Representation and Materiality in Coetzee, Ellis, Cooper
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VIOLENCE, IMMEDIATELY: REPRESENTATION AND MATERIALITY IN COETZEE, ELLIS, COOPER, BECKETT, GODARD, AND NOÉ BY AMY NEDA VEGARI A.B., HARVARD UNIVERSITY, 2002 A.M., BROWN UNIVERSITY, 2005 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE DEPARTMENT OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE AT BROWN UNIVERSITY PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND MAY, 2008 © Copyright 2008 by Amy Neda Vegari “Do your politics fit between the headlines? Are they written in newsprint? Are they distant? Mine are crossing an empty parking lot; They are a woman walking home at night, alone— They are six strings that sing and wood that hums against my hipbone.” -Ani DiFranco This dissertation by Amy Neda Vegari is accepted in its present form by the Department of Comparative Literature as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date _________________ ___________________________________ Timothy Bewes, Director Date _________________ ___________________________________ Rey Chow, Director Recommended to the Graduate Council Date _________________ ___________________________________ Kevin McLaughlin, Reader Approved by the Graduate Council Date _________________ ___________________________________ Sheila Bonde, Dean of the Graduate School iv CURRICULUM VITAE Amy Neda Vegari was born on May 15, 1981 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After graduating from The Episcopal Academy in Merion, Pennsylvania in 1998, she attended Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She graduated magna cum laude in June 2002 with an A.B. in Literature. In September 2002, she matriculated into the Ph.D. program in the Department of Comparative Literature at Brown University, where she received her A.M. in May 2005. In the following academic year, she received a Graduate Research Fellowship from the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, published an article in Michigan Feminist Studies entitled “Calling the Shots: Women as Deleuzian Material in the Cinema of Godard,” and was awarded the Albert Spaulding Cook Prize in Comparative Literature. In the 2007-08 academic year, she held a Graduate Fellowship from the Cogut Center for the Humanities. She served as a teaching assistant in the Departments of Comparative Literature, English, and French Studies. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project is deeply indebted to the guidance, encouragement, and friendship that have supported me throughout the process of writing this dissertation. I am grateful for the passionate enthusiasm, keen intelligence, and unflagging humor of my graduate colleagues at Brown in the Departments of French Studies, English, and especially Comparative Literature. Ariane Helou and Ghenwa Hayek for their emotional and gastronomical comforts. Kelley Kreitz and her husband Weston Smith for similar boons, which they continue to generously offer (and I, eagerly, to take), but which particularly sustained me during my first year in Providence. Corey McEleney for laughter that is equal parts cynical and soulful, and for his penetrating readings of my writing. Teresa Villa-Ignacio for food and shelter, for conversation intellectual and otherwise, and for strength and fidelity. And to my friends in Philadelphia, especially Meghan O’Brien for always listening, always assuaging, always smiling. I must express my appreciation for the generous support I have received in fellowships at Brown, from the Department of Comparative Literature, from the Graduate School, and especially from the Cogut Center for the Humanities and the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, each of which offered a community of talented and dedicated scholars in addition to financial support. This dissertation has benefited immeasurably from the insight and input of the members of my committee, who let me get away with nothing, and, in so doing, have allowed me to accomplish something. Kevin McLaughlin, who guided and instructed this project in its most formative stages; Tim Bewes, who endured early drafts as I tried vi to learn how to “really write,” and thus taught me the gravity that a real idea commands; Rey Chow, for her simultaneous patience and pragmatism, rigor and sensitivity. My vast intellectual debt to them goes without saying. And Elliott Colla, at times surrogate committee-member and mentor, always teacher and friend. I will never find an adequate way to express my gratefulness to my friend and ancienne colloc , Katie Chenoweth. For illuminating conversation, for take-out dinners, for laughing, for playing the piano, for acquiring a taste for violent cinema, for hours spent planted on the abject couch. For reading almost every page of everything that I turned in at Brown. For always listening and never judging—an absolute acceptance that is generously indulgent, and profoundly kind. This dissertation