Introduction

Notes

Introduction

1 . Marguerite Porete, The Mirror of Simple Souls , trans. Ellen L. Babinsky (New York: Paulist Press, 1993), chapter 119. I am also greatly indebted to Anne Carson’s essay ‘How women like Sappho, Marguerite Porete and Simone Weil Tell God’, found in her work Decreation – Poetry, Essays and Opera (New York: Knopft, 2005), pp 157–83. 2 . Lyotard, The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, trans. George Van Den Abbeele (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1988). I have also italicised the differend throughout (going against its usual implementation) so as to typo- graphically emphasise the resistance of the concept into language, as well as to help highlight its notable difference among the concatenation of phrases. 3 . See Soundproof Room , trans. Robert Harvey (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), p 37. 4 . The one exception being Soundproof Room in which Lyotard gives over most of the work (albeit in a brief and typically gnomic fashion) to investigate the ‘anti-aesthetics’ of the French writer Malraux and the various issues surrounding the phrasing of the inaudible. As shall be discussed in Chapter 1 however, Lyotard seems to gesture towards the philosophy of the differend without specifically utilising the concept, something I believe to be a mistake and that this book seeks to redress. 5 . See Lyotard’s Toward the Postmodern, eds, Robert Harvey and Mark S. Roberts (London: Humanity Books, 1993), p 181. 6 . See The Postmodern Explained to Children: Correspondence 1982–1985, trans. Julian Prefanis and Morgan Thomas (Sydney: Southwood Press, 1992), p 100. 7 . See ‘Lyotard Archipelago’ found in Minima Memoria, eds, Claire Nouvet, Zrinka Stahuljak and Kent Still (California: Stanford University Press, 2007), pp 176–96. 8 . Lyotard, The Inhuman: Reflections on Time, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), p 101. 9 . Jean-François Lyotard, Instructions paeïennes (Paris: Galilee, 1977), p 41. 10 . Lyotard, ‘Anamnesis: Of the Visible’, trans. C. Venn and R. Boyne. See Theory, Culture, Society , Vol. 21, No. 1 (2004), pp 107–20. 11 . Discussing The Differend , Lyotard declares that ‘For us to philosophize, it is nothing other than to write, and that which is interesting for us in “to write” is not to reconcile but to inscribe that which does not let itself be inscribed.’ Temoigner du differend: Quand phrase ne se peut; Autour de Jean-François Lyotard, ed., Pierre-Jean Labarriere (Paris: Editions Osirs, 1989), p 118. See Gerald Sfez’s essay ‘The Writings of the Differend’, Minima Memoria , pp 86–105. 12 . Bill Readings, Introducing Lyotard: Art and Politics (New York: Routledge, 1991), p 109.

213 214 Notes

13 . James Williams, Lyotard – Towards a Postmodern Philosophy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), p 3. See also his introductory chapter ‘Introduction: Rethinking the Political’, pp 1–8. 14 . Lyotard, Dérive á partir de Marx et Freud (Paris: Union Générale d’Éditions, 1973), p 127. Referenced in James Williams’ Lyotard: Towards a Postmodern Philosophy , p 4. 15 . Lyotard, Just Gaming, trans. Wlad Godzich (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985 ), p 23. 16 . Bill Readings, Introducing Lyotard: Art and Politics , p 87. 17 . Lyotard, Libidinal Economy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993). 18 . Lyotard, Peregrinations: Law, Form, Event (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), p 13. 19 . Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge , trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984). 20 . As Fraser and Nicholson have noted, it is the universal and ‘detached’ aspect to metanarratives that Lyotard seeks to critique: ‘In his conception of legiti- mating metanarrative, the stress properly belongs on the “meta” and not the “narrative”. It purports to be a privileged discourse capable of situating, char- acterising and evaluating all other discourse, but not itself infected by the historicity and contingency which render first-order discourses potentially distorted and in need of legitimation.’ See Nancy Fraser and Linda Nicholson, ‘Social criticism without philosophy: an encounter between feminism and postmodernism’, Theory, Culture and Society , Vol. 21, No. 2 (1988), p 357. 21 . Indeed, Lyotard has stated: ‘My wish is that those people who have the generosity to give some attention to my work would please read other things than this horrible book, because it was just a passage for me.’ See Gary A. Olsen, ‘Resisting a Discourse of Mastery: A Conversation with Jean-Francois Lyotard’, Women Writing Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), p 192. 22 . See Christopher Norris, Deconstruction and the ‘Unfinished Project of Modernity’ (London: The Athelone Press, 2000), pp 10–27. 23 . See Mark Poster, ‘Postmodernity and the Politics of Multiculturalism’, SAGE Masters of Modern Social Thought, Volume I (London: SAGE Publications, 2004), p 167. 24 . See Richard Rorty’s ‘Habermas and Lyotard on Postmodernism’, Critical Evaluations in Cultural Theory, Volume I (London: Routledge, 2006), p 352. Indeed, elsewhere Rorty himself seems untroubled by the dissolution of grand narratives, claiming that: ‘This failure to find a single commen- surating discourse, in which to write a universal translation manual (in thereby doing away with the need to constantly learn new languages) does nothing to cast doubt on the possibility (as opposed to the difficulty) of peaceful social progress.’ See ‘Cosmopolitanism without emancipation: a response to Jean-François Lyotard’, Objectivity, Relativism and Truth: Philosophical Papers , Vol. I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p 218. As shall be shown however, Lyotard believes that the very idea of progress to be a mistake. 25 . See Habermas’s The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity in association with Basil Blackwell, 1987), p 296. Notes 215

26 . Emilia Steuerman, ‘Habermas vs Lyotard’, Critical Evaluations in Cultural Theory , Volume II, eds, Victor E. Taylor and Gregg Lambert (London: Routledge, 2006), p 468. According to Habermas, in communicative action ‘participants share a tradition and their orientations are normatively integrated to such an extent that they start from the same definition of the situation and do not disagree about the claims to validity that they reciprocally raise’ while stra- tegic action (incited through conflict, competition and manipulation) it is not possible to reach a direct understanding orientated to validity claims. See ‘What is universal pragmatics?’ in Communication and the Evolution of Society (London: Heinemann Educational Books), 1979, p 209. 27 . See Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity , p 296. 28 . See Poster, ‘Postmodernity and the Politics of Multiculturalism’, p 173. 29 . See Norris, Deconstruction and the ‘Unfinished Project of Modernity , pp 18–19. 30 . Ibid., p 19. 31 . As Stuart Dalton notes: ‘Christopher Norris’s critique of Lyotard (in The Truth about Postmodernism) ignores [that] Lyotard makes it clear that differends can be overcome, and it is thought’s responsibility to do so. The incommensurability of phrase regimes may not be a permanent condition ... Most current criticism of Lyotard is directed against his early or middle-period, and ignores his most recent work.’ See ‘Lyotard’s Peregrination – Three (and a half) responses to the call of justice’, Philosophy Today , Vol. 38, No. 3–4 (Fall, 1994), footnote 35. As my quotations taken from Deconstruction and the ‘Unfinished Project of Modernity’ have shown, Norris has once more failed to acknowledge that The Differend’s central concern is how to save the honour of thinking rather than revel in its absence. 32 . See Rorty, ‘Habermas and Lyotard on Postmodernism’, p 362. Rorty elsewhere states that ‘This process of coming to see other human beings as “one of us” rather than as “them” is a matter of detailed description of what unfamiliar people are like and of redescription of what we ourselves are like. This is a task not for theory but for genres such as ethnography, the journal- ist’s report, the comic book, the docudrama, and especially, the novel.’ See Contingency, Irony, Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p xvi. Despite the having a degree of sympathy to such a view (itself the result of a theory), I do not understand why philosophy cannot be aligned with aesthetics, something I believe Lyotard’s oeuvre strives to achieve (if not fully explore). 33 . Manfred Frank, Die Grenzen der Verständigung, Ein Geistergespräch zwischen Lyotard und Habermas (Frankfurt: Suhrukamap) 1998. Referenced by Williams in Lyotard – Towards a Postmodern Society , pp 136–40. 34 . See Fredric Jameson, foreword to The Postmodern Condition , p xi. 35 . J.M. Bernstein, ‘Grand Narratives’, in On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and Interpretation (London: Routledge, 1991), p 110. 36 . See Williams, Lyotard – Towards a Postmodern Society , pp 136–40. 37 . See Readings, Introducing Lyotard: Art and Politics, p 85. 38 . See Keith Crome, ‘Voicing Nihilism’, Rereading Jean-François Lyotard: Essays on His Later Works, eds, Heidi Bickis and Rob Shields (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Group, 2013), pp 157–67. 39 . See Keith Crome and James Williams, The Lyotard Reader & Guide (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), p 118. 216 Notes

40 . See The Differend , Cashinahua Notice, pp 152–55. Elsewhere Lyotard states: ‘It is hard to imagine such a culture first isolating the post of narrator from the others in order to give it a privileged status in narrative pragmatics, then inquiring into what right the narrator (who is thus disconnected from the narrate and diegesis) might have to recount what he recounts, and finally understand the analysis or anamnesis of its own legitimacy’ (PMC , pp 22–3). 41 . See Crome and Williams, The Lyotard Reader & Guide , p 118. 42 . See Tomiche, Yale French Studies , No. 99, Jean-Francois Lyotard: Time and Judgment, eds, Robert Harvey and Lawrence R. Scher, (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2001), pp 149–63. 43 . Ibid., p 150. 44 . Lyotard, Postmodern Fables (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), p 23. 45 . There is one example in Lyotard’s oeuvre where he does at least allude to the differend existing in conjunction with literature in the same sentence: ‘When a Samuel Beckett writes his books without caring whether they are understood, when a Jerome Lindon dares to publish them, and when the ministry passes a law that allows one to find them in bookstores, this is how a testimony to the differend in literature can find its addressees’ (See ‘The Differend’, Political Writings, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993, p 10). Nevertheless, this unambiguous ‘admission’ was written two years prior to the publication of The Differend and so raises questions as to why the philosopher went on to make seemingly contradictory statements concerning the capabilities of narrative and also why he failed to explore the matter more directly. 46 . Tomiche, ‘Lyotard and/on Literature’, p 156. Nevertheless, as I shall argue in Chapter 2, it would be a mistake to exclusively conflate the differend with the Shoah as Tomiche appears to do so here. 47 . Ibid., p 156. It seems that Tomiche makes an unsustainable distinction between ‘nonnarrative’ and ‘less narrative’ literature here, not only because the latter is arguably a nonsensical and indistinct term but, as shall be discussed in Chapters 1 and 3, Lyotard himself prefers to categorise literature in terms of either the avant-garde or as being either ‘realist’, ‘modern’ or ‘postmodern’. 48 . Additionally, even if it were possible that a text’s language and structure could wholly attest to an event’s force through ‘nonnarrative’ means, doing so would only ever relay the event’s traumatic affect and consequently fail to transmit the impact of enveloping Silence. One could also argue that a ‘nonnarrative’ text cannot even exist, for regardless of its resistance to narratological tropes the act of reading itself would unavoidably align its form into a narrative so as to be understood. As Lyotard notes, the limitations of art are forever present in the form of its own techne : ‘an artifact capable of evoking absolute presence should be ... freed as much as is possible from link- ages, meanings, transferences, separated, without message, devoid of ins and outs ... a piece of writing as absolute as writing (which is relative, by definition) can make it’ ( SR , 44). 49 . See Tomiche, ‘Lyotard and/on Literature’, p 159. Notes 217

1 The Differend and Beyond

1 . As Lyotard notes: ‘Either this genre is part of the set of genres, and what is at stake in it is but one among others, and therefore its answer is not supreme. Or else, it is not part of the set of genres, and it does not therefore encompass all that is at stake, since it excepts what is at stake in itself’ (D , §189). 2 . See Jacques Derrida, Acts of Literature, ed., Derek Attridge (London: Routledge, 1992), pp 221–52. 3 . Ibid., p 229. 4 . Ibid., p 230. 5 . See Bill Readings, Introducing Lyotard: Art and Politics, (New York: Routledge, 1991), p 119. 6 . See Patrick McKinlay, ‘Postmodernism and Democracy: Learning from Lyotard and Lefort’, The Journal of Politics, Vol. 60, No. 2 (1998), p 486. 7 . See Anne Tomiche, ‘Lyotard and/on Literature’, Yale French Studies , No. 99, Jean-Francois Lyotard: Time and Judgment, eds, Robert Harvey and Lawrence R. Scher (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2001), p 159. 8 . While the presentation of such a wrong is inherently paradoxical, an approx- imate allusion can perhaps be found in Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four , in which Newspeak – the official language of the totalitarian Party – seeks to reduce the complexity and scope of language itself and so render even the conceptualisation of heretical thought impossible: ‘By 2050 – earlier probably – all real knowledge of Old-speak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron – they’ll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like “freedom is slavery” when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness’ (Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, London: Penguin Modern Classics, 2000), p 56. 9 . Lyotard even speculates if incommensurability is the hallmark of the postmodern condition: ‘Is this the sense in which we are not modern? Incommensurability, heterogeneity, the differend ... the absence of a supreme tribunal?’ ( D , §182). 10 . Lyotard describes the event as ‘Not a thing, but at least a caesura in space-time’ (See Readings’ Introducing Lyotard: Art and Politics , p xxxi). It is more frequently used by the philosopher to describe that which is ultimately unknowable and unpresentable, defying clear definition and capable of disrupting all pre- existing frameworks that come into contact with it. As Reading notes: ‘The eventhood of the event is the radical singularity of happening, the ‘it happens’ as distinct from the sense of ‘what is happening’. It leaves us without criteria and requires indeterminate judgment. It is impossible to decide whether events happen all the time (without being noticed) or very rarely (and are always noticed). The former seems more likely’ (ibid.). However, it is important to emphasise that while the event is the paradigm of the differend’s ‘ object’ 218 Notes

