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Giorgio Agamben
Hubertus von Amelunxen
Alain Badiou
Judith Balso
Judith Butler
Diane Diavis
Chris Fynsk
Martin Hielscher
Geert Lovink
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Avital Ronell
Michael Schmidt
Victor Vitanza
Siegfried Zielinski
Slavoj Zizek
2012 by Jeremy Fernando
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ISBN 978-0-9853042-1-8

for Tykhe

Authors
Jeremy Fernando
Robert Lumsden
Mark Brantner
Julia Hlzl
Nicole Ong
Lim Lee Ching
Michelle Wang
Jeremy Fernando
Michael Kearney
Paoi Wilmer
Setsuko Adachi
Shaoling Ma
Cui Su
Wernmei Yong Ade
Jeremy Fernando

Contents
ForewordTo read or not to read .................................... 8
In Difference .................................................................. 23
I hear Dead People

......................................................... 75

Fidem Frangere .............................................................. 103


The Trauma of Language ................................................. 133
Reading in Practice ......................................................... 169
Encountering Formal Beauty ........................................... 195
Randori with Franz Kafka

............................................... 233

The Unknown Pleasures of Interpretation ......................... 263


The Spirit of Exercise ...................................................... 313
Negotiating Isolation ....................................................... 339
Reading Chinese Women in Two Maoist Ballets ................ 387
Printed Matter Or, Towards a Zinetic History of Reading ... 423
Obscenity, Ruin or the Metaphor of the Eye ...................... 459
AfterwordWith friends like these ............................. 487

Jeremy Fernando
10 January , 2011
Singapore

Foreword
to read
or not to read
That is the question.

And here, we must never forget that in every


question, we can hear echoes of the question
the serpent asks woman: Did God really say
you were not to eat from any of the trees in the
garden?1 This is the question that is never
answered, can never be answered. In many ways,
this is a hermeneutical question: it asks whether
Yahweh really meant what (S)He said. And it is
this that opens a question within both woman
and man: perhaps they had misunderstood
the prohibition, misheard the injunction notto. It is not for us to judge whether they were
1

Genesis 3:1 italics added. All references to the Bible are

taken from the Jerusalem Bible.

10

On Reading

correct or not: after all, we never hear Yahwehs


command. But the question doesnt remain at
a hermeneutical level: for, even if both woman
and man had heard Yahwehs prohibition, they
had nowill never haveaccess to Her intent:
it can never be ascertained if this statement
was constative or performative. In other words,
regardless of whether they obeyed, they would be
doing so blindly.
The serpents question opened a moment of
reading in both man and woman. More than
that, it opened a connection between them
and Yahweh. Not just in the banal sense of
attempting to decode what the command was,
meant, its signification, or even the significance
of it; but more profoundly the realisation that
even as they attempted to understand Yahweh
understandingto echo Werner Hamachers
elegant phraseis in want of understanding.2
For, all they have is language: and since language
is based on correspondence, it is an act of
memory. As such, language can never account
for forgetting: which happens, can happen, to any
one, anytime. Since it happens to one, it is beyond
2

Werner Hamacher. Premises in Premises: Essays in Philo-

sophy and Literature from Kant to Celan, translated by Peter


Fenves. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 1.

Foreword

ones control, perhaps even outside of ones


knowledge. Thus, there is no reason to believe
that each act of memory might not always already
bring with it forgetting.3 So, even as they attempt
to reach out, touch, connect with, Yahweh, there
is always already a gap between them. Here, we
can hear another echo, that of Avital Ronell, and
her teaching that the connection to the other is
a readingnot an interpretation, assimilation,
or even a hermeneutic understanding, but a
reading.4 This is a connection that is nothing
more than an openness to the possibility of a
connection, that perhaps foregrounds that there is
always already a space in any connectivity.
That the dial tone might always be engaged.
This is reading as a phone call. Not just that
one may be attempting to answer the call of the
text, but that as one is attempting to read, one is
also making a call to the text. One is calling out

Another way to put it might be: forgetting is always alrea-

dy accounted for in language; it is just that we are blind to it


even as it affects us, has effects on us.
4

Avital Ronell. The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizo-

phrenia, Electric Speech. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska


Press, 1989), 380.

11

12

On Reading

possibilities to the textwhilst perhaps never


getting any answer. Thus, as one reads, one might
as well be in a conversation with oneself: if the
response to ones call is through ones reading of
the text, there is no guarantee that the response(s)
might not just be voices in ones head.
Hence, as one is readingeven with the best of
intentions, in fidelity to the textone might well
be reading into, over, the text; re-writing. After all,
one should never forget Paul de Mans reminder
that not that the act of reading is innocent, far
from it. It is the starting point of all evil.5 And
here, if we allow the trace of evil and the serpent
to resound with each other, the very evil that de
Man is warning us of is the question.
Of the heresy in all reading.
But it is not as if turning away from reading is a
solution. For, even though we might well be able
to put down the text, refuse to look, break the
connection with the other as it were, once the
question is opened in us, we might never be able
to exorcise it. Even though the woman and man
5

Paul de Man. Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in

Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust. (New Haven: Yale


University Press, 1979), 194.

Foreword

were forced to leave the garden, were banished,


they can never leave behind the consequences,
effects, of their heresy. It is not as if one can ever
leave language. It is not as if one can ever unlearn
what one has learned: the ability to will ourselves
to forget is beyond us. It is not as if one can ever
stop reading.
No one ever said that reading was safe.
And here, if we pay attention, we can hear Platos
warning resoundpoetry can be dangerous. And
in particular poetry that moves, affects, that puts
one out of ones mind. For, such a poetry quite
possibly causes effeminacy, causes one to lose
reason: such a poetry allows pathos to overcome
logos. However, Plato also teaches that rhetoric
in its highest form requires divine inspiration
by way of the daemon; who whispers in your
ear. This is a moment that seizes youthat puts
you beyond yourself. Hence, a good rhetorician
must be open to the possibility of otherness. One
could posit that Plato was being ironic in his
eviction notice: he serves this very notice in the
very form he warns against. Moreover, the aim of
the philosopher is to corrupt the youth. And this
corruption is precisely by opening in youths a
questioning of the very polis in which they lived
opening the question in them. By moving them to

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14

On Reading

question. In this sense, the very divine inspiration


that the rhetorician requires to move the audience
cannot be distinguished from the affective power
of good poetry. Even whilst poetry and rhetoric
are different forms, at their zenith, both require a
touch of the divine: the role of both the poet and
the rhetorician is to be open to the possibility of
otherness.
And what else is this openness to the possibility of
otherness than reading.
If one takes into account the fact that, according
to Plato, the poet and the rhetorician speak from
memory, then good poetry and rhetoric are a
combination of the embodiment of the craft with
an insemination from without. And since one has
no control over the daemon, there is no reason
to believe that the divine moment may not be
a whispering that is contrary to memory itself:
in other words, the highest point of poetry and
rhetoric might well be the moment when memory
failsa moment of forgetting.
Perhaps then, we might even posit that reading is
nothing but an openness to forgetting.
Which puts this very collection in question. For, if
reading is nothing but the possibility of forgetting,

Foreword

what does this say about a group of people who


come together to write about reading?
One might well be tempted here to cite, call on,
call forth, Jacques Derrida and his meditation in
Archive Fever: whilst a collection commemorates,
remembers, there is also always already an
inevitable omission, a leaving out, a forgetting
as it were.6 Even as one is creating, putting
togetherwritingthe archive, one has no choice
but to choose, pick, select from. In other words,
when archiving, one is always already reading
the object of ones archive: this is a reading
that happens at the very moment of creating,
writing. A reading that is indistinguishable from
writing. In this sense, even as everyone here is
writing about reading, they are always already
demonstrating reading whilst writing.
But that would be a tad too easy, too simple, too
convenient a way out, as it were.
One should also not forget that in summoning
another, the other, in order to make ones case,
one is always also engaging in acts of necromancy.
6 Jacques Derrida. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression.
translated by Eric Prenowitz. (Illinois: University of Chicago
Press, 1998).

15

16

On Reading

In writing about, in writing ones reading, there


is also an act of remembrance at work. After all,
this is an act of violence on their work, thought,
perhaps even their being: by writing on, about,
one inevitable wrenches the other out of context.
Hence, even as reading might be an opening of
possibilities, even if reading is the insemination
of life, the writing of, on, is a particular kind of
murder. One should never forget that to be raised,
they first have to be dead: in writing, through
writing, one might well have had been the one to
kill them. After all, the root of writing is scribere
(Latin) grapho (Greek): scratching, tearing. Thus,
each writing brings with it a certain pulling,
breaking awaybut one that is not devastating,
for even as there is a measure of destruction, there
is always also creation.
By writing about the object of ones reading, one
always already runs the risk of creating another
object, an object that might have nothing to do
with the object one is attempting to read in the
first place; by writing about ones reading, one
might never quite be reading at all.
Perhaps though, it is the acknowledgment of
the risk involved in writing that makes the
contributions of these writers so special. There is
no doubt that they are first and foremost readers;

Foreword

more than that, they have a love for texts, for


reading. By highlighting the fact that they are
reading these texts, they have also foregrounded
the fictionality of, in, their readings. Thus, all
readings will be readings. With no possibility of
verification, legitimisationthey cannot be made
kosher. By exposing themselves as the readers,
they cannot defend themselves through the usual
strategies of hiding behind theory, objective
distance, or canonical, established readings
in other words, there is no hiding behind the
academy. Hence, they are exposing themselves
to critique, to possible attacksnot just on
their work, but also on their very beings. By
exposing themselves as readers, they have made
the line between themselves and their readings
indistinguishable. By allowing their writings
of these readings to be read, they have opened
themselves to being read.
And for that, I would like to thank their acts of
friendshipand acknowledge their courage in
being associated with such an attempt to read
reading.
But it is only in taking these risks that we can
potentially open new readings in reading itself.
Here, it might be helpful to take a little detour,
and channel Gilles Deleuze; in particular,

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18

On Reading

his beautiful reflection on thinking in Pure


Immanence, where he mirrors Nietzsche in
opening a new register of thinking and the
thinker: a thinking that replace[s] the ideal
of knowledge, the discovery of truth, with
interpretation and evaluation [where]
interpretation establishes the meaning of a
phenomenon, which is always fragmentary
and incomplete [and] evaluation determines
the hierarchical value of the meanings and
totalises the fragments without diminishing or
eliminating their plurality. 7 This is a thinking
that is always already thinking itself as thinking,
and reopening itself as a question; a thinking
that never ceases thinking. This is a thinking
that doesnt allow itself the assurance of having
thought. Hence, a thinker can not only have no
metaphysical comfort of having thought, (s)he
can not only never stop thinking, her very status
as a thinkerher very selfis open to thinking,
to being thought. In reading, by reading, by
writing as readers, our writersfriendsare
not only opening themselves to be read, they
are foregrounding the possibility of themselves
as readers who have, can, never read: they are
7

Gilles Deleuze. Pure Immanence: Essays on A Life.

translated by Anne Boyman. (New York: Zone Books,


2001), 65.

Foreword

opening the possibility of themselves as a nonreader, as other to themselves. Thus, all that can
be said is that they have attempted to reada
reading that never ceases reading.
Since these readings are always fragmentary,
remain plural, remain readings, this suggests
that to attend to themto read these writings of
readingsrequires an imaginative gesture. And
here, there is a crucial lesson to be gleaned from
Oscar Wilde: if you desire to see a Japanese
effect, you will not behave like a tourist and go
to Tokio. On the contrary, you will stay at home
and steep yourself in the work of certain Japanese
artists, and then, when you have absorbed the
spirit of their style, and caught their imaginative
manner of vision, you will go some afternoon and
sit in the park or stroll down Piccadilly, and if you
cannot see an absolutely Japanese effect there,
you will not see it anywhere. 8 Perhaps, to even
conceive of reading, one must first imagine the
possibility of reading itself. If one closes oneself
to itin the interest of ideology, particular
preconceptions of what reading is, or even in the
adherence to a single, absolute truthone might
never be able to see it anywhere, even if it was
8

Oscar Wilde. Intentions. (Iowa: 1stWorld Library, 2005),

40.

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20

On Reading

staring one in the face.


Here, we should never forget that Wilde addresses
the imaginative gesture through an imaginative
one: the notion comes through Vivian, a character
in dialogue with Cyril. It is not too difficult
to hear a whisper of the epigraph in Roland
Barthes par Roland Barthes here: it must all be
considered as if spoken by a character in a novel.9
For, if reading can only posit itself as reading
with no grund to rely onthen all readings are
but positions. And our writing readers, and you
whom are reading this, are also taking these
positionssame or otherwiseas you read. So,
even as our friends are playing characters in the
very stages they set up to explore reading, you,
our readers, are fellow cast member, characters
hopefully this is our connection to each other. But
then again, didnt Shakespeare already teach us
that
Perhaps then, all we can do is to open our
receptors to the as if, and attend to possibilities,
uncertainties, unknowns.

9 Roland Barthes. Roland Barthes. translated by Richard


Howard. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).
Epigraph.

Foreword

Perhaps, all we can do is read as if we can

21

Robert Lumsden

Merleau-Ponty realised that he had been wrong

to assume that he could render a pre-conceptual


experience in the moment of perception in terms of
accounts of such an experience, which must always be
later and other. As he, reconsidering, writes: My hold
on the past and future is precarious and my possession
of my own time is always postponed until a stage when
I may fully understand it, yet this stage can never be
reached, since it would be one more moment bounded
by the horizon of its future, and requiring in its turn,
further developments in order to be understood.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception.
translated from the French by Colin Smith. (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962), 346.
And see Robert Lumsden, Immediacy and the
Impossible Poetic, arts.monash.edu.au/.../proceedingslumsden-immediacy-and-the-impossible-poetic-ttp-

23

In Difference

After the death of the author and the multiple


failures of text to signify in ways that
prove generally agreeable, what remains of
communicational certainty? Various versions of
phenomenology, it can be argued, founder on
the problem of how immediacy can be rendered
without dissolving into reports about it;1 attempts
to secure public communication work within
the presumption of a generosity of reception
(Richard Rorty, Emmanuel Levinas, Hans-Georg
Gadamer)2 which is undermined by the frequency
of misreading, misunderstanding, and resistance
to understanding in language groups of all types. 3
When the hermeneutic systems and their
contrarian critiques have been heard, a
fundamental question remains: in opening a text
to the multiple voices set loose even by a nave
reading of it, who is overheard speaking, and

24

On Reading

conference.pdf
2

An account of a conversation between Gadamer and

Derrida on trust and the hermeneutics of suspicion


appears in ed. Diane P. Michelfelder and Richard E.
Palmer (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989). A worthwhile
account of Gadamers living present of conversation,
and of the views of Lyotard, Rorty, Derrida and
Levinas on the place of generosity in reading can be
found in S. Gallagher. Conversations in postmodern
hermeneutics, in H. Silverman, ed. Lyotard: Philosophy,
Politics and the Sublime. (London: Routledge, 2002),
49-60.
3

The relation of mis (mis-understanding), mis-

interpreting, for example, to that which is not mis


is . . . that of a general possibility inscribed in the
structure of positivity, a normality of the standard.
Jacques Derrida. Limited, Inc. (Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 1988), 157.
4

Lyotard writes of this A reader (Mode): he does

not presuppose the rules of his own discourse, but


only that this discourse too must obey rules. Jacques
Lyotard, The Differend, The Differend: Phrases in
Dispute (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press,

In Difference

by whom? What is the basis for the selection of


one voice above the many possible voices for our
credulous regard? Who speaks, and to whom?
Not even the sharpest critics of transparency
seem immune to the call of the objective. As
Jean-Franois Lyotard in the opening pages
of The Differend for example invites assent for
the argument that is to follow by setting up
a first reader, it is soon evident that it is a
veiled appearance of the author himself we are
overhearing.4 In satirising the professorial voice
he will also continue to employ, Lyotard shows
a nervousness about his ability to regulate The
Differend itself, the book as a sustained argument,
by readers whose interpretive dispositions remain
unpredictable. It is a distinctive post-modern
poignancy, not so much a nostalgia for lost
origins, as the apprehensive foreshadowing of a
loss yet to be experienced.
Though the need to establish some principle
which legitimates critical enquiry after it
has taken steps to move itself beyond its
imprisonments has a long provenance, it is
informative to see it persisting in the writing
about writing of some of those who work with a
kind of designatory iconoclasm. Jacques Derrida,
no less, makes his trace incontrovertible, not in

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26

On Reading

1988), xiv. Lower on the same page (Style), Lyotard


provides a fuller description of the A reader: The As
nave ideal is to attain a zero degree style and for the
reader to have the thought in hand, as it were. There
sometimes ensues a tone of wisdom, a sententious cast,
which should be disregarded. The books tempo is not
that of our time. A little out of date? The A. explains
himself at the end about the time of our time. Given
that the last major section of The Differend bears the
title The Sign of History, we can infer that Lyotardas-whimsical-narrator identifies with this A reader
in the act of distancing himself from it somewhat.
We are also justified in hearing some discomfort in
the nave ideal ascribed, tongue-in-cheek, to his
straw-man reader, given that Lyotard claims flatly as
conclusion to a previous section (Thesis, p xii); that
There is no language in general, except as the object
of an Idea -- an impossible notion to sustain in the
case of an enquirer insisting that, whatever they are,
and however difficult to discover, his discourse must
obey rules of some sort both peculiar to themselves,
and insofar as they do indeed keep the usual
characteristics of a languagetransmissible: The
books mode is philosophic, reflective. The As only
rule here is to examine cases of differend and find the
rules for the heterogeneous genres of discourse that

In Difference

displacing it from the centre of signification, but


by making it peripherally in potentia omnipotent
to the signifying chain. There is no refuting
a semiotic ante system whose anchorage is a
spectral absolute.5
Prior to the language turn in philosophy and
critical theory and literary criticism, the desire
for accuracy in analysis rested largely with
variations of the idea of disinterested enquiry,
a presumption, taken into the humanities from
the scientific method, that the purity of seeing
of an observer could match the passion of his or
her intent. This ideal of an idea persists, largely
uninspected, to the present, especially in the work
of (even) some of the better cultural theorists.6
Fundamental to the account of the reception of
beauty in Kants Critique of Aesthetic Judgement7
and bequeathed to English letters by Matthew
Arnold, especially in The Function of Criticism at
the Present Time, it depends on the curious idea
that it is possible to shed ones preconditioning
by deciding to do so, at least for the moment of
judgement. Only a little removed from Lyotards
rhetoric, The Differend attempts to set out
versions, phrasings, of such distancing.
The disinterestedness project continues into the
Anglo-American New Criticism of the nineteen

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On Reading

bring about these cases. Lyotard also puts the differend


at the heart of sublime feeling: at the encounter of
the two absolutes equally present to thought, the
absolute whole when it conceives, the absolutely
measured when it presents. (Lessons on the Analytic
of the Sublime, trans Elizabeth Rottenberg (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1994), 6-7). But in trying to
access the sublime by relegating the mode of thinking
that took him to its threshold, Lyotard seems to make
his conclusion an incontrovertible part of his proposal.
5

In an oblique way, everything I have written has

to do with the uncanny, especially in/relation to the


question of spectrality, of ghosts. There are ghosts
everywhere in my texts. Also: I tried . . . to pay
attention to the generality of this aspectrality.
6

Pierre Bourdieus field work rests on the assumption

that the observer is able to remove him or herself from


the object of study in dividing the act of research into
two movements, the first an objective stage where one
surveys the field of research, and the second involving
a subjective analysis of social interaction. [] while
Bourdieu was correct to highlight the dualisms and
theoretical antinomies that have figured in social
theory and its resulting de-historicising of emergence
or reification of objective condition, his view of the

In Difference

forties and fifties as putative, rather than actual,


practice, though it has since gone underground
somewhat. One of its current versions is an impatience with theory which sometimes borders on
disgust, the weariness with regard to theory, and
the miserable slackening which goes along with
it, as Lyotard puts it (The Differend, xiii). This
miserable slackening of critical thinking is often
to be found claiming disinterestedness as its agent
and enjoyment for goal, but the consequence of
its labours is frequently a watery impressionism
which, allowing for the occasional adjustment for
idiom, would not have been out of place amongst
some of the critic-as-author impressionists of the
late nineteenth century.8

The unconscious of reading


In Freuds account, because of the dream works
transformations of it, we never experience the
latent content of our dreams, their raw stuff, in its
original state. Analysis is bound to work back on
a best guess basis to an idea of an original through
distorted evidences of its existence; though
Freudians would claim that such guesses can be
instinctively accurate, depending on the skill and
the experience of the analyst.

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30

On Reading

dialectic between positionality and dispositionality


(termed as first order and second order of objectivity)
was unable to overcome the dualisms identified.
Instead it pushes analysis in a direction focusing
on objective conditions and so, as second order
objectivity, objective intentions a non-individuated
subjectivity is derivative in the analytical prism in
the dialectic. Ontological complicity and the dialectic
between positionality and dispositionality. See Pierre
Bourdieu. Pascallian Meditations. trans. Richard Nice.
Stanford. Stanford University Press, 2000, Chapter
Four.
7

It will be apparent that the association of aesthetic

feeling with empathy proposed here in effect erases


the distinction Kant draws between judgements of
beauty and the agreeable in his Critique of Aesthetic
Judgement. Kants view that a pleasurable experience of
beauty is ipso facto universally valid seems to be part
of a circular argument, given that he also concedes
that there is no principle by which we can compel
admiration in another for the beautiful object we
ourselves experience.
8

Chernowitz, quoting Proust on Mme de Svign,

declared that the Impressionist order of presentation


[in literature is] showing things in the order in which

In Difference

In Sartres view, to enable repression the censor


must have more knowledge of the material of
the unconscious than it pretends to in Freuds
explanation of it. 9 To image the conscious mind
in conflict with the unconscious, and in some
degree prey to it, Sartre thinks, too readily
exonerates the individual from the responsibility
of choice which is required of him or her. An
interesting consequence of this critique is that
in making it Sartre puts himself in a position
for which Freud has been taken to task, that of
reasoning from premises which are not open to
refutation.
Sartre is correct if we allow as he does that reason
can choose freely from among options which
seem to be enjoined upon it, as they well up,
seemingly from nowhere. Since this nowhere
is certainly a feature of cognition and decisionmaking, Sartre leaves us with the question of what
it is and where (where) it comes from. Viewed
from a different angle, Sartres system of
explanation is really a mirror-image of Freuds,
insofar as it supposes a point of observation
outside the action in which both he and Freud
and we allare involved; yet no description of
such a point, and no suggestion of how it might
be conceived, is offered by either theory.
It is a variant of Sartres objection to Freud which

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On Reading

we perceive them, rather than first explaining them


in terms of their causes. John G. Peters. Conrad and
Impressionism. (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2001, (169). The enclosing quotation is from
Berrong, Richard M. Modes of Literary Impressionism,
205.
9

[...] we perceive that the censor in order to apply

its activity with discernment must know what it is


repressing. In fact if we abandon all the metaphors
representing the repression as the impact of blind
forces, we are compelled to admit that the censor
must choose and in order to choose must be aware of
doing so . . . Jean-Paul Sartre. Being and Nothingness:
An Essay in Phenomenological Ontology, translated by
Hazel E. Barnes. (London. Methuen, 1957), 75.

In Difference

will most concern us. Sartre also questions how


access to the pre-reflexive can be achieved by a
reflexive consciousness which knows itself largely
by its otherness from it. Freuds later attempt to
establish a pre-conscious element as clearing
house to the unconscious on one side and an
ante-room to the conscious on the other, fails to
eliminate the problem by subdividing it, Sartre
thinks. Sartres point holds, logically speaking.
It holds, and as it does, underscores our initiating
question: what can we comprehend with any certainty concerning the transactions between our
pre-reflexive (or unconscious) and reflexive (or
conscious) states, whether we take Sartre as guide,
or Freud? We might conclude that the answer to
this development of our question is, even more
than it was before we watched the phenomenologist set about the psychologist: nothing definitive,
however deep we delve. The confirmation of a
conviction rather, that this is where enquiry leads
and where it ought to lead, not to a clearing up
of difficulty and the making of dark things light,
but that sufficient of the unknown should remain
surplus (as indeed it does) to any explanation
brought to bear against it.

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On Reading

10

E. L Mascall. Existence and Analogy. (London:

Longmans Green, 1949), Mascall takes the view that


the gap between analogy and analogate can be closed
by attributing being equally to both terms, thus his
division between analogy of proportion (God loves us
as our human fathers love us, only to an immeasurably
greater degree) and analogy of attribution (though
the degree of love shown in the two cases is different,
this can be resolved by attributing being as a shared
substrate). Far from solving the problem, this assumes
the case Mascall wants to prove that qualities are not
only sui generis, but universal in and through their
particular appearances. He has been credited with
adopting a neo-Aristotelian perspective, or accused
of it, depending on ones point of view, but appears
to be neo-Platonic in taking instances in and by their
very appearance as demonstration of universals whose
existence would not otherwise be known. He does not,
at least, capitalise Being, preferring the more modest
lower case presentation of the cosmic appropriate to
the Anglo-Saxon tradition.

In Difference

Analogy
All discursively presented reasoning is analogic,
and all analogies are partial. 10
Knowing this does not tell us in what aspects
or to what degree insufficiencies lie as we seize
upon such items in a particular analogy perceived
as being helpful to whatever case we had been
inclined to favour. Such icons of quasi-rationality
encourage the deception that we are extending
our understanding when we cannot know but
that we are doing little more than confirming
dispositions to image the world in one way and
not another, realisations already inscribed as
expectations to which we might have little access.
Here as an example is an analogy from a book
which relates western scientific findings to
Eastern cosmologies:
The quantum vacuum turns out to be
responsible for the fate of the universe
as well. The universe could be flat.
So that lightexcept near massive
bodiestravels in a straight line, or
open (with an infinitely expanding

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On Reading

11

Ervin Laszlo. Science and the Akashic Field: An

Integral Theory of Everything 2nd. ed. (Rochester: Inner


Traditions, 2007).

In Difference

space-time that is negatively curved


like the surface of a saddle), or else
closed (where expansion is overtaken
by gravitation in a space-time that is
positively curved like the surface of a
balloon). In its future development it
could continue to expand, or it could
reverse, contract, and collapse, or else
it could remain permanently balanced
between expansion and contraction.11
This does little to explain the universe until I
select from the images it offers so that the picture
I make best suits what I am prepared to see; and
it is hard work to make a picture of it I can take
seriously against the comic grain, even then. In
the matter of the universe shaped like a saddle, for
instance, I can hardly prevent myselfmy mind
refuses chastisementimagining a backside on
that saddle, a particular backside, wearing cream
coloured jodhpurs, recently washed. This is what
I am compelled to see because of the figurative
materials from which the analogy is made, and
it is as pointless to tell me not to imagine the
universe in this fashion as it would be to instruct
someone that whatever else they do, they must
not think of a pink elephant.

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On Reading

12

[] there is no deep further fact about the self

[] when we look inward and try to discover it we


find nothing more than a bundle of fleeting sensory
impressions, memories, anticipations, and so forth.
Jacques Derrida, Life After Theory, eds. Michael Payne
& John Schad, (London and New York: Continuum,
2003), 24. But Derridas importatation of the trace as
a type of l ur-generator and spectral reference point
for signification does, in effect, provide continuity for
these impressions, memories, anticipations and so
forth. See Robert Lumsden. Reading Literature After
Deconstruction. (Amherst: Cambria, 2009), 352-9.

