moments and motifs are also constantly activated or allegorized. Their presence is sometimes explicitly alluded to, but most times is encoded, recombined and re-enacted. Among the plethora of modernist markers, Kafka emerges as one of the novel’s central motifs. His presence is not only summoned by populating the text with myriads of insects until eventually the protagonist turns into a giant beetle, but also by means of constantly re-playing the letter K, either typographically or phonetically. Besides, the text goes from re-imagining Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts and Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, to reviving futurist manifestos; it goes from Marconi’s wireless radio to the beginnings of the BBC, from England to the front lines of WWI, to Egypt and the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb. This novel is as expansive as it is ambitious.

A Trojan Horse

Compared to McCarthy’s previous novel Reminder, C is striking for its apparent conventional style. Remainder contains a narrative of cold precision told by a nameless first-person narrator who suffers of amnesia after a traumatic event, of which he can say ‘very little. Almost nothing’ (McCarthy, 2016, p. 5). His description of the incident, bringing to memory the writings of Robbe Grillet, touches only on the materiality of the event, ‘Technology. Parts, bits’ (McCarthy, Remainder , 2016, p. 5). In contrast, from its opening lines C betrays a style that is reminiscent of a more conventional realism.

Dr. Learmont, newly appointed general practitioner for the districts of West Masedown and New Eliry, rocks and jolts on the front seat of a trap as it descends the lightly sloping path of Versoie House. He has sore buttock: the seat’s hard and uncushioned. (McCarthy, 2010, p. 3)

In a move that could seem contradictory for someone so outspoken about his rejection of ‘traditional’ literary realism (Rourke, 2010), C hints at the style of the bildungsroman, following the life of its hero in a conventional ‘from-the-cradle-to-the-grave’ narrative arc that would have him experience the main

31 events of his time – technological progress, the First World War, the end of empire – and be changed and affected by them. But is this really the case?

With no concealed amusement, McCarthy himself has remarked that C’s shortlisting for the Man Booker Prize must have come from someone reading it as some form of historical fiction (Hart, Jaffe, & Eburne, 2013, p. 681). However, a few pages in the novel, the reader cannot avoid the feeling that ‘something is odd’, characters seem to deliberately play on the archetypical, as caricatures or markers of an obscure function: the father as obsessed inventor and the estranged mother and wife, the silent gardener and the oversensitive maid, the precocious sister, the estate itself with its overelaborated, labyrinthic spaces. In contrast, Serge, the protagonist, eludes definition, as if blurry on the edges. He is born with a caul (also the name of the first chapter) and as such, activates references to Dicken’s David Copperfield, a name that also brings to mind chemical elements such as copper, and carbon in an echo of the book’s title, C. Not coincidentally, all the chapters start with a C: Caul, Chute, Crash and Call.

The multilayered activation of meanings and references in a network of codes and encryptions is a constant throughout the text. It dismantles its conventional façade with an elaborate structure of self- reference that compels the reader into acknowledging the composite structure of the narrative, its repetitions and its refusal to any claim at authenticity. It turns the realist disguise that McCarthy has covered his narrative with into an elaborate work of metafiction without turning the narratorial voice towards the reader.

In an exhaustive analysis of the textual structure of this novel, Mark Davies points to the fact that C’s apparently traditional layout and its historical narrative is nothing but a ‘“Trojan Horse” that is clearly subordinate to the less realist content it brings into the text. (Davies, 2013) In his studying of the ‘manipulation of the concept of selfhood’ within the novel (Davies, 2013), this scholar refers to how the narrative challenges genre expectations by continuously denying identification with the protagonist, regardless of its being at the center of the narrative arc. Thus, by means of this conveyed sense of estrangement, McCarthy keeps the reader aware at all times of the self-referential nature of the text, while Serge Carrefax is used as a mouthpiece to advance his literary ideas (Davies, 2013).

Resonating with a metamodernist instance of the both-neither, the interesting process at play here is the coexistence of two possible readings of the novel: one that may ignore the self-referential strategies of the text and follow an unconventional but nonetheless straightforward narrative arc, in a way that allows

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C to stand as a historical novel; and another that pays attention to the ontological disquisition that is being activated about the novel itself as a literary form. A metaphor that has been used to bring attention to this possibility is Wittgenstein’s image of the duck-rabbit concurrence (Hart, Jaffe, & Eburne, 2013, p. 681), which for McCarthy is entirely adequate, for it frees the author from the constraints of ascribing to a specific genre or style.

I agree with you about the ducks and rabbits. In Updike at his best you see certain literary backstories working themselves out in a way that is not recognizably avant-garde. I suppose it is recognizably realist. But when you start picking at it a bit, when you look beneath the hood, you see all of these other histories at play there. Again, the issue is not writing one way or the other, but navigating a set of histories and possibilities (Tom McCarthy in (Hart, Jaffe, & Eburne, 2013, p. 682)).

Inauthenticity Addresses the Anxiety of the Real12

At the center of McCarthy’s literary-aesthetic project is the idea of the impossibility for art to reach a state of authenticity, which it persistently attempts to achieve. His work as a writer and artist is centered on exploring this paradox and charting its borders. Although its view is focused for the most part on modernist avant-garde, his writing is critically informed by postmodern deconstruction, mainly by the thoughts of Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, Emmanuel Levinas, Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida, but also by Jean-François Lyotard and Martin Heidegger; names that stand out and whose influence he explicitly acknowledges in most of his work of literary criticism, and in his artistic activities.