of attention (since it is interested in that which imposes a Silence upon all forms of concatenation), this does not make the differend synonymous with the event but more with the wrong that results from a loss of representation (and culpability). Simply put, for Lyotard the differend is the ‘case of conflict, between (at least) two parties, that cannot be equitably resolved for lack of a rule of judgment applicable to both parties’ (D , xi). However, as my book seeks to prove, such a definition is ultimately reductive of the differend’s scope as well as to those discourses charged with attesting to its call. 11 . See Gérald Sfez, ‘The Writings of the Differend’, Minima Memoria: In the Wake of Jean-François Lyotard , eds, Claire Nouvet, Zrinka Stahuljak, and Kent Still (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), p 87. 12 . For example, while the protagonist of Kafka’s The Trial encounters compa- rable difficulties throughout his ordeal, they are nevertheless frustrations of a system recognised by both himself and others. Indeed, the tragedy of the tale is that the more K acknowledges the legitimacy of the case brought against him, the more he is subjected to its control (and ultimately its judgment). 13 . In doing so however, it is important to remember that while the event that caused the victim to suffer a wrong is often a shared, historical one (although this is not necessarily so), its affect is always intrinsically personal and subjective. 14 . As Lyotard explains in Lectures d’enfance (Paris: Galilee, 1991), the infancy to which he refers is that: which is not an age of life and which does not pass away. It haunts discourse. Discourse does not cease to push it aside, in its separation. But at the same time discourse persists in constituting infancy, as something lost. In this way, unknown to discourse, it shelters it. Infancy is the residue of discourse. If infancy resides in this residue, this is due to nothing but the fact that it remains in the adult. (p 9) 15 . As Simon Malpas notes: ‘For Lyotard, then, the human is the product of a conflict between two inhumans: the inhuman systems of capitalist development and technology threatening to extinguish anything in the human that is not of value to them, and yet within this same human lies the uncanny strangeness of another inhuman that is a potential site of difference.’ See Jean-François Lyotard (London: Routledge, 2003), p 91. 16 . Jean-François Lyotard, Heidegger and “the jews” , trans. Andreas Michael and Mark Roberts (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990). 17 . Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p 250. 18 . See David Carroll’s ‘Rephrasing the Political with Kant and Lyotard: From Aesthetic to Political Judgments’, Diacritics , Vol.14, No. 3 (Fall 1984), p 78. 19 . Lyotard elsewhere declares: ‘I do not like the term avant-garde, with its mili- tary connotations, any more than anyone else. But I do observe that the true process of avant-gardism was in reality a kind of work, a long obstinate and highly responsible work concerned with investigating the assumptions implicit in modernity ... If we abandon that responsibility, we will surely be condemned to repeat, without any displacement, the West’s “modern neurosis”’ ( PM:ETC , 93). 20 . See ‘Habermas and Lyotard on Postmodernity’, Critical Evaluations in Cultural Theory, Volume I (London: Routledge, 2006), pp 174–75. Notes 219

21 . See Theodor Adorno’s Negative Dialectics (New York: The Continuum Publishing Company, 1973), p 362. 22 . See Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (New York: Cornell University Press, 2000), p 17. 23 . As Chapter 2 will explore in greater detail, since I understand the event as forever being beyond the borders of discourse I believe that Lyotard also misrepresents the event here, or at least the response to the event. 24 . Even in his later works where he appears more open to the representative capacitates of literature, Lyotard fails to thoroughly examine how it is that one might resound the inaudible: ‘Art and writing ... still have an audience for ears deafened by bustling [and can] make this silence heard, in the noise and by means of it; they can make this noise, the multiplication and neutralization of words, because it is already a silence, attest to the other silence, the inaudible one’ (HJ , 48). Indeed, the silence that Lyotard is more focussed upon here is not the Silence to which the differend attests (the inaudible one) but the silence born out of habitualisation and apathy. While I believe that the literature of the differend necessarily shatters both of these, it is a shame that Lyotard under-evaluates the functionality of the differend and fails to promote literature beyond the role of witness. It is my contention therefore that Lyotard is unable to appreciate its ability to make audible the Silence of the differend through the struggles and silences of its own. 25 . See ‘Resisting a Discourse on Mastery: A Conversation with Jean-Francois Lyotard’ found in Journal for Advanced Composition (JAC), Vol. 15, No. 3 (1995), p 400. 26 . Ibid., p 394. 27 . Despite the philosopher implying, as Geoffrey Bennington has highlighted, ‘that all the work preceding The Differend is more or less radically mistaken, and that the new book cancels and supersedes all the earlier books’. See Geoffrey Bennington, Lyotard: Writing the Event (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), p 2. 28 . Gary Browning, Lyotard and the End of Grand Narratives (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000), pp 163 and 171. 29 . Indeed, Gerald Sfez believes that the structural composition of The Differend is itself an attempt by Lyotard to tackle the difficulties faced in representing the differend : ‘The play of referrals between paragraphs, which are separated by the distance between them, represents an inscription, which essays to evade the defeat and pretence of the book form. It does not so much seek to facilitate passages or resolve contradictions as to multiply the crossroads and the thresholds of writing: the overlapping and infringement between the paragraphs leave the phrase in remainder. Between the paragraphs, there is always an inadequation; each paragraph retains an edge that does not allow the other paragraphs to be superimposed on it ... This is precisely how the differend renders itself to writing: not only as the writing of dissimulation and of dissimilation, but as the implication of the phrase.’ See ‘The Writings of the Differend’, Minima Memoria, p 88.While I agree with Sfez here, such a stylistic approach still leaves the question of how to best attest to the differend unanswered, or rather unannounced. 30 . Ibid. 220 Notes

31 . See Ashley Woodward’s ‘Testimony and the Affect-Phrase’, Rereading Jean- François Lyotard: Essays on His Later Works , eds, Heidi Bickis and Rob Shields (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Group, 2013), pp 187–88. 32 . Lyotard, Lectures d’enfance (Paris: Galilee, 1991), pp 133–34. 33 . Lyotard, ‘Voices of a Voice’, Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture , Vol. 14, No. 1 (1991–1992), p 130. 34 . Ron Katwan, ‘The Affect in the work of Jean-François Lyotard’, Surfaces , Vol. 3, No. 13 (1993), pp 14–15. 35 . Lyotard, ‘Voices of a Voice’, p 133. 36 . Ibid., p 132. 37 . See Nouvet’s ‘The Inarticulate Affect: Lyotard and Psychoanalytic Testimony’, Minima Memoria: In the Wake of Jean-François Lyotard , eds, Claire Nouvet, Zrinka Stahuljak and Kent Still (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), p 114. 38 . Lyotard, ‘Voices of a Voice’, p 133. 39 . Lyotard, Lectures d’enfance , p 137. 40 . Lyotard, ‘Emma: Between Philosophy and Psychoanalysis’, in Lyotard: Philosophy, Politics and the Sublime , p 32. 41 . As Tomiche notes: ‘Whereas lexis communicates, tells stories, phônè communicates nothing, has no stories to tell, but manifests itself ... an affectedness , the possibility of being affected, possibility. Furthermore, whereas tempo- rality is inscribed in the very structure of lexis ... phônè is not temporal: it is a pure singularity whose time is here and now.’ See ‘Rephrasing the Freudian Unconscious: Lyotard’s Affect-Phrase’, Diacritics , Vol. 23, No. 1 (Spring 1994), p 56. 42 . See ‘The Inarticulate Affect: Lyotard and Psychoanalytic Testimony’, p 114. Nouvet goes on to wonder whether therapy (particularly when related to trauma) is entirely predicated on the forced transcription of muteness into an address (and so consequently ‘wronging’ the affect-phrase). Nonetheless, Nouvet believes that this act is not only necessary for the patient but that is a nonnegotiable precondition for analysis, tacitly understood by both patient and therapist. 43 . Lyotard, Lectures d’enfance , p 146; ‘Voices of a Voice’, p 138. 44 . See Tomiche, ‘Rephrasing the Freudian Unconscious: Lyotard’s Affect-Phrase’, p 59. 45 . See Lyotard’s ‘Emma: Between Philosophy and Psychoanalysis’, p 44. 46 . Lyotard, ‘Voices of a Voice’, p 143. 47 . See Soundproof Room , back cover. 48 . Although, as I will explore in Chapter 4, the irreducible nature of the inaudible is something that Lyotard relates through his investigation of the affect-phrase , written some eight or so years before the publication of Soundproof Room . 49 . See Anne Tomiche, ‘Lyotard and/on Literature’, p 160. 50 . Much like the description of the perfect crime discussed earlier in this chapter, since the event can at least be deduced by its effects it can be argued that a Silence unnoticed is more akin to a nothingness than the event itself. 51 . In fact, the differend is evoked only in the section entitled ‘War’, which perhaps tells us that for Lyotard the term is still primarily understood as a case of conflict rather than an act of listening or producing. Nevertheless, speaking of two of Malraux’s texts, Lyotard writes: Man’s Hope and Man’s Fate Notes 221

have been read as narratives of war whose chronology was disarticulated by a needlessly perverse author in order to lead the reader astray ... The scenes of actual war that Malraux cut and edited are not battle scenes in their proper order. The elliptical turn indicates a vague differend from which there is no exit: a melee, a monster of ambivalence, the tightest entanglement of puta- tive opposites, like the complicity of a throat with what throttles it and against which it resists ( SR , 66–8). Although Lyotard does not describe the differend as an affecting presence that constructs and inhabits the work itself, he nevertheless seems to imply that the fragmentation of a narrative’s linear chronology can reflect the differend (something my examinations of the Odyssey and the novels of Jonathan Safran Foer will later seek to substantiate). 52 . Discussing the findings of Soundproof Room , Simon Malpas notes that ‘the work presents that there is an unpresentable in every presentation, and the critical thinker’s task is to respond to the implications of that unpresentable in ways that challenge those genres and systems that have served to occlude its very existence’ Jean-François Lyotard, p 120. Yet as this book has argued, the differend is more than a recognition of the unpresentable – it is what helps motivate ‘the critical thinker’ to respond to it at all. 53 . See Keith Crome, ‘Voicing Nihilism’, Rereading Jean-François Lyotard: Essays on His Later Works, eds, Heidi Bickis and Rob Shields (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Group, 2013), p 167. 54 . Ibid.

2 Housed Exile

1 . William Shakespeare, King Lear , Act III, sc ii. All references taken from Shakespeare, The Complete Works (London: Heron Books Ltd, 1957). 2 . King Lear, unlike Hamlet before it, allows its audience to visibly chart the trajectory of exile upon its main subject as well as upon those around him. However, the play also performs some of its most tragic events off-stage – the murder of Cordelia being the greatest example. By exiling his own audience from dramatic events and yet still forcing an engagement with its immediate effects, Shakespeare is able to evoke not only the trauma of exile but also the exile felt in the presence of the traumatic. Indeed, the entire play can be seen as an exploration of the distance between cause and effect and the complexi- ties of atonement and responsibility. Ultimately, the desolation of the play does not stem from the suggestion that the gods might kill mortals for their sport but rather that they might let some live in order to suffer the torment of unforeseen consequence that they themselves put into motion. The world of King Lear is then an amoral one, being neither fair nor just (at least when understood in a traditional sense), but it is perhaps charged with meaning and impact because of this very fact. 3 . See Lyotard, ‘Judiciousness in Dispute, or Kant after Marx’, The Aims of Representation: Subject/Text/History, ed., Murray Krieger (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), p 65. It is important also to note that Lyotard contrasts the cooperative spirit of litigation with the confrontational nature of the differend. As will later be argued, this is unavoidable as the differend is a priori 222 Notes

the result of an absence of an interlocutor between two incommensurable points and consequently appears as a direct challenge to resulting Silence. 4 . See Dunn, ‘A Tyranny of Justice: The Ethics of Lyotard’s Differend’, boundary 2 , Vol. 20, No. 1 (Spring 1993), p 196. 5 . As Lyotard states: [the] phrase presents what ought to be done, and simultaneously it presents the addressee who ought to do it. It does not arise from the true/ false criterion since it is not descriptive, but from the just/unjust criterion because it is prescriptive. One may wonder whether it is unjust or not. But even if it were unjust, it is endowed with sense, just as a phrase is endowed with sense even if it is false ... However, the sense pertinent for the criterion of justice and the sense pertinent for the criterion of truth are heterogeneous (D , §77). 6 . Ibid., pp 66–7. Bennington notes however: ‘On the one hand there is a “multiplicity of justices”, to do with respecting the rules of each genre, and on the other a “justice of multiplicity”, in which a universal prescription enjoins us precisely to such a respect. The tensions and difficulties this involves are not resolved (and the value of “resolution” could only be suspect here), but further specified in The Differend. ’ See Lyotard: Writing the Event , p 137. 7 . Bill Readings, Introducing Lyotard: Art and Politics , p 125. 8 . As James Hatley states: ‘Lyotard’s introduction of feeling as an initial mode of resistance, as a hesitation, allows that which cannot be spoken, the silence of the other’s victimisation, to remain an issue for any phrasing ... It speaks as an inability to speak, as a silence that cannot be thoroughly penetrated, in which the very notion of penetration has gone astray.’ See ‘Lyotard, Levinas, and the Phrasing of the Ethical’, in Lyotard: Philosophy, Politics and the Sublime , ed., Hugh J. Silverman (London: Routledge, 2002), p 75. 9 . See ‘Rephrasing the Political with Kant and Lyotard: From Aesthetic to Political Judgments’, Diacritics , Vol. 14, No. 3 (Fall 1984), p 78. 10 . See Hent De Vries, ‘On Obligation: Lyotard and Levinas’, in Jean-François Lyotard: Critical Evaluations in Cultural Theory, Volume III , eds, Victor E. Taylor and Gregg Lambert (London: Routledge, 2006), pp 76–100. 11 . We can find here clear parallels with Levinas’ ethical concept of saying – the presence of the face of other (a feeling that arrests totalisation) that secures responsibility before becoming a said , itself resisting use but giving cause for its application. In slight contrast to Lyotard however, ‘rather than accept next that the purity of saying’s intentions will inevitably be compromised and subordinated once saying enters into the service of the said ... Levinas insists that verbalization does not exhaust the signifiyingness of saying’. See Seán Hand, Emmanuel Levinas (New York: Routledge, 2009), p 53. For Levinas, this results in thought being constantly unresolved, demanding that it must constantly attest to that which is ‘unsaid’ while recognising itself as necessarily ‘incomplete’, perpetually in the process of becoming. 12 . See ‘Lyotard’s Neo-Sophistic Philosophy of Phrases’, Poetics Today , Vol. 15, No. 3 (Autumn 1994), p 490. 13 . Dunn, ‘A Tyranny of Justice: The Ethics of Lyotard’s Differend’, p 198. 14 . In ‘Lending an Ear to the Silence Phrase’ Dorota Glowacka believes that Dunn’s criticism comes from a viewpoint ‘whose stakes are to maintain traditional boundaries between ethics and aesthetics [ignoring, for instance] Lyotard’s Notes 223