In Difference

When I enquire what it is about this invitation


to silliness and my response to it that is so
inadequate, it seems clear that the fault lies not
with the crudeness of the analogies themselves,
but in their degrading of a hiddenness which is
lost in the attempt to rationalise the arcane. It is
a fundamental respect for the mystery of things
which we feel should remain to some extent
(because it does) after our attempts at explanation
are completed which is squandered by such jejune
illustrations. This desire to pay due regard to
the irreducible would explain our esteem of the
unconscious across cultures which are in other
ways variant.
Not that the imperative to explain and illustrate
diminishes, not even among the foes of systemic
thinking; nor should it. Both Nietzsches Will
to Power, and more recently, Derridas trace,
have deepened our sense of the subject turning
vigorously upon itself in trying to secure some
anchorage by means of which the critical
intelligence might hold the line in its relation to
the essentially indefinable. What sets apart their
reaching for definition is the ongoing questioning
of their conclusions which are generated by, and
which generate, their enquiry. 12
Not empiricism alone, then, nor theory by

39

In Difference

analogic example discursively extended; and


not the casting of the gaze exclusively outwards.
Nonetheless, short of becoming disciples of the
inward gaze entirely, we are bound to continue to
look to instances in the physical world to try to
illuminate such arcane connections.

The Mirror Neuron System,


Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex,
and the consensual spectrum
We approach a consideration of aesthetic
objectivity by way of a more obvious connection
between a given, out-there experience, and its
conversion to an inner state: the physical process
of seeing, and of colour perception, in particular.
We know that the light spectrum extends beyond
what we can see of it, but so confined are we by
that seeing that we have trouble allowing material
existence further extension. Gamma rays do not
have, they cannot, the degree of reality of light
reflected from the surface of a swimming pool in
a David Hockney painting. To perceive something
as having objective existence, we must submit to

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On Reading

13

Norman Doidge. The Brain that Changes Itself: Stories

of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science.


(London: Penguin, 2007).

In Difference

a neurological predisposition to see just as we do


and in no other way. Seeing is submission to an
uninspected automaticity.
This spectrum, in both parts, the visual outthere, and inward and pre-primed, both permits
and constrains invention. We might invent a
new name for a tint made from a mixing of the
primary colours on that spectrum, but we cannot
invent a new primary colour. In literary terms,
we can mix anew from given fundamentals:
that would be Coleridges primary imagination:
a radiant blending. Or, we can contrive stories
about previously unknown primaries which
are so much at the lurid limit of probability
that imagining them seems slightly or greatly
inappropriate: these would be works of fancy,
in Coleridges terms. Imagination would be a
variation or blending within the given parameters
of the neurologically credible, which we
experience as objective, or, at least, persuasive,
insofar as they are drawn from a place nearer to
the centre of what we, having once experienced,
are primed to know anew. Fancy seen through
this prism would be the speculative invention
of a new primary colour, the promotion of
it as though it were possible; and this might
subsequently shift nearer imaginations centre,
given the brains plasticity, once it has been lifted,

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On Reading

40

On Reading

46

On Reading

In Difference

Both seeing, and the beating of a heart, indicate


demonstrate, we might saythe systemic preorganisation of a somatic function operating
within a restricted parameter, or spectrum. In
the case of the heartbeat, there seem to be two
broad possibilities. Either such a governing
matrix exists, not visible except as it outcrops in
brain and nerve centres which are distinct and
removed from each other; or we are dependent,
seventy times a minute through life, on a random
interaction.
Taking a line from aesthetic responses to their
neurological grounding involves considering
three specialised groups of cells, sometimes
known as mirror neurons, located in the inferior
frontal cortex, superior frontal cortex, and the
ventral pre-motor cortex, and their interaction
with the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and
the right side of the amygdala, especially. While
details of the engagement between aesthetic
responses and these cell groups remain in dispute,
the weight of evidence is that they are crucial in
allowing human beings to exercise empathy and
judge well. If they fail through disease or injury or
genetic malformation, empathy is compromised.
Disagreement about the mirror neuronventromedial cortex involvement in aesthetic

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On Reading

14

Trends in Cognitive Science Vol 11 No. 10 October

2007, p. 411 Mirror and canonical neurons are crucial


elements in esthetic response. And: Mirror and
canonical neurons are not constitutive of aesthetic
response, Roberto Casati and Alessandro Pignocchi.
15

Friederike Range, and L. Huber and Z. S . Viranyi,

Selective imitation in domestic dogs in Current


Biology 17, May 15, 2007..This group nonetheless
comes down on the side of an associative sequence
learning theory which suggests that the mirror
neuron system and the capacity to imitate are forged
through sensory motor learning rather than being
inborn.

In Difference

judgement helps focus on a literary perspective.


In a recent debate, for instance, Vittorio Gallese
and David Freedbergs claim that the activation
of mirror or canonical neurons often have a
crucial (though not perhaps a sufficient) role to
play in aesthetic responses is met by the Roberto
Casati and Allessandro Pignocchis objection that
such findings rest on a selectionMichelangelo,
Goya, Caravaggio, Jackson Pollockwhose
reception can be explained by cultural
conditioning, without recourse to theories based
on neurological encoding.14
This objection overlooks refinements of response
which are readily found in the culturally
unschooled, ranging on the rejection part of
the spectrum from repulsion to indifference.
That Gallese and Freedberg restrict their study to
visual art also rather strengthens than qualifies
the case for mirror neuron mediation from the
literature point of view, given the strong crosscultural acknowledgement of the fundamental
connection between the judgement of excellence
in literature and story-telling which excites
empathy.15 A related criticism, that too close an
association of aesthetic responses with empathy
overlooks the pleasure we take in modes such
as the grotesque and the macabre, has some
purchase, and I will return to this point in

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On Reading

In Difference

considering some comments of Jean-Franois


Lyotard on the melancholy sublime.
Nothing in the Casati-Pignocchi approach
disturbs the case for a fixed spectrum of
aesthetic responses which we feel, not altogether
mistakenly, to be objective. It is objective as
perception of the colour blue, or an experience
of desire, is objective. It is not objectiveKant
(and all who have followed him) is surely
unchallengeable on this pointinsofar as a felt
conviction of the objectivity of a phenomenon
does not by that fact put that object in the world
just as we have perceived it. The absoluteness of
the divorce between noumenon and phenomena
which becomes a topic of discussion in post
hoc critical consideration of experience matters
less, a century after Nietzsche and a decade after
Derrida, than it did in the years immediately
following Kants introduction of the news to
western philosophy, the idea having been taken
up, largely due to the work of such men, into a
general realignment of the terms of engagement
of consciousness with its subjects.
Whether inscribed by nature or by nurture or
by a shifting balance of both, the normative
nature of the empathetic response in its ethical
connection is widely codified in other areas of

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On Reading

16

Oxford Journals, Life Sciences & Medicine Vol 10,

Issue 3 Cerebral Cortex. Special Issue: The Mysterious


Orbitofrontal Cortex. Decision Making and the
Orbitofrontal Cortex, Antoine Bechara, Hanna
Damasio and Antonio Damasio, pp 295-310.

In Difference

human interaction. Systems of jurisprudence


are so universal and similarly restricted as to
suggest an inscribed regimen of right seeing
which parallels the affective-aesthetic spectrum,
or they can be based on little more than an
ongoing cultural impregnation. One who takes
this view would need to find an explanation
for the universal, cross-cultural acceptance of
such law, within such restricted parameters. The
foundational propositions, the predispositions,
of such spectrums are distinctly end-stopped,
astonishingly so, given the range of excluded
possibilities. Eating people is generally reckoned
to be wrong and phoning 999 when someone is
drowning, right and proper, at the opposite end of
the spectrum.

The ventromedial prefrontal cortex


and the subject-object divide
It is the ventromedial prefrontal sector in the
orbitofrontal cortex that provide(s) the substrate
for learning an association between certain
classes of complex situation on the one hand,
and the type of bio-regulatory state (including
emotional state) usually associated with that

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On Reading

17

Oxford Journals, Life Sciences & Medecine Vol 10,

Issue 3 [] decision making is a process that is


influenced by marker signals that arise in bioregulatory
processes, including those that express themselves
in emotions and feelings. This influence can occur
at multiple levels of operation, some of which occur
consciously and some of which occur unconsciously.
Also: Neuroscience can now see the substrate of
moral decisions, and theres nothing rational about it.
Moral judgement is like aesthetic judgement, writes
Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist at the University of
Virginia. When you see a painting, you usually know
instantly and automatically whether you like it. If
someone asks you to explain your judgement, you
confabulate. Lehrer, Jonah, The Decisive Moment:
How the Brain Makes Up Its Mind. (Melbourne: Text
Publishing, 2009), 166. There is a useful list of current
research at the University of Chicago research website:
http://home.uchicago.edu/~decety/journal.html

In Difference

class of situation in past individual experience.16


Significantly, decision making does not arise
from the orbito-frontal cortex alone, but []
from large scale systems.17
Localisation, together with this distribution
across brain regions, indicates an underlying
connection between the mirror neurons and
other brain regions (the mirror neuron system),
much as otherwise unspecifiable coordination of
the outcrops of the cell groups which engineer
the heart beat, or legal systems, indicate matrixes
of which they are part.
In affective-aesthetic terms, the consensual
spectrum would constitute a link between these
groups of cells and be shown by their measurable
behaviour, much as the matrix from which the
impulse to the sinoatrial node arises stands as
index of an individuals general state of health. As
we cannot see health as a whole except through its
declared instances (a good colour to the cheeks of
the face, an ability to run the marathon without
breathing hard) for which we posit an underlying
network which becomes its (good healths)
deduced base line, so the existence of a matrix
linking the mirror neurons, limbic system, and
ventromedial prefrontal cortex can be supposed
on the basis of their cooperative endeavour

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On Reading

18

Elizabeth Zabriskie Wheeler finds that in high level

tasks blending affect and decision-making (people with


lesions to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex) are often
highly impaired. Examining Theories of Ventromedial
Prefrontal Cortex Function. Doctoral Dissertation,
University of Pittsburgh, http://d-scholarship.pitt.
edu/1104. As far as the spread of aesthetic affective
responses across brain regions is concerned, Cinzia
Di Dio, Emiliano Macaluso and Giacomo Rizzolatti
in experiments done on the response to original
(classical) and modified sculptures find that the
observation of original sculptures, relative to the
modified ones, produced activation of the right insula
as well as of some lateral and medial cortical areas
(lateral occipital gyrus, precuneus and prefrontal
areas). Also, that most interestingly, when volunteers
were required to give an overt aesthetic judgement,
the images judged as beautiful selectively activated the
right amygdala. The Golden Beauty: Brain Responses
to Classical and Renaissance Sculptures in PSICOART
n. 12010 Their conclusion, that in observers nave
to art criticism, the sense of beauty is mediated by
two non-mutally exclusive processes: one based on a
joint activation of sets of cortical neurons, triggered
by parameters intrinsic to the stimuli and the insula
(objective beauty); the other based on the activation
of the amygdala, driven by ones own emotional

In Difference

in processing affective, as they do emotional,


responses.18
This presents us with a neurological structure
part of whose function is to retrieve dispositional
responses (the term dispositional is synonymous
with implicit and non-topographically
organized),19 and with it, a means of situating
affective responses (principally) in a neurological
register rather than a continual cultural
overwriting of previous dispositions.
Though subjective and objective do not merge
in this perspective, they do devolve by visceral
agreement upon single phenomena.20 The
distinction between them reduces to a difference
of naming about aspects of the same experience:
an out-there feeling towards the thing which
we call objective, and an in-here sense of it by
which we are persuaded that our perception of
that object is correct.
The construal spectrum in this view would
stand as deep structure matrix to the aesthetic
experience we have, and to our objectifying of
that experience. Canonicity would be what we
deem to be central to the invisible spectrum from
our current location, one of whose peculiarities is
to imagine itself beyond topography. Universality

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On Reading

experiences (subjective beauty), can be retrieved for


the current proposal by pointing to the initial division
into groups of subjects who were instructed to respond
to the images presented to them with three different
mind-sets: as though they were in a museum, or
responding aesthetically or (in due) proportion. Such
an overt pre-ordering of responses is bound from my
point of view to reinforce a pre-existing inclination.
19

Oxford Journals, Life Sciences & Medicine Vol

10, Issue 3, Damasio et al. Structures in (sic)


ventromedial prefrontal cortex provide the substrate
for learning an association between certain classes
of complex situation, on the on the hand, and the
type of biorgulatory state (including emotional state)
usually associated with that class of situation in past
individual experience. The linkages are dispositional
in the sense that they do not hold the representation of
the facts or of the emotion previously paired with it in
an individuals contingent experience, but hold rather
the potential to reactivate an emotion by acting on the
appropriate cortical or subcortical structures. A. R.
Damasio. (1989) The brain binds entities and events
by multiregional activation from convergence zones.
Neural Computat 1:123132; A. R. Damasio. (1989)
Time-locked multiregional retroactivation: a systemslevel proposal for the neural substrates of recall and

In Difference

in this perspective is real, but temporary. Dogma


is revealed to be the provisional imposition it
always was.
As far as the literary consequences are concerned,
previous encounters with the film or novel
The Hunchback of Notre Dame would be seen
as dispositions, seemingly freely decided but
to some extent neurologically pre-primed,
crucial in shaping a readers later responses to
Frankenstein, novel or film. From the other end
of the spectrum, an unresponsiveness to James
Joyces Ulysses, especially if characterised by
a blankness of the never-seen-the-like-before
sort, is explicable by the want of a pre-existing
disposition by means of which a reading of the
book might have been comfortably organised,
a flat spot in the construal spectrum analogous
to the gaps in a glaucoma sufferers visual field.
Disinterested decision-making would be seen
as the expression of a false sense of objectivity,
much as the glaucoma patient supposes his
visual field to be normal (up to a certain point of
degradation) until his physician tells him there is
something he is missing.
Similarly, a predisposition to judge, or the lack
of a means to do so, being invisibly inscribed,
comes to feel objective. As indeed it is, since there

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On Reading

recognition. Cognition 33:2562


20

This link between perception and the motor

cortex, changes how we understand the aesthetic of


anatomical realism. Presently, realism is understood
in terms of artists capturing visual likeness and
thus surface similarity. (This) research opens up
the possibility that realism might also result from
artists capturing the motor look (through accurately
representing its muscle tautness and pose) of a body in
action (or state of rest). Thus while Archaic Greek and
other artists might have sought to stimulate the look
of a body as recognised by the viewers visual cortex,
Classical Greek artists went further and sought to
stimulate the viewers motor cortex and so give them
a sensation of a living body. Motor perception and
anatomical realism in Greek art.

In Difference

is no quarrelling with what is felt to be the case,


especially not when the feeling is not open to
inspection.

Reading Stages
If aesthetic judgements are infillings of
neurological matrixes from the invitations each
text presents, initial reading will be seen, not as
a resolution top down of the often competing
requirements of whatever the reader is able
to command of her or his latent intent, but a
coolness of the surface congealing chaos into
tolerably acceptable forms. First reading is a
primal matter of the unconscious coursing
towards disclosure, fluid, in flux, and falling
always out of those forms it assumes, unceasing
in sleep and waking. The image for it is, not a
desk lamp shining steady on the open pages of a
book, but a decorative oil lamp, lit from within,
whose matter takes on form prior to dissolving
back into the undifferentiated mass from which it
arose, to rise again in new forms, sliding up into
and over the visible surface. Re-reading re-visits
this first acceptance of the previously unknown
to take it in the direction of a reasonable account,
a description suitable for public conversation.

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On Reading

In Difference

First reading bears similarities to meditation, or


to the experience of meeting a startling new truth
about the universe. Re-reading is akin to drawing
up a balance sheet for scrutiny by a roomful of
shareholders.
For instance, the range of seemingly sensible
things engaged readers have found to say about
James Joyces Ulysses, having been distributed
in the academy and in part absorbed by that
audience, becomes comprehensible as versions of
the deep structure spectrum attractive to a subset
of the acceptably in-formed. The book will prove
most congenial to readers primed to choose a
mix and match of interpretive possibilities from
a place near the centre of the construal spectrum,
its sweet spot, so to speak. Readings deemed
to be unusual, adventurous when the word is
given a certain tone, marginal, or far-fetched
are akin to new shades made from the spectrums
prime colours, up for sale but not yet the sort
of thing people in general would want to use to
paint their houses. Since the brain is plastic as
well as predisposed, such unaccustomed hues
might come in time to be experienced nearer
to the construal spectrums sweet spot. Their
other possible destiny is to be considered forever
fanciful, accounts of the imaginary of new primes
impossible except in unlikely tales about them.

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On Reading

21

(Paideia), Contemporary Philosophy.

Lyotard on the Kantian Sublime, Antony David,


18 Anthony David. Quotation from Answering
the Question What Is Postmodernism in The
Postmodern Condtion: A Report on Knowledge, trans.
Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minnesota:
University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 81.

In Difference

Lyotard, melancholia, novatio, and


not-knowing
The question of the status of the critical
intelligence returns with renewed force in a
distinction Lyotard makes between several modes
of the sublime in artthe melancholy sublime,
which he characterises as a powerlessness of
the faculty of presentation [...] the nostalgia
for presence felt by the human subject [...] the
obscure and futile will which inhabits us in spite
of everything, and novatio, which he associates
with avant-garde art, and which he conceives
to be an intrinsic combination of pleasure
and pain.21 In this second, higher, sense of the
sublime, the untenable quest to present the
unpresentable is abandoned. A passage on Kant
prepares the way for the development of Lyotards
distinction:
The reader of Kant cannot fail to
wonder how the critical thinker could
ever establish conditions of thought
that are a priori. With what instruments
can he formulate the conditions of
legitimacy of judgements when he is
not yet supposed to have any at his

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On Reading

22

Lyotard, Answering the Question: What is

Postmodernism?, 32.
23

Thomas Huhn, Review of Lyotards Lessons on the

Analytic Sublime in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art


Criticism 53 (Winter 1995), 91.

In Difference

disposal? How, in short, can he judge


properly before knowing what judging
properly is, and in order to know what
it might be?22
By such means, critical thought which was
previously ensnared in a neurosis of exactitudes,
achieves a type of sublimity in realising its
highest destiny as an infinite inventive capacity
undetermined by principles but in search of
them.23
This prospect plays well initially because it seems
to outmanoeuvre sorrow. By a mere shift in
thinking about it, we have taken sorrow in as part
of a super-sensible sublimity, not distinct from
pain, but able to draw upon it. But then it doesnt
play well, for the same reasonthat it does
diminish the impact of something which can be
overwhelming as experienced. Unless it present in
one of its attenuated variants, self-pity kept at an
arms length, perhaps, or a comfortable relish in
the passing maudlin, or the wearing of left bank
black to celebrate kinship with a doleful rejection
of restriction, melancholy, not even when it falls a
good way short of the clinical depression of which
it is often the grim precursor, cannot be depended
upon to elevate itself in being considered from a
different point of view. Dissolved in the sublime,

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On Reading

24

Jean Franois Lyotard. Lessons on the Analytic

Sublime trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg. (Stanford:


Stanford University Press, 1994), 122.

In Difference

as like as not after the first introduction is over,


it will spread like ink in clear water, rather than
make the sublime more available to exhilaration.
It is unconvincing at best, and perhaps
disappointing, to be told that we can be done with
sorrow by means of a theory of sorrows.
The question with which we began is returned,
underscored by Lyotards approach to the
sublime: what is the relation of the enquirer to
this sense of stepping (somewhat) outside the
process of enquiry? Is it, possibly, no more than
an aspiration to exceed the critical moment,
an attenuated form therefore of the afflatus of
transcendence, recycled in an idea of it? If it
is actual, whether neurologically grounded or
inexplicably epiphenomenal, as some suppose
mind itself to be, how might this relation, of the
self of language to the self which listens in on its
later accounts of its presentations, be described?
In attaching a version of the sublime before the
critical intelligence confines thought by forms
of sensibility, assembled in schemas, known by
concepts, or estimated according to the good,24
do we not come into a fashion of being in which
much that is usually comprehended by the word
critical is rescinded rather than, as Lyotard
supposes, celebrating thought knowing itself

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In Difference

as it always truly was prior to opposition by its


sensible objects? This, at some possibly limbic
level, is surely a prospect offensive to the agency
of thought in its pomp. It wears, to the present
listener-in, the contrived urgency of belief,
inclined to confuse bliss with release from doubt.
How does Lyotards supersensibility differ from
The Cloud of Unknowing?
Critical endeavour consigning itself to retirement
might, as Lyotard claims, be precursor to
celebration beyond mere analysis, but if it were,
by what language, whether or not floating above
its points of containment, might we bring back
news of this development to those speaking the
old language, and thinking in its terms? The
impress of imagination unreconciled to constraint
would surely tendif no moreto compromise
whatever account we might provide of that out
there as we struggle to make of it something we
can recognise. The unconscious is unlikely to be
appeased at the prospect of supersession by some
higher condition, nor is it obvious that critical
intelligence is generally enhanced by absorption
into a more diffuse cognitive state.
As indication that going with the avant-garde
might not always be an unmitigated good, we
might consider some recent developments in the

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In Difference

heady mix of freedom and free expression which


drives the urge to make it new, in particular
the violence done to form and intellect as they
attempt to conspire to find a representation of
the moment which will be adequate to both. We
might consider the increase in schism, sturm and
splatter along the line of experimentation in the
last half century between the cool geometries of
Rothko and Bridget Riley and Mondrian with
their re-phrasings of classical harmony, to the
graffito-grounded aerosol chaos we currently
have on the blanks of public spaces, whose
message, underlying and upfront, seems to be,
because we like the feel of untrammelled selfexpression, it follows that no public space may
remain unspoiled, as no late night convenience
store may consider itself off limits to the plunder
of big spenders who find themselves short of
cash. Lyotards theory, of the sublime as of his
later theory of perception-reception, though
useful in its undermining of some reprehensible
versions of the easy transcendentalism of early
twentieth century post-Romanticism, is mistaken
in proposing that the critical intelligence achieves
apogee by legislating certain of its achievements
out of business. Too much of the contemporary
points in another direction.

73

Mark Brantner

75

I Hear Dead People:


Reading as
Responding to
Written Voices
When I read a text, I hear voices. For example,
when I read Plato, I hear a voice that always teases
me, always tests me, always makes me guess
whether hes serious, whether he means it. His
voice has the sense of a wink in it. It says, Get it?
Get the joke? Plato says one thing, but his voice
suggests that hes saying more. And it is my desire
to get at this more that keeps me returning to
him. When I read Plato there always seems to be
a difference between the meaning captured by his
words and another meaning that lies beyond the
page, that seems to lie in Plato himself. It is this
other meaning, this excess over the meaning of
the words, that I ascribe to Platos point of view.
In short, I hear more in Platos voice than what
his words mean; I hear what Plato means. This

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On Reading

admission suggests that Im willing to be duped


by Wimsatt and Beardsleys famous intentional
fallacy.1 At this point in my career, I should know
better than to say that I hear Platos point of view.
To demonstrate that Im a good postmodernist, Id
be better off simply saying that I hear the texts
point of view, that I hear the texts voice.
The truth is that I dont only hear Platos voice.
When I read someone like Slavoj iek, I hear
a very different voice. I hear a voice thatlike
Platoseems more interested in provoking me
than in communicating. But having seen him
in person and on video delivering his frenetic
lectures, I hear his lisp, his stammering, his punch
lines as I read the text. Surely, this voice that I
hear, then, is ieks, and my hearing ieks
voice as I read his writing comes from the fact
that I would recognize his voice on the street, on
the phone, in passing. His voice is distinct. And
when I read iek, I hear it. And I still think of
it as his point of view. So maybe its not quite so
strange in this case that I hear a voice. And maybe
its possible to hear a voice and not fall victim to
intentional fallacies.

William K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley. Intention-

al Fallacy. Sewanee Review, vol. 54 (1946): 468-488.

I Hear Dead People

Im not very unique in that I hear peoples voices


when I read; in fact, I think that it is not only
quite common but necessary. Without this voice,
the text, whether its Platos or ieks, would
not have a point of view. I would not be able to
understand what the text says, what the poem or
novel means, what the philosopher argues, what
the journalist reports. This book, the one you are
reading right now, is thinking reading as a mode
of response rather than an act of interpretation.
In sharing this common ground, I argue that
what we respond to in a text is not the text alone
but the voice that we hear in the text. Without
supposing a voice, a text remains a series of dead
letters, devoid of meaning. It is only through
positing a voice, with its point of view, that a text
comes to mean anything at all. When we read,
we are engaging a voice that we hear. But when
we read, whose voice is this? Is it the voice of the
writer? Do those voices I hear belong to Plato
and to iek, making me believe the intentional
fallacy? Or is it my voice, a voice within me that
I place on the text? Is it my subjective position
caught in the text? If so, then why do I hear
ieks lisps? Is it the texts voice? Can the written
word somehow contain a voice? Or, at least, can
we compare the voice of a piece of writing to the
spoken voice? All of these questions are variations
on the same question: What is the material

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ground for the voice?


This essay is a preliminary attempt to point
toward some possible answers to this question.
First, it problematizes the relation between an
empirical voice and the voice that we hear in
writing. Discussions of the written voice have
relied on a metaphor that ties the written voice
to the spoken voice through an over-reliance on
the body. Through Lacanian psychoanalysis, I will
demonstrate a conceptualization of an aphonic
voice that is appended to yet irreducible to the
body that produces it. Second, by responding
to a poem by Pulitzer-Prize winning poet W. S.
Merwin, I will demonstrate a tentative mode of
reading that responds to this aphonic written
voice.

Voices and Bodies


Peter Elbow, the most steadfast champion of the
voice in writing, admits that, when he speaks
about the voices that he hears in his students
writing, he writes in a metaphor that ties the
written voice to the spoken voice. He explains,
[T]he voice metaphor highlights how discourse
issues from individual persons and from

I Hear Dead People

physical bodies.2 As such, the spoken voice has a


materiality, which ties it to the body that produces
it and to the situation in which it is spoken. The
voices tie to the body as its cite of production is,
arguably, the most common idea of the relation
between the spoken voice and the body. When all
else is stripped away, a body produces a voice. The
argument for this relation does not originate with
Roland Barthes; this argument goes back, at least,
to Aristotles De Anima. Nevertheless, Barthes
claim that, in the voice, one hears the grain of
the body serves as an oft-cited touchstone for this
position.3
Elbow gains a material tie from this metaphor,
and this material tie allows him to account for
differences among writers texts. He writes, Just
as the spoken voice is connected to the body that
produces it, the voice metaphor calls attention
to the difference from one person to another.4
Elbow uses the voice to name the difference
among writers texts. Voices shout differences
2

Landmark Essays on Voice and Writing, edited by Peter

Elbow (Mahwah: Hermagoras, 1994)


3

Roland Barthes. Image Music Text. translated by Stephen

Heath. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 179-190.


