Sydney and Berlin Cities of Silence and Absence
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Sydney and Berlin Cities of Silence and Absence A psychogeographical reading of contemporary non-fiction texts Hannah Lili Böttcher MA (Freie Universität Berlin) This thesis is presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy under a joint award PhD programme between The University of Western Australia School of Humanities European Languages and Studies German Studies and Freie Universität Berlin Fachbereich Philosophie und Geisteswissenschaften Institut für Englische Philologie Perth and Berlin, May 2016 Examiner 1: Professor Dr. Alexandra Ludewig (UWA) Examiner 2: Univ.-Professor Dr. phil. Andrew James Johnston (FU) Day of Thesis Defence: 15 June 2016 2 Declaration / Erklärung I hereby state that all parts of this thesis are my own work and that I have not availed myself of any means other than those stated. This thesis has not previously been accepted for any other degree in this or another institution and it has been accomplished during enrolment in the degree. Hiermit versichere ich, dass ich diese Arbeit in allen Teilen selbstständig verfasst und keine anderen als die angegebenen Hilfsmittel verwendet habe. Diese Dissertation wurde noch nicht für einen anderen Abschluss an dieser oder einer anderen Institution angenommen und wurde während der Einschreibung zu diesem Abschluss verfasst. Berlin, 28 April 2016 Hannah Lili Böttcher 3 Examiners / Gutachter Supervisor Professor Dr. Alexandra Ludewig The University of Western Australia European Languages and Studies German Studies Supervisor Univ.-Professor Dr. phil. Andrew James Johnston Freie Universität Berlin Institut für Englische Philologie External Examiner Professor Dr. Dr. Russell West-Pavlov Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen Englisches Seminar External Examiner Professor Dr. Helmut Peitsch Universität Potsdam Institut für Germanistik 4 Supervision / Betreuung UWA Supervision FU Berlin Supervision Coordinating Supervisor: Professor Dr. Alexandra Ludewig Univ.-Professor Dr. phil. Head of School Andrew James Johnston School of Humanities Literaturwissenschaft European Languages and Studies Institut für Englische Philologie German Studies Co-Supervisor: Professor Dr. Philip Mead Chair of Australian Literature English and Cultural Studies 5 Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to a number of people, without whom this thesis would never have been possible. Many thanks to my supervisors in Perth and Berlin: Alexandra Ludewig, my principal supervisor at UWA, for having been incredibly supportive, enthusiastic and reliable throughout as well as for reading innumerable drafts and providing swift and helpful feedback. I could not have wished for better supervision. Philip Mead, my co-supervisor at UWA, for setting up and managing to finalise the Joint PhD agreement despite various obstacles and for taking the time to discuss my thesis with me during my stay at UWA. Andrew James Johnston at FU Berlin, for his help and for agreeing to step in at such a late stage in the project for the German side of the supervision. I was extremely lucky to have a wonderful network of family and friends around me without whom the rather lonely task of writing a PhD thesis would have been much more difficult at times. Above all I would like to thank my parents Ada and Ernst-Rudolf Böttcher for having been unceasingly supportive and encouraging since I first started university (and especially the PhD), for having listened to my worries and for always being there for me; and Gerrit Haas for lending me his support and encouragement, for always being on hand with help and advice and for patiently answering my many questions. Thanks also to my sister Lisa M. Böttcher who has provided me with hands-on advice and support. Friends near and far have had a friendly ear for me over the past four years. I cannot name them all, but Susanne Wartenberg and Judith Schühle deserve special recognition and I would like to thank them for their help. I will also miss the many happy and productive co-working Fridays with the latter. Elizabeth Gralton has done a fantastic proofreading job, for which I am very grateful to her. (All remaining errors are entirely my own responsibility.) I would also like to thank Leisa Mundy who has proofread earlier chapter drafts. 6 Thanks to Lenka Filipova for our ‘study buddy sessions’ and Johanna Ahlrichs for good company during many lunch and tea breaks at the Stabi Unter den Linden (Berlin State Library). I am grateful to Russell West-Pavlov for paving my way to Perth in the first place and for initiating the Joint PhD agreement with UWA. My thanks also go to Ian Collinson, Elizabeth Farrelly, Karl Friedhelm Fischer, Ross Gibson, Gail Jones, Eoghan Lewis, Tony Mitchell, Ella Mudie, Stephen Muecke and Naomi Stead who took the time to discuss psychogeography and my thesis with me in Sydney, Brisbane and Berlin and provided valuable suggestions. Scholarships The following Australian scholarships have financially supported this PhD project, for which I am grateful: International Postgraduate Research Scholarship: 23/02/2012-21/02/2016 (IPRS) Australian Postgraduate Award (APA): 23/02/2012-22/08/2015 UWA Safety-Net Top-Up Scholarship: 23/02/2012-22/08/2015 I would also like to acknowledge that the Graduate Research School and the Faculty of Arts at the University of Western Australia have granted Postgraduate Research Student Travel Awards that allowed me to travel to Sydney in order to conduct research as well as to present at the symposium “Cultures of Change” at the University of New South Wales in October 2013 and to attend a literary festival in London in June 2015. 