In several interviews, McCarthy has addressed his distaste for what he calls ‘middlebrow realism’ (Rourke, 2010), or ‘realist literature’s monopoly on the real’, (Rourke, 2010) accusing this mindset of participating in a mainstream, ‘sentimental liberal-humanism,[…] a mode in which the self is a kind of central value. A self which is never put in doubt, which is never given over, or ruptured by language, by contingency, by history, power agenda, etc. A self which is absolutely given and natural; a self which is kind of measured

12 Borrowed from the titles of essays by Nicholas Stavris (2015) The Anxieties of the Present, in Supplanting the Postmodern, Rudrum, D. and Stavris, N. ed. Bloomsbury; and Daniel Lea, The Anxieties of Authenticity, in MFS Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. 58, Number 3, Fall 2012, pp. 459-476

33 and validated by the authenticity of its emotions’ (McCarthy, 2012a). In response to these conceptions, he promotes a posture of inauthenticity.

Acting as General Secretary of the International Necronautical Society, a semi-fictitious art collective13 structured in the fashion of Cold War institutions and corporate bodies (Histories of Violence, 2012), McCarthy has advanced a series of manifestos, statements, declarations, reports and other bureaucratic- like paraphernalia that serve as a medium to broadcast his stance on authenticity. This is most explicitly presented in the INS Joint Statement on Inauthenticity, where it is stated that,

This is the modern dream of authenticity: that after the failure of metaphysical transcendence, the self can rise up, complete, god-like even, as a heroic subject, and many such heroes can band together into a unified people. We choose to abandon the idea of the people and the individual subject. On the contrary, the necronaut is a dividual.

For us inauthenticity is the core to the self, to what it means to be human, which means that the self has no core, but it is an experience of division, of splitting. (International Necronautical Society, 2012)

These questions concerning authenticity and the self shape McCarthy’s work as a writer. In Remainder, McCarthy portrays an unnamed narrator struggling to regain a lost sense of authentic self as being-in-the- world that he pursues through spatial re-enactments. This character is obsessed with the idea of being “real” which for him it means ‘to become fluent, natural, to cut out the detour that sweeps us around what's fundamental to events, preventing us from touching their core: the detour that makes us all second-hand and second-rate’ (McCarthy, 2016, p. 244). He can only acknowledge this state by achieving a kind of transcendental coalescence of form and matter. However, every ephemeral victory in this direction is foiled by a remainder of materiality, namely, he is haunted by the instances of the material reality that refuse to be contained in any rounded or perfect model. (McCarthy, 2016) However, as Daniel Lea points out in his essay The Anxieties of Authenticity, this novel may still hold on to a biological principle of authentic self14 as a pre-existing condition, which its protagonist unsuccessfully attempts to regain.

13‘I call it a ‘fiction’ – not that it isn’t real, but because it’s a construct that not only references but also cannibalizes a whole bunch of other cultural moments – the avant•garde, the bureaucracy of Kafka, the secret networks of Burroughs.’ (Interview with Tom McCarthy, 2011) 14 Lea provides a description of what he describes as two historical approaches to authenticity and their origin: first, ‘biological authenticity’ as presented from the Renaissance and further elaborated by Rousseau and secondly, post- Nietzschean authenticity of becoming, also elaborated by Heidegger (Lea, 2012).For further discussion of this subject

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(Lea, 2012, p. 464) In C, McCarthy further explores this question by creating a protagonist who betrays no evidence of a centered core, or authentic emotions.

As a philosophical and aesthetic project, the INS propose to embrace inauthenticity by focusing on matter, by celebrating ‘the imperfection of matter’, in ‘reference to the classical opposition of form and matter’ (International Necronautical Society, 2012, p. 223), where form is considered ‘more real than the real’ (223), perfect, divine. It is in this sense that the INS’ slogan ‘to let matter matter’ can be understood:

[T]o let things thing, to let matter matter, to let the orange orange and the flower flower. On this second slope, we take the side of things and try to evoke their nocturnal, mineral quality. This is, for us, the essence of poetry as it is expressed in Francis Ponge, late Wallace Stevens, Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies, and some of the personae of Fernando Pessoa – of trying (and failing) to speak about the thing itself and not just ideas about the thing, of saying, “Jug, bridge, cigarette, oyster, fruit bat, windowsill, sponge,” (7.3) Sponge. (7.4) Sponge. (International Necronautical Society, 2012, p. 224)

Matter is celebrated in C from its very title, which stands as a code for carbon, life, organism, and it also brings about the materiality of the act of writing, in all the instances of black matter, ink, stains, the act of leaving a mark, and the instances of reproduction, in its stream of copies and carbon copies (cc). In allusions to Joyce, the materiality of the body is also foregrounded in repeated scatological accounts of sex, masturbation, defecation and death. These are present in the narrative, not as means to convey shock, but in a matter-of-fact tone that facilitate their integration within the structure of the text.

Here we are confronted with another difficult point of contact between McCarthy’s program and metamodernism as presented by Vermeulen and van den Akker, namely, engaging in a pursuit that cannot be attained, even if the end-product seems to be antithetical. Where metamodernist artists seek to find some sense of authenticity, McCarthy embraces the inauthentic; however, his project is beset by the flaws of the medium by means of which he tries to achieve it. We can safely assume that as an author Tom McCarthy is aware of this paradox, and that the semi-comical, self-

as approached by contemporary literature see Funk, Wolfgang, The Literature of Reconstruction, Bloomsbury Publishers Inc, 2015

35 aware irony displayed in his work is a part of the mechanisms he uses to circumnavigate it. A position that brings us again to the image of metamodernist oscillation.

