Sirkka Knuuttila Fictionalising Trauma The Aesthetics of Marguerite Duras’s India Cycle Academic dissertation to be publicly discussed, by due permission of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Helsinki in auditorium XII, on the 12th of December, 2009 at 10 a’clock. ISBN 978-952-92-6405-6 (paperback) ISBN 978-952-10-5858-5 (PDF) Helsinki University Print Helsinki 2009 Il fallait receler un pouvoir secret pour avoir cette force, dans la vie. Marguerite Duras Table of Contents Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction ..................................................................... 1 Reading Colonial Trauma: A Cognitive Approach ........................ 7 On Duras’s Cyclic Aesthetics .......................................... 14 Narrativising Trauma: The Duality of Traumatic Memory. 21 The Outline of the Study .............................................. 28 I. Memory, Discourse, Fiction: The Birth of the Absent Story......... 30 On Duras’s Critical Working-Through ........................................ 34 Between Melancholy and Mourning: L’affection intentionnelle ................. 41 Dismantling Literality ........................................................ 46 II. The Aesthetic Strategies of the India Cycle ........................ 51 Repetition: Paralleling Analogous Structures ................................. 55 Homologies, Doublings, Reversals ........................................ 59 Romantic Formula: Contamination and Multiplication ................... 64 Metafiction and Testimony: Possible Worlds ................................. 67 Breaking Frames, Creating Fictional Worlds.......................... 72 Accessing Trauma Through Narrative Holes ......................... 77 The Traumatic Index .......................................................... 79 Literality and Affectivity as Powers of Change ........................ 83 III. Witnessing Trauma: Writing the Novel – Writing the Self.......... 93 Jacques Hold and Western Subjectivity: Le ravissement de Lol. V. Stein........ 97 Re-Enacting Suffocated Love . 104 Peter Morgan and the Ethnic Other: Le Vice-consul ...........................113 Interconnected by Differences: ‘Morgan’ ............................. 116 Between Mimicry and Mirroring: The Double Beggar.................. 124 IV. Modifications of the Madwoman Trope ........................... 132 Obsession in the Provincial Prison: Lol V. Stein ..............................136 Rebuilding the Triangle, Renouncing Progress? ....................... 141 Sorrow in Exile: The Cambodian Beggar ......................................147 Bodily Suffering as a Mode of Resistance............................. 152 Towards Forgetting and Freedom ................................... 158 In the Madwoman’s Land: L´amour ...........................................163 A Universe of Despair: The Perpetrator’s Return ...................... 168 Refiguring Lost Emotions: Love as Care.............................. 172 V. Crime in the Salon: The French in British India ..................... 179 Calcutta: Exclusive Spaces ............................................ 182 Isolating the Criminal ................................................ 190 Intrigues of the White Hermit . 193 The Rite of Purification............................................ 198 Between Passion and Destruction:A Male Cry........................... 202 Emotional Illiteracy and Stigmatisation .............................. 205 Recognition and Reversal.......................................... 212 VI. Icons of Mourning: India Song..................................... 220 The Power of Voice: Entangled Worlds .................................. 225 Chiasms of Life and Death: Key Images ................................. 232 Conclusion............................................................ 240 Bibliography .......................................................... 246 Index ................................................................. 266 Acknowledgements It was more than natural that Marguerite Duras’s intergeneric art proved to be for me the most appealing corpus for a closer examination of the aesthetics of trauma. Since the late seventies, I had pondered on how much of the unsayable is mediated visually through the expressive powers of the body in human interaction. This problem compelled me to adapt my expertise as a literary researcher to my knowledge as a medical practitioner, as non-verbal language seemed to me to play a central role in all interpersonal communication. With feelings of gratitude, I now realise that two indispensable personal contacts were decisive for the outlining of this study. The first was my supervisor during my graduate studies, Dr Franciska Skutta, who in 1993 in Kossuth Lajos