7 8 Contents Cover Page 1 Declaration / Erklärung 3 Examiners / Gutachter 4 Supervision / Betreuung 5 Acknowledgements 6 Abstract 10 Kurzzusammenfassung 12 List of Illustrations / Abbildungsverzeichnis 14 List of Publications / Vorveröffentlichungen 15 1. Introduction 17 2. Paris and London – Origin and Revival of Psychogeography 27 2.1 Paris – Psychogeography’s Situationist Beginnings 27 2.2 London – The ‘Visionary’ Tradition and the Psychogeographical Revival 46 3. Sydney – City of Contradictions 80 3.1 Darkness Beneath the Glitzy Surface: Haunting in Delia Falconer’s Sydney 87 3.2 The Paradox of Silence: Reading Ross Gibson’s 26 Views of the Starburst World as an Expression of Verbalised Absence 103 3.3 Urban Islands: Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour 127 3.4 Artistic Engagement with Place and History: Maps That Cried 143 3.5 Conclusion 147 4. Berlin – City of Scars 148 4.1 The Silence of Memory: Berlin in the 1960s through the Eyes of a Child 155 4.2 The Omnipresence of the Past: Cees Nooteboom’s Philosophical Forays into Berlin 181 4.3 Along the (Former) Wall: Cycling the Frame and The Invisible Frame 205 4.4 Orte des Erinnerns/Places of Remembrance 210 4.5 Conclusion 214 5. Conclusion 215 6. Illustrations 220 7. Bibliography 224 Curriculum Vitae 242 9 Abstract This dissertation – entitled “Sydney and Berlin – Cities of Silence and Absence: A psychogeographical reading of contemporary non-fiction texts” – seeks to suggest a further development of the practice of psychogeography. According to Guy Debord (1955), the theory of psychogeography offers a way of investigating the impact of the surroundings on people’s emotions and behaviour. While psychogeography is commonly associated with its avant- garde Situationist beginnings in Paris in the 1950s and 60s and its British revival in London in the 1990s, I appropriate the characteristic pliancy of the term psychogeography and attempt to break new ground with regard to its application. Firstly, my study employs psychogeography on a set of texts and other art forms that have not been read as, or identified as psychogeographical. I hereby aim to demonstrate that a contemporary interpretation of psychogeography is not confined to close readings of texts but can also be productively applied to other genres and media. Secondly, I use psychogeography in order to analyse two postmodern cities, Sydney and Berlin, which have thus far not been associated with the tradition. And thirdly, motivated by the desire to further modify the Londoners’ psychogeographical interest in their city’s local histories, I have arrived at a revised definition of the term. This novel interpretation goes beyond psychogeography’s common reading as a means of apprehending the impact of a (usually urban) place on a person by arguing that the practice equally lends itself to acknowledging the way in which the past resurfaces in and has an impact on the present, which often manifests itself in the form of what I have identified as silences and absences. The introduction provides a general overview of this project as well as its aims and methods. In addition, the choice of cities is explained: the early 1990s constituted a watershed in both Australia and Germany with regard to a coming to terms with the past, while the silences and absences that hark back to the past manifest themselves very differently in Sydney and Berlin. Chapter 2 is divided into two parts: the first part provides an overview of the Situationist origins of psychogeography in Paris and part two deals with the diverse London scene of the 1990s. Chapter 3 focuses on Sydney as a city of contradictions and argues, by means of two non-fiction texts, an urban island and an artwork, 10 that the silences and absences, which often allude to the Aboriginal past, linger under the surface and have an impact on modern-day Sydney. On the basis of two non-fiction texts, two documentary films and a memorial, Chapter 4 describes Berlin as a city of scars, heavily affected by the events of the twentieth century. In Berlin, the silences and absences abound and are firmly fixed in the cityscape. The conclusion argues that psychogeography offers potential for further revivals and analyses of other places and concepts. 11 Kurzzusammenfassung Die vorliegende Arbeit – mit dem Titel „Sydney and Berlin – Cities of Silence and Absence: A psychogeographical reading of contemporary non-fiction texts“ – schlägt eine Weiterentwicklung der Methode der Psychogeographie vor.