4

Landmark Essays on Voice and Writing, edited by Peter

Elbow (Mahwah: Hermagoras, 1994)

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On Reading

between writers. Therefore, it should be no


surprise that when writing teachers try to help
students develop their written voices they ask
them to revise their writing to sound more like
they would sound if they were to speak the essay
rather than write it. Read it aloud, teachers
often advise students, and revise your paper so
that it sounds more natural. Elbows admission,
far from being idiosyncratic, makes a standard
assumption about the voices that we hear in
the texts that we read: Spoken discourse comes
prior to written discourse and written discourse
imitates spoken discourse.
There are, however, two central problems with
this metaphor. First, we commonly dont think
of a text as a bodyand certainly not one that
produces a voice. Second, a voice is not, as
Elbow asserts, simply connected to the body that
produces it; rather, at the end of the day, a voice
is never fully reducible to the body that produces
it. In short, there is something in the voice
that cannot be accounted for by the body that
produces ita voice is in excess over that which
sounds it. Mladen Dolar points out this tricky
and paradoxical relation between the physical
body and the spoken voice: [N]ot only does [the
voice] detach itself from the body and leave it
behind, it does not fit the body either, it cannot

I Hear Dead People

be situated in it [...] It is a bodily missile which


has detached itself from its source, emancipated
itself, yet remains corporeal. [...] The voice stems
from the body but is not its part.5 If we take
this position seriously, then it challenges the
standard metaphor that links written and spoken
voices, and more importantly, the assumption
that spoken discourse simply precedes written
discourse. As I am arguing here, the voices that
we hear when we read are tied to the text but
cannot be fully reduced to them. At the same
time, we may still be able to maintain the voice as
the name of differenceor more to the point, the
voice resounds within difference. Before getting to
that point, lets look at some examples of bodily
missiles in Dolars sense.
In a truly uncanny scene of David Lynchs
Mulholland Drive, Naomi Watts and Laura
Harring go to a theater where they watch a
beautiful woman sing an aria.6 Halfway through
the song, however, the singer collapses on
stage, yet her voice, the song, continues on
reverberating throughout the concert hall holding
5

Mladen Dolar. A Voice and Nothing More. (Cambridge:

MIT Press, 2006), 72-73


6

Mulholland Drive. Directed by David Lynch. Universal

Pictures, 2001.

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On Reading

the two women spellbound. But it shakes the


film viewer. That the viewer should be shaken
is strange given that this has already been set
up. Just before the woman came on stage, the
film indicates that she will not be the singer by
showing an audiotape being cued up for the
song. In other words, the film viewer knew all
along that, in the dreamy world of that theater,
she was always lip synching, Milli-Vanilli style,
yet the beauty of the voice and the singer makes
the viewer forget that her singing is a sham. This
forgetting is compounded by the double world
that is reflected in the watching experience. First,
a dark theater is depicted on screen, a live theater
where people are on a stage engaging an audience,
which differs from the movie theater in which the
moviegoer sees the film on a screen and the actors
are images that cannot interact with the audience.
In other words, in the films world, there is a living
connection between the audience and the person
on stage. They are together in the same room.
But this togetherness between the living audience
and the living performer is a sham because
the performance is recorded, taped decidedly
not live. And the same thing is happening in a
parallel way between the audience and Lynchs
film. The audience of the film gets moved closer
to an illusion of being in a live theater, the film
depicting the proscenium stage and highlighting

I Hear Dead People

the singer. In this way, the moviegoer is brought


closer to the singer on that stage, caught up by her
beauty and the beauty of her voice. In watching
this scene, the moviegoer forgets that she is being
duped and is moved by the song emanating from
the singer. It is only in the collapse, when the song
carries on without the singer, without the material
support that sustains it, it is only when the voice
freed from the body reverberates through the
hall and the movie theater that the moviegoer is
reminded of what she knew all alongthis voice
isnt tied to this body.
But this uncanny remembrance is something
known even before this scene gets played out,
precisely because this is the way that film is
made. In movies, the voice is always recorded and
separated from the material body that seems to
be supporting it. This is the uncanny underside
of film that has been around since the advent of
talkies. One could think of the way this has been
parodied and pointed to by films themselves.
In Singing in the Rain, for instance, the female
lead of the new talking film has a gratingly highpitched voice and cannot sing.7 The producers
and director, fearing a loss of revenue, cast her in
7

Singing in the Rain. Directed by Stanley Donen and Gene

Kelly. Metro-Goldwyn Mayer (MGM), 1954.

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On Reading

the film for her beauty and hire another woman to


provide the voice for her. To a similar end, avant
garde filmmakers developed the photographed
moving image onto the sound strip on the side
of the film so that one would hear the image, so
that the sound would be directly tied to the visual
image that can never appear on the screen.
A more recent phenomenon demonstrates the
repeated troubling relation between the body
and the voice. Recall Susan Boyle, who became a
phenomenon on both sides of the Atlantic when
her rendition of the Les Miserables song The
Dream surprised the judges on the game/variety
show Britains Got Talent.8 When her segment on
the shows talent search portion was broadcast,
the show was edited in such a way as to make
sure that her powerful singing equally surprised
the at-home audience. From the very first image
of Boyle, the show played up the fact that she
does not look like a star. Her introduction shows
Boyle sitting in the background of two young and
attractive women, while she shoves what appears
to be a very large sandwich or piece of cake into
her mouth. This is, of course, accompanied by a
8

Original Version. Susan BoyleI Dreamed a Dream [Vi-

deo] Retrieved October 8, 2011, from http://www.youtube.


com/watch?v=wnmbJzH93NU

I Hear Dead People

frumpy melody that accentuates the impression


that the audience should not take her seriously.
The show amps it up in the following interview
segment when Boyle introduces herself as fortyseven and currently unemployed. She says, At
the moment, I live alone with my cat Pebbles.
But Ive never been married, never been kissed.
[She makes a face, drawing her chin back into her
neck and wincing her eyes.] Shame! [She says
giggling. Then she pulls up her hand and leans
forward as though shes confiding in the camera,]
But its not how I feel! The show has clearly
edited this portion of her interview in order to
give the impression that she is an old maid, not
to be taken seriously. It is also meant to highlight
her body. It highlights her eating, the shoving
of oversized portions of food into her mouth,
the place from which her song will originate.
It highlights her age and employment. Most of
all, it highlights her lack of beauty, by playing
up that shes never been married or even kissed.
Further, at the first move, it engenders audience
sympathy for an old maid. But on a second move,
this sympathy is compounded by the very fact
that she doesnt feel that she has missed out on
anything. When she says Shame, shes referring
to what she knows others feel. But she points out,
in false confidence, that she feels no shame. She
doesnt feel that shes missed out. This compounds

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On Reading

the sympathy the at-home audience has and


further pushes them to not take her seriously,
for she doesnt even know what shes missed out
on. Boyles introduction focuses on her body and
the expectation that such a body cannot be taken
seriously as a singer, given the current situation
in which Beyonce Knowles, Shakira, and Britney
Spears gain stardom and acclaim.
Boyle concludes her interview by saying that she
has wanted to perform in front of an audience
since she was twelve. And she concludes her
interview emphatically: Im going to make that
audience rock. But by now, the audience is taking
this as silly, not as a woman confident in the
power of her own voice. How could this frumpy,
old maid wow the audience, let alone the difficult
judges, like Simon Cowell, the acerbic Brit who
became popular in the U.S. on American Idol
for his cruel yet funny comments about peoples
voices and appearances? The show clearly sets
up her audition to be a back and forth between
Cowell and Boyle. The audience is expecting great
entertainment. Its expecting a frumpy woman to
sing horribly and later be humiliated by Cowell.
Cowell asks her about herself and reacts with
disbelief when she tells him her age and that she
wants to be a famous singer like Elaine Paige. This
exchange is exacerbated by a series of off-camera

I Hear Dead People

voiceswhistles and catcalls from the audience.


Finally, when she says shes going to sing I
Dreamed a Dream, a very difficult song with a
wide range from Les Miserable, the judges laugh
in incredulity. Finally, the at-home audience, the
judges, and the studio audience are prepared for a
great and entertaining disaster.
And she sings.
Her powerful voice rises throughout the
auditorium, and the camera cuts to each judge
and then to the audience to highlight the shocked
looks on their faces. It cuts to the audience to
show both their surprised looks and their cheers.
At this moment, the joke has been played. Weve
been had, Simon has been had, and the studio
audience has been had. And their cheers show
theyve been won over. Their cheers apologize
for their own expectations that she would fail.
Their cheers demonstrate the audiences shame at
judging her by a set of expectations. Finally, the
camera cuts to the backstage commentators, who
look and point into the camera and speak directly
to the viewers: You didnt expect that, did you?
Did you? No! The audience has apologized to her
for us. It has told her that it and we are now on
her side. We are pulling for Susan Boyle.

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On Reading

After singing, the judges weigh in. Piers Morgan


tells her, Without a doubt that was the biggest
surprise I have had in three years of the show.
When you stood there with that cheeky grin and
said I-I want to be like Elaine Paige, everyone was
laughing at you. No one is laughing now. That was
stunning, an incredible performance. The second
judge, Amanda Holden, a beautiful blond stage
actress, scolds the audience before praising her:
I am so thrilled because I know that everybody
was against you [She looks back at the audience,
and a single bodiless, nervous laugh is heard
from a woman] I honestly think that we were all
being very cynical and I think that was the biggest
wakeup call ever. [The camera cuts to Simon,
who looks stunned.] And I just want to say that
it was a complete privilege listening to that. The
juxtaposition of Amanda Holden and Susan
Boyle should not go uncommented on. Holden,
a Broadway actress in her own right, has the
appearance and the look that one would expect
for Boyles voice.
Simon Cowell gave the most honest reaction
to her song: Susan I knew the minute you
walked out [Incredulous laughter erupts from
the audience and other judges] on that stage that
we were going to hear something extraordinary.
And I was right. All the while, the music to I

I Hear Dead People

Dreamed a Dream plays in the background to


punch up the melodramatic underdog story thats
being told. Simon and the audience did expect
something extraordinary. Every aspect of the
show had been set up such that we did not only
expect something extraordinary, we expected to
hear something extraordinarily terrible. No voice
that strong or beautiful could come from such a
pathetic person.
The phenomenon and example of Susan Boyle
does more than simply illustrate the ways that a
television show is able to manipulate its audience
through standard melodramatic storylines
and (by now) overdone juxtapositions of the
embarrassingly untalented against acerbic judges.
It points to a central problem of the voicethat
problem that has been with us, at least, since
Aristotle and Quintilian. That is, the voice never
quite fits its body. The show was easily able
to manipulate the audience precisely because
the audience assumes that the voice should
correspond to the body, but time and time again,
the voice escapes its material confines. Slavoj
iek goes further claiming that an unbridgeable
gap separates forever a human body from its
voice. The voice displays a spectral autonomy, it
never quite belongs to the body we see, so that
even when we see a living person talking, there is

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On Reading

always a minimum of ventriloquism at work; it is


as if the speakers own voice hollows him out and
in a sense speaks by itself, through him.9 While
Boyle presents an extreme case of this situation,
iek points out that this is a daily experience of
the voice.
Mulholland Drive, Singing in the Rain, and Susan
Boyle share an uncanny aspect of the voice: in
each case, a voice doesnt quite fit, cannot fully
be situated within, the body that produces it. As
such, what is that material ground and support
of the voice? In Lacanian psychoanalysis, the gap
between the body and the voice is representative
of a gap within the voice itself. For Lacan, the
voice is not the voice that we hear. Instead, the
Lacanian voice is attached to these audible voices,
but remains distinct from them. Dolar explains:
Inside the heard voices is an unheard
voice, an aphonic voice, as it were.
For what Lacan called [the voice]
to put it simplydoes not coincide
with any existing thing, although
it is always evoked only by bits of
materiality, attached to them as an
invisible, inaudible appendage, yet
9

Slavoj iek. On Belief. (New York: Routledge, 2001), 58

I Hear Dead People

not amalgamated with them: it is both


evoked and covered, enveloped by
them, for in itself it is just a void. So
sonority both evokes and conceals the
voice; the voice is not somewhere else,
but it does not coincide with voices that
are heard.10
It is not simply that the voices that we hear
singers in Mulholland Drive and Singing in the
Rain and Boyles for instancedo not coincide
with the bodies producing them. Lacans point is
the material voices that we hear both evoke and
conceal another voice, an aphonic, which always
says more or less than we intend it to say.
That the materiality both evokes and conceals
the voice is what we need to understand about
what happens when we hear a voice within a piece
of writing. Lacan will go further than most in
suggesting that not only does the material voice
sounded by humans not coincide with the voice,
but that the material voice is not the only material
ground for the voice. In other words, the aphonic
voice can be attached to other material forms,
not simply the tone, rhythm, or pitch of a phonic
voice. Other materials can have an invisible,
10

Dolar. A Voice and Nothing More, 74-75

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On Reading

inaudible appendage that we hear, that speaks


to us, that makes demands on usincluding our
own inner voices. If we follow this out, it becomes
pointless to reduce the voice that we hear when
we read to the material markings on a page. For
my point is that the material markings on a page
do not simply contain a voice that I hear, but that
the material marks on the page both evoke and
conceal a voice that I hear as I read.
The materiality of the voice on the page was
a central problem that eventually silenced it
as a critical term. Without the ability to see
the voice that we hearwithout the ability to
reduce the aphonic voice that we hear to phonic
representations on a pagethe voice remained,
for most scholars, a purely subjective aspect of
writing. This was a very serious problem for a
discipline that was attempting to gain academic
standing and importance. Because of this
problem, the term came under attack. One of
the most zealous and damning critiques came
from I. Hashimoto who likened its critical uses
to evangelical rhetoric. He condemns the belief
in voice: Indeed, to believe in voice, we have to
believe that texts contain voices that somehow get
activated by eye-contact, or contain something
like pixie dust that creates voices in our heads or

I Hear Dead People

bodies when we read.11 Other scholars attempted


to respond to this devastating critique. Accepting
that if readers cannot see it on the page, then
they cannot hear it in their heads. For example,
Arthur Palacas uses linguistic theory to claim
that voice is represented by parentheticals on a
page.12 In short, he argues that writers work their
voices into their writing by making asides that
signal their intentions and stances toward their
subjects. Similarly, the anxiety that is produced
by an aphonic voice attached to a material page
sent Toby Fulwiler seeking the stylistic quirks that
he uses in his writing and that signals his more
public and more private voices.13 Readers seem
to hear a different him than he himself hears. As
a result, he begins a search for this voice on the
page that eventually produced an essay in which
he links his voice to textual devices and his use
11

I. Hashimoto. Voice as Juice: Some Reservations about

Evangelic Composition. Landmark Essays on Voice and


Writing. edited by Peter Elbow. (Mahwah: Hermagoras,
1994), 80.
12

Arthur Palacas. Parentheticals and Pesonal Voice. Land-

mark Essays on Voice and Writing. edited by Peter Elbow.


(Mahwah: Hermagoras, 1994), 121-138.
13

Toby Fulwiler. Looking and Listening for my Voice.

Landmark Essays on Voice and Writing. edited by Peter


Elbow (Mahwah: Hermagoras, 1994), 157-164.

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of stylistic language. Yet, these arguments for the


textual/bodily/material basis for the voices that
we hear in writing failedprecisely because they
were seeking a phonic voice that is attached and
reducible to its material grounds. Unfortunately,
the term voice was silenced because scholars
gave in too easily to the demand for the empirical
link.

Goodbye
How then do we discuss the aphonic voice that we
are arguing for here? How do we account for an
aphonic voice that is both evoked and concealed
in its material grounds? To end, I want to push us
toward a possible way of reading that illustrates
how we can hear in a written text an aphonic
voice, which should not be conceived of in terms
of Elbows metaphor for the phonic voice. The
Lacanian aphonic voice, which is nothing more
than an excess produced by the signification
process, is what remains of the encapsulation of
the real in language and reminds us of that which
resists signification. To demonstrate this I want
to end with a reading of the appropriately named
poem Going by Pulitzer Prize winning poet W.
S. Merwin.

I Hear Dead People

Only humans believe


There is a word for goodbye
We have one in every language
One of the first words we learn
It is made out of greeting
But they are going away
The raised hand waiving
The face the person the place
The animal the day
Leaving the word behind
And what it was meant to say 14
In this poem, we see the way in which the voice
is that which exceeds its material grounds yet
produces the poems meaning. This poem, at once,
describes this process and demonstrates it. The
break between lines one and two creates at least
two opposed meanings. Although the poem does
not employ punctuation, it is easy to understand
these lines as forming a single sentence in which
the second line is a noun clause that acts as the
predicate nominative for the first line. These lines
would be read: Only humans believe that there
is a word for goodbye. Read as a single sentence,
it suggests that belief may be a capacity of both

14

W.S. Merwin. Going. The Shadow of Sirius. (Port Town-

send: Copper Canyon Press, 2008), 46

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humans and animals, but the particular belief


in the ability of goodbye to express a feeling
concerning separation is unique to humans. And
by extension, only humans believe that language,
in general, has the capacity of expression. This
sentence, then, suggests that there is no word
that is able to encapsulate the expression that is
expressed in a goodbye. The feeling of separation
will always exceed our capacities to express it in
language. In this way, goodbye reminds us of the
fullness of a feeling that existed prior to its entry
into language.
But, at the exact same moment, its use in this
line is the remainder of this process. The word
goodbye is the only thing that remains after
signification. It remains as the word that expresses
the feeling that has been subsumed by language.
At once goodbye is the remainder and the
reminder of the inability for the word to express
itself. Goodbye points to an excess of feeling
that preexists language and that is generated
through the process of signification. The feeling
that precedes the movement of language and
the feeling of the excess that exists outside of the
word are two different things but are, at once and
paradoxically, the idea of the real emotion. And
it is goodbye that ties these two versions of the
real emotional content of the word together.

I Hear Dead People

The second reading of these two lines reinforces


this position through the very opposition
that it proposes. Following the poems lack of
punctuation and the omission of that, we are
also invited to read these two lines as separate
sentences in and of themselves. In this case,
belief, in general, is peculiar to humans and not
to animals. Only humans believe. This belief is
the reason that there is a word for goodbye. In
other words, why is it that we as humans have
a word for goodbye? It is only because we have
the capacity for belief. Without this capacity, we
would not be able to overcome the difference
between the word and that which it signifies.
Only through our belief are we able to ignore the
difference between signifier and signified and
accept that we are communicating something
when we say goodbye. So, in the first instance,
humans believe there is a word for goodbye even
though there is not one; in the second instance,
there is a word for goodbye precisely because
humans have the capacity to believe that this
lost feeling could be communicated. In both
cases there is an insurmountable gap between
goodbye and that which it signifies. But it is also
the only thing which remains after signification,
after the feeling has been caught up in language,
and it is the only thing that points back to this
feeling that is outside signification.

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The next three lines universalize the lack that is


generated through signification. All people in
every language encounter this same gap between
the signifier and signified, but it is only the word
goodbye that names this separation as such. It
is the first word we learn in three senses. First,
bye-bye is among first words that parents teach
their children. Second, it is a word that names
the loss of that we feel when language cannot
communicate fully and self-presently. Third,
it is the feeling that the separation of language
creates in us. These emotions return as products
of signification as excesses over the language
that is used. Again, the emotional content that
is experienced in a words inability to fully
express itself points, at once, to an emotion
prior to language use and to a feeling that is
generated by the movement of language. That
goodbye comes from a greeting highlights the
paradoxical effect of our alienation in language.
As a goodbye, we are reminded of that which we
have been separated from in the use of language,
but as a greeting, our movement into language
is a beginning and the generating force of the
emotional excess that we experience when we
encounter the remainder of language.
The concrete going away of a waving hand, a face,
a place, an animal, and the day cannot disappear

I Hear Dead People

fully from the world. They leave behind them


a word, the word goodbye. After the physical
world disappears within language use, language
remains in such a way that it generates both the
word for this disappearance and the emotion that
it was meant to carry. This difference between the
word and its excessive content is highlighted by
the line break. The word remains. The word was
left behind. The poem could easily end here but
almost as if it were an afterthought, the last line
suggests that there is something extra that was
left behind in addition to the word itself. That
which the word meant to say is also left behind.
The word meant here has two meanings. The
first is the straightforward meaning of the words
context. In this case, meant means intended.
There was something that someone intended
to say. The speaker had an intention that would
never be fully encapsulated by goodbye. The
speakers intention is left behind. The second
meaning of meant is its literal meaning. There is
a meaning that was left behind. In this case it has
the idea that it was left behind in so far as it was
incapable of meaning. But where is it left behind?
Is it left behind in the situation in which it is said
or is the meaning left behind prior to the saying
itself? So we hear the word goodbye coming to
the fore as the objects in the world disappear. Yet
the meaning that was left behind is, at once, in a

99

100

On Reading

paradoxical position of existing prior to the word


and never fully coming into the presence of the
statement. At the same time, this meaning is also
left behind in the saying of the goodbye. Both
exist. The word and its excessive meaning that can
never be eradicated and this is separate from it
but cannot be reduced to it nor separated from it.
This saying of the goodbye that generates both
the excessive meaning and the word is nothing
but the voice.

Julia Holzl

103

Fidem Frangere

But Sade wished to be read.


He did, his books did not. 1

Maurice Blanchot. The Infinite Conversation, translation

and foreword by Susan Hanson. (Minneapolis/London:


University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 328f.

104

On Reading

Prelude .
If we give credence to Maurice Blanchot,2 there are
three ways of reading.
First, an active, productive way of reading, which
produces text and reader and thus transports us;
the second, a passive kind of reading which betrays
the text while appearing to submit to it, by giving
the illusion that the text exists objectively, fully,
sovereignly: as one whole; and, third, there is the
reading that is no longer passive, but is passivitys
reading.
In what follows, all three ways will be pursued,
and a fo(u)rth shall be addedthe reading of unreadability, a reading of impossibility. Impossible
readings: the only reading possible, perhaps.
For what is at stake here is nothing but the(re) is.

Maurice Blanchot. The Writing of the Disaster, trans.

Ann Smock. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,


1995),101.

Fidem Frangere

TENEBRAE
Komm auf den Hnden zu uns.
Wer mit der Lampe allein ist,
hat nur die Hand, draus zu lesen.3
Come on your hands to us.
Who is alone with the lamp
has only his hand to read from.
That there is an is, that there is in such is: such is
the possibility of possibility to be thought here.
Et lux in tenebris lucet, that there is (in and
through) such lightthat there is to read, that
there is to read from: such are the textures we are
to depart from.
This first beginning, then, co-responds to the
Heideggerian Grundstimmung (groundingattunement) of an initial Er-staunen (deep
wonder): that there is, that there is (in) such is.
In den verfahrenen Augenlies da:
In the eyes all awryread there:4

Paul Celan. Stimmen/Voices.

Paul Celan. Les Globes.

105

106

On Reading

There is. That there is in such is: such is the sense


to be thought here.
In other words, and here we commence to
approach the premise of these readings, reading
must take into account the il y a of the text,
always. The il y a, this impersonal, anonymous,
yet inextinguishable consummation of being,
which murmurs in the depths of nothingness
itself , we read Levinas,5 this there is, inasmuch
as it resists a personal form, is being in general.
We could, he continues, say that the night is
the very experience of the there is, if the term
experience were not inapplicable to a situation
which involves the total exclusion of light. When
the forms of things are dissolved in the night,
the darkness of the night, which is neither an
object nor the quality of an object, invades like
a presence. In the night, where we are riven to
it, we are not dealing with anything. But this
nothing is not that of pure nothingness. There is
no longer this or that; there is not something But
this universal absence is in its turn a presence,
an absolutely unavoidable presence. It is not the
5

Emmanuel Levinas. There is: Existence without Existents,

trans. Alphonso Lingis, in Emmanuel Levinas, The Levinas


Reader, edited by Sen Hand. (Oxford and Cambridge, MA:
Basil Blackwell, 1989), 30 (pp. 29-36).

Fidem Frangere

107

dialectical counterpart of absence, and we do


not grasp it through a thought. It is immediately
there. There is no discourse. Nothing responds
to us, but this silence [] There is, in general,
without it mattering what there is, without our
being able to fix a substantive to this term. There
is is an impersonal form, like in it rains, or it is
warm. Its anonymity is essential.
Otherwise than Being: These lines are to be read
along, along with a certain being-with-out, beside
certain seclusions, the closure of such space. She
who is alone with the book has only her hands to
read from. For, what is out there, the text, remains
dark and obscure. For, what is out there is, first
and foremost, a circumcision, circumcision of
the word, writing, and it must take place once,
precisely, each time one time, the unique time6
what must be brought to the fore, then, what must
be t/here, then, is a cutting-around; and yet we
imagine an Other here, we imagine a reading of
reading that were beyond such circum-scription,
that were (as) an incision. Reading, thus, marks
6

Jacques Derrida. Shibboleth: For Paul Celan, trans.

Joshua Wilner and Thomas Dutoit, in Jacques Derrida,


Sovereignties in Question. The Poetics of Paul Celan, edited
by Thomas Dutoit and Outi Pasanen. (New York: Fordham
University Press, 2005), 63 (pp. 1-64).

108

On Reading

an incision, marks an incidere, indicates a cuttingin, signals the incident, the befalling itself. The
reader is cut by the text, each time, only one
time, the only time etc. A(t) once, the never: only
once, only one time, the only time ; such once is
always a(s) never, and there is no witness for the
witness.7 There is cannot be witnessed, the only
witness[:] there is.
To read is to be alone with the word. Reading
is (to) utter solitude; she who is alone with the
text has only her word to read from. The work
is solitary, writes Blanchot,8 and this does not
mean that it remains uncommunicable, that it has
no reader. But whoever reads it enters into the
affirmation of the works solitude, just as he who
writes it belongs to the risk of this solitude. To
sacrifice ones own solitude, ones being-alone
(and we are always already alone) to the works
solitude: there is no greater sole-ness, perhaps.
And just as there is no distinction between
being and being-with/outthere is no being
7

Jacques Derrida. Poetics and Politics of Witnessing,

trans. Outi Pasanen, in Jacques Derrida Sovereignties in


Question. The Poetics of Paul Celan, 83 (pp.65-96).
8

Maurice Blanchot. The Space of Literature. Translated, with

an Introduction, by Ann Smock. (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 21.

Fidem Frangere

109

that were not an immediate with-drawal: of


essence, of existence, of presence, that is, as the
essence of essence consists in the withdrawal of
its own existence9cannot and should not the
singular act of reading be read as the enactment
of writing? Does not every reading ex-scribe, or
rather, incise a meaning in, to, the text? There is,
then, no difference between reading and writing,
or rather, difference is all there is, for all there is
is a distance, is the distancing. Such difference is
the movement of distance; that which carries,
by carrying off, the becoming of interruption.
Difference bears in its prefix the detour wherein
all power to give meaning seeks its origin in the
distance that holds it from this origin. The to
differ/deferring of difference is borne by writing,
but never inscribed by itdemanding of writing
on the contrary that, at the limit, it not inscribe;
a becoming without inscription, that it describe a
vacancy, an irregularity that no trace can stabilise
(or inform): a tracing without trace that is
circumscribed only by the endless erasure of what
determines it.10
9

Jean-Luc Nancy. Elliptical Sense, trans. Jonathan Derby-

shire, in Jean-Luc Nancy, A Finite Thinking, edited by Simon


Sparks (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 95 (pp.
91-111).
10

Blanchot. The Infinite Conversation, 170.

110

On Reading

That it not inscribe, that it not de-scribe or even


a-scribe, but that it circum-scribes. Such is the
task of writing. That is not circumscribe, but that
it marks an incision: such must be the task of
reading. The question here, then, is not merely
a question of the possibility of possibility: the
question at stake (the question of the/re is) needs
to be asked from a distance. Certainly, all this in
order to cross the distant, but also, and maybe
above all, to turn the distant back toward the
distant without approach.
That it not inscribe, that it not de-scribe or even
a-scribe, but that it circum-scribes. Such is the
task of writing. That is not circumscribe, but that
it marks an incision: such must be the task of
reading. The question here, then, is not merely
a question of the possibility of possibility: the
question at stake (the question of the/re is) needs
to be asked from a distance. Certainly, all this in
order to cross the distant, but also, and maybe
above all, to turn the distant back toward the
distant without approach.11
The task here is thus to name this possibility a
11

Maurice Blanchot. The Step Not Beyond, translated and

with an introduction by Lycette Nelson. (New York: State


University of New York Press, 1992), 69.

