The Sublime as Model: Formal Complexity in Joyce, Eisenstein and Stockhausen MARTIN S. WATSON A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACUTLY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO ©Martin S. Watson 2016 Abstract: “The Sublime as Model: Formal Complexity in Joyce, Eisenstein and Stockhausen,” undertakes an investigation of three paradigmatic late-modernist works in three mediums — James Joyce’s novel, Finnegans Wake, Sergei Eisenstein’s film, Ivan the Terrible I & II, and Karlheinz Stockhausen’s orchestral work, Gruppen for Three Orchestras — with an aim to demonstrating cross-media similarities, and establishing a model for examining their most salient trait: formal complexity. This model is based on a reading of the Kantian “mathematical sublime” as found in his Critique of the Power of Judgment, as well as borrowing vocabulary from phenomenology, particularly that of Edmund Husserl. After establishing a critical vocabulary based around an analysis of the mathematical sublime and a survey of the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger, the dissertation investigates each of the three works and many of their attendant critical works with an aim to illuminate the ways in which their formal complexity can be described, how this type of complexity is particular to late-modernism in general, and these works in particular, and what conclusions can be drawn about the structure and meaning of the works and the critical analyses they accrue. Much of this analysis fits into the rubric of the meta- critical, and there is a strong focus on critical surveys, as the dissertation attempts to provide cross-media models for critical vocabulary, and drawing many examples from extant criticism. The dissertation concludes with reflections on the concept of “models” for criticism, their construction and their value. ii Dedication: Thanks to my parents, to R. Bruce Elder and the rest of my committee, including those present for its early stages, to Amanda Lucier, and finally, this paper is dedicated to my friends from the program, Boris Pantev and Angela Joosse: Seuls des amis peuvent tendre un plan d'immanence comme un sol qui se dérobe aux idoles. – Gilles Deleuze iii Table of Contents i: Title ............................................................................................................................................................ i ii: Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………..……....ii iii: Dedication………..…………………………………………………………………………..…......…..ii 1: Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 1 Conceptual Apparatus ............................................................................................................................... 4 Kant and the Sublime ....................................................................................................................... 4 Phenomenology and Worldhood ........................................................................................10 The Works ............................................................................................................................................... 13 Finnegans Wake ............................................................................................................................. 13 Ivan The Terrible ........................................................................................................................... 14 Gruppen ......................................................................................................................................... 14 Critical Context ....................................................................................................................................... 15 Habermas ....................................................................................................................................... 18 Agamben ........................................................................................................................................ 26 Badiou ............................................................................................................................................ 35 2: The Mathematical Sublime .................................................................................................................. 47 The Kantian Sublime: A Paraphrase ....................................................................................................... 51 Conceptual Lexicon ................................................................................................................................ 56 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................. 75 3: Phenomenology ..................................................................................................................................... 77 Husserl .................................................................................................................................................... 80 Heidegger ................................................................................................................................................ 86 4: Finnegans Wake .................................................................................................................................... 95 Introduction: Inside/Outside ................................................................................................................... 95 Reading: Shem the Penman .................................................................................................................... 97 Heuristics and Summaries ..................................................................................................................... 116 The Work (Description) ............................................................................................................... 117 Reception (Description) ............................................................................................................... 118 Creation (Description) ................................................................................................................. 119 Further Distinctions ..................................................................................................................... 119 The Work (Plane of Complexity) ................................................................................................ 122 iv Creation (Plane of Complexity) ................................................................................................... 122 Complexity and Hermeneutics .............................................................................................................. 123 Edges: Facticity, Sublimity and Anxiety .............................................................................................. 129 Critical Practice: Micropsia/Macropsia ................................................................................................. 137 1. Structural .................................................................................................................................. 140 2. Narrational ............................................................................................................................... 144 3. Formal ...................................................................................................................................... 145 4. Theoretical ............................................................................................................................... 148 5. Philological .............................................................................................................................. 151 6. Genetic ..................................................................................................................................... 152 7. Anti-Critical (Finnegans Wake as Nonsense) .......................................................................... 155 8. Exegesis: Giving Finnegans Wake its Edge ............................................................................ 159 Conclusions: Mise en abyme and Strange Loops .................................................................................. 166 5: Ivan the Terrible I & II ...................................................................................................................... 175 The Critical Sublime: A Hypothetical Model ....................................................................................... 179 Kristen Thomson: Ivan and Excess ............................................................................................. 184 Joan Neuberger: Ivan and the “Almost Infinite” ......................................................................... 202 Yuri Tsivian: Ivan and the Sublime ............................................................................................ 209 Eisenstein and the Mathematical Sublime ............................................................................................ 219 Conclusion: Deleuze’s Cinematic Sublime ........................................................................................... 235 6: Gruppen ..............................................................................................................................................