would not be the same without every person I have named; I suspect it would not exist without Katie. Most of all, my family—without whom I would not be the same, nor could I exist. Matthew, for the happiest laughter, and the richest companionship I have known, especially in these last two years. Dave, for showing me through his own example what it means to work hard, to care, to be committed, to be autonomous. Mom, for being the one who, through her own experience, understands the peculiar rigors of academic life; and more, for supporting me without indulging me, always loving me while challenging me. Dad, for teaching me how to think and how to read, in every sense; for showing me in himself a mind unparalleled in incisiveness, and an incisiveness unique in its infinite generosity and warmth: the best example of intellectualism I will ever encounter. To all four of them, for promising to always settle for me, without ever letting me settle for less than what I grudgingly know is enough. For their love. This dissertation is dedicated to them. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS VITA v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vi INTRODUCTION: 1 Violence and Mediation CHAPTER 1 19 The Mediated Body of J. M. Coetzee’s Fiction CHAPTER 2 87 Textuality and Materiality I: American Psycho and the Politics of Representation CHAPTER 3 132 Textuality and Materiality II: Dennis Cooper’s Endless Mimesis CHAPTER 4 178 Violence to the Absent Body: Beckett’s “Post-Mortem Voices” CHAPTER 5 237 Red, Blood, and the Image in Godard and Noé: Or, the Formula WORKS CITED 275 viii INTRODUCTION Violence and Mediation “The movie never ends; it goes on and on and on…” -Journey I. Cultural Context Following the infamous Duke University lacrosse case in 2006, I was struck by the report of a piece of “evidence” that surfaced several weeks into the investigation. The case began, we will recall, when a woman hired as a stripper for a men’s lacrosse team party accused three of Duke’s players of raping her on the night of March 13, 2006. The scandal continued to escalate as it became clear that questions of race, socioeconomic class, institutional privilege, and even state politics were all at stake in the investigation. In early April, the news media revealed that, on the night of the alleged crime, the following message was sent to the members of the lacrosse team from the e-mail account of one team member: To whom it may concern tommrow night, after tonights show, ive decided to have some strippers over to edens 2c. all are welcome.. however there will be no nudity. i plan on killing the bitches as soon as the walk in and proceeding to cut their skin off while cumming in my duke issue spandex.. all in besides arch and tack please respond (cited in Boyer, 53) The e-mail was ascribed an evidentiary function, as many people, including Duke’s president, read the offensive text as proof of the lacrosse players’ guilt, while some interpreted it as proof of their innocence. 1 1 “While the language of the e-mail is vile, the e-mail itself is perfectly consistent with the boys' unequivocal assertion that no sexual assault took place that evening,” said attorney Robert Ekstrand. The e- 1 2 When I encountered the story, I was surprised that what had incited such a strong reaction in others had so minimal effect on me, as the e-mail did not strike me as evidence of anything criminal (or, for that matter, exonerating). I must have been working on violence for too long, I decided, unable to muster up the horrified response that the e-mail seemed to provoke in others. To me, it sounded like something out of one of the novels I was working on, and I had a difficult time understanding how any conclusions regarding the lacrosse players’ guilt or innocence could be reached from such a text—or from any text at all. The fact that my reading stressed the e-mail’s textuality, while others read the e-mail as the reflection of a real violent act, raised a host of concerns for me. These necessitated a re-evaluation of my approach to the subject of my dissertation, which confronted representations of violence by emphasizing their inherent mediatedness. Perhaps my approach was flawed, and violence in textual form should sometimes be read as a mirroring of real events; this seemed to be the case with the e- mail in question. And if violent representation can work in this transparent way, I thought, with text offering a documentation of acts of violence, then perhaps my failure to condemn the violent works that I study amounted to a failure to condemn violent acts in the extratextual world. But soon after reports of it appeared in the news media, the e-mail was defended by its recipients as a work of “humorous irony,” 2 an attempt to mimic the style of Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho (a text that I examine at length in Chapter 2). Thus, it was determined, the e-mail did not support or refute the prosecution’s allegation.