Transmission and media

Essential to McCarthy’s work, and specifically to this novel, is the concept of transmission and media. His concern about how subjects and ideas are transmitted and flow in the air around us pervades his work as artist and writer. This relates to both, his position towards authenticity, for he assumes that every literary work is the result of tuning to already existent literary signals, and to his interest in how the medium, its materiality, affects the signal itself (Finbow, 2010). The relevance for Tom McCarthy of the connection between literature and transmission has led him to publish an e-book of literary theory dedicated entirely to this idea: Transmission and the Individual Remix. How Literature Works. This book serves as a platform from which this author advances the set of notions at the center of his work since the beginning of his artistic and literary career. From the onset, McCarthy invites the reader to take part in this position.

Listen…

A set of signals has been pulsing, repeating, modulating in the airspace of literature…

This essay is an invitation to listen to those signals, as they travel through and shape the work of Aeschylus and Ovid, Rilke, Conrad, Burroughs, Joyce and others. To retune our idea of what a writer does, of what the very act of writing ‘is’. To rethink literature itself along the lines of transmission and reception, signal and noise… (McCarthy, 2012, p. 1)

Literature is thus directly connected to radio transmission, a trope that will also be present in his analysis of Hergé’s work in Tintin and the Secret of Literature, namely, the fact that all over the Tintin books ‘what [the hero] actually does is send and receive radio messages’ (McCarthy, 2006, p. 26). According to McCarthy the notion was already there in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, where Caliban describes the air around him as ‘full of noises, sounds and sweet airs’ (McCarthy, 2006, p. 26). He relates that the same idea lies at the heart of Cocteau’s Orphée, whose protagonist tunes the radio in death’s car to the words of a deceased poet and receives phrases which only he is able to appreciate and that are later published under his name. ‘Orphée, the official author of the fragments, is not their originator but rather their repeater whose composing consists first and foremost of listening.’ (McCarthy, 2012, p. 165)

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In McCarthy’s view, such is the essence of the work of the artist, an entity functioning as a coherer of all these transmissions and broadcasting them back with new form and meaning.15 The concept was at the center of his performative work with the INS, which in 2004 set a broadcasting unit at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, that transmitted texts from mixed sources that would be picked up by other stations, reworked, and re-transmitted to the point of creating some form of loaded noise (McCarthy, 2012). These would serve as inspiration for C, a novel about transmission, code and the media by means of which signals are recorded, stored, recombined and broadcasted.

In C, transmission is everywhere. From the beginning, we are introduced to the Carrefax family, with a father who is a wireless communication enthusiast, a sister who masters the technique of sending and receiving coded messages, and the protagonist himself, who spends the nights of his early adolescence listening to his own wireless radio set. In addition, there is not only a proliferation of transmitted messages, encoded, modulated or conspicuously absent, but also of transmission technology, with poles, wires, coherers, pylons and whatnots.

A Wolf Man and a crypt. All code is burial

McCarthy projects this story of transmission on the story behind Freud’s case of the Wolf Man and its later re-elaboration by two other psychoanalysts. By visiting Freud’s case study, McCarthy also activates the concept of the “death drive”, which is another recurrent motif within the novel.

In the INS’s Founding Manifesto, the organization launched the idea that ‘death is a type of space, which we intend to map, enter, colonize, and, eventually, inhabit.’ (International Necronautical Society, 2012, p. 53) Regardless of its tong-in-cheek tone, the subject addressed is at the heart of Western thought, namely, the notion of death as the ultimate challenge for philosophical and artistic projection. The impossibility of art, and in the case of the writer, of language to actually represent death runs parallel to another impossibility, that of representing trauma, in as much as traumatic events create a space of irrepresentability, and nevertheless are echoed and encoded in the discourse surrounding it. Thus, it is by following this logic of parallelism between death and trauma, that C recreates Freud’s The Wolf Man and Abraham and Török’s The Wolf Man’s Magic Word: A Cryptonymy. (in (McCarthy, Calling All Agents, 2012)

15 ‘The coherer, or radio-conductor is one of the elements of early radio reception devices’. (Lanone, 2014)

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Already in his second report to the INS (McCarthy, 2012), and elsewhere in his study about Hergé’s work and his essay Transmission and the Individual Remix, McCarthy discusses what he finds to be the most notable elements about this case, which he would later integrate to his work, above all the notion advanced by Abraham and Török of the cryptonymy, an idea that leads him not only to invoke ‘all code as burial’ and ‘to operate or dwell within the space of code is to be already dead’ as a mantra throughout his texts (McCarthy, 2012, p. 177), but also to embed this very notion within the structure of C.

As presented by McCarthy, Freud’s study is centered on a young Russian man, Sergei Pankejeff, who suffered of obsessional neurosis. His case involved several traumas, among other elements: witnessing his parents having sex; having an incestuous attraction for his sister, who committed suicide in her youth; the recurrence of nightmares. Besides, Pankejeff would display an obsession with insects, receiving enemas and a specific position for sex (McCarthy, 2012, p. 179). Freud’s analysis sets off from the unraveling of the elements in Pankejeff’s recurring dreams and the breakdown of screen memories and linguistic phenomena that appear in his patient’s account. (p. 180) For McCarthy, ‘[t]he Wolf Man neurosis is manifest, but in code. Both the dream and the screen memory act as mechanisms to enmesh, transpose, overlay and encrypt. Freud’s job […] is to listen for the frequencies of repetition, trace the patterns of mutation, and so break the code.’ (p. 180) The narrative in C works in the same way, with a stream of motifs and nodes of meaning that are encoded and re-enacted in every chapter.