own efforts to articulate heterogeneity “otherwise”, and the fact that he is writing both within and against the contexts of post-Heideggerian critiques of mimesis’, Minema Memoria, p 51 (pp 49–66). Glowacka is slightly unfair here, given that Dunn also believes that the suggestion ‘that we simply sepa- rate the issue of individual autonomy from the issue of social good overlooks the complex ways in which our simplest moral precepts entail assumptions about subjectivity, about the way it can or cannot be shared ... and about the ways the subject is and is not autonomous’ (‘Tyranny of Justice’, p 220). Nevertheless, her point attests to the difficulties many have concerning Lyotard’s uneasy union between the aesthetics and the ethical. 15 . While such a position is understandable (if also regrettable), it still does not explain Lyotard’s relative silence following its publication concerning how the differend operates in practice. 16 . See Lyotard, ‘Judiciousness in Dispute, or Kant after Marx’, p 57. 17 . Indeed, one wonders how there could be an occurrence of an ‘objective’ differend entirely divorced from human concerns since the incommensurability between two parties, however linguistic in nature, must necessarily be judged to incite a wrong rather than a damage. Without the human element present, how else would one differentiate a differend from a litigation? 18 . Dunn, ‘A Tyranny of Justice: The Ethics of Lyotard’s Differend’, p 197. 19 . See Readings, Introducing Lyotard: Art and Politics , p 124. 20 . Dunn, ‘A Tyranny of Justice: The Ethics of Lyotard’s Differend’, p 201. 21 . As I have already stated however, Lyotard is more legitimately criticised over his reluctance to later present how we might attest to the differend in practice. Again, Lyotard is perhaps wary of doing so for such prescriptions might risk annulling the indeterminate judgments the differend promotes. Nevertheless, such a silence might also attest to the philosopher’s own unwillingness to examine more closely the differend and the role of literature for fear that to do so would certain contradictions or constraints in his own thought. 22 . See ‘Lyotard, Levinas, and the Phrasing of the Ethical’, p 79. 23 . See Bennington, Lyotard: Writing the Event , p 137. 24 . Lyotard elsewhere states: ‘when I speak of paganism, I am not using a concept. It is a name, neither better nor worse than others, for the denomination of a situation in which one judges without criteria. And one judges not only in matters of truth, but also in matters of beauty (of aesthetic efficacy) and in matters of justice, that is, politics and ethics, and all without criteria’ (JG , 16). Nevertheless, as Dunn rightly points out: ‘it is not clear how the pagans or anyone else could know anything about the occurrence [of obligation], since Lyotard has succeeded only too well in establishing its inscrutability’. See ‘A Tyranny of Justice: The Ethics of Lyotard’s Differend’, p 197. 25 . This contradiction in Lyotard’s work is even brought to attention by the philosopher’s own hand. In an interview with Van Den Abbeele, Lyotard appends a literary monologue concerning the differend between the traumatic effects of his own life and those in the academic Anglo-American field: ‘That my American friends understand what they would be like if three or four times in their lifetime they had seen their president arrive from Canada after the occupation of the United States by Mexican soviets and walk down the Mall in the midst of sniper bullets.’ See Diacritics , Vol. 14, No. 3 (Fall 1983), p 21. Ironically, Lyotard is here arguing that his life is fundamentally 224 Notes

incomprehensible to others who do not share the same experiences while at the same time relating this impossibility (quite effectively I might add) through the literary form. 26 . See Hent De Vries, ‘On Obligation: Lyotard and Levinas’, Jean François Lyotard : Critical Evaluations in Cultural Theory , Volume III , p 97. 27 . See entry on ‘Pagan’, by Peter Brown, Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World , eds, G. W. Bowerstock, Peter Brown and Oleg Grabar (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1999), p 625. 28 . Thomas Docherty, The Lyotard Dictionary , ed., Stewart Sim (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), pp 158–9. 29 . As David Carroll comments: ‘To define what a phrase is would be to situate it in terms of one of its regimes – to reason, know, describe, tell, question, show, command, etc. – at the expense of its place in others.’ See Paraesthetics (New York & London: Methuen, 1987), p 164. 30 . This established ‘internal peace’ of understanding lasts only until the chal- lenged by another genre (or differend ) and its reign is usurped. In simpler terms, the phrase can be understood more as Crown than King – each particular monarch representative of an inherited position which, even in the act of coronation, alludes to both the transience of the role as well as to a higher authority that cannot be reached: Know we have divided In three our kingdom: and ‘tis our fast intent To shake all cares and business from our age, Conferring them on younger strengths, while we Unburthen’d crawl toward death. ( KL , Act 1, sc. i) 31 . As Dunn notes, Lyotard ‘can predict the inevitability of the differend because it is the implacable residue of resentment generated by any cognitive regimen and thus by a systematic attempt to adjudicate wrongs’. See ‘A Tyranny of Justice’, p 204. 32 . See Lyotard and the End of Grand Narratives , p 37. 33 . See Plato, trans. Desmond Lee, the Republic (London: Penguin Classics, 1987). It is also interesting to note that Plato does not trust the artist to adhere to his earlier suggestions at selective censure, perhaps an acknowledgment that poetry could not so selectively be controlled. By the end of the dialogues, to allow anything other than hymns or paeans in the state would ensure that ‘pleasure and pain become your rulers, instead of law and the rational prin- ciples commonly accepted as best’ (R , 10:607) and even then, one wonders how it could effectively be curtailed. 34 . As Plato writes: Brought up as we have been in our own admirably constituted societies, we are bound to love poetry, and we shall be glad if it proves to have high value and truth; but in the absence of such proof we shall, whenever we listen to it, recite this argument of ourselves as a charm to prevent us falling under the spell of a childish and vulgar passion. Our theme shall be that poetry has no serious value or claim to truth, and we shall warn its hearers to fear its effects on the constitution of their inner selves, and tell them to adopt the view of poetry we have described. ( R , 10:608) 35 . Dante, himself sent into exile from Florence, perhaps best describes its pains: ‘You will leave everything you love most: this is the arrow that the bow of Notes 225

exile shoots first. You will know how salty another’s bread tastes and how hard it is to ascend and descend another’s stairs’, Paradiso , trans. Robert and Jean Hollander (Michigan: Doubleday, 2007), XVII, 55–60. 36 . Readings, Introducing Lyotard: Art and Politics, p 73. 37 . Plato, Laws , trans. Trevor J. Saunders (London: Routledge, 2004), Book 7, 817c. 38 . Throughout the course of the play Shakespeare casts not only the mad from the houses of power but also the old, the blind, the unselfish good, and sends them into the storm of exile. Those that remain, with few exceptions, are the wicked and devious, the corrupted and corrupting who plot the removal of others while within the walls of their office. As Lyotard notes: ‘If he or she persists in invoking [the unprovable] wrong as if it existed, the others (addressor, addressee, expert commentator on the testimony) will easily be able to make him or her pass for mad. Doesn’t paranoia confuse the As if it were the case with the it is the case? ’ ( D , §9). 39 . However, Lyotard is also aware that culture often imposes an injunction on art (and so therefore thought itself) through the call for realism: ‘Be communicable, that is the prescription. Avant-garde is old hat, talk about humans in a human way, address yourself to human beings, if they enjoy receiving you then they will receive you’ (I , 2). Elsewhere Lyotard also notes that: ‘Artistic and literary investigation is doubly threatened: by “cultural politics” on one side, by the art and book market on the other. The advice it receives, from one or the other of these channels, is to provide works of art which, first, relate to subjects already existing in the eyes of the public to which they are addressed and which, second, are made (“well-formed”) in such a way that this public will recognise what they are about, understand what they mean, and then be able to grant or withhold its approval with confidence, possible even drawing some solace from those it accepts’ ( PM:ETC , 17–18). Ultimately, according to the philosopher, ‘any attack on artistic experimentation mounted by political authority is inherently reac- tionary’ ( PM:ETC , 16). 40 . ‘Lyotard’s Peregrination – Three (and a half) responses to the call of justice’, Jean Francois Lyotard: Critical Evaluations in Cultural Theory , Volume III , footnote 32. Lyotard also writes: ‘When I say “transcendence”, it means: I do not know who is sending me the prescription in question’ (JG , 69). Concerning this ‘Law’, Lyotard states that: ‘There is a law and we absolutely don’t know what is says, nor even where it comes to us, but we have always to invent it through our actions. The law tells us that there are things to do and things not to do without telling us which is which.’ See ‘That which resists, after all’, Philosophy Today , Vol. 36, No. 4 (Winter 1992), p 404. 41 . Adorno, Negative Dialectics , p 381. 42 . Adorno, Metaphysics : Concepts and Problems (California: Stanford University Press, 2000), pp 19–20. 43 . Adorno, Negative Dialectics , p 381. 44 . Adorno, Metaphysics : Concepts and Problems , p 20. 45 . Stuart Dalton, ‘Lyotard’s Peregrination – Three (and a half) responses to the call of justice’, p 241. 46 . Elsewhere Lyotard describes anamnesis as ‘the search for that which remains unthought although it has already been thought ... and the resistance that 226 Notes

one finds in the work of hearing [reading] and anamnesis is of another kind to that which might simply oppose itself it the transmission of knowledge’ ( PM:ETC , 117). 47 . See David Carroll, Paraesthetics , p 170. 48 . Dunn, ‘Tyranny of Justice’, p 220. 49 . As Glowaka comments: ‘To Allen Dunn’s warning that “it is dangerous to conflate the artist’s needs for discontinuous originality with a death camp victim’s plea for justice” (‘Tyranny of Justice’, p 220), one should answer “Yes, I am running that risk each time I link onto “Remember!”; nevertheless I ought to”.’ See ‘Lending an Ear to Silence’, Minima Memoria , p 65. 50 . ‘The identifiable force of myth is not debatable. It cannot be explained through the putting into place of a specular representation: a sick person does not get better by looking in the mirror. This force proceeds from the mere formal properties of the narrative tradition anchored as it is in a world of invariable names where not only the heroes but also the narrators and narratees are established and permutable, and thus identifiable retrospectively and reciprocally’ (D , §220). 51 . See Rodolphe Gasche, Saving the Honor of Thinking : Critique, Theory, Philosophy (California: Stanford University Press, 2007), p 284. 52 . Ibid., p 284. 53 . Dunn acknowledges this multiplicity: ‘The ethical differend asserts a victimisation that derives from a system’s inability to compensate a wrong; it implies that justice might be rendered in another possible language. The aesthetic differend, by contrast, asserts a more subtle victimisation, a victimisation that is created by representation itself in the very process of mimesis.’ See ‘Tyranny of Justice’, p 218. 54 . Bill Readings, Introducing Lyotard , p 57. 55 . ‘Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave/My heart into my mouth’ (KL , Act I, sc i, 9–10). 56 . However, by the play’s tragic end Lear is able to read presence in the absence of his daughter’s voice, seeing movement across lips that can no longer speak, though such recognition is undoubtedly borne more from despera- tion and grief rather than insight. Nevertheless, as Lear’s actions attest, such occurrences are still phrases able to be linked onto. 57 . See Dunn’s ‘Tyranny of Justice’, footnote 11.