Fidem Frangere

distance, to name this possibility as distance, to


name the possibility of distancing (as) the only
possibility of relation. Re-calling Jean-Luc Nancy,
[t]here can only be relation [] if we start with
an absolute distancing, without which there
would be no possibility of proximity, of identity
or strangeness, of subjectivity or thinghood.12 It
is only through distance that reading is possible;
distance might indeed be what perfects the
workif, that is, the reader keeps it pure, and
inasmuch as it is, moreover, the measure of his
intimacy with the work. 13
What is must, at the same time, be ex-scribed,
must be cut out, and if we attribute a certain
presence (to the text, to the reader: to the author,
that is) then certainly not to (re)present it or
to signify it, but to let come to one and over one
what merely presents itself at the limit where
inscription itself withdraws (or ex-scribes itself,
writes itself outside itself).14

12

Jean-Luc Nancy. Res ipsa et ultima, trans. Steven Miller,

in Jean-Luc Nancy, A Finite Thinking, edited by Simon


Sparks (Stanford: Stanford University Press 2003), 315 (pp.
311-318).
13

Blanchot, The Space of Literature, 200.

14

Nancy. Elliptical Sense, 110.

111

112

On Reading

To let come to one what comes, always. Seen as


such, seen as deferred presenciation (and what
is presence but an eternal withdrawal of its own
existence), reading marks the inscription of a
presence that is not, that was never; it is a matter
of dis/appearance, always, an(d) appearance at
the cost of disappearance, and so forth. Thus [t]o
read would mean to read in the book the absence
of the book, and, as a consequence, to produce
this absence precisely where there is no question
of the book being either absent or present
(defined by an absence or a presence).15
And it is here, where there is neither presence
nor absence, that we might want to briefly recall Roland Barthes, according to whom the
now infamous death of the author is a prerequisite for text to take place: Once the Author
is removed, the claim to decipher a text becomes
quite futile. To give a text an Author is to impose
a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final
signified, to close the writing [] when the
Author has been found, the text is explained.16
Once the text is explained, it is no longer. No
15

Blanchot. The Infinite Conversation, 427.

16

Roland Barthes. The Death of the Author, in Roland

Barthes, Image Music Text, trans. Stephen Heath (New York:


Hill and Wang, 1978), 147 (pp. 142-148).

Fidem Frangere

longer to think, but to come and to let come;17 to


let come to one what comes, always.
It is, then, precisely the death of the reader (the
writer was never alive) that allows for the text. It
is at the cost of the writer (we remember Barthes
famous dictum/conclusion that the birth of
the reader must be at the cost of the death of
the Author18), but also at the cost of the reader
that a text can, that a text must be readsimply
because it is the reader herself who creates the
text: One ought to say that the readers role,
or that which will become, once the work is
complete, the power or the possibility of reading,
is already present, in changing forms, in the
genesis of the work. To the extent that to write
is to snatch oneself back from the impossibility
where writing becomes possible, writing assumes
the characteristics of readings demand, and the
writer becomes the nascent intimacy of the still
infinitely future reader.19 Or, to read Barthes20 yet
again, [t]he reader is the space on which all the
quotations that make up a writing are inscribed
without any of them being lost; a texts unity lies
17

Nancy. Elliptical Sense, 103.

18

Barthes. The Death of the Author, 148.

19

Blanchot, The Space of Literature, 198.

20

Barthes. The Death of the Author, 148.

113

114

On Reading

not in its origin but in its destination. Yet this


destination cannot any longer be personal: the
reader is without history, biography, psychology;
he is simply that someone who holds together in a
single field all the traces by which the written text
is constituted.
By no means excluding the essential singularity
of the reader, her (ostensible) im-personality is
the very condition of and for the act of reading
itself. For, as Nancy states for writing, reading
essentially displaces and deports every assigned
recognition, every prescribed identification.21
The character of the book, Nancy continues,
consists only in its own tracing, and that tracing
ends only by again taking up its own beginning
[]. Its reading is interminable, interminably
recommenced, reprised, and renewed, for writing
seeks nothing other than its own reprise.
Writing seeks its para-phrases. There is no end
of writing, as to read is to (re)write the text. As
writing, reading is a question of becoming,
always incomplete, always in the midst of being

21

Jean-Luc Nancy. On the Commerce of Thinking: Of Books

& Bookstores, trans. David Wills (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008,), 20.

Fidem Frangere

formed.22 Bearing different temporalities, it is


through this difference that writing and reading
are. Writing, consisting of anticipated readings,
always taking place in the not-yet, finds its
presence in (its) reading. Reading, lingering on
the no longer, finds its presence in and through
ex-scription. In between: a there is that can be
read as neither absence nor presence.

FIDEM
Je suis un prostitu de la lecture
Il ny a pas dIthaque
ni l ni au-del de l
I am a prostitute of reading
There is no Ithaca
neither there nor beyond there 23
The presence of the there is is, perhaps, as (an)
ex-posure. No text is true to its words, and there
22

Gilles Deleuze. Essays Critical and Clinical (London and

New York: Verso, 1998), 1.


23

Michel Deguy. Dvotion/Devotion, in Recumbents. Po-

ems, translations, foreword, and notes by Wilson Baldridge


(Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2005), 114f.

115

116

On Reading

is no texture for the word. En passant, every


word(ing) bears its abandonment. The word
betrays, makes us believe, makes us believe that
there is a there is. For, the act of reading is an act
of t/reason, always. Etymologically to be read as
to advice or to explain, reading does not seek a
response, nor does it aim at an ex-change. Rather,
it intrudes (always intrudes) and, re-enacting
singular wordings, it in-scribes an existence that
is not, that has never been; reading, again, is
nothing but the imposition of meanings, of conotations external to the textjust as there is no
inside inside the text.
The intruding reader, reading as intruder,
intruded by the text, pretends to understand,
imagines possibilities of (its) existence, of
presence as such: as if the work were a preexisting object to which the reader, wholly
independent of it, responds, whereas it is in fact
a set of coded signals which become a poem or a
novel only in a specific reading, and within which
the reader too comes into being (as a singular
subject partly produced in the reading of the
work). Reading a work therefore makes it happen
[] a reading is a performance of the singularity
and otherness of the writing that constitutes the
work as it comes into being for a particular reader

Fidem Frangere

in a particular context.24
Hence reading is a(s) re-presentation. Reading
does nothing but a re-presentation of the
singularity and otherness of the text, just as it
adds the singularity and otherness of every reader
to the text. As Chris Fynsk points out, the text
is a presentation of thought; reading requires a
relation to the text as presentation [] and as a
presentation of thought [] It requires constant
recollection of the fact that as long as we are
interpreting, we are not yet reading.25 We need
to begin, we need to begin to read. Only through
reading can such relation be established. To write
with Avital Ronell, the connection to the other
is a readingnot an interpretation, assimilation,
or even a hermeneutic understanding, but a
reading. 26
And what is reading, after all? Nothing but an
assignation of signs, of the sign as designator of
24

Derek Attridge. The Singularity of Literature (London and

New York, Routledge, 2004), 87.


25

Christopher Fynsk. Language and Relation: ...that there is

language (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 4.


26

Avital Ronell. The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizo-

phrenia, Electric Speech (Lincoln and London:University of


Nebraska Press, 1989), 380.

117

118

On Reading

an assumed signation, deferred and at the same


time, as Blanchot states for the text, [a] set of
phenomena that hold themselves in view; and
what is writing if not bringing into view, making
appear, bringing to the surface?27 And what
is reading if not precisely the concealment of
such surface, which is nothing but yet another
origin? Reading is (nothing but) this: Reading
is ignorant. It begins with what it reads and in
this way discovers the force of a beginning. It is
receiving and hearing, not the power to decipher
and analyze, to go beyond by developing or
to go back before by laying bare; it does not
comprehend (strictly speaking), it attends. A
marvelous innocence.28
Reading betrays, reading pretends. As every
attempt to understand, reading pretends that
there was something given, some essence that
could be read (inscribed). And yet there is no text,
the text is (to be) made, by ourselves. It is us who
write the text, each time, and this is why the text
cannot be read as such. The text, it seems evident,
must remain anOther; it cannot be accessed.
What is a book no one reads? Something that
is not yet written. It would seem, then, that to
27

Blanchot. The Infinite Conversation, 165.

28

Blanchot. The Infinite Conversation, 320.

Fidem Frangere

119

read is not to write the book again, but to allow


the book to be: written this time all by itself,
without the intermediary of the writer, without
anyones writing it. The reader does not add
himself to the book, but tends primarily to relieve
it of an author.29
The impersonality of the reader creates the
book, since to read is [] not to obtain
communication from the work, but to make
the work communicate itself.30 Thus [r]eading
simply makes the book, the work, become a
work beyond the man who produced it, the
experience that is expressed in it and even beyond
all the artistic resources which tradition has
made available. The singular property of reading
demonstrates the singular sense of the verb
to make in the expression it makes the work
become a work 31
As Derek Attridge asserts, [a]ll reading is an
event as much as it is an act32 and this is why
reading could, perhaps, indeed be an attempt
to respond to the otherness, inventiveness, and
29

Blanchot. The Space of Literature, 192.

30

Blanchot. The Space of Literature, 197.

31

Blanchot. The Space of Literature, 192f.

32

Attridge. The Singularity of Literature, 81.

120

On Reading

singularity of the work [] When it succeeds


in apprehending otherness, in registering the
singularity and inventiveness of the work, we may
call a reading creative.33
Yet, there is no other (form of) reading. Every
reading that does not surrender to its own
impossibility (namely, to read the text as such:
again, there is no such that could be read) remains
as such: impossible. Only Otherness allows for
com-prehension. And such Otherness, in turn,
allows for what Derrida claims for writing,
namely a nonsymmetrical division designated
on the one hand the closure of the book, and on
the other the opening of the text.34 The closure of
meaning allows for the opening of the text. This
is why [r]eading is not a conversation; it does
not discuss, it does not question. It never asks of
the book, and still less of the author: What did
you mean exactly? What truth, then, do you bring
me? A genuine reading never puts the genuine
book into question. But neither does it submit to

33

Attridge. The Singularity of Literature, 79.

34

Jacques Derrida. Ellipsis, in Jacques Derrida, Writing

and Difference. Translated, with an introduction and additional notes, by Alan Bass (London an New York: Routledge,
2002), 371 (pp. 371-378).

Fidem Frangere

121

the text.35
Without a text an sich, no book can be read.
Reading, again, remains impossible, is possible
only as such: as the possibility of impossibility. As
a matter of principle, we read Nancy, the book
is illegible, and it calls for or commands reading
in that illegibility. Illegibility is not a question of
what is too badly formed, crossed out, scribbled:
the illegible is what remains closed in the opening
of the book, what slips from page to page but
remains caught, glued, stitched into the binding
[] What is illegible is not for reading at all, yet
only by starting from it does something then offer
itself to reading. Of itself the book is untouched
and sealed; it begins and ends in that sealing; it is
always its own epitaph: here lies an illegible one.36
Becoming its own epitaph, always already,
the (textual surface of the) book must remain
untouched. Its problem, as Nancy rightly points
out, is that a unity and uniqueness are implied
in it.37 The sacredness of the book, he states,
35

Blanchot. The Space of Literature, 193.

36

Nancy. On the Commerce of Thinking: Of Books & Book-

stores, 27.
37

Nancy. On the Commerce of Thinking: Of Books & Book-

stores, 15.

122

On Reading

consists in the fact that the book poses and


imposes itself at one and the same time as a given,
fully formed, integral and nonmodifiable entity,
while also opening itself liberally to reading,
which will never stop opening it wider and
deeper, giving it a thousand senses or a thousand
secrets, rewriting it, finally, in a thousand ways.38
[ La quantit de fragments me dchire
(Ren Char)]
What is at stake here, thus, is the possibility of
the cum, and the very possibility of possibility
itself: Is it, in fact, possible to read? Is it, in fact,
possible to enter relation?
As is the case with possibility, the act of reading
is, once more, an impossible task. Reading, read
as such, cannot actually take (its) place, or it is
not. Reading, therefore, remains an incomplete
act, its act being (its) incompletion. What is
is to be read as finite fragment: reading is a(s)
fragmentary readings. The fragment is, here, to be
read as incomplete. Reading assumes that there
is something that could be readsomething that
could be read as such. For there is no cum either.
38

Nancy. On the Commerce of Thinking: Of Books & Book-

stores, 18.

Fidem Frangere

And such reading, as every reading, is to break


ones word. We will not keep our word here, and
never.
And still we ask, is the impossibility of reading,
then, possible (=and there is no sign of
interrogation here)

FRANGERE.
The favorable fragment 39
Thus reading, perhaps, is possible only as (the
possibility of) fragmentary reading, a(s) reading
of the fragment. It is the fragmentary that offers
the ghost of a chance, not the void of pure
absence but the ambiguous image of a word
effacing itself.40 Beyond absence or presence, the
fragment is, il y a: The fragment is to be written
singularly, the fragment is a written singularity,
never to be written in the plural; the fragment
happens only once. Etymologically rooted in
39

Blanchot. The Step Not Beyond, 63.

40

William S. Allen. Ellipsis. Of Poetry and the Experience of

Language after Heidegger, Hlderlin, and Blanchot (Albany,


State University of New York Press, 2007), 196.

123

124

On Reading

frangere, to break, every fragment de-signates a/


its rupture.
Some fragmentary readings of the fragment, then.
Of the fragment, little should be written, JeanLuc Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe begin their essay
Noli Me Frangere.41 Claiming that the fragment,
being neither object nor genre, does not form
a work, they assert that [i]t is a mistake [] to
write in fragments on the fragment.
This means, as Blanchot states for writing,
that [t]o no longer be able to write except in
relation to the fragmentary is not to write in
fragments, unless the fragment is itself a sign
for the fragmentary.[] Still, we cannot, thus,
writing, free ourselves from a logic of totality
in considering it as ideally completed, in order
to maintain as pure remainder a possibility of
writing, outside of everything, useless or endless,
whose study a completely different logic (that
of repetition, of limits, and of the return)still
difficult to disengageclaims to guarantee us.
41Jean-Luc Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. Noli
me Frangere, trans. Brian Holmes, in Jean-Luc Nancy, The
Birth to Presence, trans. Brian Holmes and others (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1993), 266 (pp. 266-278).

Fidem Frangere

125

What is already decided is that such a writing


would never be pure, but, on the contrary,
profoundly altered, with an alteration that could
not be defined (arrested) in regard to a norm.42
And yet, there is no other way to write, to write
on the fragment than to write in fragments. The
there is is to be read as and through the fragment/
ary: (the) there is (is) no(thing) outside the
fragment, (the) there is does neither refer to (its)
completion nor to a hidden totality. All there
is are momentary sites. Constituting a rupture,
always, the fragment is not to be reduced to its
fragmentary form. Rather it is to be seen as
both content and form, and beyond both (But as
yet, Schlegel reminds us, no genre exists that is
fragmentary both in form and content).43 Such
is the task of fragmentary reading: reading gives
form to content, and vice versa.
And of the fragment we know nothing. We must
not know: such is the exigency of the fragment.
We cannot know: such is the pre-requisite of the
42

Blanchot. The Step Not Beyond, 42.

43

Friedrich Schlegel. Athenaeum Fragments, in Friedrich

Schlegel, Philosophical Fragments, trans. P. Firchow (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1991),
27 (pp. 18-93).

126

On Reading

fragment. We must, Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe


argue, not believe that we could know how
to fragment, that we could know ourselves in
fragments, that we actually could fragment. No
one fragments, unless perhaps it is that Noli me
frangere that all writing utters: dont fragment me,
dont wish to fragment me.44
Noli me frangere, do not dissolve myself, cries the
text; the text cries because it does not know. Alien
to itself, the text, as the fragment, must come
from an outside. The fragment is Other, always,
and [t]he fragmentary expresses itself best,
perhaps, in a language that does not recognize it.
Fragmentary: meaning neither the fragment, part
of a whole, nor the fragmentary in itself.45
Un-recognisable, the fragment is different, always
different. This is why the fragment proves the idea
of a whole an absurdity: if there was a whole, how
could it be ruptured?
By no means does the fragment designate a lack,
on the contrary; the fragment ruptures its own
existence. As Blanchot showed in his text on
Nietzsche, [f]ragmentary speech does not know
44

Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe. Noli me Frangere, 267.

45

Blanchot. The Step Not Beyond, 43.

Fidem Frangere

127

self-sufficiency; it does not suffice, does not speak


in view of itself, does not have its content as its
meaning. But neither does it combine with other
fragments to form a more complete thought, a
general knowledge. The fragmentary does not
precede the whole, but says itself outside the
whole, and after it.46 Outside and after it, and the
fragment is all there is: in order to be read, the
text must remain external.
All there is, then, are fragments
The world worlds as wording. Its fragmentation
serves as (its) opening; it is self-contained and yet
open. A fragment, we read Friedrich Schlegel
has to be entirely isolated from the surrounding
world and be complete in itself like a porcupine.47
The fragment eludes its reading, its classification.
We cannot know the fragment, and all we can
know is the fragment. As Nancy (Ludovico)
declares: Ill claim for writing (not for myself ,
but for literature) nothing less than the risking
of this willingness and the hazarding that writing
may shatter, burst apart.48 Such initial willingness
46
47
48

Blanchot. The Infinite Conversation, 152.


Schlegel. Athenaeum Fragments, 45.
Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe. Noli me Frangere, 276.

128

On Reading

for (self-)destruction is the conditio sine qua


non for every text. If writing is the destruction
of every voice, of every point of origin,49 then
reading is originating this destruction. It is the
fragment that gives evidence of the alienation
between reader and text. Fragment speech is
speech of the between-two [] The speech of
fragment does not form a joinder from one to
the other, it rather separates them; as long as it
speaks, and in speaking remains silent, it is the
moving tear of time that maintains, one infinitely
distant from the other, these two figures wherein
knowledge turns.50 There is no reconciliation
between reader and text.
The fragment is conditioned by finitude, just as it
is the condition of and for finitude.
Every reading is a finite reading, a reading of and
in finitude (the fragment, and the fragment alone,
allow for readings of finitude). As insinuated
above, the reader must not impose a meaning
on the text; rather, she must dare to let the text
be different. Finitude, here, is sensu Jean-Luc
Nancy understood as the non-fixing of []
signification: not, however, as the powerlessness
49

Barthes. The Death of the Author, 142.

50

Blanchot. The Infinite Conversation, 158.

Fidem Frangere

to fix it, but as the power to leave it open.


`Finitude` thus means: unaccomplishment as the
condition for the accomplishment of action (or
for the accomplishment that action is).51 Thus
reading, then, must account for an ethics of dis/
appearance52 an ethics that follows Heideggers
interpretation of the Heraclitian ethos as an
abode, or place of dwelling; it designates an open
region. And these ethe are to be seen as l/ethe,
with lethe being conceived as concealment rather
than as being related to truth, aletheia.
What is must be concealed in order to be, to
come, to become. The text must remain obscure.
In the end, au-del de l, there is, then, a step/not
sensu Blanchot. Reading, the latter reminds us,
is anguish, and this is because any text, however
important, or amusing, or interesting it may be
[], is emptyat bottom it doesnt exist; you
have to cross an abyss, and if you do not jump,
you do not comprehend.53 A leap/ing in, to, the
51

Jean-Luc Nancy. Originary Ethics, trans. Duncan Large,

in Jean-Luc Nancy, A Finite Thinking, 178 (pp. 172-195).


52

See Julia Hlzl. Transience. A poiesis, of dis/appearance

(New York/Dresden: Atropos Press, 2010), especially pp.


85-92.
53 Blanchot. The Writing of the Disaster, 10.

129

130

On Reading

abyss. The abyss: it is here where the opening is


a-mounted. Only with,in the abyss can there be
an opening towards the text: it is with, in such
chasm that readings occur. And once again one
has to jump in order to sense this sans: A-byssos,
without bottom, sans fundament, grund-los. Only
through such originary Grund-losigkeit can the
text be read as such. As such, the text has neither
beginning nor end, nor does it possess an origin/
al.
Sub-sequently, the pas is both, is both step and
no/thing, and this is why it is the pas, and the pas
alone, that allows for such leap.
In order to read, we have to leap; in order to leap,
we have to read. Non solum: sed etiam.

Nicole Ong

133

The Trauma of
Language,
in reading, ethics
and Beloved.
Reading would be a lovely thing,
if it werent for the words that get in the way.
Perhaps reading is not very far from trauma
for trauma, like reading, is a reading of the self.
For we can never pre-empt what will become
a traumatic event in our lives, or know why
something has traumatised one person and not
the other, or even why an event that may have
not been traumatic to an earlier version of the
self now causes such distress. In this way, trauma
reveals there is something about the self that is
unique, inconstant; the self remains a secret to
itself, a secret from the self.
Perhaps a similar thing happens as one reads,
in the sense of there being no knowing how
reading will potentially change the self. In every
encounter with a text, there is an unknown part of

134

On Reading

ourselves that we exchange for something else. If


the process of trauma is a metaphor for reading, it
is a foreboding albeit prophetic one: the exchange
that we make with the text, for a self that we
will not know, could potentially transform us or
traumatise us. It is a sacrifice of the self for an
unknown one. A sacrifice, like all sacrifices, that is
irrational except to the one who makes it.
***
So much of humanness and language are
intrinsically linked. In more than merely a
metaphorical way, Toni Morrisons Beloved
explores the extent to which ones reality is
shaped through languageboth the absence and
presence of itand in doing so, alludes to how we
can begin to understand the effects of reading.
Derrida writes in The Gift of Death that [one]
cannot respond to the call, the request, the
obligation, or even the love of another without
sacrificing the other other, the other others.1 To
choose one is to neglect the rest. It is perhaps the
irony of humanness, where even in an ethical
responsean attempt at being humanewe
1 Jacques Derrida. The Gift of Death (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 68.

The Trauma of Language

cannot help but perpetuate a form of inhumanity


towards another. If this is the case, the best ethics
can hope to do is make the attempt to choose
the option of least violence. The failure to do
this is the crime that Sethe is charged with. She
is constantly judged by others for choosing the
wrong other to empathise with, for choosing the
least of all sensible choices. Paul D accuses her of
acting like an animal, quipping You got two feet,
Sethe, not four,2 when he discovers that she has
killed her child. Paul Ds words convey his disgust
with her lack of reason and responsibility as a
mother. To him, a mothers role is to ensure the
protection of her childs life at all costs. Therefore,
when Sethe chooses to value or empathise with
Beloveds freedom over Beloveds life itself, it is an
incomprehensible thought. Furthermore, Sethes
inability to explain her actions beyond saying
repeatedly, I took and put my babies where
theyd be safe,3 does little to convince Paul D of
her credibility. His instincts exemplify a common
impulse, as Derrida highlights:
For common sense, just as for
philosophical reasoning, the
most widely shared belief is that
2 Toni Morrison. Beloved. (UK: Vintage, 2007), 194.
3 Morrison, Beloved, 193.

135

136

On Reading

responsibility is tied to the public and


to the nonsecret, to the possibility
and even the necessity of accounting
for ones words and actions in front of
others, of justifying and owning up to
them.4
Since the ethical is as such is the universal,5 the
act in question must be able to be universally
recognised and this is most traditionally done
so through the means of language. To be able to
speak of it is proof of this universality, of ones
ethicality; it is that which inscribes the realm of
the humane. Here, Sethes refusal (and perhaps
inability) to explain the controversy of her actions
seals our perception of her inhumanity. The logic
that if it can be spoken, it is acceptable prevails;
and the reverse is equally at work, if it cannot be
spoken, it is disregarded.
With the ethical being inextricably tied to
language, it unfortunately also becomes the
very thing that enables the choosing of one
over the other. We easily turn a blind eye to
our un-ethicality towards Sethe when we can
4 Derrida. The Gift of Death, 60.
5 Soren Kierkegaard. Fear and Trembling, translated by
Alastair Hannay. (UK: Penguin Books, 2005), 98.

The Trauma of Language

137

articulate reasons to justify ourselves: her act was


so inhumane, for example, that she could not
possibly deserve any empathy. Words allow us this
duplicity, to be to one what we are not to another.
In Sethes case, they are the things that trap her
from being a part of the ethical task, what
Kierkegaard calls the unwrapping of [the act in
question] from this concealment [so that it can]
become disclosed in the universal.6 Beloved is the
undertaking of such a task, balancing between
viewing Sethes situation in its singularity, not in
isolation from her history, from the history of her
family, and from the institution of slavery,7 whilst
attempting to establish the translation of her
story into something universal. Morrisons novel
is a call to justice, one that involves more than
mimesis or the repeated representation of past
traumas, so [that] judgement requires a working
through.8 One of her first calls to justice is to give
a voice and language to that which has yet been
spoken about. Beloved is an experiment with the
concept of black motherhood differing so greatly
6 Kierkegaard. Fear and Trembling, 98.
7 Raja Halwani. Literary Ethics. in Journal of Aesthetic
Education 32.3, 1998, 20.
8 Gregory S. Jay Other Peoples Holocausts: Trauma, Empathy, and Justice in Anna Deavere Smiths Fires in the Mirror.
Contemporary Literature 48.1, 2007, 123.

138

On Reading

from our traditional sensibilities that it requires


an entirely different way of regarding it. Morrison
crafts a new language to make sense of this world,
allowing one to empathise with the responsibility
that characterises black motherhood. In this way,
the novel reminds us that the absence of language
may not necessarily render something unethical;
it may simply not have been written about just
yet.
For, in The Gift of Death, Derrida proposes a
notion of responsibility that is counterintuitive,
a responsibility that requires the absence of
language and that requires silence: that one must
first be irresponsible in order to be absolutely
responsible. He states:
Such is the aporia of responsibility:
one always risks not managing to
accede to the concept of responsibility
in the process of forming it. For
responsibility demands on the one hand
an accounting, a general answering for
oneself with respect to the general and
before the generality, hence the idea of
substitution, and on the other hand,
uniqueness, absolute singularity, hence
nonsubstitution, nonrepetition, silence

The Trauma of Language

139

and secrecy.9
To illustrate the aporetic nature of responsibility,
where it is both accountability and yet secrecy
at the same time, Derrida uses the example of
Abrahams sacrifice of his son, Isaac. In this story,
without revealing his intentions, the secret,
hidden, separate, absent, or mysterious,10 God
asks Abraham to offer his son as a sacrifice to
him. As father and son prepare to climb the
mountain, Isaac asks his father where they will
find the sacrificial lamb. Abraham responds by
saying that God himself will provide one. He
keeps the secret of what God has ordered him
to do, and does not speak of it to his son or the
rest of his family lest they hinder the process of
sacrifice.
And, because he doesnt speak, Abraham
transgresses the ethical order, that is, the highest
expression of the ethical is in terms of what
binds us to our own and to our fellows (that can
be the family but also the actual community of
friends or the nation). By keeping the secret, and
remaining responsible to God, Abraham betrays

9 Derrida. The Gift of Death, 60.


10 Derrida. The Gift of Death, 58.

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On Reading

ethics.11 The ethical is a temptation that must


be resisted because as soon as one speaks, as
soon as one enters the medium of language, one
loses that very singularity [] speaking relieves
us, Kierkegaard notes, for it translates into the
general.12 By justifying his actions, Abraham
would lose his ultimate responsibility along with
his singularity, make him lose his unjustifiable,
secret and absolute responsibility before God.13
Hence, Abrahams absolute responsibility, or faith
as Kierkegaard calls it, towards God brings him
to a place where the single individual is higher
than the universal, where the single individual
determines his relation to the universal through
his relation to the absolute, 14 rendering him in
a posture of absolute duty. It is this relation with
the absolute other, this binding in his singularity
with this other that immediately propels [him]
into the space or risk of absolute sacrifice,15
because Abraham has to sacrifice all else (in this
instance, Isaac) in order to respond to God. This
is why Abraham becomes thoroughly incapable

11 Derrida. The Gift of Death, 59.


12 Derrida. The Gift of Death, 60.
13 Derrida. The Gift of Death, 61.
14 Kierkegaard. Fear and Trembling, 82.
15 Derrida. The Gift of Death, 68.

