COLLOQUY text theory critique issue 9 may 2005 COLLOQUY text theory critique 9 (2005). © Monash University. www.arts.monash.edu.au/others/colloquy/issue9/issue9.pdf ISSN: 13259490 Issue 9, May 2005 Editorial 3 ARTICLES Sebald’s Anatomy Lesson: About Three Images-Documents from On the Natural History of Destruction, The Rings of Saturn and Austerlitz Muriel Pic 6 Mimetic Theory and Hermeneutics Paolo Diego Bubbio 16 Aesthet(h)ics: On Levinas’ Shadow Matthew Sharpe 29 Surface Strategies and Constructive Line: Preferential Planes, Contour, Phenomenal Body in the Work of Bacon, Chalayan, Kawakubo Dagmar Reinhardt 48 “Different Songs Sung Together”: The Impact of Translation on the Poetry of José Juan Tablada Ce Rosenow 71 Recuperating the Virtual Past Through Recollection: Wordsworth’s “Im- mortality Ode” Rachael Cameron 92 If Creation is a Gift: From Derrida to the Earth (An Introduction) Mark Manolopoulos 108 REVIEW ARTICLES The Anxiety of Place: Peter Read. Haunted Earth. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2003 Emily Potter 124 Imperatives: Andrew Benjamin. Disclosing Spaces: On Painting. Man- chester: Clinamen Press, 2004 Dimitris Vardoulakis 130 REVIEWS Peter Murphy and David Roberts. The Dialectic of Romanticism. London: Continuum, 2004 Robert Savage 140 COLLOQUY text theory critique 9 (2005). © Monash University www.arts.monash.edu.au/others/colloquy/issue9/contents9.pdf 2 Contents ░ Jack Reynolds and John Roffe (eds). Understanding Derrida. London: Continuum, 2004 James Garrett 144 Peter Krapp. Déjà vu: Aberrations of Cultural Memory. Minneapolis: Uni- versity of Minnesota Press, 2004 Dimitris Vardoulakis 146 Malcolm K. Read. Educating the Educators: Hispanism and its Institu- tions. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2003 Vek Lewis 149 John Manning. The Emblem. London: Reaktion, 2002 Barbara Ghattas 153 Hollywood and Diversity: Subversion, Apologetic, or Both? Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. Dir. Danny Leiner. New Line Cinema, 2004 Sina Rahmani 156 Mummy: The Inside Story. London: British Museum. July 2004 – August 2005 Greg Esplin 165 Mireille Guiliano. French Women Don’t Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure. London: Chatto & Windus, 2005 Michelle Kelly 169 Catherine Millet. The Sexual Life of Catherine M, trans. Adriana Hunter. London: Serpent’s Tail, 2002 Rachel Morley 171 CREATIVE WRITING Elle (A play for one audience member and one eye at a peephole) Anita Beckman 176 Four Poems Dan Disney 188 Extract from Susanne Ayoub’s Engelsgift (Angel’s Venom) trans. Vicky Kristoffersen 192 Editorial This new issue of Colloquy sees three significant changes in the jour- nal. First, the look of the journal has changed. From now on, the material will be published in pdf format. The decision to adopt pdf is not only due to the fact that most internet journals have already switched to that format. It is also easier to print and to read than hypertext. And, it makes it possible for citations from Colloquy to be by page number. The second change concerns an increased emphasis on translation. In collaboration with the postgraduate programme in translation studies at Monash University, the journal has sought to publish both translations – such as the one by Vicky Kristoffersen – and articles in the theory of trans- lation – such as Ce Rosenow’s article. Thirdly, from this year onwards the journal will be publishing two is- sues annually. This will further facilitate the dissemination of ideas through Colloquy, allowing a greater number of articles to be published with less waiting time between issues. The second issue for this year will come out in November and it will be dedicated to the work of author, critic and intellectual Maurice Blanchot. Af- ter the conference “Blanchot, the Obscure” that Colloquy organized in Au- gust 2004, the journal invited the participants to submit their presentations as articles. In addition, friends and colleagues, who for one reason or an- other were unable to attend the conference, have also submitted articles. While the May 2006 issue will be a general one, the November issue for 2006 will be based on the conference “Be true to the earth” that was co- organized by Colloquy on 30 March–1 April this year. Colloquy is commit- ted to the organization of, and participation in, conferences. After the con- ferences on Blanchot and on eco-criticism, the journal is involved in the conference “Imagining the Future: Utopia, Dystopia, and Science Fiction” which will be held at Monash on 6–7 December 2005. The proceedings of this conference will be published as Issue 13 of Colloquy in May 2007. COLLOQUY text theory critique 9 (2005). © Monash University. www.arts.monash.edu.au/others/colloquy/issue9/editorial9.pdf 4 Editorial Introduction ░ Colloquy is unwavering in its support for originality in academic writing. This pursuit would have been impossible without the numerous referees who have written reports for us. Their