3 Homer and Ondaatje

1 . Alexander Pope, Homer’s Iliad (Maryland: Wildside Press, 2008), p xiii. 2 . ‘“Then, Glaucon”, said I, “when you meet encomiasts of Homer who tell us that this poet has been the educator of Hellas, and that for the conduct and refinement of human life he is worthy of our study and devotion, and that we should order our entire lives by the guidance of this poet, we must love and salute them as doing the best they can, and concede to them that Homer is the most poetic of poets and the first of tragedians, but we must know the truth, that we can admit no poetry into our city save only hymns to the gods and the praises of good men. For if you grant admission to the honeyed muse in lyric or epic, pleasure and pain will be lords Notes 227

of your city instead of law and that which shall from time to time have approved itself to the general reason as the best”’. Plato, the Republic [Book 10, 606e–607a]. 3 . Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion (Michigan: Knopf, 1987), p 146. 4 . I would also be wary here of following Lyotard in attributing the loaded title of ‘genius’ to those who inscribe what their chosen form struggles to espouse, most obviously because it risks levying artistic and ethical obligation onto a select few rather than the many. While I believe that to truly bear witness to differends through finding idioms in which they can be expressed necessitates a radical act that runs counter to convention, I doubt whether Lyotard or myself would wish to imply that this radicalism is the stuff of ‘genius’, exclusive only to those with the requisite talent. Rather, it is my contention that the differend unavoidably involves a radi- calisation of form in order to better be expressed, and as a result the skill required to make it heard is not an innate, privileged one but rather one borne from communion with the differend itself, theoretically evocable by all. 5 . Paean, Pindar, 7b 12–15. Referenced in Andrew Ford’s Homer: The Poetry of the Past (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), p 81. 6 . Homer, Odyssey , trans. Robert Fagles (Bath: Penguin Books, 2001), I, 11. 7 . The prophecy comes from Tiresias, the renowned blind seer who unfailingly predicts the future of men. Speaking to Odysseus he declares: ‘And at last your own death will steal upon you ... /a gentle, painless death, far from the sea it comes/to take you down, born down with the years in ripe old age/with all your people there in blessed peace around you’ ( O , 11, 153–57). 8 . See Gregory Nagy’s Comparative Studies in Greek and Indic Meter (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1974), p 248. I believe that the differend functions in a similar manner to kleos in that it refers to both a ‘hearing’ and a ‘speaking’, reception as well as its resonance. As I will later argue, kleos is to be understood as an intrinsically disruptive force that recognises the transmission of renown and its susceptibility to alteration. Indeed, it could even be argued that this disruptive force of kleos ultimately sets in motion the force of the postmodern. 9 . Claude Calame, The Craft of Poetic Speech in Ancient Greece , trans. Janice Orion (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), p 77. 10 . Adriana Cavarero, Cultivating the Muse , ‘The Envied Muse: Plato versus Homer’, p 49. 11 . Plato, Ion ; See The Dialogues of Plato Ion, Hippias Minor, Laches, Protagoras , trans. R. E. Allen (London: Yale University Press, 1998), 534c. 12 . Steele Commager, The Odes of Horace: A Critical Study (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962), p 3. 13 . Pietro Pucci, Odysseus Polotropos: Intertextual Readings in The Odyssey and The Iliad (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987), p 231. 14 . Homer, The Iliad, trans. Robert Fitzgerald (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), II, 488–90. 15 . While the ‘character’ of the Muse scarcely seems to act independently of the Poet and his subject, there are moments of discrepancy, specifically in the Odyssey where there is a disagreement as to who Penelope’s favourite suitor is. For while both Telemachus and Athena surmise that Eurymachus to be the 228 Notes

Queen’s favourite, the Muse believes Amphinomus to be the front-runner of her affections. See Fredrick Ahl and Hanna M. Roisman’s The Odyssey Re-Formed (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), p 277. 16 . Ibid., p 94. 17 . See also Italo Calvino, Why read the Classics (Michigan: Pantheon Books, 1999), p 12: ‘What Ulysses preserves from the lotus, from Circe’s drugs and the Siren’s song, is not merely the past or the future. Memory truly counts ... only if it holds together the imprint of the past and the plan for the future, if it allows to do things without forgetting what one wanted to do, and to become without ceasing to be, to be without ceasing to become.’ While the Muse is unable to do this, it is a skill that Odysseus comes to depend upon. 18 . Unlike the imagined, temporally projected kleos described by Achilles in the Iliad : ‘If I hold out here and lay siege to Troy/ – It’s just used to indicate a line break in the verse of the text -my journey home is gone, but my glory never dies. If I voyage back to the fatherland that I love, /my pride, my glory dies’. ( TI, IX, 262) 19 . While kleos here is present in the sense that it is an addressed announcement, it is also an announcement whose content faces the past rather than the future. In the rare cases that a character speaks of his own kleos in the Iliad (Hector in 6.444–46, or Achilles in 9.412–16), it is always as renown to be attained (or lost). Yet here in the post-Trojan world of the Odyssey, Odysseus speaks of his own heroic deeds retrospectively without need of an extraneous (acknowledged) Poet or a sense of the future – the fact that he survived the battlefields and supernatural encounters of his past enables him speak as a witness as well as a Poet; indeed, it fuses the two together. 20 . As Irene Jong notes: ‘The main story contains repeated references to the Apologue adventures which serve to authenticate them: (by the narrator) 1.6–9; 2.17–20; 8.448; (by Zeus) 1.68–71; (by Odysseus) 20.18–21; 23.251 and 310–41. Thus there is no reason to see Odysseus’ narrative as one of his lying tales.’ See A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p 222. Nevertheless, while the events of the Apologue may retain internal credence within the structure of the Odyssey as a whole, it must be noted that the poem’s most epic and fanciful events – representing the oldest tales of Odyssean folklore – are narrated by a man known by all to lie. As a result, the Apologue can be seen – or at the very least, be seen to invite – commentary upon the reliability of narration itself, its credibility undermined through the agent of its delivery. 21 . One needs only listen to Odysseus’ second Apologue – related to Penelope after their eventual reunion and reconciliation – to see how contextually determined his narratives can be ( O , XXIII, 353–87). That Odysseus edits certain aspects of his voyage home as a result of the addressee being his long- suffering and faithful wife is understandable (most pointedly his initially unforced romantic sojourns with Calypso and Circe). However, it is also telling that Homer openly displays such a tailored summation, the reported absences of narrative serving once more to highlight Odysseus’s unreliability as narrator and the ever-present factor of context in determining his tale. For even this account of Odysseus’s second Apologue is itself subject to context. Delivered as indirect speech, the Poet is no doubt aware that a full recitation Notes 229

of Odysseus’s adventures is narratologically unnecessary as well as structurally disruptive and so recounts Odysseus’ own recollections in a condensed fashion, its thirty lines moving through a time span that lasts through the night and into the early hours of the morning. As a result, there is some uncertainty as to whose narration is the more censored. Nevertheless, the episode reveals the distinction between Odysseus and the Poet and explores the discrepancies between an event’s aletheia and the considerations of narrative and its audience. 22 . Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature : Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, trans. Willard Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), pp 7–13. 23 . Michael Clarke, ‘Manhood and heroism’, in Homer , ed., Robert Fowler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p 79. 24 . Charles Segal, ‘ Kleos and its Ironies in the Odyssey ’, Reading the Odyssey (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), p 205. 25 . Don DeLillo, White Noise (London: Penguin Books, 1985), p 17. Note here the description also working at a metapoetic level, with the fame of Odysseus’ previous renderings following even Homer’s creation during his odyssey. 26 . Indeed, in the same breath as disavowing kleos aphthiton, Achilles immedi- ately asks: ‘But come, tell me the news about my gallant son/Did he make his way to the wars, /did the boy become a champion – yes or no?’ (O , XI, 559–61). 27 . Such gifts are offered by Calypso, Circes and the Sirens. It is also interesting to note that these offers of entrapment exclusively come from female figures, providing a divine parallel to the faithfully chaste and mortal Penelope back in Ithaca. 28 . ‘Note that the word “mute” ... is regarded by linguists as an onomatopoeic formation referring not to silence but to a certain fundamental opacity of human being, which likes to show the truth by allowing it to be seen hiding’ ( Nox, Anne Carson, p n/a). This is also how the differend functions, bringing light to darkness through a process that unavoidably serves to further elon- gate the shadow’s reach. 29 . ‘Cyclops – /If any man on the face of the earth should ask you / who blinded you, shamed you so – say Odysseus, /raider of cities, he gouged out your eye, /Laertes’ son who makes his home in Ithaca!’ ( O , IX, 358–62). 30 . While Odysseus rejects Calypso’s offer of immortality, one can assume that (since he continued to remain with her for several years – as he also would with Circe) his nostos and feelings of faithfulness towards his wife were not the only reasons for his refusal. Another reason could perhaps have been a sense of purpose – without the impending horizon of death and the pressing concerns of mortality to guide him, Odysseus might have felt that his life would lose its direction and his actions rendered meaningless. This seems to be substantiated by his response to hearing of hardships ahead: ‘And if a god will wreck me yet again on the wine-dark sea/I can bear that too, with a spirit tempered to endure ... Add this to the total – /bring the trial on!’ (O , V, 243–47). 31 . See also Pietro Pucci’s essay ‘The Song of the Sirens’ in which he notes that the creatures reproduces the diction of the Iliad through conspicuous use of traditional phrases from the epic and as a result is able to seduce Odysseus through recognising him as a ‘literary’ character of great renown: ‘in other 230 Notes

words, they invite him to change poet and poem, and to return to be the character of the Iliad ’ ( Reading the Odyssey, ed., Seth L Schein, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996, pp 191–99). He also notes: ‘The Poet of the Odyssey presses the point that the inspirers of the Iliad are turned toward an irretrievable and remote kleos and grief, whose song indeed fascinates the listeners; yet the memory ... spells death. In this way, by incorporating their Iliadic song into the poem, the Odyssey appropriates the Iliad with a gesture of disavowal’.(ibid., pp 196 and 199). 32 . Blanchot, The Book To Come , trans. Charlotte Mandell (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), p 8. 33 . Ibid., pp 5–6. 34 . Ibid., p 4. 35 . Although Odysseus’ violence to his mortal enemies is well-known, his adventures also spelled the doom for some of the divine. The myth of the Sirens suggests that they would meet their end when one was able to sail past the isle unharmed by their voice. Similarly, one can view his victory over the Cyclops, his silent denouncement of the Muse and the rejection of various divine affections, as emblematic of the assent of Man and the beginning of the slow withdrawal of the gods. 36 . One can also presume that Odysseus could not fully concentrate on what the Sirens had to impart as he was preoccupied with urgently signalling to his men to set him free: ‘So they sent their ravishing voices out across the air/and the heart inside me throbbed to listen longer. / I signalled the crew with frowns to set me free – / they flung themselves at the oars and rowed on harder’ (O , XII, 208–11). Indeed, one can here find echoes of literature’s impossibility of presenting Silence without also annulling its presence. 37 . Lyotard, ‘Voices of a Voice’, p 133. 38 . As previously mentioned, since there is confirmation of their occurrence by others outside the Apologue , such as Zeus (O , I, 82–90) and the Poet himself ( O , I, 5–10) we have no reason to suspect that Odysseus does not believe such tales. Indeed, Odysseus himself refers to events of the Apologue in the past tense: ‘Bear up, old heart! You’ve born worse, far worse, / that day when the Cyclops, man-mountain, bolted / your hardy comrades down’ (O, XX, 20–4). Yet it is interesting to note that the Siren episode serves no narratological purpose – it is symbolic only of a sojourn, one fraught with danger perhaps, but an idle curiosity nonetheless. Despite this, when Odysseus and his crew face the dangers of Scylla and Charybdis forewarned by Circe, he mentions his victory over the Cyclops and not the conquered experience of Sirens endured only moments before. Is it because the encounter is deemed too passive, too un-heroic and unmanly to be worth retelling? Perhaps, but Odysseus has avoided combat before, even in the Polyphemus’ cave. So why the omission? It can only be because that is all Odysseus has of the encounter – Silence. As Lyotard notes, ‘the “perfect crime” ... consists in ... obtaining the silence of the witness, the deafness of the judges, and the inconsistency (insanity) of the testimony’ ( D , §9). 39 . Who is responsible for Odysseus’ Silence here: Odysseus or Homer? Is the ‘unchangingness’ of Odysseus a result of the event’s consciously permitted Silence that he is unwilling or unable to recognise, or does it ultimately highlight the limit of Homer’s craft and his inability to represent the Notes 231

unrepresentable and its impact? Given that the Apologue is avowedly Odysseus’ own kleos, it might arguably have been disingenuous of Homer to have represented the episode in a way that transmitted its full, Silencing, impact while the man himself remained unaware of its transmitted trauma. (To this end, it is irrelevant whether or not the epic form – ungoverned by the narratological restrictions imposed by the Apologue – would have been able to permit such a representation). Indeed, even when Odysseus has reunited his name and his identity under the roof of his own oikos, the Poet relates Odysseus’ recollections to Penelope and still the event is recounted in terms of an experience conquered: ‘He told how he caught the Siren’s voices throb- bing in the wind’ ( O , XXIII, 379).Trauma, it seems, will be with him, unrec- ognised, until his death. 40 . Crome, Lyotard and Greek Thought (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004), p 151. 41 . ‘The master and pupil have concluded a contract: the former will be paid only if the latter has been able to win, thanks to the teaching he receives ... The alternative is simple and the judgement easy: if Euathalus has won at least once, he pays; if not, he is absolved. And since he has not won, there is nothing to pay. In its brachylogical conciseness, Protagoras’ reply transforms the alternative into a dilemma. If Euthalus has won at least once, he must pay. If he never won, he still won at least once, and must pay’ (D , Protagoras Notice). As Crome notes: ‘The wrong that Euathalus suffers at the hands of his tutor cannot testify to itself precisely because the terms in which it expresses itself, the terms in which it articulates itself, are already the terms of Protagoras’ argument.’ See Lyotard and Greek Thought , p 151. 42 . Ibid., p 153. 43 . However, an exception can be found in the essay ‘Voices of a Voice’ where Lyotard writes: the autologism of the interior monologue, which, in the order of what it articulated, is a close kin to the mutism of the phonè , at least in terms of address. Its model is to be found in Molly Bloom’s monologue, in the final episode of Ulysses. This autologism sets up house with autoerotism ... One has there an acceptable characterization of a phantasm: an intense phonè which concedes its reference and sense to lexis , but refuses to it the possibility of addressing another. Thus, two paths are in one. (p 135) While it must be remembered that the phonè isn’t the differend – the phonè is that which supposedly cannot be phrased; the differend is the recognition of the Silence that results from the attempt at doing so (or not) – nevertheless, we have here perhaps the clearest example of the philosopher referencing (albeit only slightly) the capability of literature to successfully present the unpresentable in a practical sense. 44 . Michael Ondaatje, Coming through Slaughter (London: Picador, 1979), p 5. 45 . See John Gennari’s ‘Jazz Criticism: Its Development and Ideologies’, Black American Literature Forum , Vol. 25 (1991), p 464. 46 . See Crome, ‘Voicing Nihilism’, p 167. 47 . Lyotard, ‘Voices of a Voice’, p 130. 48 . See ‘“He had Pushed his Imagination into Buddy’s Brain”, or, How to Escape History in Coming Through Slaughter’, Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice , Vol. 9, No. 2–3 (2005), p 204. 232 Notes