The Trauma of Language

of making himself understandable.16 Derrida


emphasises that, if I put to death or grant death
to what I hate it is not a sacrifice. I must sacrifice
what I love17 because:
It is indeed this love for Isaac that
makes his act a sacrifice by its
paradoxical contrast to his love for
God. But the distress and the anxiety
in the paradox is that he, humanly
speaking, is thoroughly incapable of
making himself understandable. Only
in the instant when his act is in absolute
contradiction to his feelings, only then
does he sacrifice Isaac, but the reality
of his act is that by which he belongs
to the universal, and there he is and
remains a murderer.18
Though the sacrifice must be of something that
one loves, the love for the Other must be greater
in order to make that sacrifice. It is not difficult to
see Beloved as the greatest sacrifice that Sethe has
to make. To the mother, the best thing she was,
was her children. Whites might dirty her all right,
16 Derrida. The Gift of Death, 65.
17 Derrida. The Gift of Death, 63-64.
18 Derrida. The Gift of Death, 65.

141

142

On Reading

but not her best thing, her beautiful, magical best


thingthe part of her that was clean19 as they
represent a part of her that is irreplaceable, a part
that has not yet been defiled. Denver describes
Sethe as trying to persuade Beloved [] that
what she had done was right because it came
from true love,20 a love that sincerely wanted to
prevent her daughter from suffering through the
trauma of slavery. Sethe tells her daughter that
anybody white could take your whole self for
anything that came to mind. Not just work, kill,
or maim you, but dirty you. Dirty you so bad you
couldnt like yourself anymore. Dirty you so bad
you forgot who you were and couldnt think it
up.21 Just like how Isaac is not the sacrifice per
se, more precisely Abrahams relationship with
Isaac that Abraham must give up, Sethe sacrifices
her relationship with Beloved so that she might
have a whole life in death apart from her white
tormentors.
In this way, Sethe makes apparent an irrevocable
binary between the slaves and the slave owners.
Life without defilement, freedom and humanity
is impossible for them in the presence of the slave
19 Morrison. Beloved, 296.
20 Morrison. Beloved, 295.
21 Morrison. Beloved, 295.

The Trauma of Language

owners. In Beloved, schoolteacher is the epitome


of personhood that Sethe does not know and
cannot know, he is:
The quintessential figure of white male
authority, wielding the power of the
word as well as the whip. While his
students attempt to define Sethe in
their notebooks, he tells them to put
her human characteristics on the left;
her animal ones on the right. And dont
forget to line them up. Sethes assertion
of her humanity earns her the scars
that form a choke-cherry tree on her
back; when she protests the way that
schoolteacher has allowed his nephews
to milk heras if she were a cowhe
orders them to whip Sethe back into
silence.22
Male, female; object, subject; human, animal;
voice, voiceless; power, powerless; master, slave;
freedom, bondage; selfish, selfless his presence
calls to life all the binaries that exist between
them, dictating the posture in which she must
22 Caroline M. Woidat. Talking Back to Schoolteacher:
Morrisons Confrontation with Hawthorne in Beloved. MFS
Modern Fiction Studies 39.3-4, 1993, 528.

143

144

On Reading

exist before him. Hence, Sethes ability to be a


mother to her children, an exertion of her self,
cannot exist in relation to him. As schoolteacher
tracks Sethe down to enslave her and her children
back into Sweet Home, he is her absolute Other to
whom she must always respond at all cost. When
she recognised schoolteachers hat,23 it was all
that was necessary to propel her into action, into
the space or risk of absolute sacrifice.24
Whilst the element of love is present in Abrahams
Other,25 leading to his extraordinary faith, there
is of course the unmistakable absence of love in
Sethes absolute other. When Sethe responds to
schoolteachers presence in Baby Suggs yard, it is
not his face that she reacts to, but a recognition of
his hat that sends her flying.26 This encompasses
the nature of their impersonal relationship; to
23 Morrison. Beloved, 192.
24 Derrida. The Gift of Death, 68.
25 For God promises Abraham that He will establish [His]
covenant between [Him] and [Abraham], and [He] will
multiply [Abraham] exceedingly in Genesis 17. Abrahams
faith hinges on this promise in Genesis 17:19, that it is
through Isaac that God will fulfil the covenant He has with
Abraham: to make him a father of a multitude of nations.
(Genesis 17:5).
26 Morrison. Beloved, 192.

The Trauma of Language

145

her, his face is irrelevant. Where the God of


Abraham eventually stops him from murdering
his son, Sethes faceless Horror makes no such
intervention. It would be counterproductive
therefore to talk about faith in terms of Sethes
relationship with schoolteacher. Neither faith
nor love compels her to action, yet there is an
obvious force, one equal to or more powerful than
faith, which keeps Sethe stuck in this absolute
singularity with schoolteacher. In a relationship
that is predicated only upon fear and is empty of
love, Sethes absolute responsibility towards her
other can only be terrifyingly binding, senseless
and desperate. It can only be borne out of trauma.
Where Abrahams faith is based upon the
certainty of Gods faithfulness, Sethes trauma
stems from schoolteachers consistency in taking
her best things away from her. As Dean Franco
indicates, property is the point in the novel, and
it is where trauma and material possession meet.
[] The experience of the black characters is
decidedly the experience of propertystealing or
being stolen, freeing or being freed, repossessing,
and hauntingly, claiming, and adeptly identifies
the novels particular lexicon of trauma.27
27 Dean Franco.What We Talk About When We Talk About
Beloved. MFS Modern Fiction Studies 52.2, 2006, 425.

146

On Reading

However, his surmising of trauma being part of


a collective experience of the black characters
implies that a culturally and ethnically similar
group will always undergo the same traumatic
experience, that trauma can be mutually
understood. Beloved suggests otherwise. Sethe
alludes to this possible source of her trauma as
she explains to Paul D the origins of the scars on
her back:
After I left you, those boys came in
there and took my milk. Thats what
they came in there for. Held me down
and took it. I told Mrs. Garner on em.
She had that lump and couldnt speak
but her eyes rolled out tears. Them boys
found out I told on em. Schoolteacher
made one open up my back, and when
it closed it made a tree. It grows there
still.
They used cowhide on you?
And they took my milk.
They beat you and you was
pregnant?
And they took my milk!28

28 Morrison. Beloved, 19-20.

The Trauma of Language

147

As Paul D struggles to comprehend the


monstrosity of beating a pregnant woman,
Sethes indignation lies in the fact that she was
forced to release the best thing that, as a mother,
she could give her children. That another slave
does not immediately understand her distress
highlights that trauma is not a cultural or shared
experience. It is this assumption that one has the
ability to grasp the source of anothers trauma that
Morrison cautions us against. For one to assume
that trauma is entirely knowable is a violent
gesture again falling back into the system which
leaves no room for the absolute alterity of the
other.29 It is a gesture akin to the arrogant notion
that anything outside of ones comprehension is
unjustifiable and unacceptable. This is the mistake
that Paul D makes, that Sethes critics make, as
they proceed to execute an impulsive judgement
on her actions.
Cautious against the repetition of this violence
onto Sethe, Beloved offers the possibility that a
traumatic experience is one that is utterly that of
an individuals. In Sethes case, as schoolteacher
and his nephews rape her of her milk, we witness
the first possible collapse of assumptive world: a
29 Dorata Glowacka. Sacrificing the Text: The Philosopher/
Poet at Mount Moriah. Animus (2), 1997, 38.

148

On Reading

world where she has ownership over her body and


her children. Her initial denial of this collapse
is evident through her futile attempt to seek
justice. Her words, I told Mrs. Garner on em, is
reminiscent of a child tattling on another child,
and the incongruity of such a light-hearted tone
with the gravity of the rape is incomprehensible.
Yet, this is the extent of the uneven relationship
between a black mother and a white slave owner.
In a white world, no matter the outrageous things
done to her, Sethe will always merely be regarded
as an insignificant tattletale. All she is left with is
the haunting memory of two boys with mossy
teeth, one sucking on my breast the other holding
me down, their book-reading teacher watching
and writing it up.30 Furthermore, written on her
body now is the indelible seal of schoolteachers
authority over her. As permanent as the
chokecherry tree scars on her back are, so is his
unshakeable presence in her life.
Not only does he remove her best as a mother, he
also takes away the dignity of her humanness as
a human being. She tells Beloved:
I was about to turn around and keep on
my way to where the muslin was, when
30 Morrison. Beloved, 38.

The Trauma of Language

I heard him say, No, no. Thats not


the way. I told you to put her human
characteristics on the left; her animal
ones on the right. And dont forget to
line them up. I commenced to walk
backward, didnt even look behind me
to find out where I was headed. I just
kept lifting my feet and pushing back.
When I bumped up against a tree my
scalp was prickly. [] My head itched
like the devil. Like somebody was
sticking fine needles in my scalp.31
Instead of having insight as to why Sethe is so
disturbed by what she overhears, we only read
of her physical symptoms that act as signifiers
pointing to the dissonance within her. In a
subsequent conversation with her husband, she
has no ability to describe or even make sense of
why and how this event has affected her. That
language can only describe the exterior effects of
trauma on her body and not her interior wounds
reflects the way that language is limited to a
superficial rendering of the magnitude of the
traumatic experience. Trauma, like faith, remains
outside of reason and language becomes a symbol
of what cannot be spoken, as words can never
31 Morrison. Beloved, 228.

149

150

On Reading

be sufficient in their task of representation or


substitution, even though they are necessary, in
some sense they always lie, even as they are used
to tell the truth.32 When Paul D attempts to force
an explanation out of Sethe, his attempt is futile:
Sethe knew that the circle she was
making around the room, him, the
subject, would remain one. That she
could never close in, pin it down
for anybody who had to ask. If they
didnt get it right off she could never
explain. Because the truth was simple
[] Simple: she was squatting in the
garden and when she saw them coming
and recognised schoolteachers hat, she
heard wings. Little hummingbirds stuck
their needle beaks right through her
headcloth into her hair and beat their
wings. And if she thought anything, it
was No. No. Nono. Nonono. Simple.
She just flew.33
Here, the third-person narration intrudes on
32 William R. Handley. The House a Ghost Built: Nommo,
Allegory, and the Ethics of Reading in Toni Morrisons Beloved. Contemporary Literature 36.4, 1995, 688.
33 Morrison. Beloved, 192.

The Trauma of Language

her initial first-person perspective and allows


the readers to see and hear things that she
cannot express to Paul D. It has no choice but to
do so, because Sethe cannot explain the event,
not even to herself. The return of the fine
needles sensation suggests that schoolteachers
reappearance is a trigger for Sethe. Matsakis
defines a trigger as anything that reminds [one]
of [ones] trauma and thereby activates stressrelated emotions and/or physical symptoms.34
Following that, triggers can bring forth not only
memories of the trauma, but the physiological
states of terror and high anxiety (adrenaline)
or the physiological states of shutdown and
withdrawal. People who have been severely or
multiply traumatised often live in an altered
state of arousal and even decades after the event,
they may exhibit [] reactions to reminders of
the trauma.35 Here, Morrison uses a metaphor
of the hummingbirds in attempt to communicate
the state of Sethes hyperarousal. The assonance
of needle beaks creates the piercing effect that
conveys the insistence of the imaginary birds
attack, paralleling the way she is triggered into
action by schoolteachers arrival. The beating
34 Aphrodite Matsakis. Trust After Trauma. (California:
New Harbinger Publications, 1998.), 95.
35 Matsakis. Trust After Trauma, 96.

151

152

On Reading

of the hummingbirds wings portrays an inner


turmoil that is so chaotic it cannot be merely
swatted away and dismissed. Finally, the words
she just flew are ironic, as unlike even the
little hummingbirds that can fly away freely,
Sethe has nowhere to go. In doing so, Morrison
creates poignancy for her character, but even
more importantly, the irony here emphasises the
difficulty of being able to mean what one says.
Sethe calls the event simple since narrating
the event is evidently possible, but it is also the
last word that can even begin to represent this
event. Simply put, at its core, the trauma remains
inaccessible to knowledge.36 This is what makes
it difficult to understandhow can something be
said without saying anything at all? In this way,
Sethes trauma renders her silent to the point
where it becomes a secret even to herself. It is this
traumatic singularity with schoolteacher (since
it is only Sethe that he has this specific effect on)
that compels her to the same sacrificial end.
Two things are happening simultaneously as
schoolteachers presence triggers Sethe into a
traumatic return. Her response is immediate. She
reacts firstly as a slave: only as a slave does she
36 Judith Greenberg. The Echo of Trauma and the Trauma
of Echo. American Imago 55.3, 1998, 321.

The Trauma of Language

153

need to feel fear in the presence of a white slave


owner; only as a slave does she have a reason
to respond to him at all. The need to protect,
however, comes from her second response as a
mother. It is after all only a slaves recognition of
her slave masters power that leads her to realise
as a mother that her children are in danger. In
this instance, unlike Abrahams absolute loyalty
to his Other, Sethe is not entirely faithful to the
slave/master binary opposition. Her act of flying
demonstrates her attempt to respond to the
mutually exclusive categories of both slave and
mother at the same time. By running, instead
of submissively yielding to him, Sethe attempts
to break free from this bind with him in order
to be a mother to her children and to protect
them from harm. Her maternal instincts are
understandable, the want to protect her child
from slavery and the self-preservation of wanting
to keep the things most precious to her. Though
her body is literally inscribed with this mark of
white male dominance, Sethe ultimately defies
schoolteachers authority by killing her own child.
She kills Beloved so that no one, nobody on this
earth, would list her daughters characteristics
on the animal side of the paper.37 Reaffirming
her own humanity as well as her childrens,
37 Morrison. Beloved, 296.

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On Reading

Sethe denies schoolteacher the right to possess


her family as slaves.38 Here we can read her
motherhood as an attempt to break the binary
between them. But it comes at a major sacrifice.
By attempting to assert herself, to have everything
that he has (that is, the freedom to choose another
other to respond to), to be the mother that she
was never allowed to be, the gift that she can give
to her daughter is one of death; a gift of death. It
is a double paradox and tragedy: not only does
her gift of death take away her ability to ever be
Beloveds mother again, it is also the only freedom
she can ever have. She can never know any other.
The binding paradox of her reality leads her to
sacrifice without restraint, to the point of physical
death.
The strength of Sethes motherhood is
traditionally celebrated, yet to merely consider
this aspect of her sacrifice is inadequate. Though
her attempt to assert herself already renders her
to such a tragic sacrifice of her own motherhood,
the greater sacrifice ultimately still lies in her
relationship with schoolteacher. Her transgression
in loving her children that thickly in Paul D
words, and existing outside the boundaries
38 Woidat. Talking Back to Schoolteacher, 528.

The Trauma of Language

of slavery cannot go without penance, since


loving as a slave, according to Paul D, meant
loving small, loving in an unobvious way so
that whatever was loved did not become part
of a technique for punishment.39 Consider the
essential outcome of her actions, in that by the
time she faced him, looked him dead in the eye,
she had something in her arms that stopped him
in his tracks. He took a backward step with each
jump of the baby heart until finally there were
none.40 The babys heartbeat and schoolteachers
footsteps moving as one beat portrays the way
they are united by an inextricable tension. One
cannot be present with the other; yet Sethes life is
as powerfully defined by one as it is by the other.
We can read the scene as the horror of the babys
impending death pushing schoolteacher away, or
conversely, signifying that with each step he takes
away from Sethe, he pulls her babys life away
with him. In this we see a familiar echo of Sethes
past traumatic encounter returning to her present
situation. It is as Caruth argues:
[Trauma] cannot be understood in
39 Ashraf H. Rushdy. Daughters Signifyin(g) History: The
Example of Toni Morrisons Beloved. American Literature
64.3, 1992, 577.
40 Morrison. Beloved, 193.

155

156

On Reading

terms of any wish or unconscious


meaning, but is, purely and inexplicably,
the literal return of the event against
the will of the one it inhabits. [...] It
is this literality and insistent return
which thus constitutes trauma and
points to its enigmatic core: the delay
or incompletion in knowing, or even
in seeing, an overwhelming experience
that remains, in its insistent return,
absolutely true to the event.41
Against Sethes will, schoolteachers presence
triggers a re-experience and a re-living of her past
traumatic experience in the present. Morrison
underscores the overwhelming extent of her
trauma by suggesting that the event does not
merely repeat itself in memory, but it compels
her to repeat the very act that traumatised her
in the first place. If Sethes trauma stems from
continually having to surrender her best things
to schoolteacherher breast milk, her human
dignitythis is exactly how she reacts in this
situation. His sudden presence triggers her to
kill her baby. By holding the dead child in her
arms as she looks at him, she has once again,
41 Cathy Caruth. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. (Maryland: The John Hopkins UP, 1995), 5.

The Trauma of Language

inevitably, sacrificed her best thing to him as a


result of their slave/master relationship. It proves
to be such a powerful bind, that even when
Sethe attempts to act on her own terms, she still
reinforces his supremacy over her life.
Beloved leaves us with no sentimental notions
as to what it means to be absolutely responsible
to another. The consequences of something
so unspeakableignoring of the other others
for the absolute Otheris traumatic in itself.
Schoolteachers response to Sethes sacrifice
epitomises the very nature of these difficult
consequences. When he sees the nigger woman
holding a blood-soaked child to her chest with
one hand, right off it was clear [to him] that
there was nothing to claim,42 and the absence
of any emotional response is deafening. In
comparison to Abrahams Other, who intervened
and prevented him from committing such a
traumatic act, even after Sethe has once again
sacrificed her best to schoolteacher, she is
discarded and considered worthless. To him, the
assertion of herself as a mother and the extremity
of her humanness, reduces her the status of a
wild, mishandled creature. His words are heavily
ironic as he reflects on his own magnanimity,
42 Morrison. Beloved, 175.

157

158

On Reading

saying that he had chastised that nephew, telling


to thinkjust thinkwhat would his own horse
do if you beat it beyond the point of education,
and to see what happened when you overbeat
creatures God had given you the responsibility
ofthe trouble it was, and the loss,43 in order to
teach the boy about being a humane slave master.
It is precisely his lack of thought and education
that has led to such tragedy. The extent of his
warped sense of humanity unveils itself as he
regards the entire situation before him as a mere
economical exchange, without a thought towards
Sethes profound loss. As he mourns the loss of
his livestock, since Sethe had ten breeding years
left,44 he is completely impervious to the fact that
a mother, believing death to be a safer option
than an impending encounter with him, had just
killed her child out of protection. This jarring
incongruity highlights that even what appears to
be most obvious to one may not factor into the
sight of another. In ones blindness, one has the
capacity to be damaging to another without any
realisation of it at all.
Yet, it is with a complicating gesture that
schoolteachers blindness and indifference
43 Morrison. Beloved, 176.
44 Morrison. Beloved, 176.

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159

towards her is the thing that grants her the


freedom she has always wanted. After he
concludes, something was wrong with her,45 he
walks out of 124 and never returns again. The
sacrifice of her daughters life frees Sethe from
him, allows her to have the things that were
previously other to herfreedom, property,
ownership over herself and her family. It is as we
traditionally expect in a sacrificial transaction,
as sacrifice has predominantly been understood
as a necessary passage through suffering and/
or death (of either oneself or someone else) on
the way to a supreme movement of transcendent
truth.46 Through exchanging the thing one loves
most for this truth, the act of sacrifice becomes
an investment for a return. In other words, the
sacrifice of Beloveds life is the thing that pays
for Sethes release. It is a haunting reality. As a
mother, the notion that every additional day in
freedom is another day lived in exploit of her
daughters death is paralysing one. Schoolteachers
supremacy renders her incapable of a selfless
sacrifice as she is forced to benefit economically
from her daughters death. She fails to give her
daughter a dignified death. To allow even that
45 Morrison. Beloved, 176.
46 Dennis King Keenan. The Question of Sacrifice. (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2005), 1

160

On Reading

would have been to contradict his absolute power;


it would have granted her a moment of real
freedom.
***
It is language that calls us into the ethical task,
that connects as well as separates us from being
able to respond, that calls us to a sacrifice. As
Derrida reminds us once again, the concepts of
responsibility, of decision, or of duty, are condemned a priori to a paradox, scandal and aporia. Paradox, scandal and aporia are themselves nothing
other than sacrifice, the revelation of conceptual
thinking at its limit, at its death and finitude.47 If
the very things that testify to the essence of humanity in its ethicality exist within in a paradox
and cannot fully be explained, how can we even
begin to respond to the nature of our own humanity? We have to consider that:
Sacrifice is essentially a holocaust. In
sacrifice, all (holos) is burned (caustos).
There is no remainder. As such, it
is essentially essenceless. It involves
selflessness, giving without reserve.
Sacrifice has to be beyond calculation
47 Derrida. The Gift of Death, 68.

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161

and hope of a reward, so as not to


be construed as self-serving (and,
therefore, not a genuine sacrifice).48
If a true sacrifice cannot lead to a goal or a
return, the unveiling of a paradox ought to
signal the immediate failure of our ethical task.
There is no means to move beyond what is
present to us; there is no known way to carry
on. Does the promise of such an end absolve
us from continuing to regard Sethes multiparadoxical situation? How can we turn away
from responding after witnessing the way
these paradoxical concepts can have such a
catastrophic effect on a persons life? As we recall
schoolteachers inhumane imperviousness to
Sethes predicament, it is clear that silence is not
an acceptable response to a history of atrocity.49
Mandel asserts that the novels and its subjects
limits to language is not an ethical gesture of
respect to the victims and their suffering as this
trite conclusion has become an excuse to retreat
into a privileged space of silence that effectively
elides the inevitable complicity that language,
48 Keenan. The Question of Sacrifice, 1.
49 Naomi Mandel. I Made The Ink: Identity, Complicity, 60
Million, and More. MFS Modern Fiction Studies 48.3, 2002,
608.

162

On Reading

action, and a history of atrocity forces upon us


all.50 Silence has become a convenient refuge
that allows us to avoid dealing with the difficult
issues that have no answer to them. Ethics calls
us to a higher responsibility even in the face of
not knowing how to be responsible. In order to
be ethical, we must make an impossible promise:
a promise to respond, without knowing how to
respond.
Morrisons novel is her very attempt to do so.
It is a risky attempt, since reading poses us
with the same problem that ethics does. Where
an ethical decision is the call to respond to a
single other, being blind to all other others in
order to respond to that single other, in order
to make that decision, one has to ignore in
order not to ignore. Likewise, in order to read,
we can only choose a single interpretation
of the text each time. We have to be blind to
other alternative interpretations. In this light,
the novel places us dangerously in the realm
of repeating schoolteachers blindness as this
desire to possess [the novel for ourselves] often
leads to brilliant interpretive insights, but it

50 Naomi Mandel. I Made The Ink, 608.

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163

also blinds interpretation to its own hubris.51


In every instance that we assert ourselves over
the text by judging whether Sethes actions are
immoral, deciding what is acceptable love for her
children on her behalf, we become schoolteacher
all over again. We are her Other, removing her
freedom and demanding her sacrifice. After all,
every time we reread the novel, we call her to
kill her child again and again against her will.
Our position as readers grants us schoolteachers
power of dictatorship, allowing us to assert
ourselves through our interpretations of the text
without any accountability. We can easily remain
blind to the other alternative interpretations or
possibilities of reading the text, simply because we
are the ones who do the reading. Having been so
explicitly shown through schoolteachers actions
the kind of destruction that blindness and power
can lead to, it seems surprising that Morrison
would employ a form of expression that fosters
the very thing she heavily critiques.
Therefore, it is with a leap of faith that Morrison
calls us into this ethical space. As she presents
us with a magical realist text that cannot deny
51 James Phelan. Towards a Rhetorical Reader-Response
Criticism: The Difficult, the Stubborn, and the Ending of
Beloved. MFS Modern Fiction Studies 39.3&4, 1993, 715.

164

On Reading

its own fictional nature, Beloved refuses us any


convenient conclusions or answers. By deviating
from the form of a realist novel, she prevents
us from regarding it as though it is a factual,
historical account. Instead, it is an offer to
constantly challenge her text. Regarding her own
work, Morrison explains,
these spaces, which I am filling in, and
can fill in because they were planned,
can conceivably be filled in with
other significances. That is planned
as well. The point is that into these
spaces should fall the ruminations
of the reader and his or her invented
or recollected or misunderstood
knowingness. The reader as narrator
asks the questions the community
asks.52
As such, Morrison invites her readers to arrive
at readings which may or may not coincide with
those intended by the author,53 in an attempt to
52 Toni Morrison. Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The
Afro-American Presence in American Literature. The
Tanner Lectures on Human Values. (The University of Utah,
2007), 157.
53 Koolish. To be Loved and Cry Shame, 172.

The Trauma of Language

165

prevent a totalitarian reading of the novel. For


example, when Sethes daughter returns to her
as a ghost, it is impossible to be certain of what
she is. For the characters, who Beloved is, is
not merely ambiguous but multiply inscribed.
Simultaneously, she represents many things,
many people, each of which are true.54 She is a
paradigm case of the stubborn. Despite the best
efforts of many careful readers, her character
escapes any comprehensive, coherent account.
No matter how we arrange or rearrange the
information about Beloved, there is always
something that does not fit with the experience
of everything else. Beloveds elusiveness is the
thing that allows us to suspend a final judgement
on who she is and by letting the stubborn remain
the stubborn means that we accept the possibility
that the struggle to interpret and perform
a shareable world is one we cannot entirely
win.55 We have no choice but to suspend our
conclusions, allowing the novel to affect us, as we
remain open to it. It is not for us to possess.
The multiplicity that Beloved embodies
54 Phelan. Towards a Rhetorical Reader Response Criticism, 715.
55 Phelan. Towards a Rhetorical Reader Response Criticism, 716.

166

On Reading

continually opens up new possibilities of


regarding the novel, compelling us to a reread,
in the hopes of a further illumination. The novel
does not hide the ethical dilemma. Rather, in
bringing this notion to the forefront of our
consciousness, we are constantly reminded of
the things we do not see, the things that we
cannot see. The glaring inadequacy of every
conclusion that we come to presses us to further
consider another perspective, another other. This
posture with which we read Beloved signifies the
way Morrison calls us to read ethically. In the
same way that Beloved remains a question, our
resistance in passing a final judgement on Sethe
similarly keeps her act remaining as a question.
We can never read enough to answer it. As we
can do nothing except to reconsider her situation
every time we read Beloved, we offer her our own
gift of death: the sacrifice of our time.

Lim Lee Ching

169

Reading in Practice:
Literary Silence
and Violence in J.M.
Coetzees Foe
If we had a keen vision and feeling of
all ordinary human life, it would be like
hearing the grass grow and the squirrels heartbeat, and we should die of
that roar which lies on the other side of
silence.
George Eliot, Middlemarch.1

In The Noise of Freedom: J.M. Coetzees Foe,


Robert M. Post attempts, among other things, an
allegorical reading of Foe, in which he presents a
direct scheme that attempts to trace in the novel
direct resonances with the various aspects of

1 George Eliot. Middlemarch. (New York: Signet Classic,


1981), 191.

170

On Reading

apartheid South Africa. Post identifies, for example, Cruso and the scheming shipmaster in Bristol
with the Afrikaner government; Susan Barton
with the liberal white South African, and simultaneously, Mother Africa.2 Other patterns are
also observed, such as the ideas of confinement
and interlopation being read, not incorrectly, but
no less predictably, as representative of the full
spectrum of colonisation, isolation and segregation, with the obvious immanence of dominion
suggesting white ownership.
While not exhaustive, the foregoing nonetheless
gives a good idea of the analogous way in which
Post furnishes his reading. By extension, it may
even be argued that the intent domestic episodes
in the novel represent the restriction of congregation, of the address to an audience, and of the
dissemination of any written material, as well as
the house-arrest that form the cumulative effect
of a apartheid-era banning-order; and Barton and
Fridays misidentification as gypsies and denial
of hospitality at the inn are further evidence of
the widespread practice of racial segregation at
a social level. But such critical responses may be
2 Robert M. Post. The Noise of Freedom: J.M. Coetzees
Foe. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, (vol.XXX,
No.3, Spring, 1989: 143-154), 145.