To Freud’s account McCarthy adds Abraham and Török’s re-examination. He notes that by ‘using a rhetoric of tuning’ (p. 180) these researchers address the discursive wrapping of the case. He relates how they trace chains of metonymic words by means of which meaning is displaced, following processes of synonymy, allosemy, transpositions and mutations (p. 181). These chains they label as ‘cryptonyms (words that hide)’ (p. 181)(emphasis in the original), which for them is evidence of the presence of a crypt (p. 181). The notion of the crypt, which is linked to the notion of trauma, is of key importance for this author’s own architecture of writing. For him, the crypt represents ‘a hidden fold or enclave from which coded transmissions come but that itself always remains out of earshot, un-dee-effable as it were’ (p. 181).In this light, it is possible to understand how C navigates through its main apparent paradox, that of transmission and burial; a question that is also raised in the introduction to An Interview with Tom McCarthy,

C is […] poised between two apparently contradictory notions of “how literature works”—a phrase we place in quotation marks because it serves as the subtitle to McCarthy’s short e-book,

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Transmission and the Individual Remix (Vintage, 2012). There is the idea of literature as a radio network, a technology that helps us listen “to a set of signals that have been repeating, pulsing, modulating in the airspace of the novel, poem, play— in their lines, between them and around them—since each of these forms began.” And then there is literature as crypt, an occult zone within which, as Nicolas Abram and Maria Torok argued in The Wolf Man’s Magic Word (1976), inadmissible or unsayable losses are encoded and preserved. (Hart, Jaffe, & Eburne, 2013, p. 658)

McCarthy therefore will seed this novel with innumerable crypts, physical and allegorical. Not only is Serge’s sister buried in the family crypt at Versoie, but there are also crypts in the battlefield of WWI, an underground chamber where transmissions are turned into film and mapping; fake transmissions from beyond the grave, and finally actual Egyptian crypts. For McCarthy, the very technological advances that convey communication are crypts in themselves that are haunted by the ghosts of dead relatives. (McCarthy, 2006)

The crypt also stands for the ‘failure to mourn’ (p. 183). McCarthy notes how ‘[f]or Freud, the failure to mourn properly produces melancholia, a complex that “behaves like an open wound,” infecting the whole psyche’. (p. 183) Allusions to this feature of the crypt will appear continuously in the novel, introduced most notably by Serge’s visit to a sanatorium where he attends the practice of a Freud-like doctor who points at the crypt within him.

“[…] You have a poison factory in you that secretes to arteries, liver, kidneys and beyond. To brain to brain too, when we don’t prevent.

“What’s causing it,” Serge asks.

“Morbid matter!” Dr. Filip’s thin voice pipes from his small mouth. “Bad stuff. If I am speaking several hundred years ago I call it chole, bile – black bile: mela cole[…] It needs a host to nurture it, and you are willing. Yesterday you spoke to me of what it wants, which means you serve its needs, make them your own. This we must change.” (McCarthy, 2010, pp. 94-95)

Instances of failed mourning are a constant in the text, reworked in repetitive re-nactment, recombined or encoded, setting layer upon layer of meaning, so that by the last chapter the text has become an overloaded composite that conveys the sensation of transmission noise. The author underlines this

39 sensation by situating much of the final chapter in Alexandria, a city that has gone through all possible combinations and that is described using Serge’s impression of his guide as a model.

Petrou knows everything about the city. He seems to have absorbed it almost chemically: blotted it up, the subsequent reaction dictating his elemental constitution. It strikes Serge that if you cut a graft off him, a cross-section, and mounted it on a slide-tray beneath a microscope, then what you’d see would be a cellular combination of every Greek-speaking Jewish draper whose yarmulke’s made from Alexandrian cotton, each partially French-descended native clerk proudly twiddling his Second Empire moustache as he describes the track he’s writing in his leisure hours about the horticultural benefits of Napoleon’s Egyptian reign, the Austro-Hungarian confectioners whose Viennese profiteroles bear the distinctive taste of local sugar, the Maltese photographers, Levantine booksellers and Portuguese tobacconists they visit every afternoon – a combination, too, of the cells of the Persians, Romans and ersatz-Greeks who people his daily talk: all of them, right back to sister-wedding Ptolemies. (McCarthy, 2010, p. 247)

Alexandria stands as a metaphor for the continuous enmeshing and embedding of previous narratives within this novel. As the city, the text is populated by innumerable landmarks of modernism, cohabitating with ideas and tropes new and old, all flattened into one plane in the manner of the ancient hieroglyphs that Serge will find at the end of his journey to the archeological heart of the land.

Serge encrypts within himself the trauma of his sister’s death, his incestuous attraction, and the primal scene witnessed at too early an age to be able for him to comprehend. These motives are encoded, re- transmitted and re-enacted throughout the novel, and the process of encoding and re-enactment becomes the center of the text and its main motif. The novel itself plays out as an enormous crypt, encoding and transmitting pervious texts, spreading a network of codes all over its surface. The text highlights this by constantly calling attention to processes of encoding and deciphering: Serge’s sister’s avid engagement with cryptography, Serge’s later enthusiasm with early radio transmissions and Morse code, or his encoding of Hölderlin stanzas within the fire sequences of his plane camera-weapon, to cite some examples. Serge’s last name also acts as a code that is constantly being transmuted, altered and transposed, alluding to insects, scarabs, Käfer (McCarthy, 2010, p. 179). Ultimately, the novel’s title stands as a versatile codeword for carbon (black matter, but also the basic element of life, and the action of leaving a print), communication, copy, code, crypt, coherer, etc.; it is played out in the title of every

40 chapter: Caul, Chute, Crash, Call. As critics point out, C becomes an incessant generator, a wellspring of words and meaning, ‘spawning a staggering paradigm of combinations’ (Lanone, 2014).