49 . Ibid., p 207. 50 . Lyotard, in the foreword to The Lyotard Reader , ed., Andrew Benjamin (Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd, 1989), p xiv. 51 . See ‘The Motif of the Collector and History in Ondaatje’s Work’, CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture , Vol. 6, No. 3 (2004), p 6. 52 . See Alice Van Wart’s essay ‘The Evolution of Form in Michael Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid and Coming through Slaughter ’: http://www. uwo.ca/english/canadianpoetry/cpjrn/vol17/Van%20wart.htm 53 . See Douglas Malcom’s essay ‘Solos and Chorus: Michael Ondaatje’s Jazz Politics/Poetics’, Mosaic , Vol. 32, No. 3 (1999), p 133. 54 . As S. De Smyter notes: ‘Since Bellocq is a photographer, the association with “darkroom” is easily made. The darkroom is a place where pictures get devel- oped. Exploring one’s inner self, then, can be seen as productive, but also as a dangerous process ... The more Bolden meets Bellocq, the more his borders of “self” are affected and the more attracted he is to the idea of returning to a state of undifferentiation.’ See ‘Michael Ondaatje’s Coming Through Slaughter: Disrupting Boundaries of Self and Language’, English Studies, Vol. 88, No. 6 (2007), p 692. 55 . It is interesting to note the extended motif that walls, windows, and mirrors have throughout the novel, acting as gateways between the author and his ‘historiographical’ fiction. Ondaatje understands that in examining something you are also examining yourself – the figure you are trying to capture cannot avoid in some way merging with your own, or the medium that tries to represent it: ‘The photograph moves and becomes a mirror. When I read he stood in front of mirrors and attacked himself, there was the shock of memory. For I had done that. Stood, and with a razor-blade cut into cheeks and forehead, shaved hair. Defiling people we did not wish to be’ ( CS , 133). 56 . Ondaatje’s small disclaimer at the end of the book in full reads: ‘While I have used real names and characters and historical situations I have also used more personal pieces of friends and fathers. There have been some date changes, some characters brought together, and some facts have been expanded or polished to suit the truth of fiction’ ( CS , 158). As Jerry Varsava comments, ‘Ondaatje exhibits a marked inclination to conflate the factual and the fictional.’ See ‘History and/or His Story? A Study of Two Canadian Biographical Fictions’, eds, Theo D’haen and Hans Bertens, History and Post-war Writing (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990), p 210. 57 . See ‘Playing Hide and Seek in Language: Michael Ondaatje’s Historiography of the Self’, American Review of Canadian Studies , Vol. 24, No. 1 (1994), p 25. 58 . Jon Saklofske, ‘The Motif of the Collector and History in Ondaatje’s Work’, p 2. 59 . See ‘Metafictional Biography: Michael Ondaatje’s Coming through Slaughter and The Collected Works of Billy the Kid ’ , Historiographic metafiction in modern American and Canadian Literature , eds, Bernd Engler and Kurt Müller (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1994), pp 447–63. Hochbruck goes on to explain that Donald Marquis’ book In Search of Buddy Bolden ‘is able to deflate [most of the myths concerning the musician], includ[ing] the fact that Bolden did not run a barbershop ... that he did not edit a scandal sheet called The Cricket , and that he did not ... go berserk during a parade. Bolden’s deterioration was Notes 233

slow and progressive ... Ondaatje chooses to reshuffle the different truths to find a new meaning’ (p 455). 60 . As Alice Van Wart notes, there is an old jazz tune by King Oliver called ‘Weather Bird’ that may have led Ondaatje to use the image. See ‘The Evolution of Form in Michael Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid and Coming through Slaughter ’, p n/a. 61 . Ibid. 62 . Although as Stephen Scobie notes, the empathy between the two figures should nevertheless be tempered by the recognition of their differences: ‘The kind of artist that Ondaatje describes Buddy Bolden as being could not have created the structure that is Coming Through Slaughter .’ See ‘ Coming Through Slaughter : Fictional Magnets and Spider’s Webbs’, Essays on Canadian Writing , Vol. 12, No. 10 (1978), p 20. Similarly, Sam Solecki recognises that although Bolden’s art leads to ‘chaos, madness and silence’, Ondaatje’s book itself exemplifies order and form, albeit presented through the challenging mode of postmodern fiction. See Spider Blues: Essays on Michael Ondaatje (Montreal: Vehicle Press, 1995), p 44. 63 . See Sally Bachner’s ‘“He had Pushed his Imagination into Buddy’s Brain”, or, How to Escape History in Coming Through Slaughter’, pp 209 and 212. Indeed, while Bachner finds the novel to be a ‘profoundly moving, inventive and even deeply compassionate portrait’, her reading is also ‘marked by some degree of ethical revulsion’ (p 216) at Ondaatje’s methods of reanimation, an interpretation I wholeheartedly reject. 64 . Although, as a becoming-plaintiff Bolden still elects to retreat into silence and reject the trappings of fame, which in turn poses the ethical dilemma of whether one should retrieve voices that choose to retreat into silence. Indeed, this is a concern keenly shared by Ondaatje, who ultimately elects to slow the narrative down to a halt after the musician is committed to the asylum. 65 . However, as has been noted at the beginning of this chapter, the usual translation of kleos as ‘fame’ is semantically inadequate, concentrating as it does on what has instigated renown rather than on the medium that transmits it. See Nagy’s ‘Comparative Studies in Greek and Indic Meter’, pp 245–52. The synthesis of poet and hero embodied by Odysseus can be seen as a measure by Homer to redress the gap between mouth and memory, medium and message, while also drawing attention to the fact that kleos is a disruptive element that forces an acknowledgment that content and form are transmitted and so at perpetual risk of alteration. 66 . See Sally Bachner, ‘“He had Pushed his Imagination into Buddy’s Brain”, or, How to Escape History in Coming Through Slaughter’ , p 209. 67 . As Douglas Bauber notes in his book Michael Ondaatje (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1993): My reading of this segment, like my reading of the whole, depends on my mood as much as on the implications of the text. But it remains opaque. Are those verbs simply the active present tense of a dropped first-person singular, or are they imperative? Do they address character, author, or us? To what and whom does ‘Thirty-one years old’ refer? What does the final sentence really mean? ... Meaning is not the point: writing is. Finally, what I come back to, again and again, is the ever-changing yet always engaging 234 Notes

energy of the writing itself, and the fact that because I can’t fix either the characters or the text within a single generic focus or a particular kind of reading, they remain in flux, evading explanation, yes, but singing a siren song of empathy I cannot resist. (p 135) 68 . According to Sally Bachner, ‘Bolden’s mental breakdown becomes visible as an attempt to escape the peculiar historicity forced upon the famous. “Leaving the stage”, even if that stage is only the “rectangle on the street”, is akin to escaping the confining ontology of history, which is synonymous with the ontology of fame. He escapes into the “loss of privacy” that Ondaatje’s fiction is able to enact for him’. See ‘“He had Pushed his Imagination into Buddy’s Brain”, or, How to Escape History in Coming Through Slaughter ’, p 213. 69 . As Karen E. Smythe notes: ‘Ondaatje translates his character’s ecstasy into a “mad parade” of nouns and verbs that jostle syntactical order: both Buddy and his words have let go of logic – or adhere to a different kind of logic.’ See ‘“Listen It”, Responses to Ondaatje’, Essays on Canadian Writing, Vol. 94, No. 53 (1994), p 5. 70 . See W.M. Verhoeven, ‘(De)Facing the Self: Michael Ondaatje and (Auto) Biography’, Postmodern Fiction in Canada, eds, Theo D’Haen and Hans Bertens (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1992), p 190. 71 . As Alice Van Wart comments, Ondaatje ‘artistically and aesthetically increases the narrative effect and enhances the novel’s meaning by “figuration”, the arrangement of words and images into a shape that complements and echoes the verbal content. The meaning therefore occurs in the tension among the individual compositions and their juxtaposed arrangements’. See ‘The Evolution of Form in Michael Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid and Coming through Slaughter in Canadian Poetry , No. 17 ( Fall/Winter 1985). 72 . Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster , trans. Ann Smock (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), p 7. 73 . The Apologue itself is indebted to trauma, not only because of its related (often traumatic) events but also because Odysseus begins to tell his tale when he is overcome with the emotion of hearing someone else’s testimony. Indeed, it is worth quoting in full so as to note how Odysseus’ tears are not only asso- ciated with an emotional outpouring that overwhelms the subject but also with a violent assault that ultimately takes one captive: That was the song that famous harper sang but great Odysseus melted into tears, running down from his eyes to wet his cheeks ... as a woman weeps, her arms flung around her darling husband, a man who fell in battle, fighting for town and townsmen, trying to beat the day of doom from home and children. Seeing the man go down, dying, gasping for breath, she clings for dear life, screams and shrills – but the victors, just behind her, digging spear-butts into her back and shoulders, drag her off in bondage, yoked to hard labour, pain, and the most heartbreaking torment wastes her cheeks. ( O , VIII, 585–96) 74 . Since Homer draws a parallel between the mastery of the bow and a poet’s mastery with words, it is interesting to see the object almost as a symbolic representation of Odysseus’ mimetic abilities; not only do both require some Notes 235

measure of distance between tool and target but both are catalysts of execu- tion that defer the moment of impact to a secondary instance. 75 . As Winfried Siemerling notes: ‘I would like to suggest that Coming Through Slaughter has several endings, endings which I find very hard to reconcile and which perhaps should not be reconciled. These endings “contain” Bolden as much as they may try to spew him back out into history. The “struggle for life” between “author and hero” can be seen, in this perspective, to continue through to the finishing line’, ‘Temptations of Identity: Michael Ondaatje’s Coming Through Slaughter and Fascination’ (Lecture in Osnabruck, 2 December 1991), cited by Wolfgang Hochbruck in ‘Metafictional Biography: Michael Ondaatje’s Coming through Slaughter and The Collected Works of Billy the Kid ’, p 259. 76 . See ‘“He had Pushed his Imagination into Buddy’s Brain”, or, How to Escape History in Coming Through Slaughter ’, p 219. 77 . Ibid., p 216. 78 . Ibid., p 217. 79 . Lyotard, ‘The Sign of History’, The Lyotard Reader , p 409. 80 . Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves (Bath: Anchor Press, 2000), p 50.

4 The Traumatic Sublime

1 . Hippocrates, De Capitis Vulneribus, 10d–32, sc 11, line 43, quoted in the Journal Analgesia and Anesthesia, Special Article, 2000: ‘Etymology and Literary History of Related Greek Words’ by Helen Askitopoulou, Ioanna A. Ramoutsaki and Eleni Konsolaki. 2 . The Illiad , VIII, 376–85. 3 . Trauma: Explorations in Memory (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), p 4. 4 . Dominick LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), p 42. 5 . Vall, ‘Silent Visions – Lyotard on the Sublime’, The Contemporary Sublime, Art & Design (London: Academy Group, 1995), p 69. 6 . See Lyotard’s ‘The Affect-phrase (from a Supplement to The Differend)’ found in The Lyotard Reader and Guide, eds, Keith Crome and James Williams, pp 104–10. 7 . Lyotard, ‘The Communication of Sublime Feeling’, The Lyotard Reader and Guide , p 257. 8 . Lyotard, ‘Critical Reflections’, Artforum , trans. W. G. J. Niesluchowski, 29.8 (1991), p 92. Additionally, Lyotard understands a presentation as simply a phrase that presents a universe taking place. See The Differend , §111–19. 9 . Instructions paiennes (Paris: Galilee, 1977), p 36. Lyotard is even tempted to describe himself as a Kantian of the unwritten Fourth Critique , a work that he thinks he might eventually compose: ‘There is lacking an empirical ethics (an ethics of ‘prudence’) that is, a politics. There is not quite a fourth ‘Critique,’ but a third part to the Third Critique . One can wonder at the fact that, in the Third Critique , reflective judgment is at work only on the aesthetic object and nature as teleology. Because there is yet another realm to which reflective judgment obviously applies the realm of political society’ 236 Notes

( JG , 88). However, later on his life Lyotard declares that: ‘As for a politics of the sublime, there is none. If there were, it could only be the Terror. But in politics, there is an aesthetics of the sublime’ ( PM:ETC , 112–13). 10 . Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgement , 5:263. Of course, one of the horrific differends of the Final Solution was the gradual cessation of the Jewish people as civilians in the eyes of the Nazi regime. As a consequence, their human rights were considered forfeit and their extermination permitted. 11 . However, as David Carroll comments, Kant could be criticised here for ‘proposing an aestheticism of history: a notion of an approach to historical events that demands “subjects of history” who are emotionally active (enthu- siastic or sorrowful, in the case of negative signs), but, nonetheless, passive when it comes to any form of action or participation – purely aesthetic spectators reduced always to contemplation from a distance’. Paraesthetics , p 179. 12 . See ‘Lyotard, Gadamer, and the relation between ethics and aesthetics’, Lyotard – Philosophy, Politics and the Sublime (London: Routledge, 2003), p 92. The quote the writer uses of Lyotard’s is from the philosopher’s text Enthusiasm (California: Stanford University Press, 2009), p 108. 13 . See Serge Trottein, ‘Lyotard: Before and After the Sublime’, Lyotard – Philosophy, Politics and the Sublime , p 196. 14 . Ashley Woodward, ‘Nihilism and the Sublime in Lyotard’, Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities , Vol. 16, No. 2 (2011), p 62. As this book contests, literature of the differend is able to provide such an experience precisely because of its formal limitations and representational failures. 15 . In Kant’s words: ‘We might even define taste as the faculty of estimating what makes our feeling in a given representation universally communicable without the mediation of a concept.’ Critique of the Power of Judgement , 5:295. 16 . Lyotard, trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg, Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime (California: Stanford University Press, 1994), p 239. 17 . Carroll, Paraesthtics , p 182. 18 . Ibid., p 167. 19 . Importantly, Lyotard also believes that the postmodern is not to be understood as a stage that follows the modern but rather a part of it: ‘not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant’ ( PMC , 79). 20 . See Serge Trottein, ‘Lyotard: Before and After the Sublime’, L yotard – Philosophy, Politics and the Sublime , p 198. 21 . See Caruth, Trauma: Explorations in Memory , pp 4–5. 22 . See Caruth, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p 4. 23 . Ibid., pp 2–3. 24 . See Roger Luckhurst, The Trauma Question (London: Routledge, 2008), p 79. 25 . See Adorno, Negative Dialectics , pp 362 and 367. 26 . Felman and Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature Psychoanalysis and History (London: Routledge, 1992), pp xvii and 224. 27 . Caruth, Trauma: Explorations in Memory , p 7. 28 . See Roger Luckhurst, The Trauma Question, p 81. Indeed, his belief that Lyotard would ascribe such negative qualities to representation is puzzling, especially as he later exclaims that ‘if trauma is a crisis in representation, then Notes 237