Reading in Practice

useful only in their directness, and are unfortunately also simplistic. Foe can be read as a kind of
political allegory, but not in the specific, grounded sense that a text like Animal Farm is. In many
ways, Coetzees novel defies the limiting confines
in which allegorical correspondence operates. He
says in an interview that:
Foe is a retreat from the South African
situation, but only from the situation in
a narrow temporal perspective. It is not
a retreat from the subject of colonialism
or from questions of power. What you
call the nature and processes of fiction
may also be called the question of who
writes? Who takes up the position of
power, pen in hand?3
The kind of allegorical procedure that is worked
out in Foe takes place at a more general level,
which challenges the social and political status
quo in an indirect but nonetheless vigourously
intellectual manner. This includes raising questions about the nature of power-formation, its
consequences on the making and manipulation
3 Tony Morphet. Two Interviews with J.M. Coetzee, 1983
and 1987. TriQuarterly, 69 (Spring/ Summer, 1987: 454464), 462.

171

172

On Reading

of history, and the implied subjection by time and


temporal concerns, as well as the notions of violence and rhetoric inherent to these processes.
The critic Joseph Frank, in an attempt to identify
defining aspects of Modernist narratives, notes
that these writings adopt a spatial form in the
substitution of sequentiality with simultaneity.
This mode of reading into narrative structure may
provide a useful entry to understanding the way
which aspects of temporal organisation operates in Foe, while also allowing for a way to read
Coetzees attempts at formulating a coherent view
of history and historical construction in his novel.
An extract from Franks essay may be in order
here:
The meaning-relationship is completed
only by the simultaneous perception
in space of word-groups that have
no comprehensible relationship to
each other when read consecutively
in time. Instead of the instinctive and
immediate reference of words and
word-groups to the objects or events
they symbolize and the construction
of meaning from the sequence of these
references, modern [writing] asks
its readers to suspend the process of
individual reference temporarily until

Reading in Practice

173

the entire pattern of internal references


can be apprehended as a unity.4
This results in narrative arrangements that delineate temporal and historical boundaries. The
implication is that the structure of a modern literary text is no longer defined by its linear narrative
logic, but by what Frank calls a spatial logic. This
re-formulation of the temporal dimension creates
a sense of spatiality by drawing together disparate
instances of time to form a singular, unified and
all-inclusive moment.
While Franks ideas, originally written in 1945, are
a response to the aesthetics of the High Modernist
movement, much of it remains applicable to
the consideration of Postmodernist writing,
such as Coetzees novela writing defined,
also, by its appropriation of simultaneity and
fragmentation. Franks implication is that, for
literature, the urge to subvert the restrictiveness
of conventional associations between narrative
and linear/temporal experience necessitates the
foregrounding of spatiality; and that this spatiality
unifies a multitude of narrative elements. The
4 Joseph Frank. The Widening Gyre: Crisis and Mastery in
Modern Literature. (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers
University Press, 1963), 13.

174

On Reading

constituent fragments of the text, then, work


together simultaneously and take on a spatial
logic in the same way that the individual parts
come to make up the aesthetic whole of, say,
an object of plastic art such as sculpture or
architecture. Frank sees in all of this removal
of temporal distinctions a discontinuity that
encompass all times.5 The very palimpsest
effect that he speaks about is evident, for
example, in Susans preoccupation with temporal
undecidability: her urging of Cruso to mark
time, and his resistance; and her incomplete
dating of the letters (no year), and subsequent
abandonment of the attempt. These straddle the
text simultaneously in the realm of a no-time, and
a kind of temporal universality. The novel exhibits
a proclivity for discontinuity and fragmentation
as a way to transcend temporal strictures. This
reinforces the spatial simultaneity of time and
history by foregrounding the circularity of
temporal and historical processes.
An aspect of the circular narrative process can
be seen in the way that the novel begins in
medias res, but with At last at the start of text.
The narrative, logically, ends at Part 3, but it
5 Joseph Frank. The Widening Gyre: Crisis and Mastery in
Modern Literature, 59.

Reading in Practice

175

ends at a kind of beginning: It is a beginning


. Tomorrow you must teach him a.6 This
necessitates the emergence of Part 4, which
serves as a returnto the site of convergence
of the novels various narrative threads: Where
Cruso ended up and where his narrative ended;
where Friday ended up, origin unknown, future
unknown; where Susan ends up, and leaves off
with a manufactured identity and narrative on
handMrs Cruso, searching mother becomes
female castaway. The missing frame of Part 1 is
completed in Part 4, with the near repetition with:
Dear Mr Foe, at last I (emphasis added).7 Part
4 also gestures towards Fridaysand everyones
history. It does not pretend to represent this
history but acknowledges that it exists, an aspect
which will be considered later.
There is an indication that much of the novels
vitality is created by its multitude of ontological
complications. There is here an introduction of
a previously-non-existent fictional character by
one author into the fictional narrative of another,
already-deceased author, fictionalising the latter but returning to him his patronymic identity,
and allowing these two characters a confabular
6 J.M. Coetzee. Foe. (London: Penguin, 1986), 152.
7 Coetzee. Foe, 155

176

On Reading

relationship that attempts to chart the narrative of


a third character, who straddles two separate but
similar narratives (Defoes and Coetzees)alive
in one, dead and marginalised in most of the
other. This attempt is further thwarted by the persistent presence of yet a fourth character, whose
narrative it is that may be able to complete the
novels (Coetzees) narrative tapestry, and whose
silence in the later text is precisely that which prevents the novel from completing itself. In part 4 of
Foe, the confabulators Susan and Foe die, twice,
while the narrative takes up a voice of its own
projected in the previous sections by Susanand
returning them near to the site of the novelsnot
the proper, temporalbeginning. She returns to
die at the beginning of her own narrative, setting
Foe on a kind of ontological instability.
Much of the discontinuity of Foe is also the direct
result of Coetzees weaving of disparate allusive
sources. Central to the intertextual quality of the
novel is Defoes Robinson Crusoe, but also his
Roxana (whose plot about missing daughters,
and the notions of patronymy: Susan, Foe/Defoe,
are at play in Coetzees novel), Captain Jack, and
even bits of Moll Flanders. These intertextualities
work alongside others in the novel, such as its
biographical (Defoes), mythical (the babes of the
wood legend is visited upon twice), theological,

Reading in Practice

177

Shakespearean (Tempest) allusions; and even its


Beckettian patterns. Foes discontinuous narrative structure is unified by the simultaneity of its
intertextual impulse, which reveals itself to be at
once fragmentary, repetitive, and circular; highlighting its postmodernist impulse by subverting
its own ontological grounds. It is possible, at this
point, to suggest that parts of Coetzees allegorical
impulse are situated in the intertextual complexities that he weaves into the novel. The network
of relationships at work in the South African
context, one can infer, does not lie merely in the
dialectics of black-white, master-slave, but also in
the range and depth of its histories, cultures, and
experiences. In this way, the novels allusive tendency points to a kind of allegorical strategy that
takes on a spatial logic, as befitting the imagery of
South Africas endearing identification as a Rainbow Nation, and one that needs to be understood
in its multitudinous, and later, reconciliatory,
whole.
David Attwell reminds us of Coetzees own argument that a confessionals self-examination is
endless The confessant does not have the pow-

178

On Reading

er to end the discourse but merely to abannon it.8


Susan Bartons account of The Female Castaway
is a narrative of her largely uneventful year spent
on Crusos island, a narrative of which is suspended in the simultaneity of her self-conscious awareness of its mundanity and its dramatic sensibilities
being predicated upon its own circumscription by
her arrival at and departure from the island, and
her reluctance to include those aspects of these
back-stories. It is further caught in a number of
other resistances: Crusos refusal to add meaningfully to the account by severely limiting his own
narrative; Susans own refusal to embellish her
own account, as Captain Smith and Foe suggest;
and, most problematic of all, Fridays silence. The
overwhelming effect of Fridays silence lies in the
persistent latency of his part in the overall narrative being articulated. That it continues to haunt,
yet resist, Bartons struggle for a satisfactory
account overturns any meaningful notion of his
inexplicable mutilation being a source of disempowerment. In his muteness, Friday holds the key
to unlocking, not just his own history, but also
that of the island, one that continually threatens
to subvert those of Crusos and Bartons, and even
8 David Attwell. J.M. Coetzee: South Africa and the Politics
of Writing. (Oxford, England: University of California Press,
1993), 112.

Reading in Practice

179

overshadow any that Foe may have attempted to


invent. The voice that cannot yet speak is ultimately the voice that can, as the faintest faraway
roar,9 complete the confessional of a history of
mastery and enslavement.
Fridays silence is defined by its boundaries, themselves formed by the varied linguistic attempts to
inscribe his narrative/history. Susans and Foes
and even Coetzeesdiscourses on the mysterypuzzle-void that is Fridays story, at best, trace,
metaphorically, the outline that forms Fridays o,
without being able to locate where his narrative
residesinside or outside of this narratorial void.
This perhaps raises the question of marginality
whose narrative and which narrative does the
novel marginalise, and does it even marginalise at
all? Foe articulates the necessity to make Fridays
silence speak, as well as the silence surrounding
Friday.10 This marks an interesting resonance
with the partial circumscription of Susan Bartons
island narrative, and the deliberate attempts by
Cruso to subvert, even reduce and deny, his own,
as well as Fridays stories. The questions of the
hows and wherefores of their arrival upon the
island are obvious here, and are complicated by
9 Coetzee. Foe, 154.
10 Coetzee. Foe, 142.

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On Reading

Crusos stance on memory and time as modes of


narrative articulation: Nothing I have forgotten
is worth the remembering.11 The issue of marginality, then, becomes one that concerns the notions
of origins, and the denial thereof, in both spatial
and temporal sense.
Unlike Defoes Robinson Crusoe, who obsessively
makes records in his journals and all manner of
date-keeping, Coetzees Cruso, we are told, keeps
no journal and is insistent on not marking time,
save the rocks used in the terrace-building, which,
though serving as time fillers, essentially empties
Crusos island experience of any temporal sense
by its repetitive and apparent illogic. How, then,
does Friday come to be so named? The novel provides no answer to this, but this deliberate denial
of access to Fridays origins, in spite of its nominal
rootedness in a temporal specificity, is indicative
of a loss of identityjust as Susan Barton intermittently questions her own and the nature of
her beingas the cost of relying on an arbitrary
means of delineating experience and existence,
which time invariably proves itself to be. Fridays
centrality, as a result, can be read in relation to
what he is not: Crusos near-absolute denial of
time, and Susans over-reliance on it, defeats them.
11 Coetzee. Foe, 17.

Reading in Practice

181

Friday, on the other hand, and in his inarticulacy,


overcomes the strictures of time and, indeed,
comes to define it:
He is writing the letter o.
It is a beginning, said Foe. Tomorrow
you must teach him a.12
Fridays O is a symbol open to much
interpretation and, in this short exchange,
temporally-loaded, there is a simultaneous
embodiment of the alpha and the omega,
borrowing from scripture an all-encompassing,
omni-present significance that is affixed to and
which yet transcends time.
Central to the understanding of Coetzees
considerations in this respect is his appropriation
of the traditional apocalyptic motif as a means of
grasping the significance and the implications of
the novel. Apocalyptic narratives inhabit a pattern
that is driven by a need for the summation of
the meaning of history, and other associative
existential truths, in preparation for an impending
end of the world, and its replacement by a new
and salvational one. Foe seizes this premise of the
scriptural narrative as a way to make sense of the
12 Coetzee. Foe, 152.

182

On Reading

acute uncertainty in which the world is plunged.


This is no mere attempt at deriving assurance
amid the highly deliberate representations and
articulation of doubt in the novel. Coetzees is a
response to history that situates the ideological
aspects of power, authority and subjugation as
predictable aspects of a history that is cyclical.
Therein lies Coetzees modification of the conventional apocalyptic preoccupation with the
convergence of thematic meanings and narrative conclusions. Even as violent historical forces
presage potential annihilation, he is convinced
that they form part of a cycle of destruction and
regeneration. There is, in his model, an absence of
assurance that accompanies the promise of a messianic element, as the biblical revelation does
and scriptural allusions play an important role in
the attempt to situate the various tensions centred
on the relationships at play in the novel. Fridays
possible castration, is hinted at only subtly, when
Susan, addressing her own uncertainty: I saw
and believed I had seen, though afterwards I
remembered Thomas, who also saw, but could not
be brought to believe till he had put his hand in
the wound.13 This echo of the biblical Doubting
Thomas references Christs wounds and the resur13 Coetzee. Foe, 119-120.

Reading in Practice

183

rection it implies and, by attributing a salvational


value directly to Fridays wound, presents the
savage as saviour. It also situates the allusion as an
attempt to overturn the kind of messianic rhetoric
commonly associated with the colonial enterprise.
More importantly, as repeatedly acknowledged
by Barton and Foe throughout the novel, Fridays
mutilationand hence silenceis both the foe to
a comprehensive reading of the text, and whose
surmounting promises to be the source of its
salvation. For Susan, inducting Friday into language is imagined not just to be the way in which
to save her narrative, but also to his freedom, as
well as her own freedom from a reverse bondage
to Friday, and her own sense of guilt: He desires
to be liberated, as I do too. Our desires are plain,
his and mine.14 The vision here is one that is held
in suspension between a sense of assurance, or at
least hope, and a resignation to the inevitability
of failure. This is sustained by the tension of the
perpetual imminence of an end, itself suspended
between death and deliverance, which ties the
novel in an interminality between promise and
denial.
There are further manifestations of this in skewed
religious terms, in the identification of writing
14 Coetzee. Foe, 148.

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On Reading

and speech:
We are accustomed to believe that our
world was created by God speaking; but
I ask, may it not rather be that he wrote
it, wrote a Word so long we have yet
come to the end of it? May it not be that
God continually writes the world, the
world and all that is in it? 15
What is thrown into relief is not just the notion
of theological linearity but also established eschatological concerns. These form a trajectory that
the novels structure readily subverts, and whose
non-linear, discontinuous narrative structure,
and spatial logic can only be intimated but never
fully grasped, because the implied vastness lies
in the texts continual re-inscription of itself. The
issue raised by Foes words transcends even these
to question the very nature of creation itself: that
there is a foreboding possibility of reading all the
world in its textuality. The ontological implication, then, lies in the problematics of signification,
because language is persistently and potentially
a failed vehicle, as witness the impossibility of
Susan Bartons inscripted emancipation of Friday.
These relate pointedly to the question, and sug15 Coetzee. Foe, 143.

Reading in Practice

185

gestion, of Fridays role as deliverer and subject of


hoped-for deliverance:
What concerns us is the desire [to
be free], not the name [of freedom].
Because we cannot say in words what
an apple is, it is not forbidden us to eat
the apple. 16
Religion, as with politics, is necessarily ideological, and if, as with all semiotic constructions, they
inhabit an inescapable element of arbitrariness,
then the question of existence itself becomes
problematic, not least any political posturing and
its attendant salvationist bentwhich in turn may
explain the nature of Coetzees own seemingly
inscrutable, non-committal political position.
The original sin that transgressed upon divine
prohibition and broke the most fundamental
of human unions is a kind of pride and vanity
that forms the basis for all of human kinds
subsequent discontents, namely a proclivity for
organisation by division and hence difference.
The basic division of a self and an Other parallels
the kind of adversarial stance that takes root in
doctrines of them and us. It is such doctrines
16 Coetzee. Foe, 149.

186

On Reading

masked in the rhetoric of theology and ideology


that inevitably precipitate humanitys impulse
to homogenise and exclude. There is a sense of
recognition in the novel that humanitys divisional
instinct is continually and potentially rapturous
in the Christian sensethough not necessarily
redemptive: there is a tension and constant
undecidability between communalisation and
abandonment that surrounds the characters,
especially Susan Barton. Her instinctive need
to rescue Friday from the island, for example, is
a measure of this inclination: it is our duty to
care for him in all things, and not abandon him
to a solitude worse than death.17 Her attempts
to homogenise Friday by committing him to her
version of civilisational community, as well as to
the realm of language, fails because they achieve
nothing but to foreground Fridays difference
and to further alienate him. She comprehends
yet subjects Friday to being re-shaped day by
day in comformity with the desires of others.18
The instinctive need for identityand to impose
identityit may be inferred, results not in
inclusivity but in the magnification of humanitys
separateness, with the only true unity falling
to the experience of humanity itself. Susan
17 Coetzee. Foe, 39.
18 Coetzee. Foe, 121.

Reading in Practice

187

ultimately takes up this recognition: We are all


alive, we are all substantial, we are all in the same
world, despite Foes retort that You have omitted
Friday.19
As much as choices determine history, these
choices are also made in accordance to lessons
of a past. Coetzee presents in Foe a history based
on the circular relationship between repetition
and disappointment. Civilisational and political
concerns, with their thrusts towards arriving at
ideals, are temporal by design, given that arcadian
and utopian motivations have their rootedness
not in the geographical but along a temporal
trajectory of nostalgia and aspiration. The island
and its history, residing only in the mind of Susan
Barton, occupy no spatial ground, and its topography exists merely in the realm of the imaginative will. Humanitys distinguishing characteristic
lies, in many ways, in its inventiveness, indulges a
sense of superiority by pitting the self against its
own capabilities, and hence of humanity against
itself. And human kinds insistence on resorting
to violent, reductive choicessuch as war, occupation, colonisation, tyrannybecomes a kind of
defeatist attempt to project the merely imaginablesuch as moral, intellectual and civilisational
19 Coetzee. Foe, 152.

188

On Reading

superiorityonto actual experience, is doomed


to failure. Similarly, there can be no absolute end
to human conflict because the idea lies only in the
adoption of an absolute pacifism, an idea as utopian as that of a just war or just occupation.
These remain unattainable because to choose to
avoid involvement in violence does not absolve
accountabilitythat is Susan Bartons failure, not
Coetzees.
To return to an allegorical consideration of
the novels place in its proper historical and
political context, it may finally be necessary to
take up Coetzees own position in relation to
the articulation of the South African situation.
Brian Macaskill and Jeanne Colleran have
treated of the issue of political resistance and
representationan issue Coetzee refuses to
leave uncriticized. 20 For them Coetzees strategy
builds into the text a set of critical mechanisms
that fends off the obligation to dictate to or speak
for the proletariat.21 Macaskill and Colleran
20 Brian Macaskill and Jeanne Colleran. Reading History,
Writing Heresy: The Resistance of Representation and the
Representation of Resistance in J.M. Coetzees Foe. Contemporary Literature, (Vol. 33, No. 3, Autumn, 1992: 432-4570),
21 Macaskill and Colleran. Reading History, Writing Heresy, 446.

Reading in Practice

189

address the issue of art, specifically Fridays, but


do not articulate the significance of it implications
to Coetzees transcendence of the specific and
restrictive way in which allegorical procedures
and their direct correspondences usually rely
upon. Fridays art and his silence resonate not
just the novel, but also throughout most critical
treatments of the novel.
What Coetzee offers in his novel is not merely
the resistance to a singular, albeit extended,
climate of oppression and tyranny that can be
articulated. Superficially, the reader is offered no
access to Fridays thoughts and consciousness not
merely because of his silence but also because
his history has been denied, first by Crusos
resistance to fillingif he actually has accessthe
gaps of Fridays biographical details, and then
by Crusos own silencing in his death. And yet,
Friday is not totally silent and his very presence
and the vagueness of his actions do imply a rich
biography. Literally, he hums in what Cruso
calls The voice of man and manages even to
repeat the utterance Ha-ha-ha as an assertion
of his tongueless-ness but not voicelessness.22
For Susan, just merely the scene in which she
witnesses Friday scattering petals out in the
22 Coetzee. Foe, 22.

190

On Reading

water offers a series of possible explanation;


she initially thinks that he is fishing, but then
hypothesises that it may be an act of supplicative
offering or some other such superstitious
observance,23 before settling for the possibility
of it being an act of mourning and remembrance.
This scene bears much significance, as when he
is described as having launched his log upon
the waterwhich was deep at that placeand
straddled it.24 The description is loaded in it
sexual connotations, suggesting a kind of vitality
associated with Friday, even as it parallels Susans
own straddling of Cruso and, later, Foe; and
even as it is set as a counter-narrative to the later
suggestions of Fridays castration. These varied
associations between Friday and his actions,
however confused or contradictory they may
be, nonetheless point to a personal, cultural
history that he understands and can articulate to
himself. The indecipherable nature of this history,
it would seem, is part of Coetzees point: that
it is impossible to delve meaningfully into any
personal history, not least that of a people and a
nation; and one with as conflicted a history as the
one of his immediate experience. The key, then,
lies in the acknowledgement and acceptance that
23 Coetzee. Foe, 31.
24

Coetzee. Foe, 31.

Reading in Practice

191

even a history that is defeated and silenced is an


inevitable aspect of a grand historical narrative.
Its existence cannot be effaced.
Barring language, Fridays communion with
whatever history it is that the flower-scattering
scene may imply is one that is direct and
unmediated. This is unlike the difficulties that
language and its associative silence may present to
other modes of accounting for ones history, such
as is faced by Susan Barton. Friday, though mute
and inarticulate, is nonetheless the most multilingual and charismatic of all the characters. His
linguistic repertoire includes his own systemic set
of musical notes and dance routine, the primitive
language imparted by Cruso, the pictographic
ones offered by Barton, as well as the alphabetic
ones that both Barton and Foe impose upon
him. Considered thus, we can read a multiplicity
of access to Friday and the interpretation of his
representation, lending to his narrative a range
of possibilities while also suggesting a kind
of universality that can be attached to his role
in the politics of the novel. Fridays spinning,
mystical dance, his repetitive musical notes, and
his rows of repeated inscriptions all point to a
confrontation with a larger aspect of an unending
history with all its manifestations of violence
and oppression as cyclical and repetitive. This

192

On Reading

prescribes, in its own way, a process by which


art can be seen to take on a kind of universality
that disarms the inherent power relations at play
throughout history.
Early in the novel, Cruso explains to Susan
that:The planting is reserved for those who come
after us and have the foresight to bring seed. I can
only clear the ground for them. Clearing ground
and piling stones is little enough, but it is better
that sitting in idleness.25 Even as this is the closest
that Coetzee comes to directly addressing political
reality in his novel, there is, like Walter Benjamins
space-making Destructive Character, and like
Coetzees own character, an acute awareness
of historys weight, and of ones profound, if
seemingly insignificant, effect on the course
of its development.26 Accusations of Coetzees
representations as historically unsituated and
hence in apparent silent complicity with white
South African oppression miss the point: it is not
that Coetzee is not political, but that he realises

25 Coetzee. Foe, 33.


26 Walter Benjamin. The Destructive Character. (Trans.
Edmund Jephcott. Selected Writings: Volume 2: 1927-1934.
Eds. Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, Gary Smith.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press, 1999: 541-542).

Reading in Practice

193

any political strategy cannot be successful in and


of itself.
The seeming failure of the novel to articulate
any meaningful political position can therefore
be seen as a reflection of his view of the reality
of the South African problem as a larger universal and philosophical problem of humanity.
In this sense, the portrayal of Friday can be said
to be a vital, literary version of Coetzee himself.
But even that may be a limited way to view the
construction of Coetzees position. He is the
composite of his characters, whose cumulative
contributions to the overall narrative of Foe gives
a fuller perspective of the attempt to inscribe the
South African and, indeed, any power-political
narrative. As much as we can read the novel as a
loose allegory of historical reality, it is also possible to identify its narrative voices with that of
their author and his reaction to the immediacies
of his political and historical environment, such
as when Foe and Barton discuss the nature and
possession of narratorial meaning: there comes a
time when we must give a reckoning of ourselves
to the world; he has the last word who disposes
over the greatest force. 27

27 Coetzee. Foe, 124.

W. Michelle Wang

195

Encountering
Formal Beauty: An
Aesthetic Reading of
Saramagos All the
Names
The sense of literature as a mass noun referring
to written works, especially those considered
of superior or lasting artistic merit,1 underpins
our general understanding and, subsequently,
our readings of literary texts. However, as Allan
Singer and Allen Dunn observe, while the study
and reading of literature characteristically proceed from the assumption that the literary text
is a work of art [] far less frequently do [we]
inquire what this means or entertain the proposition that it matters.2 In this vein, the reading I
undertake in this chapter, of Portuguese novelist
1 Literature. Oxford Reference Online. (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2005). Web.
2 Allan Singer and Allen Dunn, eds. Literary Aesthetics: A
Reader. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), 36.

196

On Reading

Jos Saramagos All the Names, is not only an attempt to respond to the text, as Jeremy Fernando
puts it, but a further endeavor to respond to its
intrinsic artistic merit. Compared to other functional responses we may have to the text, aesthetically-oriented readings of literature proceed from
the fundamental premise that the text is a literary
work of art and derives at least part of its significance as literature when we appreciate it as art.
In their readings of Saramagos novels such as All
the Names, literary critics tend to pass cursorily
over the extraordinary beauty of his writing in
order to get at some innate symbolic meaning
of his work, whether this has to do with its function as an existential allegory or a commentary
about epistemological instabilities. Steven Kellman, for instance, emphasises the novels function
as an allegory about the impossibility of knowing
another and knowing oneself,3 while Margaret Birns describes its milieu as a nightmarish
dystopia.4 A reviewer from Publishers Weekly also
observes, Alternately farcical, macabre, surreal
and tragic, this mesmerizing narrative depicts the
3 Steven Kellman. All the Names. Magills Literary Annual,
2001.
4 Margaret Boe Birns. All the Names. Magills Survey of
World Literature. (Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 2009).

Encountering Formal Beauty

197

loneliness of individual lives and the universal


need for human connection.5 These analytical
observations are of critical significance in interpretations of Saramagos work, but they also signal
critics tendency to neglect aesthetic dimensions
of his writing. The narrative, readers are informed, is surreal and mesmerizing, but how
or why it is so remains a mystery.
I propose, as Walter Pater does for art critics, that
it is perhaps even more important for literary
critics (and for readers of literature in general)
to possess a certain temperament, the power of
being deeply moved by the presence of beautiful objects.6 For, it is the aesthetic properties of
art objects, Nol Carroll asserts, that alert us to
the qualitative dimension of the world at large
and improves our capacities for understanding
them.7 Reading that responds to the beauty of the
text, that allows for the discernment of pleasurable shapes and formsthereby propelling our
5 Review: All the Names. Publishers Weekly 247.35 (28
Aug 2000): 53. EBSCOhost. Web. 27 May 2011.
6 Walter Pater. Studies in the History of the Renaissance.
Critical Theory Since Plato. Ed. Hazard Adams. (New York,
NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), 643.
7 Nol Carroll. Philosophy of Art: A Contemporary Introduction. (London: Routledge, 1999), 99.