Through his continuous play of encoding and transmission McCarthy brings the attention to the construed nature of the text, how his novel works by recreating previous information. In so doing he revisits a clear postmodernist challenge of the function of the author, or the subjective self, as a generator of authentic material. In addition, it is also relevant for our analysis how C exploits the ambivalence of encryption, its potential to simultaneously show and withhold. It could be argued that its purpose is not to provide any definite reading, but that its interest is the very process of encoding and embedding. Therefore, as the traumas in the story, the book never reaches closure. What is more, by activating multiple readings and refusing to provide a definitive understanding, the work remains open to innumerable possibilities for the creation of meaning.

Technology and the Death Drive

This novel’s interest in transmission is also expressed by means of the text’s exploration of technology, in a sense that both motifs complement each other. The text engages with the uncanny side of the mechanics of storage and transmission, ‘the inhuman side of media’ (Nieland, 2012), and it is pervaded by the relation between death and technology. From the ghostly stories that haunt the origins of our current communication devices, to the very catastrophe that the novel sees as inextricable from technological progress. McCarthy, like Benjamin rejects drawing a triumphant idea of progress, a positivist conception of history, whose dark underside he is committed to explore. The following paragraphs will also include a discussion of how the Futurist Manifestos and the ideas of the prosthetic developed by Freud influence the way technology appears in C.

Technology is a key element within the structure of the novel. Its presence comes in the shape of archaic Huguenot looms, transmission towers, pylons, radio, gramophones, wireless transmitters, etc. It is also alluded to by means of the pervasive motif of the insect/incest. This connection is made clear in the primal scene witnessed by Serge as a child. Projected against a silk sheet that had just served as a cinema screen, the copulating bodies of his sister and (presumably) the family guest form a silhouette resembling a huge insect made of pulsing mechanical parts. (60). The traumatic event will be repeatedly re-enacted by Serge in all his sexual encounters, entwined with the attraction to his dead sister, as a space where desire and repulsion coexist. Sexual arousal, which is pervaded by the specter of his sister, also comes to Serge from

41 his contemplation of technology and his musing of the amalgamation of organic and mechanical parts while contemplating the possibility of a plane crash. Technology and trauma will also be embedded in the countless references to insects throughout the text, which play on the insect/incest palimpsest. Thus, trauma, technology and death make for a recurrent triangular motif within the novel, in the sense that by bringing up one of its corners, the other two are sequentially activated.

As Justus Nieland remarks in Dirty Media: Tom McCarthy and the Afterlife of Modernism, the idea of the crypt is also connected to a technological side of the mind, ‘an artificial unconscious, [which] offers more testimony to the primordial role of techne in the self, its foundational inauthenticity’ (Nieland, 2012, p. 582). He cites other critics that have elaborated on the idea of the crypt as the technological work of the mind, a place that is not natural, but a construct, an artifice (Nieland, 2012, p. 582). With these arguments, the attention is brought on the significant space McCarthy devotes in this novel to the inhuman and the prosthetic in a Freudian sense16, of which a good example is the uncanny speech of the deaf students from Serge’s father’s school. Simon Carrefax speech at the beginning of the novel, about the functioning of the phonatory system is based almost entirely on technological metaphors. The sound his pupils produce, explained in this way, is entirely prosthetic.

Our job here is to restore to the deaf child the function of his pipes and all their stops: the larynx with its valves; the timbre-moulding pharynx; the pillar supported palate which, depressed hangs like a veil before the nares; and so on. Speech, like song, is but the mechanical result of certain adjustments of the vocal organs. If we explain to deaf children the correct adjustments of the organs they possess, they will speak. (McCarthy, 2010, p. 17)(Emphasis in the original)

For McCarthy, technology and death are intrinsically related. His conviction that technological progress carries within its own catastrophe is echoed by Serge’s reflections while taking an exam for the School of Military Aeronautics.

Yet even as these things take shape in his imagination he realizes that not only will they fail to prevent the collision, but it was they themselves, in their amalgam, who caused it in the first place: the catastrophe was hatched within the network, from among its nodes and relays, in its miles

16 The reference is to the “prosthetic god” from Civilization and Its Discontents. Here Freud advances the notion that humans are trapped by the same prosthesis that are meant to enhance and liberate them, and which would eventually replace them. See Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. Broadview Press, 2015

42 and miles of track, splitting and expanding as they run on beyond the scope of any one controlling vision; it was hatched by the network, at some distant point no longer capable of being pinned down but nonetheless decisive, so much so that ever since this point was passed – hours, days of even years ago – the collision’s been inevitable, just a matter of time. (McCarthy, 2010, p. 119)

As a last example of the place of technology in the novel, it is essential to mention the war section of the novel. The depiction of technology in “Chute”, is heavily indebted to Marinetti, an influence that Tom McCarthy mentions in many of his frequent interviews (Histories of Violence, 2012). The several instances of technology and bodies thrust against one another, merging organic and mechanical parts, and the expanse of the inhuman sense in Serge’s perception bring immediately to mind some motifs in the Futurist Manifestos: ‘Our bodies penetrate the sofas upon which we sit, and the sofas penetrate our bodies. The motor bus rushes into the houses which it passes, and in their turn the houses throw themselves upon the motor bus and are blended with it’ (Boccioni, Carrà, Balla, & Severini, 1910). Echoes of this image can be found in the novel in passages such as

The idea that his flesh could melt and fuse with the machine parts pleases him. When they sing their song about taking cylinders out of kidneys, he imagines the whole process playing itself out backwards: brain and connecting rod merging to form one, ultra-intelligent organ, his back quivering in pleasure as pumps and pistons plunge into it, heart and liver being spliced with valve and filter to create a whole new, streamlined mechanism.