this generates narrative possibility just as much as impossibility , a compulsive outpouring of attempts to formulate narrative knowledge’, ibid., p 83. This is why, although I understand thinkers such as Lawrence Langer who are wary of virtually any aesthetic codification of Holocaust experience, for fear that it may ‘mediate atrocity’ by formalising it through the rules of genre and discourse, I nevertheless believe that Lyotard’s approach – although more troubled – is ultimately the more fruitful (or at least, preferable to Silence). 29 . Laurie Vickroy, Trauma and Survival in Contemporary Fiction (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2002), p xiv. 30 . See Wulf Kasteiner, In Pursuit of German Memory: History, Television and Politics after Auschwitz (Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2004), pp 215 and 205. 31 . Susannah Radstone, ‘Screening Trauma’, Memory and Methodology (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2000), p 89. 32 . LaCapra, Representing the Holocaust – History, Theory, Trauma (New York: Cornell University Press, 1994), p 97. 33 . David Becker, ‘Dealing with the Consequences of Organised Violence in Trauma Work’, Conflict Transformation (Berlin: Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management, 2001), p 1. As this chapter will argue however, this is precisely why literature can be a positive force in the exploration of trauma since it is able to function as a case-study of a specific traumatic event and its affects. 34 . Ruth Leys, Trauma: A Genealogy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), p 306. 35 . LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma , pp 21 and 96. 36 . Bill Readings, Introducing Lyotard: Art and Politics (London: Routledge, 1991), p xxxi. 37 . LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma , p 190. 38 . As Lyotard observes: ‘The sublime is not a pleasure, it is a pleasure of pain; we fail to present the absolute, and that is a displeasure, but we know that we have to present it, that the faculty of feeling or imagining is called on to bring about the sensible (the image). To present what one cannot conceive, and even if it cannot manage to do this, and we suffer from this, a pure pleasure is felt from this tension’ (I, 126). It is my contention however that the traumatic sublime is a sensation devoid of any associations with pleasure, the traumatic event that destabilised the capacities reason and representation so terrible as to prompt despair rather than motivation (although importantly not exhaustively extinguishing hope). 39 . Caruth, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History , pp 91–2. 40 . The fundamental difference between the event and the ‘traumatic event’ being that the former exists as a singularity, an is , while the latter exists as a repetitious is , a plurality. 41 . See Lyotard and the End of Grand Narratives , p 78. 42 . See PM:ETC , p 14. 43 . See Lyotard: Philosophy, Politics, and the Sublime , p 2. 44 . In LaCapra’s terminology, I believe the sensation of the traumatic sublime would be both an ‘acting out’ and ‘working through’ of the traumatic event, simultaneously a re-living of the instances of trauma but also a recognition of the narratological elements necessary for such re-enactment to take place. 238 Notes

However, the traumatic sublime should not be understood as ‘the ecstatic secularization of the sacred in a radically “excessive” or transcendent form [that is] ... beyond ethics’ ( Writing History, Writing Trauma, p 190) since I believe that such an interpretation is based on a traditional, and some would say anachronistic, reading of the sublime, pace Kant. 45 . Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, trans. Justin O’Brien (London: Penguin Books, 2000), p 111. 46 . Ibid. 47 . Ibid. 48 . Caruth, Trauma: Explorations in Memory , pp 4–5 and 153. 49 . Although, to be fair to Lyotard here, such a move is always understood as response to ‘when human beings who thought they could use language as an instrument of communication learn through the feeling of pain which accompanies silence (and of pleasure which accompanies the invention of a new idiom), that they are summoned by language, not to augment to their profit the quantity of information communicable through existing idioms, but to recognise that what remains to be phrased exceeds what they can pres- ently phrase, and that they must be allowed to institute idioms which do not yet exist’ (D , §23). The question – once again – becomes: how best to attest to the differend without subsuming its call? 50 . I also believe that my designation of becoming-plaintiff is helpful here in recognising the indeterminacy of the process of testimony, highlighting Lyotard’s uncharted space between being a mute victim and an articulate plaintiff. 51 . Elie Wiesel, Dimensions of the Holocaust (Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1977), pp 6–7. 52 . Ibid., p 7. 53 . James Young, Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust: Narrative and the Consequences of Interpretation (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1988), pp 15–16. 54 . G. H. Hartman, ‘On Traumatic Knowledge and Literary Studies’, New Literary History , Vol. 26 (1995), p 540. 55 . As Robert McAfee Brown writes: ‘There is hope that the Holocaust, unre- deemably evil in itself, could be a grotesque beacon, in the light of which we could gird ourselves against its repetition toward any people in any time, in any place. And I believe that unless we can use it as such a beacon, the Nazis have finally won .’ See ‘The Holocaust as a Problem in Moral Choice’, Dimensions of the Holocaust, pp 47 and 62. 56 . Anne Whitehead writes: ‘Trauma fiction emerges out of a postmodernist fiction and shares its tendency to bring conventional narrative techniques to their limit. In testing formal boundaries, trauma fiction seeks to foreground the nature and limitations of narrative and to convey the damaging and distorting impact of the traumatic event.’ See Trauma Fiction (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), p 82. 57 . LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma , p 186. 58 . Jacques Derrida, Cinders , trans. and ed. Ned Lukacher (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991), p 43. 59 . Robert Eaglestone, The Holocaust and the Postmodern (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p 288. Derrida himself defines the trace as ‘the simulacrum of a presence that dislocates itself, displaces itself, refers itself, it Notes 239

properly has no site’. See ‘Difference’, Margins of Philosophy , trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1982), p 24. 60 . Jacques Derrida, Cinders , p 43. 61 . Robert Eaglestone, The Holocaust and the Postmodern , p 293. 62 . Derrida writes: ‘One says “warm cinders”, “cold cinders”, depending whether the fire still lingers there or no longer stirs ... Does this make the words warm or cold? Neither warm nor cold. And the gray form of these letters? Between black and white, the color of writing resembles the only “literality” of the cinder that still inheres in a language. In a cinder of words, in the cinder of a name, the cinder itself, the literal ... has disappeared. The name “cinder” is still a cinder of the cinder itself’ ( Cinders , p 49). 63 . Dori Laub, Testimony (London: Routledge, 1991), p 70. 64 . ‘Trauma, Absence, Loss’, Critical Inquiry , Vol. 25, No. 4 (1999), p 699. 65 . Eva Hoffman notes: As with ‘trauma’ or ‘second generation’ itself, I half balk at the phrases and their implicit reification of tenuous, intricate, and yes, rich internal experiences. For much of my life, I would have dismissed the under- lying notion as well, and with considerable impatience. For who, after all, wants to think of oneself as traumatised by one’s very parentage, as having drunk victimhood, so to speak, with one’s mother’s milk? And yet, the phrases do refer to real phenomena. For of course, the conditions of survivors’ lives, their psychic states and scars, could not but affect or infect those around them, their children most of all. See After Such Knowledge: Memory, History, and the Legacy of the Holocaust (New York: Public Affairs, 2004), p 61. 66 . As James Young writes: For a generation of artists and critics born after the Holocaust, the experience of Nazi genocide is necessarily vicarious and hypermediated. They haven’t experienced the Holocaust itself but only the event of being passed down to them. As faithful to their experiences as their parents and grandparents were to theirs in the camps, the artists of this media- saturated generation make their subjects the blessed distance between themselves and the camps ... These are their proper subjects, not the events themselves.’ See ‘Forward: Looking into the Mirrors of Evil’ found in Mirroring Evil, ed., Norman L. Kleeblatt (Jewish Museum, 2001), p xvii. 67 . New York Times, interview conducted by Deborah Solomon, published 27 February 2005. 68 . Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena, trans. Philip Boehm (New York: Schocken Books, 1990). 69 . While a great deal of humour is to be found in these mistranslations and malapropisms, there is also a serious message that underpins them. Alex is a character whose ‘premium’ knowledge of English appears to have been learnt solely from a thesaurus and academic textbooks rather than from any social application. As a result, his understanding of the language – more arti- ficial than organic – is stilted precisely because of its precision. Foer here highlights the fact language is primarily understood through context and sense rather than through retention or recollection. However, there is also a comparison to be made with a character from Foer’s other novel, Extremely 240 Notes

Loud and Incredibly Close – Ms. Schmidt – who over-enthusiastically employs neologisms in vain attempt to integrate more completely into her adopted culture and language. In utilising such polarising examples of the alienating affect that articulation (rather than silence) can have on the speaker, Foer highlights the extreme difficulty of expression through a second voice, a form of expression that his own literary works are attempting to enact. 70 . Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated (London: Penguin Books, 2003), p 214. 71 . See ‘Keeping History at Bay: Absent Presences in Three Recent Jewish American Novels’, Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Winter 2011), p 690. 72 . See Wole Soyinka, The Burden of Memory, The Muse of Forgiveness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p 58. 73 . Ultimately, although I do find it difficult to conceive of a victim truly tran- scending his or her status, neither do I accept that a victim is unavoidably destined to a life of mute impotence and overwhelming despair, something that both novels seem (largely) to support. While both Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close have characters that are unable to wholly surmount their own trauma – indeed, they are the Grandfather of the protagonist in each case – they are nevertheless able to cultivate and secure a better future for their grandchildren by the end of the novels. 74 . See Kristiaan Versluys, Out of the Blue: September 11 and the Novel (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), p 95. 75 . See Illka Saal, ‘Regarding the Pain of Self and Other: Trauma Transfer and Narrative Framing in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close ’, Modern Fiction Studies , Vol. 57, No. 3 (Fall 2011), p 467. 76 . See John Wrighton, Ethics and Politics in Modern American Poetry (New York: Routledge, 2009), p 2. 77 . Trauma: Explorations is Memory , p 172. 78 . Lyotard himself notes the range of expression at work in ‘muteness’: ‘This mute communication is made up of non-discrete inspirations and expira- tions of air: growling, pantings, sighs. It spreads over the face and its spreads through the whole which thus “signals” like a face. The essence of the face considered negatively (referred to by an actually articulated phrase) is that is lips are mute. Thus it will be necessary to extend the phônè as far as the gesture’ ( AP , §13). 79 . ‘Sometimes I would think about those hundred letters laid across my bedroom floor. If I hadn’t collected them, would our house have burned less brightly?’ ( ELIC , 83). 80 . ‘I would give everything for them to live without violence. Peace. That is all that I would ever want for them. Not money and not even love. It is still possible. I know that now, and it is the cause of so much happiness in me. They must begin again. They must cut all the strings, yes? With you (Sasha told me that you will not write to each other anymore), with their father (who is now gone forever), with everything that have known’ (EII , 275). 81 . This paradox is perhaps best related within another exemplary work of ‘Holocaust Fiction’ – Art Spiegelman’s Maus (1991). Within the second volume, set sat in a room with his psychiatrist, the author discusses the double-bind when faced with representing its horrors: ‘Samuel Beckett once said: “Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness” ... On the other Notes 241

hand, he SAID it.’ See Maus II: A Survivors Tale – And Here My Troubles Began (London: Penguin Books, 1992). 82 . As Foer notes in Everything is Illuminated : ‘The Origin of a Story is always Absence’, p 230. 83 . See Jacques Derrida, ‘Lyotard and Us ’, Minima Memoria , p 22. 84 . See ‘Keeping History at Bay: Absent Presences in Three Recent Jewish American Novels’, p 678. 85 . As Anne Whitehead declares: ‘Memory and forgetting to not oppose each other but form part of the same process. In the face of mounting amnesia, there is an urgent need to consciously establish meaningful connections with the past. Postmodernist fiction is part of this memory project. Its innovative forms and techniques critique the notion of history as a grand narrative, and it calls attention to the complexity of memory.’ Trauma Fiction , p 82. 86 . Interview conducted by Deborah Solomon, published 27 February 2005. 87 . Adorno, Notes to Literature II , ed., Rolf Tiedemann, trans. S. Nicholsen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), pp 423 and 488. 88 . Adorno, Negative Dialectics , pp 360 and 367. Of course, it is the contention of this book that attesting to the differend might lead out of such a circle, revealing Silence’s (non)presence at the same time as calling for cultural idioms to reconfigure themselves to answer its call. 89 . Reading Beckett, Adorno believes that ‘understanding ... can only mean understanding its unintelligibility, concretely reconstructing the meaning that it has no meaning’. See Notes to Literature I , ed., Rolf Tiedemann, trans. S. Nicholsen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), p 243. 90 . Adorno writes: ‘Art, which is no longer possible if it is not reflective, must renounce lightheartedness of its own accord ... The statement that it is not possible to write poetry after Auschwitz does not hold absolutely, but it is certain that after Auschwitz because Auschwitz was possible and remains possible ... lighthearted art is no longer conceivable. Objectively, it degener- ates into cynicism, no matter how much it relies on kindness and understanding.’ See Notes to Literature II , p 251. 91 . Is then Foer’s work to be considered ‘modern’ in the Lyotardian sense of the term? Not quite, as there are still lacerations of style that put forward the presentation of the unpresentable juxtaposed against the more traditional elements of the work. It is more postmodern that modern then, but perhaps not as postmodern as it could be. Nevertheless, perhaps this is to Foer’s advantage, structurally, mimicking the author’s (and reader’s) own distance from the traumatic events, serving to contrast the eruptions of traumatised semiotics connected to attempting to represent the event itself and its inaudible call. 92 . Adorno, Notes to Literature II , p 253. 93 . See Ross G Douthat, ‘After Tragedy’, National Review (2005), p 50; Harry Siegel, ‘Extremely Cloying & Incredibly False’, New York Press (13 April 2005); Tim Adams, ‘A Nine-year-old and 9/11’, The Observer (29 May 2005). 94 . Although, as Diana Wardi points out, such a inventively stylistic approach could be a legitimate artistic response to the fact that the second and third generation of Holocaust survivors faced ‘[t]heir [parent’s] silence [which] left a terrible vacuum in the children’s hearts, and they had no choice but to fill it with fantasises and dreams that they wove out of fragments of information’. 242 Notes