198

On Reading

emotions in specific, powerful waysthus offers


readers an alternate recourse through which we
can experience the world.
Integral to the design and creation of all art,
form is essential to most theories of the beautiful. The English art critic Clive Bell insists that
form is the one quality without which a work
of art cannot exist. The supreme quality in art,
he explains, is formal; it has to do with order,
sequence, movement and shape.8 Translating
Flicit Lamennaiss sentiments in De lArt Du
Beau, tienne Gilson affirms that beauty exists in
a work of art inasmuch as it is endowed with a
form, and thus form is the proper object of art.9
Denis Donoghue too asserts that form cant be
evaded; it is the coherence of the work of art
this is Adornos main emphasis.10 It is as form,
Donoghue further argues, that the beautiful can
be materially grasped.11 Form, therefore, offers a
tangible means by which we can gesture towards
the beauty we find in literary texts. Forms order8 Clive Bell. Proust. (London: Hogarth Press, 1928), 13; 67.
9 tienne Gilson. The Arts of the Beautiful. (Normal, IL:
Dalkey Archive Press, 2000), 30.
10 Denis Donoghue. Speaking of Beauty. (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2003), 121.
11 Donoghue. Speaking of Beauty. 114.

Encountering Formal Beauty

199

ing devices direct the diverse, chaotic forces12


we tend to find in complex works of literature,
conveying their sense of wholeness to readers through the use of sophisticated shapes and
frames that impose a sense of unity on the text.
Form is crucial because it gives the novel a distinct shape. Novelistic plot, Donoghue explains,
is grasped as the force of organization that comes
after the form.13 This force of organisation has
alternately been called the golden thread by
Robert Schumann, in reference to the order and
arrangement we find in music.14 Gilson explains
Schumanns proposition that a common thread
runs through a brilliant piece of music, cohering all parts to the whole such that we discern
its overarching unity, which is the principle of
distinction15 in the art object. By comprehending
how parts of an artwork serve larger designs,16
we gain a better appreciation for how the art
objects wholeness, as manifest in its design and
composition, offers keen aesthetic pleasure in
12 Donoghue. Speaking of Beauty. 123.
13 Donoghue. Speaking of Beauty, 123.
14 Schumann; qtd. in Gilson. The Arts of the Beautiful, 49.
15 Schumann; qtd. in Gilson. The Arts of the Beautiful, 49.
16 Carroll. Philosophy of Art: A Contemporary Introduction,
150.

200

On Reading

readers experience of reading Saramago. In


keeping with the spirit of this collection, my
encounters with formal beauty in Saramagos novel
can be made manifest in a close reading of these
parts that serve the design of the whole in All the
Names.

Traversing Labyrinths
As Schumanns golden thread does for music, another legendary thread gives organisational force to the yarn Saramago spins in All the
Names.17 I use the word yarn richly in the sense
of its meaning as both thread and story, for the
organising principle that lies at the heart of Names
is the mythological story of Ariadnes thread
through the labyrinth.18 Names derives its shape
and wholeness from the overarching narrative
frame that the Grecian myth provides, where rich,
17 The novels title, All the Names, will hereafter be shortened to Names.
18 Ariadne is the Greek weaving mistress who comes to
the aid of the hero-figure Theseus with her ball of red yarn,
allowing him to follow her thread to safely make his way out
of the monster Minotaurs labyrinth, and to eventually save
the day.

Encountering Formal Beauty

201

recurring symbols of threads and trails leading


through the novels labyrinthine archives and
mazes greet readers at every fork in the narrative.
Names is predominantly filtered through the
perspective of the banal everyman Senhor Jos,
a general clerk working in an unnamed citys
Central Registry, who is prosaic down to his very
name. His life is unexpectedly altered forever
when, chancing upon the birth record of an unknown woman one day, he decides to follow Ariadnes thread to find this woman. Though there is
nothing to suggest why Senhor Jos should take
an extraordinary interest in this ordinary woman,
the novel is a record of his adventures in the quest
for his unknown lady-love, only to learn that she
has killed herself during the course of his search.
Though there are multiple ways Ariadnes story
ends in Greek mythology, in one version, her
forlorn despair at being abandoned by Theseus
after he escapes the labyrinth causes her to hang
herself with her thread.19 In an enigmatic affirmation yet simultaneous rewriting of Ariadnes
myth, the unknown woman too dies by her own
hand in the curious reverse-labyrinth of Names.
She is thus at once Ariadne and her faithless lover
19 J. Hillis Miller. Ariadnes Thread. (London and New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), 1992, 11.

202

On Reading

Theseus: for not only is the unknown woman the


thread that leads Senhor Jos out of his lonely web
of solitude, she is also the faithless lover (albeit
an unwitting one) who dies out on Senhor Joss
love before he reaches her at the other end of the
tenuous Ariadnes thread that unites thema
thread that likewise holds the narrative of Names
together.
Names weaves a rich tapestry of images that bring
labyrinths, threads and trails, and narrative/writing together. Senhor Joss quest begins in a literal
labyrinth at his workplace in the Central Registry:
avalanches of files, which are always happening however firmly the masses of paper are held
in place, have made [the walkway] intended to
provide direct, rapid access [to the Registry] into
a complex network of passages and paths, where
you are constantly confronted by obstacles and
cul-de-sacs.20 Registry employees are constantly
navigating the confusing shelves of archives and
towering piles of paper that form the veritable
walls of this labyrinth. To successfully traverse the
tangled maze, the Registrar instructs his subordinates to make use of Ariadnes thread.21
20 Saramago. All the Names. 1997. Trans. Margaret Jull
Costa. (London: Harvill Press, 1999), 145.
21 Saramago. All the Names, 7.

Encountering Formal Beauty

203

The term Ariadnes thread, used on at least six


other occasions22 in a variety of contexts, both
in its literal and figurative configurations, refers
in this case to the physical ball of yarn the Registrar keeps in his drawer for employees use in
the archival maze. To find a birth, marriage or
death record, Registry clerks must descend into
the labyrinth with its twists and turns, skirt
round mountains of bundles, columns of files,
piles of cards, thickets of ancient remains and
walk down dark gulleys, between walls of grubby
paper, while yards and yards of string will have
to be unravelled, left behind, like a sinuous, subtle
trail traced in the dust, there is no other way
of knowing where you have to go next, there is
22 Other instances in which the term Ariadnes thread is
used in Names: the end of his Ariadnes thread was there,
to use the mythological language of the Central Registry
(39); not daring to use the real Ariadnes thread, despite
the fact that the drawer in the Registrars Office where it was
kept, along with a powerful torch, was never locked (141);
suddenly, from unknown depths, the longed-for solution welled up within him, like the end of a new Ariadnes
thread (174); In the Central Registry, we use Ariadnes
thread, it never fails (194); Senhor Jos walked over to the
Registrars desk, opened the drawer where the torch and
Ariadnes thread were waiting for him. He tied the end of
the thread round his ankle (244).

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On Reading

no other way of finding your way back.23 These


recurring symbols of labyrinth, thread and trail,
which are critical to the artistic design of Names,
constitute a narrative frame that coheres the
whole.
The Central Registry is not the only physical labyrinth in Names, but finds its haunting lookingglass in the General Cemetery. Edifices become
mirrors of each other in Names: One enters the
cemetery via an old building with a faade which
is the twin sister of the Central Registry faade.
There are the same three black stone steps, the
same ancient door in the middle, the same five
narrow windows above,24 and [l]ike the faade,
the interior of the building is a perfect copy of the
Central Registry [with ] the same long counter, stretching the whole length of the enormous
room, the same towering shelves, the same arrangement of staff.25 Relations between Registry
and Cemetery employees, we are told, are openly
friendly and full of mutual respect, because []
they know that they are digging at either end of
the same vine, the vine called life and which is

23 Saramago. All the Names, 143-44.


24 Saramago. All the Names, 184.
25 Saramago. All the Names, 189.

Encountering Formal Beauty

situated between two voids.26 Patterns of images are established not only between objects and
characters that serve as foils to one another, but
more importantly, emphasise the wholeness and
perfection of the narrative structure in the methodical, symmetrical patterns of events created.
The reader learns that straight lines in the Cemetery are like the straight lines in a labyrinth of
corridors, theyre constantly breaking off, changing direction[:] you walk around a grave and
suddenly you dont know where you are.27 This
labyrinth of corridors is further convoluted by
the mischievous shepherd28 Senhor Jos encounters at the unknown womans grave, in the
section for suicides.
So what is the truth about the land of
suicides, asked Senhor Jos, Not everything here is what it seems [. . .] its
a labyrinth, You can see when somethings a labyrinth, Not always, [t]his is
the invisible kind, I dont understand,
For example, the person lying here, said
the shepherd, touching the mound of
26 Saramago. All the Names, 189.
27 Saramago. All the Names, 194.
28 Saramago. All the Names, 209.

205

206

On Reading

earth with the end of his crook, is not


the person you think. Suddenly, the
ground began to shake beneath Senhor
Joss feet, the one remaining piece on
the board, his final certainty, the unknown woman who had at last been
found, had just disappeared. [.] None
of the bodies buried here corresponds
to the names you see on the marble
stones, [] Theyve all been swapped
around.29
The disorientation perpetuated by the physical
labyrinths of Names, with their avenues of ambiguity and the hopelessness of certain direction, is
multiplied exponentially as invisible labyrinths
like the Cemeterys section for suicides add to the
confusion. A metaphor for the impossibility of
certain knowledge, the symbol of the labyrinth
allows Saramago to undermine certainties in
favour of possibilities. To walk the labyrinth, as
Senhor Jos does in Names (and the reader along
with him), is, as Saramagos translator Giovanni
29 Saramago. All the Names, 208. Dialogue in Saramagos
writing is never delineated by quotation marks; his use of
punctuation is limited primarily to commas and periods.
Alternations between characters speech when they are in
dialogue is given in the use of capitalisations.

Encountering Formal Beauty

Pontiero puts it, to journey at random through


time and space, a human adventure which demands courage and imagination.30 Formal
parallels between labyrinths of the Central Registry and the General Cemetery create harmonious echoes across disparate sections of the text,
reinforcing the sense of unity we find in Names,
which in turn conveys the novels integrity and
wholeness to the reader.

Through Mental and Metaphorical


Labyrinths
Apart from the physical labyrinths we encounter
in the novel, Names also presents several metaphorical journeys through the labyrinth. The
symbols of labyrinth and thread predominantly
link and cohere Senhor Joss trail of the unknown woman. At one point, he deliberates with
the notion of simply calling her, for on the other
side of the pavement, was a telephone box, []
just twenty paces away and he would reach the
30 Giovanni Pontiero, trans. Introduction. The Year of the
Death of Ricardo Reis. By Jos Saramago. (London: Harvill
Press, 1999), x.

207

208

On Reading

end of a thread that would carry his voice to her,


the same thread would bring him an answer, and
there, in one way or another, his search would
end.31 At another point, his investigations, which
indicated no route along which to continue,
seem to place before him an unscalable wall32
in the maze. Obstacles that surround this labyrinthine search are also described as a hole that
Senhor Jos has gotten himself into, with all the
doors shut and not a single clue to follow.33 When
he eventually finds an avenue of escape, the
longed-for solution well[s] up within him, like
the end of a new Ariadnes thread.34 Rich imagery
relating to the labyrinthof threads, routes and
wallspervades Names, relating not only parts of
the novel to each other but also to the whole.
Just as Senhor Jos is on the unknown womans
trail, the Registrar himself is on Senhor Joss
trail: the Registrar tells him at the end of the
novel that Ive been keeping a regular track of
your activities.35 The Registrar in fact becomes a
foil to Senhor Jos over the course of the novel,
31 Saramago. All the Names, 69; emphasis added.
32 Saramago. All the Names, 134; emphasis added.
33 Saramago. All the Names, 35; emphasis added.
34 Saramago. All the Names, 174.
35 Saramago. All the Names, 242.

Encountering Formal Beauty

209

divided as they are by hierarchy at the beginning


of Names. For instance, Senhor Joss insomnia
over his difficulties in locating the unknown
woman causes him, for the first time in his life, to
be late for work one morning when he oversleeps.
He leaves the house dishevelled and at a crazy
gallop quite inappropriate to his age and condition. More than an hour later, the Registrar
arrived. He looked rather withdrawn [], at first
sight, anyone would say that he had slept badly
too.36 His unknown Ariadne thus links Senhor
Jos to the Registrar as well. On another occasion,
Senhor Jos is left trembling in the fearful dark,
during his nocturnal expedition in the archive of
the dead, after his torch goes out. He then talks
himself back into composure: Look, apart from
being afraid, nothing really bad has happened to
you yet [] youve got the string tied round your
ankle, with the other end tied to the leg of the
Registrars desk, youre safe, like an unborn child
attached by the umbilical cord to its mothers
womb.37 The imagery of Ariadnes thread through
the labyrinth, which forms the novels central
narrative frame, is endlessly perpetuated as characters make both their literal and metaphorical
journeys through the labyrinths of Names.
36 Saramago. All the Names, 175.
37 Saramago. All the Names, 152.

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On Reading

Saramago further capitalises on his use of the


Greek metaphor by including its meaning as a reference to logic-solving processes, such that narrative and writing become intimately woven into a
tapestry of associations and are transformed into
Ariadnes threads of their own. Likewise deriving its name from the Grecian myth, Ariadnes
thread can also refer to the process of resolving
logical difficulties through an exhaustive record
(physical or otherwise) of all possible alternatives.
Saramagos writing style, which embraces theoretical alternative plot developments,38 thereby
transforms the novel into a veritable record of
multiple possible alternatives. In this way, the narrative itself becomes another Ariadnes thread.
Theoretical alternative plot developments in
Names often materialise as part of Senhor Joss
imaginary meanderings or playful thought experiments. His mind is a metaphorical labyrinth
where, having reached [a] point, his thoughts
stopped, then took another route, a narrow, uncertain path []. The thought broke off again and

38 David Frier. The Novels of Jos Saramago: Echoes from the


Past, Pathways into the Future. (Cardiff: University of Wales
Press, 2007), 3.

Encountering Formal Beauty

211

abruptly retraced its steps.39 Slipping through


the confused labyrinth of his unmetaphysical
head,40 Senhor Joss mind takes imaginary meandering voyages guided by Ariadnes thread, at
the other end of which lies the unknown woman.
As Mary Daniel points out, [h]ypotheses crowd
the pages41 of Saramagos novels and take the
shape of lengthy asides and digressions that play
out in Senhor Joss sometimes far-fetched imagination. For example, after he conducts his initial
investigations under deceptive pretexts at the
building where the unknown woman was born,
his mind races ahead as he conjures a mental picture of the terrible consequences that would ensue
if his deceit were to be exposed before his boss,
the Registrar.42 In another instance, his mind
constructs an imaginary run-in with an (also)
imaginary concierge at the unknown womans
apartment.43 When he hesitates over the option
39 Saramago. All the Names, 66-67.
40 Saramago. All the Names, 28.
41 Mary Daniel. Symbolism and Synchronity: Jos
Saramagos Jangada de Pedra (The Stone Raft). Jos Saramago (Blooms Modern Critical Views). Ed. Harold Bloom.
(New York, NY: Chelsea House Publications), 2005, 18.
42 Saramago. All the Names, 126-27.
43 Saramago. All the Names, 235.

212

On Reading

of calling the unknown womans parents from


the Registry telephone on a Sundaya day when
no one is presumably at workhe once more
imagines the disastrous consequences, should
the Registrar have the call traced: Senhor Joss
imagination did not stop at creating this troubling dialogue, once it was over, he went on to
enact in his mind what would happen afterwards,
the unknown womans parents coming into the
Central Registry and pointing, Thats the man, or
else [].44 These ambivalent or elses typify our
experience of reading Names.
Saramago pushes these alternative possibilities
and the nature of Senhors Joses imaginings to the
limit, when the latter begins to converse with the
ceiling in his own home.
[T]here was no reason why you should
go on looking for this woman unless,
Unless what, Unless you were doing it
out of love, Only a ceiling would come
up with such an absurd idea [. . .], You
wanted to see her, you wanted to know
her, and that, whether you like it or
not, is love, These are the imaginings
of a ceiling, Theyre your imaginings,
44 Saramago. All the Names, 217.

Encountering Formal Beauty

a mans imaginings, not mine [. . .].


After this, the ceiling decided to remain
silent, it had realised that Senhor Joss
thoughts were already turned to the
visit he was going to make to the unknown womans parents.45
For most of the dialogue, it is easy to dismiss
the multiple conversations Senhor Jos has with
his ceiling as cathartic articulations to soothe
his anxieties. Yet Saramago continually slips
such odd, whimsical comments into the narrative that forbid such simplistic rationalisations.
The extraordinary notion that the ceilings own
consciousness prompts its decision to remain
silent when it realises that Senhor Joss attention
was now engaged elsewhere takes the reader by
surprise.46 This account of Senhor Joss mental
labyrinths, in its exploration of alternative plot
developments, thus becomes symbolic of the
logic-solving process of Ariadnes thread, giving

45 Saramago. All the Names, 215.


46 See p.135 and pp.213-14 of Names for other examples of
Senhor Jos in conversation with his ceiling.

213

214

On Reading

the novel its richly textured surface.47

Symmetrical Patterns of Silence


Saramago maintains the harmonious structure of
his writing by weaving corresponding episodes
into distinct patterns of images that pervade the
text, where these strands of reverberation give the
novel its sense of wholeness and integrity. Orchestrations of silence, in particular, find enormous
resonance in Names, where encounters with these
muted moments in our experience of reading
Saramago are imbued with surrealistic beauty.
47

These alternate possibilities that play with the cores of

chance and chaos in the novel are also constantly tossed


about playfully by the narrator, who experiments with
make-believe scenarios in which some trifling action by
Senhor Jos might alter the entire course of the novel. For
example, when Senhor Jos goes to the unknown womans
old school district in search of more information about
her, the possibility of an imaginary run-in with one of the
Registrys deputiesan unmitigated calamity for Senhor
Josis posited: had Senhor Jos revealed his identity and
produced his fabricated Registry-letter of authority, we are
told that he would undoubtedly have been exposed (Names
132-33).

Encountering Formal Beauty

215

When Senhor Jos makes his first illicit nocturnal


journey into the Registry, the narrator observes
in the dimness of the shadows that the strange
shapes of shelves laden with papers seem[ed]
to burst through the invisible roof and rise up
into the black sky, [and] the feeble light above the
Registrars desk was like a remote, stifled star,48 as
the clerk sat in the Registry until dawn, listening
to the faint rustle of the papers of the living above
the compact silence of the dead.49 The enigmatic
vision of the strange shapes of Registry shelves
crammed with papers, bursting through the invisible roof to at last reach the black skies of night,
is a wonderfully defamiliarised presentation of
the Registry as compared to previous descriptions of it in daytime. To complement the strange
new surroundings we find ourselves in, Saramago
illumines the scene with only a feeble light coming from the bulb that hangs above the Registrars
desk like a remote, stifled star.
At the literal level, the passage is merely a portrayal of the poorly-lit Registry in the nighttime:
shelves appear to extend to infinity because
Senhor Jos cannot differentiate the roof in the
darkness and the lamp above the Registrars desk
48 Saramago. All the Names, 15.
49 Saramago. All the Names, 18.

216

On Reading

provides only a weak source of illumination. Yet


Saramago creates an irresistible iridescence to the
moment as his beautifully poetic use of language,
depicting the Registry, captures the readers imagination. The magic of the moment is complete
as Senhor Jos sits listening to the faint rustle of
the papers of the living above the compact silence
of the dead. There is something extremely tenuous about the nature of reality at this point. It is
unclear why papers in the archive of the living
should rustle faintly while papers in that of the
dead should remain sombrely silent. Yet it makes
perfect poetic sense because the dead, of course,
are silent; they no longer have voices. By the same
token, however, these are references to inanimate
objects, to papers, which have neither voice nor
volitions to move in the first place.
Images of such fragile, tremulous silences that
threaten to crumble at the slightest disturbance
are repeated throughout the novel, imbuing the
narrative with an enigmatic breath of beauty.
When Senhor Jos spends a solitary night by the
unknown womans grave, he is acutely sensitive to
the tremendousness of the surrounding silence.
Walking for long hours through the General
Cemetery, he passes through epochs, eras, dynasties, through kingdoms, empires and republics,
through wars and epidemics, through infinite

Encountering Formal Beauty

217

numbers of disparate deaths, beginning with the


first sorrow felt by humanity and ending with [the
unknown] woman who had committed suicide
only a few days ago.50 He sees, on the graves,
angels with wings spread, angels with
wings folded, tondos, empty urns, or
urns filled with false stone flames or
a piece of languid crepe draped about
them, griefs, tears, majestic men, magnificent women, delightful children cut
down in the flower of life, old men and
women who could have expected no
more, whole crosses and broken crosses, steps, nails, crowns of thorns, lances,
enigmatic triangles, the occasional unusual marble dove, flocks of real doves
wheeling above the cemetery. And
silence. A silence interrupted only from
time to time by the steps of the occasional, sighing lover of solitude drawn
here by a sudden bout of sadness from
the rustling outskirts where someone
can still be heard weeping at a graveside
on which they have placed bunches
of fresh flowers, still damp with sap,
piercing, one might say, the very heart
50 Saramago. All the Names, 202-03.

218

On Reading

of time, these three thousand years of


graves of every shape, meaning and
appearance, united by the same neglect,
by the same solitude, for the sadness
they once gave rise to is now too old for
there to be any surviving heirs. 51
Universal human history is encapsulated in this
movingly eloquent description. Saramago creates
the sense of a vast expanse of time through the
ages via effective use of counterpoint, contrast,
and groups of associations: of majestic men and
magnificent women, of delightful children and
the venerable aged, and of nails, crowns of thorns,
lances, and broken and whole crosses that allude
to Jesuss crucifixion, arguably the most famous
death in all of Western human history. Historical
watershed events (the rise and fall of epochs and
dynasties, of bitter wars and frightful epidemics)
have now become ghosts of the past that need no
longer be mentioned by name, for they have sunk
into a silence that has been reduced to unified
neglect, sameness of solitude and forgotten legacies of sadness. The mighty weight of this silence
is tremulously broken intermittently by the quiet,
sentimental sobs and hushed footsteps of solitary
mourners.
51 Saramago. All the Names, 197.

Encountering Formal Beauty

219

On another occasion, as Senhor Jos sits in the


empty house of the unknown woman, [t]he
silence, which had seemed to him absolute, was
interrupted now by noises from the street, especially, from time to time, by the passing of a car,
but in the air too there was a slow breathing, a
slow pulse, perhaps it is the way houses breathe
when they are left alone, this one has probably
not even realised it yet that there is someone in it
now.52 The occasion parallels the instance in the
novel when Senhor Jos is eating a lonely dinner at home (an adjacent edifice to the Central
Registry, with a connecting door between them)
and the narrator observes that [t]here was an
absolute silence, you could scarcely hear the
noise made by the few cars still out and about in
the city. What you could hear most clearly was a
muffled sound that rose and fell, like a distant bellows, but Senhor Jos was used to that, it was the
Central Registry breathing.53 Such transpositions
of realitydescriptions of breathing edifices with
evolving consciousness of their ownsuffuse the
text with a surreal beauty that does not necessarily have logical substance, yet make perfect
poetic sense. The recurring pattern of images in
the tremulous silences of Names vividly evokes
52 Saramago. All the Names, 237; emphasis added.
53 Saramago. All the Names, 174; emphasis added.

220

On Reading

George Eliots famous line from Middlemarch:


and we should die of that roar which lies on the
other side of silence.54 For, these inaudible hums
of muffled bellows, faint rustles and slowly pulsing buildings roar at us from the other side of
silence, in a muted murmur that drowns out even
the noisy cars passing in the streets, deafening us
in the majesty of their beauty.

Concentric Progressions and


Interpenetrations
These echoing parts, as manifested by symmetrical patterns of silence that mutely reach out to one
another across the novels expanse, allow Saramago to create a concentric rather than sequential narrative progression. Rather than a linear
sequence of cause-and-effect, Daniel proposes,
there is perceived throughout the [narrative]
universe a meaningful and concentric overlapping and interpenetration of lives and events at

54 George Eliot. Middlemarch. (Charleston, SC: Forgotten


Books, 1950), 145.

Encountering Formal Beauty

221

all levels.55 The concentric narrative progression


thus confers the text with formal structure to
direct its chaotic forces, as seemingly disparate
episodes are rendered meaningful by such overlapping of events.
I raise two instances in Names to explain this.
Senhor Jos begins his search for the unknown
woman at the only existing address he has on
Registry record: the house in which she had been
raised as a baby. Upon arrival, he hears a babys
cries through the closed door.56 For a moment,
nothing seems odd about the situation, until the
realisation that the crying baby cannot possibly
be the same one from thirty-six years earlier (the
unknown woman as an infant) hits the reader.
Though it is fairly conceivable that another
woman with a baby may live there now (as indeed
turns out to be the case), the curious coincidence
of the timing and purpose that brought Senhor
Jos to this doorstep on this night gives the moment a singular sense of unreality. Echoes of the
past of which he has come in search, of the baby
girl who herself once cried in the same house,
55 Mary Daniel. Symbolism and Synchronity: Jos
Saramagos Jangada de Pedra (The Stone Raft). Jos Saramago (Blooms Modern Critical Views), 20.
56 Saramago. All the Names, 35.

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On Reading

make it difficult to shake the surreal sentiment


that this moment can just as easily have been
thirty-six years earlier, a sentiment that does not
slide by unobserved.
[It was as if Senhor Joss] brain had
suddenly run out of control and gone
shooting off in all directions, as if time
had collapsed everything, backwards
and forwards, compressing everything
into one compact moment, he thought
that the child whom he had heard
crying behind the door was, thirty-six
years before, the unknown woman, that
he himself was a boy of fourteen with
no reason to go looking for anyone, far
less at this time of the night. Standing
on the pavement, he looked at the street
as if he had never seen it before, thirtysix years ago the street light shone more
dimly, the road wasnt tarmacked [].
Time moved, began to expand slowly,
then faster, it seemed to buck violently
[], the roads succeeded one another,
became superimposed, the buildings appeared and disappeared, they
changed colour, shape, everything jockeying anxiously for position before the

Encountering Formal Beauty

light of day came to change it all back.57


The intensity of this non-linear moment creates
the sense of two concentric tales being laid out,
one on top of the other, which finds their common centre in the crying baby. Time collapses
unto itself, disrupting the sense of linear, sequential order, giving the narrative its spherical shape.
In the possible order that form divines, two different dimensions of time are collapsed together,
creating a new sense of the narratives progression
for the reader.
The concentric nature of narrative in Names is
also reinforced by the image of an unanswered
telephone. When Senhor Jos goes to inform
the lady in the ground-floor apartment that the
unknown woman, her goddaughter, is dead, he
is caught unawares by the discovery that the two
had conversed over the telephone only days,
perhaps moments, before the latters suicide.
Relating the incident to Senhor Jos, the lady in
the ground-floor apartment recounts the conversation with her goddaughter: I couldnt cope
with all the memories, I couldnt sleep [] It
didnt take long before we were both crying, as if
we were bound to each other by a thread of tears
57 Saramago. All the Names, 35.

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On Reading

[] We left it that she would come and visit me


as soon as she had time.58 Again, the ineffaceable
image of Ariadnes thread weaves its way into the
narrative. The reader and Senhor Joss understanding that the unknown woman will never
have the chance to make this last visit heightens
our sense of the moments tragedy, as the old lady
adds that her attempts to reach the unknown
woman over the past few days met only with a
response from the answering machine.
[I]n the following days I tried several
times and at different hours, I phoned
in the morning, I phoned in the afternoon, I phoned after supper, I even
phoned at midnight [...]. The conversation could not continue to roll around
the black hole hiding the truth, the
moment was approaching when Senhor Jos would say Your goddaughter
is dead [...]. It was as if what the lady in
the ground-floor apartment had to tell
him might still, who knows how, make
time run backwards and, at the very last
moment, steal the unknown woman
back from death. 59
58 Saramago. All the Names, 166; emphasis added.
59 Saramago. All the Names, 167.