contribution is gratefully acknowl- edged. In addition, the very existence of the journal is predicated upon the continual support from the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics and the School of English, Communications and Performance Studies, as well as the Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies. Their enthusiasm for the journal has made the present issue possible. The Editors Chris Bassett Jasmin Chen Peter Coleman Chris Danta Sam Everingham Michael Fitzgerald Gerald Frederic James Garrett Leah Gerber Barbara Ghattas Andrew Johnson Rhonda Khatab Hamish Morgan Carlo Salzani Robert Savage Sabina Sestigiani Dimitris Vardoulakis Jessica Whyte ARTICLES Sebald’s Anatomy Lesson: About Three Images-Documents from On the Natural History of Destruction, The Rings of Saturn and Austerlitz Muriel Pic (Translated from French by Laura Winn in conjunction with the author) W. G. Sebald’s work endorses the use of archives: notably image- documents, which are widely used in his narratives as well as in his es- says. The author is figured as the observer who records witness accounts (Erzählen/Berichten) and reconstructs them through montage. Sebald did not begin his career as a writer until his university career had reached ma- turity. He was first and foremost a researcher, and this is how he always presents himself in his narratives: inevitably their primal scene is that dur- ing some research he comes across some document whose particularity attracts his attention. As researcher and writer, Sebald is a man of the ar- chives. His narratives encounter the fugitive and sublime shadows of the past in documents, images and texts found during his research. They are invaded by all sorts of documents that lend them an atmosphere of Un- heimlichkeit, the angel of the bizarre crossing familiar space. In the work of Sebald, however, the quest for traces does not lead to historical fables. Quite on the contrary, the author’s goal is to reinstate reality as it has been, to find a language through which the beings whose memory is confined to COLLOQUY text theory critique 9 (2005). © Monash University. www.arts.monash.edu.au/others/colloquy/issue9/pic.pdf ░ Sebald’s Anatomy Lesson 7 the archives can survive: “One does not resuscitate the lives that have ended up in the archives. It is not a reason for making them die a second time. The space is narrow in which a narrative can be built that does not cancel or dissolve them, that keeps them available so that one day, and elsewhere, another narration can be made from their enigmatic presence. … To have a taste for archives is visibly to wander through the words of others, to seek a language which preserves their pertinence.”1 What is this language in the work of Sebald? How legitimate is the literature in which it is elaborated? I. Historical demagogy and literary montage With his essay Luftkrieg und Literatur, this question takes a polemical turn. In this text, Sebald argues that German post-war literature has not played the essential role that he seeks for it: to give over to collective memory images of the destruction of German towns during the allied bomb- ings: a plan for an all-out bombing campaign, which had been supported by groups within the Royal air force since 1940. This event of destruction ac- tually poses serious problems, according to the author, concerning history and historical discourse because, between passive silence and a fanatical will to reconstruct, Germany chose to “banish memory.”2 What does this mean? On the one hand, according to Sebald, it means that it is possible to diagnose in the survivors a double state of apathy and hysteria. This rec- ognition of traumatic mutism and superactivity in the face of the shock ex- plains that all the accounts of the horror of the destruction are trapped in “stereotyped lines”. Sebald underlines “the psychological aspect of the re- call of the traumatic experiences” and claims that we cannot ignore this natural reaction of the memory. On the other hand, there remains a cultural fact: “In my view, such a preoccupation with retrospective improvement of the self-image they wished to hand down was one of the main reasons for the inability of a whole generation of German authors to describe what they had seen, and to convey it to our minds.”3 Behind this declaration, there is the argument that memories are destroyed by the use of “pre-established images fixed inside our heads”4 which are the representations of history. To struggle against this repression, Winfried Georg Sebald sought ex- ile quite early on, and this choice is related to his problematic relationship with Germany as is shown in his essay. Born in Bavaria at Wertach in the Allgäu Alps, in 1944, he left Germany, and finally became a university as- sistant at Manchester. He later became a lecturer at Norwich, where he founded a centre for literary translation in 1988, and where he died in a car 8 Muriel Pic ░ accident in 2001.