See Memorial Candles: Children of the Holocaust , trans. Naomi Goldblum (New York: Tavistock, 1992), pp 187–88. 95 . See Robert Eaglestone, ‘The Age of Reason is Over ... an Age of Fury was Dawning’, Wasafiri , p 21. 96 . See Caruth, Trauma: Explorations in Memory , p 11. Similarly, Birgit Dawes argues that Foer’s multi-layered narrative ‘replaces individual concern with a communal one, emphasising the need for several voices and dialogue’ so as to subscribe ‘ethically and structurally’ to a ‘cosmopolitan memory.’ See ‘On Contested Ground (Zero): Literature and the Transnational Challenge of Remembering 9/11’ Amerikastudien , Vol. 57, No. 4 (2007), p 540. 97 . As Saal notes: ‘in [Foer’s] extreme allergisation, even mythologisation, of events, he purposefully effaces concrete historical circumstances that are important for understanding ... Framed in this way, our narrative memory must then inevitably proceed from the perspective of victimhood, the passive voice that effaces agency and reduces history to “Stuff that Happened to Me” as the title of Oskar’s scrapbook suggests ... But by effacing the moments of human agency ... Foer effectively takes the events of Dresden and New York out of reach of historical inquiry, and with this, also beyond literature’s capacity to inspire thinking about man-made change’. See ‘Regarding the Pain of Self and Other: Trauma Transfer and Narrative Framing in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close ’, p 467. 98 . Caruth, Trauma: Explorations in Memory , pp vii and 154. 99 . As Caruth comments: ‘since the traumatic event is not experienced as it occurs, it is fully evident only in connection with another place, and in another time’. Ibid., p 7. 100 . Michel Faber, ‘A Tower of Babble’, The Guardian (4 June 2005). 101 . New York Times, interview conducted by Deborah Solomon, published 27 February 2005.

Conclusion

1 . See Carson’s ‘How women like Sappho, Marguerite Porete and Simone Weil Tell God’, Decreation – Poetry, Essays and Opera , p 171. 2 . Ibid., p 179. 3 . Robert Harvey suggests that: ‘Lyotard’s oeuvre seems to answer that this witnessing that “I” should strive to train itself to bear is a positioning of an “I” as passage. “I” am to become and remain passages everywhere I can, as plural as possible, taking care, all the while, that this “I-as-passages” never favours the facile tendency to tidily fill the abyss over which the passage is suspended.’ ‘Telltale at the Passages’, Yale French Studies, Jean-François Lyotard: Time and Judgment , p 102. As I have sought to argue throughout this book, I believe that literature of the differend forces such passages of witnessing. 4 . See Anne Carson, Decreation – Poetry, Essays and Opera , p 180.

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Index

Adorno, 44–5, 65, 86, 89–90, 166–7, Bennington, Geoffrey, 73, 219n. 27, 197, 199–200, 208, 241n. 90 222n. 6 Negative Dialectics, 86, 166–7, 197, Blanchot, Maurice (1907–2003), 120 241n. 88 Bolden, Buddy, 60–1, 103, 114, 124, affect-phrase, 6, 24, 52–6, 162, 165, 129–48, 153–5, 232n. 59, 233n. 168, 170, 184, 220n. 48 64, 234n. 68, 235n. 75 see also phrase see also Ondaatje, Coming Through art, 2–4, 10–11, 17, 20–2, 74, 104, Slaughter; jazz 106–7, 136, 145, 158, 199–200 Burke, Edmund (1729–1797), 40, 162 Lyotard and art, 2–3, 10, 11, 17, 20, 22, 38, 41–4, 46–8, 52, 57–8, 60, Camus, Albert (1913–1960), 175–6 82, 86, 88, 124, 160, 164–5, 168, see also Sisyphus 175, 192 Carroll, David, 41, 67, 97, 118, 164, see also artist; artistic work; avant- 224n. 29, 236n. 11 garde; the differend Carson, Anne, 205, 213, 229n. 28 artist, The, 64, 78–84, 89, 93, 94, 97, Caruth, Cathy, 159, 165, 166, 167, 99, 101, 127, 144, 158, 178, 224n. 169, 171, 176, 201, 211, 242n. 99 33, 226n. 49, 233n. 62 see also event, traumatic event; see also art; artistic work; avant- LaCapra; trauma garde cinders, 181–2, 239n. 62 artistic work, 47, 58, 127, 132, 133, see also Derrida; the differend 166, 173, 199, 226n. 49, 227n. 4, Cordelia, 94–5, 221n. 2 241n. 90 see also Shakepeare, King Lear; see also art; artist; avant-garde; the silence differend Crome, Keith, 19, 21, 60, 125, 130 Auerbach, Erin (1892–1957), 112, 116 see also Crome and Williams Auschwitz, 2, 11, 17–18, 45, 86, 90, Crome and Williams, 21 155, 158, 160, 166–8, 179, 191, 197, 199, 208, 241n. 94 Dalton, Stuart, 85, 215n. 31 see also Holocaust; Shoah damage, 2, 7, 8, 19, 32–4, 36–8, 45, avant-garde, 12, 20, 24, 38, 43–4, 46, 53, 68, 71, 72, 78, 80, 83, 84, 88, 74, 82–4, 86, 99, 170, 210, 216n. 94, 99, 102, 110, 116, 125, 129, 47, 218n. 19, 225n. 39 132–4, 138, 142, 143, 147, 148, see also art; artistic work; the 155, 158, 159, 168, 177–8, 180, differend 187, 188, 207, 210, 223n. 17 see also becoming-plaintiff; the Bachner, Sally, 132–3, 141, 143, differend; plaintiff; victim; wrong 154–5, 233nn. 63, 66, 234n. 68 decreation, 206–7, 212 Beckett, Samuel (1906–1989), 41, 88, see also Marguerite Porete 199, 216n. 45, 240–1n. 81 Derrida, Jacques (1930–2004), 28, 31, becoming-plaintiff, 35–6, 83, 96, 102, 58, 181–2, 197 142, 143, 233n. 64, 238n. 50 see also cinders; Law of Genre

253 254 Index differend, The, 2–10, 37–8, 39, 48–9, and structural representation, 23–4, 50–1, 57, 58, 61–2, 75, 92, 96, 36, 43, 55, 77, 88, 89, 94, 133, 104, 197, 205–8, 212, 213n. 2, 156, 158, 179, 186, 192, 198, 211, 220n. 51, 221n. 52, 223n. 21 219n. 29, 227n. 4, 236n. 14 and the affect-phrase, 54, 56 and the sublime, 41, 88–9, 163, and Auschwitz, 45, 90, 155, 216n. 172–5 46, 236n. 10 and trauma, 148–9, 152, 158, 161, and becoming-plaintiff, 36 166, 202, 211 and cinders, 181–2 Dresden (bombings), 183, 187, 188, and the concatenation of phrases, 190, 193, 242n. 97 66, 67, 77, 86, 138, 224n. 31 Dunn, Allen, 66, 68, 70–1, 90, 97, and disruption, 19–21, 44, 97, 147 209, 222n. 24, 223n. 2, 224n. 31, as émigré, 65, 72, 79, 83–4, 226n. 53 98–9, 209 and ‘failure’, 25, 32, 94, 97, 158, Eaglestone, Robert, 181–2 180, 198, 236n. 14 echo, 5, 8, 31, 36, 40, 55, 60–1, 63, 65, functioning as incommensurable 95, 99, 101, 103, 107, 112, 120, paradox, 31, 36, 39, 74, 83, 69, 123, 128–9, 131, 132, 133, 134, 84, 90, 154, 157, 207 138, 139, 140, 143, 145, 146, 149, and intuition, 31, 34, 44, 50, 72, 90, 151, 152, 154, 155, 157, 158, 175, 97, 157, 161, 209 186, 188, 194, 197, 199, 203, 207, and justice, 67–74, 85, 90, 93, 98, 208, 210 178–9, 195, 209, 226n. 53 émigré, 65, 72, 79, 185, 208, 209 literary differend, 5, 6, 24, 53, 92, see also artist; the differend; the 95, 97–9, 104, 123, 129, 131, 139, event 156–7, 192, 209, 210 encounter, 7, 8, 12, 16, 20, 30, 44, and literature, 3–10, 21–5, 26, 32, 54, 72, 78, 101, 104, 105, 113, 36, 37, 39–42, 46–51, 56, 61–2, 118–27, 129, 135, 144, 146, 147, 64, 65, 69, 70, 72, 74–5, 77, 83, 169, 172, 179, 185, 228n. 20, 84, 87–9, 92–3, 94–100, 103, 105, 230n. 38 111, 126, 128, 139, 147, 154, Enlightenment, The, 12–13, 15, 17, 156–8, 160, 165, 175, 179–81, 20, 91, 163, 175 184, 186, 192, 198, 208–10, 216n. ethics, 64, 74, 79, 162–3 , 222nn. 11, 45, 219n. 24, 223n. 25, 231n. 43, 14, 235n. 4, 238n. 49 236n. 14, 237n. 33, 242n. 3 event, The, 2, 24, 29, 38, 39, 44–5, narrative and neutralisation, 22–4, 47–9, 52–4, 58, 59, 61, 63, 72, 76, 36, 47–9, 76, 89, 91, 93, 96, 160, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 93, 236n. 14 94, 95, 96, 98, 100, 107, 108, 118, and phrase regimes/genres, 27–9, 120–8, 139, 144, 146–8, 151–2, 224n. 29 157, 160, 162, 165–6, 167, 170–1, and positive accounts of 178, 179–81, 183–8, 194, 196–9, presentational difficulty, 125–6, 201–2, 211, 216nn. 48, 51, 229n. 133, 189 3, 230n. 39, 241n. 91 and The Postmodern Condition, see also the differend; the sublime; 13, 14 unpresentable and relativism, 17–18, 215n. 3I traumatic event, 159, 167, 169–78, of a ‘second order’, 52–3, 91–2 181–3, 185–95, 198, 201–2, 211, and stridency, 59–61, 85, 145, 209, 237n. 44, 239n. 66, 241n. 91, 213n. 4 242n. 99 Index 255 exile, 18, 22, 39, 44, 45, 63–5, 72, 117, 126–7, 142–3, 149, 151–2, 75–84, 86, 90, 92, 93–4, 95, 96, 156, 159, 226n. 2, 228n. 21, 97–9, 105, 114, 116, 117, 118, 230n. 39, 233n. 65 121, 131, 136, 137, 147, 148, see also the Iliad; kleos; the Muse; 149, 150, 152–3, 180, 188, 194, Odysseus; the Odyssey; the Sirens 195, 198, 208, 209, 210, 221n. 2, human, The, 17, 38, 44, 46, 50, 60, 224n. 35 65, 70, 71, 75, 107, 110, 113, housed exile, 99, 210 122, 184, 201, 206, 209, 215n. see also the differend; émigré 32, 218n. 15, 223n. 17, 225n. 39, 229n. 28, 238n. 49 fame, 103, 104, 106, 109, 112, 114–15, 130, 133, 134, 135, 140–3, 154, Iliad, 6, 101, 112, 114–15, 117, 142, 229n. 26, 233n. 65, 234n. 68 159, 228n. 19, 229n. 31 see also kleos incommensurability, 5, 14, 17, 27, 28, Faurisson, Robert, 17–18, 91 31, 41, 56, 68–72, 74, 77, 84, 89, figural, The, 6, 162 90, 92, 96, 97, 99, 102, 125, 126, Foer, Jonathan-Safran (1977– ) 131, 156, 157, 162, 163, 172, 173, Everything is Illuminated, 160, 170, 182, 192, 209, 215n. 31, 217n. 9, 182, 184–8, 190, 192–7, 240n. 4 223n. 17 Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, see also the affect-phrase; the 160, 170, 184, 187–8, 189, 190, differend; the event; the Forgotten; 193–4, 195, 196, 199–202, 203, phrase; stridency 239n. 69, 240n. 73 infancy, 54, 201, 218n. 14 forgotten, The, 24, 39–40, 43, 65, 85, inhuman, 38 87, 89, 90–1, 96, 108, 118, 165, intuition, 2, 3, 4, 8, 42, 25, 30, 34, 36, 196, 198, 207 46, 48, 49, 50, 58, 61, 64, 67, 71, see also the differend; Lyotard, 72, 77, 85, 92, 96, 97, 99, 104, Heidegger and “the jews”; Shoah; 124, 125, 133, 145, 156, 157, unpresentable 158, 159, 161, 175, 176, 182, 187, Frank, Manfred, 19 207, 209 Freud, Sigmund (1856–1939), 11, 84, see also the differend 85, 166, 167 jazz, 129, 135, 138, 141, 233n. 60 Goneril, 82, 95–6 see Buddy Bolden; Ondaatje, Coming see also Shakespeare, King Lear Through Slaughter Joyce, James (1882–1941), 21, 22, 41, Habermas, Jürgen (1929– ), 15–17 75, 98, 102, 104, 116, 117 Hamlet, 39, see also, language; Ulysses Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friederich (1770–1831), 44, 86, 208 Kafka, Franz (1883–1924), 22, 35, 41, heresy, 4, 9, 204, 207–8, 212, 217n. 8 102, 184, 218n. 12 Holocaust, 11, 17–18, 20, 23, 45, 90–1, Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804), 27, 31, 160, 166, 167, 169, 179, 181–2, 40, 43, 84, 85, 93, 124, 162–3, 188, 198–9, 236n. 28, 238n. 55, 211, 235n. 9, 236nn. 10–11, 15, 239n. 65, 240n. 81, 241n. 94 238n. 44 see also Auschwitz; the differend; the Critique of the Power of Judgment, 27, Shoah 40, 162 Homer (7/8th Century B.C.E.), 22, 78, kleos, 101–2, 106, 108, 109–10, 80, 101, 105–6, 108–12, 114, 116, 112–19, 122, 126, 142, 143, 150, 256 Index kleos – continued 40, 41, 42, 44, 47, 53, 80, 82, 83, 153, 227n. 19, 228n. 26, 229n. 112, 124, 125, 146, 147, 158, 164, 31, 230n. 39, 233n. 65 173, 192, 218n. 19, 225n. 39, see also fame; Homer; the Odyssey 226n. 46, 235n. 9 Postmodern Fables, 20, 75, 79, 124, LaCapra, Dominick, 166, 169, 181, 128, 160 183, 237n. 44 Soundproof Room: Malraux’s Anti- see Caruth; event, traumatic event; Aesthetics, 20, 26, 46, 53, 57–62, trauma 107, 122, 130, 145, 192, 196, see also Derrida 207, 213n. 3, 216n. 48, 220n. 47, language, 2, 7, 15, 21, 27, 28, 29, 30, 221n. 52 31, 36, 37, 38, 39, 47, 48, 50, 55, Towards the Post-modern, 22, 98, 102, 64, 70, 73, 76, 77, 88, 90, 91, 92, 104, 112, 116, 117, 149, 153, 180 93, 95, 98, 102, 104–5, 108, 109, 112, 122, 123, 126, 131, 138, 146, mimesis, 75, 78, 81, 88, 91, 101, 111, 152, 153, 154, 161, 165, 166, 132, 223n. 14, 226n. 2 168, 178, 179, 180, 185, 187–8, The Mirror of Simple Souls, 1, 207, 212 189–94, 197–8, 202–3, 210, 211, see also decreation; Porete 212, 213n. 2, 216n. 48, 217n. 8, modern and the sublime, 41, 74, 125, 226n. 53, 238n. 49, 239n. 62, 146, 164, 172, 174 240n. 69 modern narrative, 21–2, 101, 112, language games, 13–15, 17, 50 116, 124, 127, 157, 217n. 9, Law of Genre, 28 241n. 91 Levinas, Emmanuel (1906–1995), 65, modernism, 124, 236n. 19 67, 72–4, 100, 222n. 11 Muse, The, 101, 106–10, 113, 114, lexis, 24, 53–5 117, 120, 123, 126–7, 134, 143, see also phonè 151, 228n. 15, 230n. 35 Lyotard, Jean-François (1924–1998) see also the differend; Homer; the The Differend – Phrases in Dispute, Odyssey 2, 4–6, 7, 12, 17–18, 20, 23–4, 25–37, 41, 48, 51–2, 67, 69, 71–4, narrative, 3–4, 17, 21–5, 26, 30, 36, 89, 91, 123, 125, 161, 162, 177, 47–9, 51, 64, 69, 83, 89, 91–3, 95, 197, 208, 213n. 11, 215n. 30, 97, 99, 101–2, 107, 108, 109–12, 216n. 40, 219n. 27, 222n. 6 114, 117, 118, 119, 122–5, Heidegger and “the jews”, 39–40, 42, 127–30, 134, 136, 139, 141, 142, 52, 85, 87–9, 108, 148, 167–8, 143, 144, 146, 147, 151, 152, 175, 183, 187, 192, 198, 219n. 24 153, 160, 166, 167, 168, 175, The Inhuman, 38–9, 41, 42, 43, 77, 179, 184–5, 187, 191, 192, 194, 120, 127, 132, 146, 161, 164, 165, 196, 197, 198, 199–200, 202–3, 180, 201, 225n. 39, 237n. 38 209–10, 214n. 20, 216nn. 40, 45, Instructions paiennes, 235n. 9 47, 48, 221n. 51, 226n. 50, 229n. Just Gaming, 66 21, 233n. 61, 234n. 71, 237n. 28, Lectures d’enfance, 218n. 14 238n. 56, 242n. 96 Libidinal Economy, 11–12, 18 grand-narrative, 7, 19, 46, 51, 103, Peregrinations, 20, 206, 207 209, 214n. 24, 241n. 85 The Postmodern Condition, 12–17, 22, meta-narrative, 11, 13–14, 15, 17, 236n. 19 18, 19, 30, 37, 44, 71, 86, 103, The Postmodern Explained to Children; 140, 214n. 20 Correspondence 1982–1985, 6, 17, Norris, Christopher, 17–18, 215n. 31 Index 257

