Melancholy Memories and Literary Language
0
조회
0
다운로드
1
인용
0
참고문헌
키워드
초록
In this article, I want to explore the problematic of dealing with narratives that precede oneself, one’s life; past narratives that in various ways influence the present, our lives here and now. I will look at Naipaul’s encounter with the English rural landscape, one that is partly informed by his literary memories. This encounter is reminiscent of Freud’s notion of hysteria, one that captures some of the profound disorientation that preceding historical narratives might impose on our present lives. Hysteria furthermore echoes vaguely in Marianne Hirsch’s concept of postmemory, which constitutes an extreme version of the idea that preceding narratives might overshadow the present. Implicit in both Naipaul’s and Hirsch’s problematic relation to the past is the possibility that the past remains unverifiable, and, therefore, potentially non‐existent. One finds such a dynamic in Freud’s notion of melancholia, which Freud himself explicitly relates to the phenomenon of hysteria. This is further explored in Paul Auster’s semi‐autobiographical text The Invention of Solitude in which Auster affirms the necessity of literary language, as a redemptive principle of connectedness, one by which the past’s visibility eventually is secured.
Abstract
In this article, I want to explore the problematic of dealing with narratives that precede oneself, one’s life; past narratives that in various ways influence the present, our lives here and now. I will look at Naipaul’s encounter with the English rural landscape, one that is partly informed by his literary memories. This encounter is reminiscent of Freud’s notion of hysteria, one that captures some of the profound disorientation that preceding historical narratives might impose on our present lives. Hysteria furthermore echoes vaguely in Marianne Hirsch’s concept of postmemory, which constitutes an extreme version of the idea that preceding narratives might overshadow the present. Implicit in both Naipaul’s and Hirsch’s problematic relation to the past is the possibility that the past remains unverifiable, and, therefore, potentially non‐existent. One finds such a dynamic in Freud’s notion of melancholia, which Freud himself explicitly relates to the phenomenon of hysteria. This is further explored in Paul Auster’s semi‐autobiographical text The Invention of Solitude in which Auster affirms the necessity of literary language, as a redemptive principle of connectedness, one by which the past’s visibility eventually is secured.
참고문헌 (18)
- Agamben, Giorgio, "Stanzas: Words and Phantasm in Western Culture" (1993), U of Minnesota P
- Anderson, Benedict, "Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism" (1991), Verso
- Auster, Paul, "The Invention of Solitude" (1989), Faber and Faber
- Baudrillard, Jean, "Simulacra and Simulation" (1994), The U of Michigan P
- Benjamin, Walter, "Theses on the Philosophy of History", Illuminations
- Hannah Arendt, "Harry Zohn", pp.245~255 (1999), Pimlico
- Cubitt, Geoffrey, "History and Memory" (2007), Manchester UP
- Freud, Sigmund, "Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis" (1989), Norton & Company
- Freud, Sigmund, "Mourning and Melancholia, In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud Vol. XIV, 1914‐1916", pp.243~258 (1968), The Hogarth Press
- Hirsch, Marianne, "The Generation of Postmemory", pp.103~128 (2008), Poetics Today
- Kafka, Franz, "The Trial, America, In the Penal Settlement, Metamorphisis, The Castle, The Great Wall of China, Investigations of a Dog, Letter to his Father, The Diaries 1910-23" (1976), Secker and Warburg
- Krapp, Peter, "Déjà Vu: Aberrations of Cultural Memory" (2004), U of Minnesota P
- Naipaul, V.S, "The Enigma of Arrival" (1988), Penguin
- Rubin, Derek, "‘The Hunger Must Be Preserved at All Cost’: A Reading of The Invention of Solitude, In Beyond the Red Notebook: Essays on Paul Auster", pp.60~70 (1995), U of Pennsylvania P
- [URL]
- van Alphen, Ernst, "Second‐Generation Testimony, Transmission of Trauma, and Postmemory", Poetics Today, 27(2), pp.473~488 (2006)
- Zizek, Slavoj, "Looking Awry" (1992), MIT P
- Zizek, Slavoj, "Melancholy and the Act", Critical Inquiry, 26(4), pp.657~681 (2000)