Bangor University DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY The metousiastics of culture European relativism in literature and cinema Mild, Matthew Award date: 2015 Awarding institution: Bangor University Link to publication General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 30. Sep. 2021 THE METOUSIASTICS OF CULTURE European Relativism in Literature and Cinema By Matthew Mild A PhD Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a PhD in European Studies Bangor University, School of Modern Languages and Cultures. April 2015. 2 Abstract This inquiry examines the connection of relativism with cultural identity in con- temporary European films and novels. The focus is on representations of marginal bodies challenging essentialist understandings of cultural identity, called metousi- astic. The method is semiotic and discourse analysis of literary and visual texts from a poststructuralist theoretical stance. The main texts are twelve novels and twelve films, chosen for the purpose of a cohesive discussion about four main thematic and stylistic features. Although this project started off from German and Italian works at the geo-historical borders of modern western and other European ideologies, the inquiry engages also with texts in other languages. Chapter 1 ad- dresses the questions raised in the introduction and provides their rationale in the shift from essentialist to more sceptical understandings of cultural memory and identity. Chapters 2 to 5 deal with the four relativist themes and styles selected. Authors and film-directors include György Pálfi (Hungary), Gianni Amelio (Ita- ly), Juli Zeh (Germany), Ian McEwan (Britain), Amélie Nothomb (Belgium), Alejandro Amenábar (Spain), Erik de Bruyn (the Netherlands), Lars von Trier (Denmark), and José Saramago (Portugal). Chapter 2 argues that relativist por- trayals of the body and the mind question essentialist norms of health. Chapter 3 contends that work and play supply a thematic tool apt to defy age-roles. Chapter 4 zooms in on the biopolitical implications of social bonds in which heteronorma- tive discourses are criticised. Chapter 5 extends this anti-essentialist or metousias- tic critique to intercultural relationships challenging ethnocentric narratives, which add the fourth and last comparative reading. The conclusion examines these tropes further. This final section further refines the argument that the four stylistic and thematic features analysed offer a new remodelling of cultural identity based on the relativist awareness of the social and historical shaping of the body at the margins of conventional norms. 3 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………..7 I. ESSENTIALISM AND RELATIVIST IDENTITIES…………33 II. THE METAPHOR OF FLUX AND HEALTH AS AN IDENTIFIER Pirandellian Bodies...........................................................................................63 Renewal in Juli Zeh’s Narratives......................................................................80 The Cinema of Passive Terrorism…………………………………………………102 Fluidity as a Key-image…………………………………………………………….105 III. THE ECSTASY OF OVERTHROWING AGE CONVENTIONS Metarchy vs. Hierarchy……………………………………………………………115 Exploring Metarchic Labyrinths………………………………………………….128 The Vicious Circle………………………………………………………………….143 Revealing Revelling in Shifting Shapes………………………………………….158 4 IV. EROS AS A TROPE AND THE IDENTIFIER OF GENDER Sublime Androgyny……………………………………………………………..161 The Cyclical Order of Eros……………………………………………………178 Creative Sublimation…………………………………………………………..186 Critical Desire in Literary and Filmic Discourses…………………………204 V. HUBRIS FROM COSMIC TRAGEDIES TO ETHNIC HYBRIDITY Dis-estrangement………………………………………………………………..208 Outlining Hybrid Horizons…………………………………………………….218 Amor Fati…………………………………………………………………………248 The Category of Overcoming…………………………………………………..288 VI. THE AESTHETICS OF METOUSIA AND EUROPEAN RELATIVISM……………………………………………….289 C I T E D R E F E R E N C E S………………………………………..294 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank Laura and Tony for their comments and support. Special thanks go to the skeptical ethics and critical theory reading groups, and everyone in IGRS/IMLR and the department of languages at Bangor University, particularly to Jordi, Helena Chadderton, and Nicki, who have meanwhile moved elsewhere. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, the scope of this enquiry was a challenge.1 Thank you, Laura Lepschy and Shirley, for reading and commenting on my work on twentieth-century writing. Your unyielding belief in the use of my occasionally misunderstood contributions has kept me going. Thank you, Laura Calisti, for being there all along. And thank you, Maria Cristina, Patrycja, Clara, Martina, Gareth, Myfyr, Deak, and Owain. I also wish to thank Gillian, Ian, and William from back at Salford, Greater Manchester. My thanks go also to Einar in Oslo, Luciana in Adelaide, Mads in Aarhus, John in Dublin, and all acquaintances from my yearly seminars in Vancouver, Providence, Toronto, and New York. 1 All translations are my own. 6 INTRODUCTION Films and novels engage with multiple social and cultural frames which include European relativism. This stylistic and thematic framework is the subject discussed in the following pages. The social meanings of situational difference for cultural identity are dealt with through the lens of European relativism in the films and novels examined here, which are selected particularly from the Italian and the German context owing to the historical and socio-political interests pursued in this thesis. Works with relativist themes and styles revolving around and developed upon the relativist trope of the body are explored in this enquiry, which tries to answer a complex research question. This enquiry is centred on the following research question: what styles and topics are used by films and novels which show the heatedly debated meaning of relativism for European identity? This adds a fresh literary and cinematic contribution to the debate on European identity and essentialism. However, the focus of this thesis is not European identity as such, but rather the anti-essentialist relativist themes and styles explored in the European literary and filmic works under scrutiny. This enquiry deals with this question in a form which shows how films and novels link up European identity to situational otherness, or metousiastics – that is, the overcoming (met-) of scornful cultural essences (-ousia) through the public praise and trust of the ultimately scorned situational body of the Other, or otherwise denominated site and/or subject of difference. The goal envisaged here is to show how images of cultural memory from novels and films underscore the meaning of situational otherness and social change for European identity, as well 7 as which styles and topics are summoned in these imageries, in relation to definitions of the four main metousiastic relativist themes of body and mind, work and play, social relations, and cross-cultural situations. Although it is possible to treat novels and films separately, this enquiry also stresses that the two forms complement each other through their interdependent use of writing and acting across the two media to represent identity and otherness. What follows is an exploration of European relativism as marked by situational Others and social change. These two main features and European identity itself are not givens, as they are historically shaped in various ways. In this context, situational otherness refers to the side of identity which is marked by relativity to – or contingency upon – specific social and historical settings – or situations – where otherness and the body are defined in ever new manners. Social change is the relevant process of cultural memory, in which earlier settings of identity and otherness give way to new ones whereby the bodies of the Others who were scorned or misunderstood come to be praised and trusted. The meanings of situational otherness and social change for European identity also highlight its historical shaping, which means that European identity is not a universally accepted given. The goal of this enquiry is, therefore, to provide an overview that outlines salient stylistic and thematic features of the outlook of European relativism as a helpful component of the historical reshaping of European identity, which can be found in the metousiastics or cultural anti-essentialism of the novels and films in review. The themes of body and mind, work and play, social bonds, and cross- cultural situations are discussed in each of the four analytic chapters with a focus 8 on the textual subthemes of mental health (Corpus Delicti, L’Etranger, and Uno, nessuno e centomila) and disability (Le chiavi di casa, Mar Adentro, and vincent will meer), hierarchy (Das Glasperlenspiel, Het Carnaval