Odyssey, 6, 22, 101, 102, 105, 106, politics, 2, 3, 10–11, 21, 27, 37, 39, 57, 107, 109, 111–17, 123, 125, 127, 71, 155, 158, 164, 174, 179, 223n. 142, 146–7, 149, 151–3, 155, 210, 24, 225n. 39, 236n. 9 221n. 51, 227n. 15, 228n. 19, Porete, Margurite (1250–1310), 1, 3, 230n. 30 8–9, 204–5, 207, 211–12 Odysseus, 60, 101–3, 105, 106, The Mirror of Simple Souls, 1, 109–13, 115–27, 139, 142–4, 207, 212 146, 149–53, 175, 227n. 7, see also decreation 228nn. 17–21, 229nn. 25, 29–31, postmodern, 11, 13, 14–15, 16, 24, 37, 230nn. 35–6, 38–9, 233n. 65, 41, 46, 57, 78, 105–6, 112, 117, 234n. 73–4 124–5, 127, 139, 217, 217n. 9, Ondaatje, Michael (1943 –), 103, 105, 227n. 8, 236n. 19 128, 129, 130–4, 140, 153 postmodern and the sublime, 74, 146, Coming Through Slaughter, 77, 103, 160, 164, 172–4, 191 126, 128–9, 132–48, 153–6, 210, postmodern artist/art, 82, 98, 99, 164 232n. 59, 233n. 62 postmodernism, 15, 18, 124, 166 Ondaatje as an authorial presence, postmodernism and literature, 103, 134–7, 141, 143, 146 130, 149, 157, 199, 210–11, 216n. see also Buddy Bolden 47, 233n. 62, 241n. 91 Orwell, George (1903–1950), 46–7, see also modernism; realism 217n. 8 Readings, Bill, 11, 19, 67, 71, 80 perfect crime, The, 34, 220n. 50, realism, 124, 200, 225n. 39 230n. 38 Republic, The, 65, 75–7, 79–80, 82–4, philosophy, 2, 5, 6, 10, 15, 16, 18–21, 92–4, 99, 105, 126, 139, 180, 209 23, 25, 37, 39, 51–2, 64, 69, 79, see also the differend 90, 93, 155, 158, 161, 164, 167–8, Rogozinski, Jacob, 19, 91–2 174, 177, 182, 195, 206, 208–9, Rorty, Richard, 15, 19, 43, 74, 214n. 212, 213n. 11, 215n. 32 24, 215n. 32 phonè, 53–6, 121, 131, 165, 178, 203, 208, 231n. 43 Sfez, Gerald, 31, 52, 219n. 29 see also the differend; lexis; stridency; Shakespeare, William (1564–1616), 22, the unpresentable 63, 217n. 8, 221n. 2 phrase(s), The, 2, 10, 26, 29–30, 34, King Lear 63, 81–2, 94–5, 221n. 2, 45, 48, 53, 54, 63–4, 66, 73, 75–8, 224n. 30 79–80, 85, 89, 92, 93, 104, 105, Hamlet, 221n. 2 122, 126, 138, 148, 160, 161, 189, see also Cordelia; Goneril 212 Shoah, 23, 65, 90, 173, 179, 180, 182, phrase universe, 53, 66, 197 216n. 46 phrase regimes, 23, 32, 39, 48, silence, 2–4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 17, 18, 20, 65, 93 24, 26, 29, 30, 31–2, 35, 36, 37, see also affect-phrase, the differend 39, 42, 45, 46, 48, 49, 52, 56, 59, plaintiff, 32–5, 37, 38, 110, 143, 177, 61, 62, 65, 67, 71, 72, 77, 83, 84, 178, 238n. 50 85, 86, 92, 94–5, 96, 102, 103, see also becoming-plaintiff 104, 105, 112, 118, 122, 123, Plato (427–347 B.C.E.), 22, 64, 78–82, 125–9, 131, 132, 133, 134, 137, 101, 111, 224nn. 33, 34 139, 147, 148, 155, 156, 157–8, on art, 78–9, 80, 81 160, 161, 177, 179, 189, 191, 192, Republic, 78–9, 80–1 196, 197, 202, 208–12, 216n. 48, 258 Index silence – continued traumatic; traumatised victim; 218n. 10, 219n. 24, 220n. 50, unpresentable 222nn. 3, 8, 230nn. 38, 39, 231n. 43, 233n. 65, 237n. 28, 241n. 88 Ulysses, 22, 98, 102, 116–17, 231n. 43 Sirens, The, 102, 107, 118–22, 124–7, see also Joyce, James 130, 146, 157, 158, 229n. 27, unpresentable, 3, 4–5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 230n. 36 12, 14, 17, 20, 24–5, 30, 32, 37, Sisyphus, 84, 175–6, 191, 202 40, 41, 48, 49, 52, 58–9, 61, 82, see also Camus 83, 88–9, 90, 91, 93, 98, 102, 103, Stein, Gertrude (1874–1946), 22–3 110, 112, 118, 121, 124, 128, 129, stridency (strident scream), 6, 24, 26, 132, 133, 146, 148, 156, 161, 162, 53, 56, 60, 58–61, 120, 122, 145, 164–6, 167, 169, 170, 172–3, 174, 192, 209 176, 178, 180, 183, 187, 192, 196, see also the affect-phrase; the 202, 203, 209, 210, 211, 217n. 10, differend; Lyotard, Soundproof 221n. 52, 231n. 43, 241n. 91 Room; the Odyssey; Ondaatje, see also the affect-phrase; the Coming Through Slaughter; phone; differend; the event; phone; unpresentable stridency; the sublime; trauma sublime, 7, 8, 20, 26, 40–3, 53, 68, 74, 84, 88–9, 124–7, 144, 146, 154, victim, 50, 67, 72, 80, 82–4, 85, 90, 156, 160, 162–5, 168–72, 175, 91, 102–3, 110, 123, 140, 142–3, 191, 235n. 9, 237n. 28 147, 150, 155, 169, 176–8, 199, traumatic sublime, 8, 53, 98, 160, 208, 211, 218n. 13, 222n. 8, 172–4, 176, 180, 191, 202–3, 211, 226n. 49, 238n. 50, 240n. 73, 237n. 44 242n. 97 see also the differend; the event; the traumatised victim, 150, 159, 169, unpresentable 171, 175, 176, 178, 187, 188, 189, 191, 193–6, 198, 203, 239n. 65 Tomiche, Ann, 22, 23, 24, 25, 29, 58 vicus, 64, 76–7, 79, 83, 84, 93–4 trauma, 8, 32, 35, 38, 39, 53, 54, 56, 84, 87, 88, 100, 104, 116, Wart, Alice Van, 135, 141, 146 118, 121, 123, 125, 148–52, Wiesel, Elie, 23, 168, 179 154–5, 159–61, 165–76, 178–91, witness, 8, 24, 30, 31, 34, 40, 41, 42, 193–203, 211, 220n. 42, 231n. 47, 50, 52, 54, 55, 56, 73, 84, 39, 234n. 73, 236n. 28, 237n. 33, 88–9, 93, 96–8, 102, 103, 110, 238n. 56, 239n. 65, 240n. 73 119, 122, 123, 126, 127, 167, 168, see also Caruth; the differend, the 169, 179, 180, 182, 184, 187, 189, event, traumatic event; Foer; 190, 191, 193–4, 196, 198, 201, Homer; LaCapra; Ondaatje; 202, 206, 212, 219n. 24, 228n. 19, traumatic; traumatised victim; 230n. 38, 242n. 3 unpresentable World Trade Center attacks, 160, traumatic, 7, 8, 24, 31, 34, 53, 55, 173, 183 63, 93, 102, 147, 148, 151, 154, writing, 4, 5, 11, 12, 23, 39–40, 42–3, 155, 160, 161, 166–76, 179, 183, 46–8, 50, 51, 52, 56, 58, 73, 87, 187–9, 191–4, 198, 200–3, 211, 88, 89, 98, 102, 108, 118, 137–8, 221n. 2, 223n. 25, 234n. 73 144, 148, 157, 167, 181, 184, 188, see also Caruth; the differend, the 189–90, 192–5, 198, 201, 205, event, traumatic event; Foer; 216n. 48, 219nn. 24, 29, 223n. Homer; LaCapra; Ondaatje; 14, 233n. 67, 239n. 62 Index 259 writing – continued 133, 134, 138, 139, 143, 147, 152, see also art; the artist; artistic 155, 157, 158, 161, 177–8, 180, work; avant-garde; the differend, 187, 202, 206, 209, 210, 217n. 8, the literary differend, language; 218nn. 10, 13, 220n. 42, 223n. modernism; postmodern; realism 17, 224n. 2, 225n. 38, 226n. 53, wrong, 2–3, 7, 9, 10, 18, 21, 24, 25, 231n. 41 26, 29, 30–8, 39, 40, 43, 45, 46, see also becoming-plaintiff; damage; 48, 49, 50, 53, 56, 59, 61–2, 65, the differend; plaintiff; trauma; 68–9, 70–2, 74, 78, 80, 84, 86, 89, victim 90, 91–2, 93, 96, 97, 98, 99–100, 102, 103, 104, 105, 118, 123, 126, Young, James, 179, 239n. 66