For Serge, the space of war is the site where he reenacts the complex trauma of the death of his sister and his sexual attraction to her. He is drawn constantly towards this obsessive experience of pain and pleasure and war is the perfect setting for him (Histories of Violence, 2012). Therefore, his experience of war is entirely devoid of fear, or any ethical and moral concerns. He witnesses the conflict from an aesthetic point of view. This rendering allows McCarthy to channel Marinetti’s approach to war and violence through his protagonist. McCarthy notes how Marinetti perceives war ‘not as a means for imposing an ideology or expanding land boundaries, […] but as a setting where the limits of the self are breached. The limits where the bourgeois sovereign “I”, identity, are ruptured physically […] More important, psychologically, in a kind of psychic dimension, […] by the hecticness of the space […] The self is no longer here where my thoughts are, but is kind of distributed, networked and multiplied along the trajectories of ordinances, and the flightpaths of bullets and shells’ (Histories of Violence, 2012).

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It is in light of this perception that flying over the battlefields Serge sees humanity spread as ants or dots on a horizontal plane where he is unable to distinguish where English lines end and the German front begins (McCarthy, 2010, p. 140). When he is congratulated for having destroyed an enemy battery and killed his operators he can only reply: “I don’t see it that way” (McCarthy, 2010, p. 159). The ethical dimension of his acts eludes him, for he has only an aesthetic relation to the war.

His approach is provocative, but under the layers of aestheticism there is the pulsing of a distress call, which has also been encoded in the whole of the body of the text. Echoing a concern that is also present in modernism but that it reaches out to our contemporaneity, the novel stresses the disaster of technological modernity. Through this vision of humanity through technology everything is objectified and mechanized, in the same way that Heidegger (another underlying source of inspiration for this novel) described our modern perception as every element of our reality as a ‘“standing reserve,” supplies in a storeroom, as it were, pieces of inventory to be ordered and conscripted, assembled and disassembled, set up and set aside. [In his view] Everything approaches us merely as a source of energy or as something we must organize. We treat even human capabilities as though they were only means for technological procedures, as when a worker becomes nothing but an instrument for production. Leaders and planners, along with the rest of us, are mere human resources to be arranged, rearranged, and disposed of. Each and every thing that presents itself technologically thereby loses its distinctive independence and form’ (Blitz, 2014). Therefore, we can argue that the affectionless rendering of the war and its relation to technology, is another way for McCarthy to stress the inhuman part of technology, but as a catastrophe, highlighting the violence that it entails. Hence, though not explicitly, there is an ethical dimension to his narrative. One that has been overlooked by some critics, but that places this novel running parallel to contemporary works that are more overt in their ethical and moral engagement.

Death as space

Space is another of the great areas of exploration of this novel. At the beginning of this chapter we introduced the INS manifesto, where death is considered as a type of space, which this art project intends to explore (International Necronautical Society, 2012, p. 52). McCarthy will navigate once more this aesthetic and philosophical notion armed with the concept of the crypt that runs along the Wolf Man. As he discusses in Tintin and the Secret of Literature, the crypt is not only the emitter of coded messages, but a space, which is conveyed by Abraham and Török by means of architectural metaphors (McCarthy, 2006, p. 79). In this way, a philosophical blind alley is provided with planes and metaphorical walls that can be

44 charted, studied, perhaps even represented. Literature makes it possible to circumnavigate this point of paradox, and that is what interests this author.

With the purpose of bringing forth the collapsing of all dimensions into one plane of representation, a single space, McCarthy populates the text with fattened images. From there he explores surfaces where not only death and space coincide, but also time. Several instances of this kind of construction can be found in the novel, and a very illustrative example appears in the third chapter, where Serge Carrefax, by then a war veteran with a strong sense of displacement, enrolls in the Architectural Association regardless of his innate inability to see perspective (McCarthy, 2010, p. 194). At some point, he is compelled to present his sketches to a school official as proof of compliance with his duties. When Serge shows his dossier, he refers to it as plans for a ‘memorial’ (McCarthy, 2010, p. 213), i.e., a place of death, but also a place of time, of remembrance.

Space is one of the focus points of exploration from the beginning of the book. It is presented primarily from Serge’s ‘peculiar’ condition, his inability to see perspective. He sees things flat, which is not only a metaphor for his lack of depth as a character, but a device for the author to superimpose motifs and narratives in one plane. Everywhere in the novel, space is being mapped, transported, reproduced. The children in the beginning of the novel map their monopoly game over the space of the Versoie estate; the crypt and the labyrinth of the home will appear in Egypt, where all projections are flattened into hieroglyphs; as an observer in the war, Serge is mapping the front lines from a plane, in the following chapter he will map London’s postwar underground of drugs and spectacle. By the end of the novel he will be charting the landscape in the process of establishing the first imperial communication network (later BBC).

Within this textual mapping, McCarthy creates nodes within the landscape of the novel, spaces of coalescence. These are passages where there occur amalgamations of landscapes, soundscapes and techno-spaces. A most revealing example comes in a scene from the war chapter where Serge coincidentally visits an underground ‘sounding range’. There he is introduced to a mapping facility. In this buried place, another re-enactment of the crypt, technicians work the radio signals transmitted by the plane observers through a contrived technological process that combines microphone reception, resonating piano strings, and film; all of it its transported to a spatial representation of enemy batteries’ coordinates. (McCarthy, 2010, pp. 152-153)

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For McCarthy, the flattening of all projections is also a way of bringing all the narrative spaces to the plane of the written page. Of all the aspects of the act of writing he is focused mostly on the process of leaving a mark, on the two-dimensional print on the horizontal surface of the page. The text’s self-reference is continuously calling attention to the process of the act of writing, the smudge of ink, the carbon copy, the tar that stains the landscape and Serge’s face, the stories engraved on the back of Egyptian scarabs, etc. This process of marking-erasure-and-marking-again is a metaphor for literature itself, where every new text bears the mark of its antecedents. The book itself becomes a process of charting of the soundscape of previous narratives, which are continuously replayed and reworked within the novel in what scholar Catherine Lanone calls a ‘monstrous patchwork of a text’, or a massive ‘switchboard’ (Lanone, 2014). In this process, McCarthy is upholding literature as something essentially impure. He is bringing our attention to how by cannibalizing other texts, even other media, literature has the capacity to create something entirely new.

