”Then catastrophe strikes” : lire le désastre dans l’œuvre romanesque et autobiographique de Paul Auster Priyanka Deshmukh To cite this version: Priyanka Deshmukh. ”Then catastrophe strikes” : lire le désastre dans l’œuvre romanesque et autobiographique de Paul Auster. Littératures. Université Paris-Est, 2014. Français. NNT : 2014PEST0009. tel-01186124 HAL Id: tel-01186124 https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01186124 Submitted on 24 Aug 2015 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Université Paris-Est Northwestern University École doctorale CS – Cultures et Sociétés Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences Laboratoire d’accueil : IMAGER Institut des Comparative Literary Studies Mondes Anglophone, Germanique et Roman, EA 3958 “T HEN CATASTROPHE STRIKES :” READING DISASTER IN PAUL AUSTER ’S NOVELS AND AUTOBIOGRAPHIES « THEN CATASTROPHE STRIKES » : LIRE LE DÉSASTRE DANS L’ŒUVRE ROMANESQUE ET AUTOBIOGRAPHIQUE DE PAUL AUSTER Thèse en cotutelle présentée en vue de l’obtention du grade de Docteur de l’Université de Paris- Est, et de Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature de Northwestern University, par Priyanka DESHMUKH Sous la direction de Mme le Professeur Isabelle ALFANDARY et de M. le Professeur Samuel WEBER Jury Mme Isabelle ALFANDARY , Professeur à l’Université Paris-3 Sorbonne Nouvelle (Directrice de thèse) Mme Sylvie BAUER , Professeur à l’Université Rennes-2 (Rapporteur) Mme Christine FROULA , Professeur à Northwestern University (Examinatrice) Mme Michal GINSBURG , Professeur à Northwestern University (Examinatrice) M. Jean-Paul ROCCHI , Professeur à l’Université Paris-Est (Examinateur) Mme Sophie VALLAS , Professeur à l’Université d’Aix-Marseille (Rapporteur) M. Samuel WEBER , Professeur à Northwestern University (Co-directeur de thèse) In memory of Matt Acknowledgements I wish I had a more gracious thank-you for: Mme Isabelle Alfandary , who, over the years has allowed me to experience untold academic privileges; whose constant and consistently nurturing presence, intellectual rigor, patience, enthusiasm and invaluable advice are the sine qua non of my growth and, as a consequence, of this work. M. Samuel Weber , whose intellectual generosity, patience and understanding are unparalleled, whose Paris Program in Critical Theory was critical in more ways than one, and without whose participation, the co-tutelle would have been impossible. Northwestern University’s Comparative Literary Studies and Department of French and Italian , for warmly opening their doors to me. Mme Chantal Delourme , whose help in the initial stages of my enterprise made all of the above possible. Mme Sylvie Bauer whose passion for contemporary American fiction inspired and shaped mine, and who continues to be a source of encouragement. Mme Michal Ginsburg , for her time, and for teaching two of the best courses I have ever taken. Mme Christine Froula, Mme Sophie Vallas and M. Jean-Paul Rocchi . It is a privilege to have them serve on my dissertation committee. My family and friends , especially those who, over the past decade, happened to present me with Paul Auster’s novels on various occasions (it had to mean something!); Frédérique and Carla , who have walked this rocky road, hand-in-hand with me; Olivier , to whom I’m forever indebted. 1 Table of Contents Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 4! First part: Time of the disaster ...................................................................................................... 17 ! Chapter 1 Imminence ................................................................................................................. 18 ! 1.1 ! Imminence as a temporal conflict ....................................................................... 18 ! 1.2 ! Imminence as the starting point of writing .......................................................... 20 ! 1.3 ! Imminence of death ............................................................................................. 22 ! 1.4 ! Imminence of loss and symbolic forms of death ................................................. 28 ! Chapter 2 Experiencing the present .......................................................................................... 42 ! 2.1 ! Experiencing the present through distance: wandering and solitude .................. 43 ! 2.2 ! Grasping the now, grasping the here ................................................................... 54 ! 2.3 ! Failing to grasp the present through writing and language ................................. 57 ! Chapter 3 Chance and loss ........................................................................................................ 63 ! 3.1 ! Unpredictability within predictability: chance and the quest .............................. 64 ! 3.2 ! Chance as a boundary .......................................................................................... 71 ! 3.3 ! Good fortune, bad fortune: chance and disaster .................................................. 73 ! 3.4 ! Potentiality, determinism and fate ....................................................................... 78 ! Chapter 4 Coincidence and repetition ....................................................................................... 90 ! 4.1 ! Modalities of the coincidence: interchangeability and simultaneity ................... 92 ! 4.2 ! Repetition, trauma and “interpretosis” ................................................................ 99 ! 4.3 ! Other patterns of repetition: the mirror images of coincidences ....................... 110 ! Chapter 5 Historical time, storytelling and disaster ............................................................... 117 ! 5.1 ! Auster as a Jewish writer? ................................................................................. 117 ! 5.2 ! Fictionalizing history ......................................................................................... 129 ! 5.3 ! Storytelling ........................................................................................................ 133 ! Second part: Space of the diaster ................................................................................................. 143 ! Chapter 6 The spatial experience of solitude .......................................................................... 144 ! 6.1 ! Solitude: absence vs. presence .......................................................................... 144 ! 6.2 ! Confined spaces or predecessors of the “little room” ....................................... 153 ! 6.3 ! The room(s) ....................................................................................................... 157 ! Chapter 7 The Space of the Book ............................................................................................ 167 ! 7.1 ! Defining the book .............................................................................................. 170 ! 7.2 ! The book as a space of disaster ......................................................................... 178 ! Chapter 8 “Bodies in space:” Disaster and the Body ............................................................. 192 ! 8.1 ! Motion, or the writing body .............................................................................. 193 ! 8.2 ! Illness, or the ailing body .................................................................................. 196 ! 8.3 ! Violence, or the maimed body .......................................................................... 209 ! Chapter 9 Transcending the Body: Emptiness, Nothingness, In-betweenness ........................ 220 ! 2 9.1 ! “Nowhere:” the body and the world .................................................................. 222 ! 9.2 ! Levitating towards nothingness ......................................................................... 226 ! 9.3 ! The fall and the void: emptiness ........................................................................ 234 ! Third part: Experience of the disaster – boundaries, limits and poetics ................................. 242 ! Chapter 10 Boundaries. ........................................................................................................... 243 ! 10.1 ! Quest and narration, death and life, beginning and end ................................... 244! 10.2 ! From melancholia to limit-experience .............................................................. 247 ! 10.3 ! The tearing of the self from itself, and the question of the subject .................. 251 ! 10.4 ! Paradoxes and the uncanny .............................................................................. 259 ! Chapter 11 Dissociation and Reappropriation ....................................................................... 270 ! 11.1 ! Dissociation ...................................................................................................... 270 ! 11.2 ! Reappropriation as an instance of disaster or a response to disaster?