University, Hungary, revealed to me Duras’s cyclic, repetitive style. The second, and longer, connection was Riitta Hari with whom I once as a young medical student shared the wonders of the human body. In 1995 Professor Hari gave me her colleague Antonio Damasio’s then recent Descartes’ Error – in French − thus introducing me to the relational concept of an embodied mind from a renewed viewpoint. I should like to express my thanks to both these persons for opening me the pathway towards this study on Duras’s fictionalising of trauma. For the practical impetus to write the dissertation I would like to thank my supervisors, Professors Hannu Riikonen and Heta Pyrhönen from the University of Helsinki, the Department of Comparative Literature, Faculty of Arts. Professor Riikonen’s farsighted counsel encouraged me to use English as the language of choice instead of my beautiful, nuanced mother tongue, Finnish. He sensibly helped me to seek guidance from the then visiting Professor Christopher Prendergast, whose comment on my initial view of the India Cycle as a postmodernist tragedy turned my attention to Duras’s style as a criticism of modern society. Under Professor Pyrhönen’s theoretical guidance, I found the concept of trauma to be a most effective tool when analysing the signifiance of non-verbal expression and repetition so prominent in Duras’s aesthetics. Professor Pyrhönen valuably indicated to me the seminal interdisciplinary sources, through which I plunged into the problematics of historical trauma. At some intriguing points of writing this work, she appositely commented on its semantic content. I would like to express my gratitude for her formal suggestions near the completion of the work, and for her practical help when going through the process of pre-examination. I am grateful to Professor Mervi Helkkula from the University of Helsinki for the supervision of this process, and to Docent Päivi Kosonen from the University of Tampere for her remarks on some general research aspects as I concluded my Acknowledgements ii work. Finally, my special thanks go to Professor Leslie Hill from the University of Warwick for his careful evaluation of the completed study. Having presented several parts of the work at the literary research seminars of the Department of Comparative Literature, I should like to extend my thanks to all those participants whose comments helped to sharpen my pencil. In particular Martti-Tapio Kuuskoski’s enthusiasm for Duras opened my eyes to the original sources of her autofiction. Sporadically, an emotional sharing of the vicissitudes of scientific writing with Marit Finne, Tiina-Käkelä Puumala and Susanna Suomela gave me necessary gusts of energy and times of joy during the past seven years of writing. I was also warmly received in Professor Eero Tarasti’s seminar on existential semiotics, where I could present a few early drafts of the work. His friendly support led me to share my ideas on trauma in the Finnish seminars and world congresses of the International Association for Semiotic Studies. There I was drawn by Professor Harri Veivo to the literary semiotics international group, which gave me a rewarding opportunity to elaborate on the semiotics of emotion in literary research. It was an inspring environment in which to develop disciplined creative thinking, and for which I would likewise thank Professors Christina Ljungberg and Jørgen Dines Johansen as well as all the group members, including Merja Bauters. I also owe a big debt of gratitude to Professor Henry Bacon’s remarks on my elementary analysis of Durasian film, and his assistance in finding the most topical sources of cognitive film theory. My most respectful appreciation goes to a number of specialists who have read and commented on several parts of my thesis presented in international seminars and conferences, which profoundly affected and promoted my work. These occasions were mostly arranged by the graduate school of Comparative Literature and the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. Professor Marie-Laure Ryan expertly gave me feedback on possible world theory adapted to Durasian cinema. Professor Patricia Waugh emphatically encouraged me to continue with interpreting the Durasian oeuvre as trauma fiction, which helped me to see it as part of the postmodernist reaction to modernism. Fortunately enough, a growing interest in cognitive poetics brought several prominent scholars to Helsinki, such as Professors Peter Stockwell and David Herman. Among them, Professors Suzanne Keen and David S. Miall turned out to be aquainted with Damasio’s importance to literary research, just as I was working on the problematic relation between cognition and emotion at the advanced level of my cognitive therapy education. During the final phase, Professor