As a side note, it should be added that this interest on death and space by Tom McCarthy can be traced to his reading of Maurice Blanchot, who sees literature coincide with death as a space of meaning. (Critchley, 2001) This notion informs the novel and the instances of exploration of space that have been discussed above. The difference lays in that while death is the space where all meaning ends, literature is a space of building meaning. In that sense, through literature, through charting the space towards death, the place where all meaning disappears, new meaning is being created. Literature has this fundamental privilege, which McCarthy is expanding by struggling to reach his impossible goal. Above all, his commitment is evidence of the generative potential of the novel as a narrative form. By attempting (and failing) to cancel a philosophical paradox, it is able to push the boundaries of creativity, and in so doing, to produce new forms and new meaning.

This brings us to the last item in our analysis of C and Tom McCarthy’s work: the place that the notion of failure occupies within the structure of the narrative as a crucial element in this author’s creative process.

Failure

As mentioned before, McCarthy links the idea of the crypt to the Freudian argumentation of the failure of mourning. As a concept, failure extends to the full body of the novel becoming a recurring theme. For McCarthy, embracing failure is a manner of exploring inauthenticity, the failure at perfect representation, to achieve perfect coalescence, or transcendence. For that reason, his work avoids any direction that may

46 lead to tragedy, or heroic deaths, since for him and his colleagues at the INS ‘tragedy is about making death meaningful […] The tragic hero takes death into him- or herself and it becomes meaningful’. (Critchley, 2001, p. 71) He admires from an author like Beckett his slapstick tone of tragicomedy, in the sense that he avoids the perfect resolution. (Critchley, 2001, p. 71) In McCarthy’s view, a gesture that synthetizes the ‘failure of tragedy, the failure of matter to get aufgehoben, to go up there and be sublime. We want to go to the heavens as heroes but we trip over our own shoelaces and piss ourselves’ (Critchley, 2001, p. 73) (Italics in the original).

Comedy, on the other hand denies that moment of catharsis (p. 71). McCarthy’s project therefore reaffirms ‘comic acknowledge rather than tragic affirmation’ (Joint Statement on Inauthenticity, 2012, p. 227). Thus, in addition to conveying several humorous situations, this novel also repeatedly denies the protagonist’s death. Following an overwhelming death-drive, Serge does not share with his fellow observers and pilots the terror of dying as a blazing ball of mechanical parts, ‘carboneezay’ (McCarthy, 2010, p. 164); however, he doesn’t die from plane crash; (in a nod to Blanchot) he is saved at the very last moment from death by a firing squad, a death he had so eagerly anticipated that its denial makes him experience fear for the first time in the war; and (in a nod to Marinetti) he fails to die in a car crash. By living on and not being able to escape his own drive towards reenacting his trauma, towards repetition, the protagonist is condemned to an even more tragic fate than death itself. He is driven towards death and yet he is unable to reach it. Deprived of this moment of fulfillment, death only comes to Serge by chance, as an anticlimax. As an archetypical necronaut, he ‘dies almost without noticing, feeling a twig in his back instead of a bullet, stung […] by a flying insect and succumbing to the resulting fever.’ (Joint Statement on Inauthenticity, 2012, p. 229)

This investment on failure seeks to strip the novel of transcendent connotations. The intention is to keep it in the realm of the materiality of things; what the INS mean by invoking their motto ‘to let matter matter’. In this way, a text cannot claim sovereignty over reality, for it is incapable of bringing the whole of material world into an ideal form, a system of words cannot contain all meaning. Simon Critchley, INS’s main philosopher summarizes the way the work of art (in our sense, literature) came to occupy this position.

If religion is no longer the realm in which the question of the meaning of life is to be thought through, then what other realm is? One obvious candidate is art. Art becomes the way in which questions of the meaning and value of life are articulated; and the aesthetic movement associated

47 with that is Romanticism. In Romanticism, the energy of religion gets transformed into an artwork: an artwork that would reveal God, or something like God, in nature - but what that actually means is an artwork that would provide meaning for a human self. For the German Romantics such as Schlegel, the aesthetic form capable of bearing that question of meaning is the novel, and the task becomes writing the great novel of the modern world (Critchley, 2001, p. 59).

McCarthy’s work is a form of rebellion against this monopolizing of meaning, which constrains rather than liberates the novel as a genre, and as a means for language to create new meaning. With this stance McCarthy’s is holding onto a postmodernist ethos of dismantling grand narratives. His whole creative project is attuned to the idea of ‘break[ing] down people's convictions about truth in the name of truth’ (Critchley, 2001). Thus, the postmodernist logic of fracture and fragmentation is still valid in his narrative, not only as an aspiration towards truth, but also as a politically charged means to undermine and subvert hegemonic discourse.

On this point, McCarthy’s position clashes with the metamodernist narrative that we had discussed before, as proposed by Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker. the first chapter of this dissertation included an analysis of the way metamodernism engages with failure. Bringing those comments here, we can state that according to this framework, and as a neo-romantic quality, the metamodernist author embraces a narrative of self-recreation, or self-construction to which he/she engages sincerely, even though aware that it is an impossible task (Van Poecke, 2011). On the other hand, in contrast to these romantic ideals, McCarthy’s novel works to emphasize how this attempts at self- expression are manufactured, and regards individual reassembling of old narratives as constructs. His approach proposes a more oblique way to reach truth; one that leaves space for many interpretations, and in so doing, it opens the door to more narratives, more creation of meaning, new structures. It could be argued that both conceptions are equally loaded with their own set of shortcomings, for while metamodernist bends dangerously towards naivete, McCarthy’s work runs the risk of repeating postmodernism’s dead-end of turning onto itself in an infinite loop.

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Conclusions

This dissertation has aimed at establishing a connection between an aesthetic conceptual framework, namely metamodernism and the novel C by Tom McCarthy with the purpose of placing this literary work within current debates about contemporary cultural production. This relation has proven to be very complicated, for although there are some points of convergence, such as a conception of the possibility to simultaneously inhabit different, sometimes contradictory positions, and with it an effort to negotiate the paradoxes that arise from this practice. They also share an interest on authenticity and the representation of the real, and both grant a relevant space for the notion of failure. However, it transpires from our examination that even in those points of shared concern, McCarthy’s general aesthetic project at moments appears to set itself in direct opposition to the metamodernist perspective. Another aspect of this is the way McCarthy’s work problematizes Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker’s model for succeeding postmodernism by refusing to entirely renounce skepticism and deconstruction as means to envision artistic creation.

A point to consider when discussing this novel is the way McCarthy assumes a praxis of literary creation that is compatible with Eshelman’s conception of performatism. Present within the metamodernist framework, this notion envisions the creation of a frame in the work of art, that is acknowledged by the reader, from within which its principles operate. In the case of C, there are two levels of enframing that occur simultaneously. The first frame occurs at the level of the narrative text, where the continuous relations of encryption and repetition supersede character development or narrative arc as the novel’s focus of concern. By stepping into the network created by McCarthy, the reader accepts the enframing posed by the novel as a crypt that encodes its own themes imbedded into or alongside previous narratives. More interestingly, McCarthy’s own exegesis of the tropes of his work, outside the body of the novel, act as an external level of enframing, namely, his critical work in Tintin and the Secret of Literature, Transmission and the Individual Remix, along with his work with the INS and his many articles and reviews.17

Related to this outer level of enframing is the notion that McCarthy’s activities within the frame of his aesthetic project harmonize with the idea of the multidisciplinary nature of metamodernist production, as advanced by Seth Abramson’s elaboration. These activities create the highly elaborate network of

17 Justus Nieland acknowledges the difficulty of escaping the gravitational pull of Tom McCarthy’s aesthetics. (Nieland, 2012, p. 578)

49 aesthetic-philosophical discourse that wraps C and provides the ground for his complex dialogue between modernist tropes and postmodernist criticism.

The space of oscillation that is modelled in metamodernism allows for considering McCarthy’s use of the structure of the bildungsroman while at the same time challenging genre expectations by presenting a protagonist deprived of psychological evolution and with a general lack of exploration of conscience. This relates to McCarthy’s primary purpose of assuming a deconstructive approach to generalized conceptions of the self and authenticity. In addition, the notion of an oscillation between two irreconcilable poles, which in McCarthy’s case would represent appropriating modernists tropes while informed by postmodernist praxis, or advancing new space and meaning for the novel while proclaiming its inherent dysfunctionality, also opens up the space for this author’s engagement with the idea of failure, which is embedded within an aesthetic commitment to attempt to overcome unsurmountable impossibilities. These are key concerns that inhabit contemporary artistic activities whose energies of representation are projected against unattainable objectives, such as embracing the paradox of attempting to do a nothing that by its realization becomes a something.

McCarthy’s appropriation of antihumanist motives in this novel, his exploration of the prosthetic, the divided self, and his general claim of inauthenticity contrast the more optimistic proposition of the metamodernist framework and its conception as a revival of humanism in the context of the new millennium. However, both projections share a concern with the state of modern subjectivity in the context of the contemporary challenges to conceptions of the self, subjectivity and the individual that are brought by technological developments. McCarthy’s position would thus be understood as one which embraces the inability of language to authentically represent subjectivity; however, in the face of the paradox of approaching the problems of language through language, he has proposed to attend to it inauthentically, to march in reverse. The idea would not be to reach the final destination, authenticity, transcendence, but to create literature and new meaning in the very process of aiming and missing the target.

In a general sense, C is an ‘uncomfortable’ novel, mainly because it eludes simple classifications. If a narrative explores trauma but excludes the exploration of the traumatic conscience, it eludes an affective identification with its protagonist, and it showcases inherent dangers of human relation with technology without explicit ethical or moral engagement, the most foreseeable effect such work would have on its readers would be that of disorientation and estrangement, even disgust. However, it is precisely the way

50 it compels its readership to actively engage with its complexity that makes for this novel’s most remarkable value. C refuses to reduce the rich set of possibilities that spread over its narrative, which would be lost by offering resolution to the issues it rises. On the contrary, from the beginning McCarthy demands from the reader a full attention to the way the narratives that antecede this novel have been disassembled and recombined to produce new modes of reflection about essential attributes of the contemporary human condition.

It should be added that in infusing new life into defunct avant-gardist tropes by means of a contemporary approach to the self, subjectivity and representation, McCarthy is able to expand the narrative possibilities of the novel. C also represents a way in which the problems of language and meaning can be accessed, not to be solved, but to be negotiated sincerely, and in this process of negotiation new spaces are opened for exploration. His stance allows for a reconsideration of the spaces between modernism, postmodernism and the latter’s possible succession, by offering within the frame of the debate about their demarcations, a positive sense of conceptual fluidity and interchangeability.

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