Encountering Formal Beauty

The episode, in its heartrending bleakness, finds


enormous resonance when Senhor Jos goes to
explore the unknown womans empty apartment
at the end of the novel. An inexplicable sense of
loss leads him to sit dejectedly on her sofa after
a short rummage of her apartment, unable to
bring himself to resume his search of her private
belongings, knowing well that she will never
again return to them. And [a]t that moment, the
telephone rang:
The answering machine came on, a
female voice said the telephone number, then added, Im not at home right
now, but please leave a message after
the tone. [...] he is so troubled by the
few words he heard [...] no, shes not at
home, shell never be at home again,
only her voice remained, grave, veiled,
as if distracted, as if she had been thinking of something else when she made
the recording. Senhor Jos said, They
might ring again, and nurturing that
hope, he did not move from the sofa
for another hour, the darkness in the
house grew gradually thicker and the
telephone did not ring again.60
60 Saramago. All the Names, 238.

225

226

On Reading

It is moments like these that suffuse the text with


what C. A. R. Hills calls an unearthly, muted
beauty.61 Both episodes are laid in concentric
overlaps that have the unanswered telephone and
the unknown womans voice on the answering
machineher sole remaining legacy for Senhor
Jos at the end of his searchas their common
centre. The reader wonders if the unanswered
call Senhor Jos heard was made by the old lady
from the ground-floor apartment trying to reach
the unknown woman for the last time, to verify if
her goddaughter is indeed gone. Or, if narrative
time has once more folded into itself, where this
instant, in which Senhor Jos finds himself in the
unknown womans apartment, is that same moment from before when the old lady earlier tried
to reach the unknown woman by telephone. The
richness of the narrative is rendered meaningful
by these associations between events and images (of the weeping baby and the unanswered
telephone) rather than through a linear narrative
sequence.
As a writer, Pontiero remarks, Saramago is motivated by the desire to establish patterns of sym61 The quotation is taken from C. A. R. Hillss comment
about All the Names in Literary Review, which is reprinted
on the novels back cover.

Encountering Formal Beauty

metry amidst the chaos, [and] to discover unexpected links between men and symbols. Pontiero
does not explicitly articulate to what ends these
patterns of symmetry and links between men
and symbols serve, but I offer the suggestion
that it must inevitably have to do with the formal
artistry of Saramagos writing. The novelist himself affirms Pontieros observation when he writes
in The Double: chaos is merely order waiting to
be deciphered.62 This order, I propose, may be
discerned by making sense of standards in wholeness (of formal structures and narrative shapes)
and principles of harmony (including symmetry,
corresponding echoes and patterns of images)
that are purposefully constructed for artistic ends
in Saramagos novels.

Aesthetic Readings of Literature


As with my analysis of All the Names, most art
philosophers and literary aestheticians agree on
the centrality of formal appreciation in reading
literature or fiction as art. An aesthetic reading
that privileges the artistry and formal qualities of
Saramagos writingin his narrative construc62 Saramago. All the Names, 98.

227

228

On Reading

tions that resist realism, the poesis of his eloquent expressions, and especially the wholeness
and harmony of its narrative unityis congruent
with the novelists own outlook on his work. As
Onsimo Almeida affirms, Saramago himself
has disavowed all attempts to identify cleavages,
ruptures, or breaks in his works, and has openly
supported the critics who privilege readings of
his writing where unity prevails.63 The prevailing
unity of Saramagos writing, I contend, is most
comprehensively expressed in an aesthetic reading of his novels.
More importantly, however, I hope to have demonstrated the significance and value of an aesthetic reading in the approach of literature or fiction
as art. The kind of analysis I have undertaken
with Names, with its focus on literature as an
art form, is, as Peter Lamarque observes, rarely
found within Theory, and where literature as art
does get mentioned it is usually in dismissive
terms. Yet literature [...] has been designated an
63 Onsimo Almeida. Jos Saramago: O Ano de 1998.
Colquio/Letras 151/152 (Janeiro-Junho 1999). Portuguese
Literary and Cultural Studies 6: On Saramago. Ed. Anna
Klobucka. (Dartmouth, MA: University of Massachusetts
Dartmouth Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture,
2001), 249.

Encountering Formal Beauty

art form for over two millennia.64 To think of


literature as art, Lamarque explicates, is minimally, to think of works as artifacts or designs
of some kind, exhibiting artistry, comparable
in certain respects with other arts, and capable
of affording distinct kinds of pleasure and the
relevant literary qualities are essentially explicable in aesthetic terms.65 The centrality of the
notion of literature as art underpins my aesthetic
interpretation of Saramagos Names as well as my
firm contention that reading literature or fiction as art is fundamental to literary criticism.
Although there are other appropriate types of
critical approaches that address the subject matter present in works of fiction, these approaches
usually attend much less closely, if at all, to the
literary qualities of, or what is artistic about, the
art object.
An aesthetic reading of the literary work as art
acknowledges the fundamental significance of its
artistry, which I argue is the main characteristic
that distinguishes it from other types of writing
that tend to be more discursive in nature; it is
what makes literature irreplaceable as a unique
64 Peter Lamarque. The Philosophy of Literature. (Malden,
MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2009), 12.
65 Lamarque. The Philosophy of Literature, 16-17.

229

230

On Reading

form of art. Lamarque, in fact, goes as far as to


suggest that appreciating literature as art is not
simply one among other critical approaches. It is
more fundamental, since there is a conceptual
connection between literature and art such that it
would be paradoxical to speak of appreciating a
work as literature but not as art. In contrast, there
is nothing paradoxical in speaking of appreciating
a work as literature but not in deconstructionist,
new historicist, or psychoanalytic terms.66 My
point is that attending to a works formal properties is essential to our fundamental understanding
of the category literature. Though cognitive, moral
and social experiences are legitimate and appropriate responses to literature do much to enrich
our interpretations of texts, they are not specific
or elemental to literary writing in particular.
While aesthetic interpretations do not represent the only kind of legitimate response to art
available to us, it is necessary to a reading of any
literary text that considers itself a work of art and/
or makes a claim to beauty. Works of fiction that
lend themselves to an aesthetic reading tend to
be more creative in the ways they use language or
experiment with form. This does not imply that
literature that contains rhetorical or social calls
66 Lamarque. The Philosophy of Literature, 16.

Encountering Formal Beauty

231

to action cannot be considered art, but these, I


argue, are not the emphases of literary art objects.
The tipping point between artistic and non-artistic works of literature, I suggest, lies in the balance
between the texts formal beauty and discursive
elements that distract from the poetic illusion created; its rhetorical qualities, in short, should not
drown out its imaginative possibilities as a work
of artistic creation.
Literary criticism today is increasingly being saturated by theoretical readings of literature that pay
little attention to its literary qualitiesand virtually no attention to its aesthetic pleasureswhich,
I argue, should instead be its emphasis; our readings of literature need to be compatible with its
aims as art and artistic creation. Reading practices
that attend to the formal artistry and aesthetic
pleasures of fiction are a necessary complement to
what Daphne Patai and Will Corral call theorys
empire.67 Only then can we defend the value of
our encounters with beauty in reading, which
add to our rich experience of the world; to say
with conviction that literature is indeed one of the
great arts of the times.
67 Daphne Patal and Will Corral, eds. Theorys Empire: An
Anthology of Dissent. (New York, NY: Columbia University
Press, 2005).

Jeremy Fernando

233

Randori with
Franz Kafka;

on reading, irony,
and the law 1
As in judo, the best answer to an
adversary manoeuvre is not to retreat,
but to go along with it, turning it to
ones own advantage, as a resting point
for the next phase.
Michel Foucault
Since we are attempting to speakwriteof
randori, of a grappling that is always in relation
with another, it might be apt to open with a line
from one of my favourite thinkers of the body
not just the body as corporeal being, but a body in

1 A version of this paper was presented at an open lecture at


Kogakuin University, Tokyo on 10 June, 2010.

234

On Reading

relation, in relationality, a body with other bodies,


sometimes even a body in communion, in touch,
in movement, with another, and itself; in other
words, a corporeal becoming as it is attempting to
be. And here, we might momentarily want to keep
in mind the potential question that accompanies
all thought, all cited thought, all quotations, in
particular the notion of whether one is always
only choosing a quotation, a thinker, a kind of
thinking, because one likes it, because it happens
to suit one at that particular moment. This opens
various registers of citationality: whether we are
citing to pay a certain homage, an acknowledgement that the thought comes from another, from
elsewhere; whether we are deferring to another;
whether that moment of deference brings with it
a shielding of ourselves, as if to say, if you have an
issue with that thought, dont argue with me; pick
your fight with the otherFoucault in this case.
By speaking of citationality, and bodies, we have
opened a thinking on how forms, rules, regulations, affect our selves, have an effect on our bodies, our corpus. And here, we cannot ignore the
trope that the term like comes from lich, which

Randori with Franz Kafka

235

etymologically can be traced to corpse.2 So, even


as we are attempting to consider the notion of
preferenceperhaps even to guard against it for
fear that biasness may cloud our thinkingwe
cannot turn a blind eye to the fact that there are
effects on our corporeal being even as it may be
affecting our very thinking. In other words, even
as there are laws governing the way we may be
approachingthe manner of our thoughtthese
laws themselves are not entirely divorced from us.
Hence, we might not only be dealing with laws
that are not entirely clear, that we might not be
able to fully see, we are also always already potentially blind to the manner in which we are affecting the law, even as it has effects on us.
This is akin to the problem that K faces when he
is brought before a power that he neither knows
and can never knownor can see, but which
clearly has effects on him. This is due to the fact
that K is faced with a law that he must approach,
and which has power of judgment over him, but
2 Here, one might open the register that we call the oeuvre of an author her body of work. One should note that
etymologically speaking, there is no mention of the body
specifically in the term: it traces itself back to opus, or work.
Hence, the body that we are referring to might well be that
of the authorthe work that is written on her self.

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On Reading

at the same time always hidden from him. And it


is this that the priest attempts to highlight to him
through the famous parable of the Law, the tale
from within Franz Kafkas The Trial which goes:
Before the Law stands a doorkeeper.
A man from the country comes to this
doorkeeper and requests admittance to
the Law. But the doorkeeper says that
he cant grant him admittance now. The
man thinks it over and then asks if hell
be allowed to enter later. Its possible,
says the doorkeeper, but not now.3
It is not that the man is not allowed into the Law,
not allowed to see what it is that is judging him,
but that he is not allowed to at this very moment.
Since there is no time stipulation to but not
now, it is not that the doorkeeper is lying to him,
but that the moment of admittance is deferred,
not necessarily eternally, but perhaps for just one
moment, perhaps only a moment longer than the
life of the man. However, it is not as if the Law has
no effect on their lives. On the contrary the man
from the country waits outside the doorway till
the end of his life; and in the larger context of the
3 Franz Kafka. The Trial, translated by Breon Mitchell. (New
York: Schoken Books, 1998), 215.

Randori with Franz Kafka

novel, Ks trial fully occupies his daily existence.


In other words, both of them are completely
consumed by the Law, by a force that they do
notand cannotsee or comprehend, by a force
that they remain completely blind to.
Even though the Law is a force that affects them,
has an effect on them, it is not as though they
are compelled to be before it. The man, of his
own free will, decides that he would prefer to
wait.4 At no point is he forced to remain. This
opens the possibility that it is the man, unlike the
doorkeeper, who is free. The latter is captive to
his duty, to the Law, as not only has he to wait for
the man to appear, but must also wait there till he
decides to leave. In this sense, it is the executer
of the Law who is most bound to it. As the priest
explains to K,
the man is in fact free: he can go
wherever he wishes, the entrance to the
Law alone is denied to him, and this
only by one person, the doorkeeper.
If he sits on the stool at the side of the
door and spends the rest of his life
there, he does so of his own free will;
the story mentions no element of force.
4 Kafka. The Trial, 216.

237

238

On Reading

The doorkeeper, on the other hand, is


bound to his post by his office; he is not
permitted to go elsewhere outside, but
to all appearances he is not permitted to
go inside either, even if he wishes to.5
So, even as the doorkeeper is bound to the Law,
it is not as if he knows what the Law is. As he
tells the man, Im only the lowest doorkeeper
the mere sight of the third is more than even
I can bear.6 Moreover, it is the man who in the
darkness now sees a radiance that streams
forth inextinguishably from the door of the Law.7
Nothing is said of whether the doorkeeper sees
this light. This suggests that both, regardless
of whether they are there by choice or duty,
are affected by a power that is beyond their
comprehension. And even though the man sees
this light, he never knows what it means, or even
what the light is.
The unknowability of the Law becomes even
more curious if we take into account the fact
that the doorkeeper tells the man, no one else
could gain admittance here, because this entrance
5 Kafka. The Trial, 221.
6 Kafka. The Trial, 215.
7 Kafka. The Trial, 216.

Randori with Franz Kafka

was meant solely for you.8 This suggests that


it is a personalised Law; and this opens the
register of the paradox that every lawthat the
Law itselffaces. In order for something to be
Law, it has to have a certain universality: it is
applicable to everyone without distinction or
discrimination. However, each application of the
Law is situational, unique, singular. Hence, at
best, the Law can only be knownif that term
can even be used in the first placeat the very
moment in which it is applied; to the man, to
K, to you. In other words, the Law can only be
glimpsed by the effects it has on one, but can
never be known as such. This is precisely why
the priest tells K, you dont have to consider
everything as true, you just have to consider it as
necessary. For, it is not so much that one cannot
distinguish what is true from what is not (which
is the misunderstanding that K has in thinking
that lies are made into a universal system9) but
more radically that each truthand by extension
each lieis only provisional, situational, singular.
It is the situationality of the Law, of each positing
of the Law, that allows the commentators [to]
tell us: the correct understanding of a matter and
misunderstanding the matter are not mutually
8 Kafka. The Trial, 217.
9 Kafka. The Trial, 223.

239

240

On Reading

exclusive.10 One can, at best, guess whether it is


a correct understandingwhich suggests that
every misunderstanding is not only potentially a
correct understanding, but that it is impossible to
distinguish between them in the first place. One
might even posit that within every understanding
lies a misunderstanding. It is for this reason that
even the executer of the Law remains blind to it:
all the doorkeeper is doing is carrying out the
Law in that particular situation, the situation of
the Law being solely for you; in other words,
the only knowledge that the executer of the Law
has is of its effects; the only time that the executer
knows of the Law is at the very moment (s)he is
executing it.
Here, we might take a slight detour, maybe even
a little step backwards, and reopen the register of
citationality when it comes to the law. After all,
whenever one turns to the law, one has to also
evoke the notion of precedence, of something
similar that has happened before. If it happens to
be a new situation, one has to then draw parallels
with something else. And here, it is not difficult
to hear an echo of a phrase that we have been
using rather regularly in the last few minutes;
that of in other words. This opens the question
10 Kafka. The Trial, 219.

Randori with Franz Kafka

241

of exactly whos words are we using here: if I go


back to the beginning, then firstly are those words
of Foucault, not in a sense of did he sayor
writethem (that would be easier to verify, even
though one must never forget the entire history
of mis-attributions that haunts the legitimacy
of citations); secondly, and probably more
importantly, every citation, attribution, is always
already out of context. In this sense, whenever
we say in other words, we are not only pointing
out the fact that these are not exactly our words,
we are also covering, veiling, the notion that
these are precisely our wordsif not in content,
then surely in form, in sequence, words that are
ordered according to our needs, desires. Hence,
we are once again unable to do away with one
of our initial concerns: the notion of biasness,
preference. In creating a particular corpus, are we
always already writing our own bodies into it: by
evoking Foucault, by resurrecting him through a
sance of languageby playing medium here
am I always already injecting, inseminating,
my self in that dissemination? And it is no
coincidence that quotation marks are occasionally
referred to as vampire marksnot only do
they look like puncture wounds, whenever one
quotes one is enacting a violence of context by
abductingdraggingout of context. More than
that, one is also appropriating the life, the force

242

On Reading

(by way of its effects), the energy, of the words, for


ones own purposes.
In other wordsfor what choice do I have
here but to foreground the otherness in what I
am attempting to saywhatever I am saying,
even as much as I am attempting to legitimise
through, and with, the other, is always already
haunted by the spectre of illegitimacy. For, even
as oneIam attempting to back up what is said
with others, Ioneis never able to distinguish
which are myoneswords, from that of the
other. Hence, it is not just that one is unable to tell
one self from the other, both one and the other
are now also potentially indivorceable. In other
words, ones words are always already potential
other to oneself.
This brings us to the question of the author,
of writing, of whether is it possible to write
something, to create something. And of course,
it would be absurd to say that one cant: one
only needs to look around to see it happening
everywhere, everyday. The problem is the attempt
to link authorship to authority; as if the writer
of the situation can play at being Godallseeing, and in full control. The trouble with
authority is that it is illegitimate. For, if something
is legitimate, access to it would be open to

Randori with Franz Kafka

243

everyonegoverned by the Law. It is only when


something is illegitimate that the authority of
a person is required to enact it. In other words,
authority is the very undoing of the Law. For
instance, a death-sentence can only be pardoned
by the authority of the sovereign. In doing so
(s)he is going against the legal system which
sentenced that person to death; the same legal
system that upholds her/ his very sovereignty.
To compound matters, any enactment of the law
requires an executor of that law; in other words,
a figure of authority. Hence, authority is both
authored by the law, and its very author at the
same momentthe hinge on which it operates,
and also its very finitude. Moving back to Kafka,
and the Law, we now notice that if there was a
figure of authority who chose to let the man from
the country pass through the door, he would
have been able to do so. For, what would happen
is an undoinga re-writingof the Law, at that
very moment in time. The result of which would
have been: the door would be open, solely for
you. And this would be precisely a moment of
authorship, where the Law is being written, for
you, and only for you.
But what if we are on the other side: after all, how
often are we in a position to write, in a place of
authority? And we have to take into consideration

244

On Reading

the fact that even if we are in a lofty positionin


a seat of powerone cannot enact ones authority
on oneself. Even a President, or a King, cannot
pardon her/ him self: so, even as one cannot put
the sovereign in front of a court, and one has
to impeach her/ him (or in the case of a King,
assassinate him), when that occurs, the sovereigns
hands are tied. Another figure of authority, the
authorship of another, is needed in order to save
themselves. Hence, whenever one is faced with
the Law, one is always already in the position of a
reader; where one is attempting to respond to this
Law, without necessarily knowing what it is one is
responding to, or even reading.
The fact that, as the priest tells K, the correct
understanding of a matter and misunderstanding
the matter are not mutually exclusive,11 gives
us some hope. For, this suggests that not only
are they never quite separate; they are always
already potentially part of each other. Here, one
has to consider the fact that whether something
is correct or not is based on the notion of
correspondence. However, in order for that to
occur, it has to be at least the second encounter
between the object and the wordhence,
correspondence is premised on the memory of
11 Kafka. The Trial, 219.

Randori with Franz Kafka

245

the relationality between the two in question. A


thinking of memory would hardly be complete
(not that a complete thinking may ever be
possible) without a contemplation of forgetting.
In order to do so, we should momentarily stop
and consider what it means to say I forgot. One
can always posit that I forgot is a performative
statement. What is more interesting is to consider
the possibility that I forgot is a constative
statement: in this case, for the statement to be
true, there cannot be an object to it; the moment
there is an object to I forgot, one has strictly
speaking remembered what one has forgotten.
For instance, when one is at the supermarket
intending to buy something, one can utter I
forgot what I want to buythere is still no
object to the statement. Unless one eventually
remembers, there is nothing more that can said.
Hence, all the person can utter is the very fact that
(s)he has forgotten, and nothing more.
And since there is no referent to forgetting, this
suggests that there is always already an element
of unknowabilityan unknowable elementin
forgetting. In other words, there is an element that
lies beyond the cognition of the subject, beyond
the subject herself. The implication is: one cannot
choose forgetting; one cannot choose what one
forgets. Forgetting happens to one: it is something

246

On Reading

other to the subject that has an effect on her. And


if this is so, there is absolutely no reason each
act of memoryeach rememberingmight not
bring with it the possibility of forgetting. In other
words, forgetting is not an antonym of memory,
but is potentially part of memory itself.
By extension, if all we knowif knowledge
itselfis composed of memory, this would
suggest that we can never be sure if what we
know is complete; we can never be secure of our
understanding.
If this is so, this would then suggest that there
is always already a potential gap within our
understanding, within our knowledge system
itself. And there is no more appropriate graphical
denotation of this gap that the ellipsis. Rather
than being a marginalised figure of writing, an
aberration to the conceptual totality of writing,
the ellipsis is the very figure of writing itself. And
here, it might be helpful to momentarily turn
again, this time to Werner Hamacher, and his
position that the
ellipsis is the rhetorical equivalent of
writing: it depletes, or de-completes,
the whole so as to make conceptual
totalities possible. And yet every

Randori with Franz Kafka

conceivable whole achieved on the


basis of ellipsis is stamped with the
mark of the original loss. Like writing,
it withdraws from the alternatives of
presence and absence, whole and part,
proper and foreign, because only on its
ever eroding foundation can conceptual
oppositions develop: it withdraws from
its own concept. Ellipsis eclipses (itself).
It is the figure of figuration: the area
no figure contains. 12
In other words, even if we dont see an ellipsis
within a sentence, there is always already the
possibility of its presence. For, it is the very figure
of forgetting. And it is precisely forgetting that
allows one to write, and read, in the first place;
for, if everything has already been said, there is
nothing left to write, there would be no more
need to read. It is only the fact that one can
never be sure if one has forgotten that leaves
us the space to continue thinking, to continue
negotiating.

12 Werner Hamacher. Hermeneutical Ellipses: Writing the


Circle in Schleiermacher in Premises: Essays in Philosophy
and Literature from Kant to Celan, translated by Peter Fenves. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 74.

247

248

On Reading

If we momentarily reopen the register that all


knowledge is a form of memory, this suggests that
all that we know is a citation, a quotation. And
since we can never do away with the possibility
of forgetting, we will not only be uncertain of our
knowledge, of what we know, we will also never
quite know whether what we know is from us, or
from another. As Hlne Cixous reminds us,
citation is the voice of the other and
it highlights the double playing of the
narrative authority. We constantly hear
the footsteps of the other, the footsteps
of others in language, others speaking
in Stephens language or in Ulysses,
I mean in the books language It
reminds us that we have been caught up
in citation ever since we said the first
words mama or papa.13
In other words, each utterance, every attempt
to speak, write, brings with it the notion of
otherness. Hence, the very stability of the I is
always already called into questionthe self and
the other can no longer be seen as antonyms.
Not only is the self and the other in relation with
13 Hlne Cixous. Stigmata. (London: Routledge, 2005),
135.

Randori with Franz Kafka

each other, the self is potentially other to itself.


The potential uncertainty grows if we take into
consideration the teaching of Paul de Man, who
never lets us forget that,
it is impossible to say where quotation
ends and truth begins, if by truth we
understand the possibility of referential
verification. The very statement by
which we assert that the narrative is
rooted in reality can be an unreliable
quotation; the very document, the
manuscript, produced in evidence
may point back not to an actual event,
but to an endless chain of quotations
reaching as far back as the ultimate
transcendental signified God, none
of which can lay claim to referential
authority.14
In this manner, it is impossible to distinguish a
moment of reading from a potential re-writing.
And since reading and writing are haunted
by illegitimacyboth ultimately lacking any
necessary referentall reading is a potential
14 Paul de Man, Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in
Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust. (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1979), 204.

249

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On Reading

writing (which can only happen if all writing is


also a reading of sorts). It is this inability to know
if we know, to be sure that we have understood,
that allows us to continue reading, to continue
negotiating with the text; that ensures that we
have possibly never quite read the text.
It is this unknowabilitythis ellipsis that both
allows one to know yet never allows this knowing
to be completethat Jacques Derrida notes in
Right of Inspection when he argues that even
though the reader has a right to see, it also take
a certain skill to see. It is not a random, purely
arbitrary act as (s)he is always already bound
by a law of seeing. And here, one must never
forgetor at least attempt to never forgetthat
in reading, and in writing, one is always already
governed, bound, by the law of grammar. Hence,
you are free but there are rules.15 In this way,
reading, and seeing, is a negotiation between the
reader and the text. One is free within a certain
set of rules, and ones reading is an interjection, an
interplay between the reader and the text, within
the rules laid out, the rules before which both
the reader and the text must stand; there is a
law that assigns the right of inspection, you must
15 Jacques Derrida. Right of Inspection, translated by David
Wills. (New York: The Monacelli Press, 1998), 1.

Randori with Franz Kafka

observe these rules that in turn keep you under


surveillance.16 In order to play the gamethe
game of seeing, the game of readingyou have
no choice but to remain within these limits, this
frame, the frame-work of these frames 17 And
more than that, a text gives both you and itself
(through its characters, through the outcome of
its own narrative),
a right to look, the simple right to look
or to appropriate with the gaze, but
it denies you that right at the same
time: by means of its very apparatus it
retains that authority, keeping for itself
the right of inspection over whatever
discourses you might like to put forth
or whatever yarns you might spin about
it, and that in fact comes to mind before
your eyes.18
It is in this way that every seeing reveals and
conceals at the same time; every seeing always
already involves a certain inability to see, an
inability to know. In effect, every reading is a
positing, taking a position, making a choice,
16 Derrida, Right of Inspection, 1.
17 Derrida, Right of Inspection, 1.
18 Derrida, Right of Inspection, 2.

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On Reading

which comes with a moment of madness, of


blindness.

So, whats randori got to do with it

So far, weor at least Ihave managed to


skirt around the issue of randori: after all, the
implication of it being in the title is that one
is obliged to at least mention it. In fact, one is
usually expected to let it play a main role in
whatever one is writingor speakingon.
These are the rules of the game. If we slow
down a little again, we might notice that this is
premised on a relationality between the title and
the content of whatever is entitled so. We can
also recast this question in the realm of art, in
particular the notion of how the title of a work
bears a relation with the actual work itself. If we
extrapolate a little, it is a question of whether a
work of art has a relation to its framingis van
Goghs Sunflowers still a masterpiece if it was
found in a street-corner, painted on a wall, or is
much of its allure due to its position in a gallery,
or a museum? This is, of course, the question
of whether the frame is the art, or whether art
itself has an essencewhilst this is not quite

Randori with Franz Kafka

253

the time, nor place, to address the issue (which


already opens the register of thinking having a
particular grounding, even if not a grund), we
can still allow the resonances of these registers
to remain with us, and affect our thought. If we
were to yield to temptation and touch on it too
fleetingly, it would be hard to disagree with the
notion that art is probably an interplay of things:
the setting, the work, the signature (and here
we reopen the notion of author, authorship, and
authority once again). After all, the famous aura
that is often spoken of, most famously by Walter
Benjamin, means breath: there is no reason why
the breath, or even spirit of a work, cannot come
from somewhere else, somewhere other to the
work itself. Socrates famously drew inspiration
from daemon that whispered into his ear; in
Roman thought it was a genius that gave one the
stimulation to create; the more contemporary
version of this would be ones muse. In all
instances, it is a flash from elsewhereother to
the selfthat affects one: in other words, the art is
always already other to the artist. All the artist can
do is prepare her self to be the medium through
which the art is expressed.
But back to randori. In a typical situation, randori
is the place, and time, where one tests whether
ones techniques work against another person;

254

On Reading

one who often-times has a similar skill-level, and


more importantly is trying to do exactly the same
thing to you, that is test her technique on you.
This is by no means a free-for-all situation: both
parties are bound by the same rules. Hence, it is
a contracted situation: where both, in principle,
negotiate in advance what is allowed, and what
forbidden; and unless both parties agree, the bout
is off. Which means that strictly speaking, randori
is a game.
It is worthwhile to note that in the Anglo
speaking world, randori is often translated as
either free-sparring or play. In the first instance,
it implies a certain freedom within restriction
you can try anything within the rules of the
game to beat your opponent. Play brings with
it a more interesting connotation: it suggests a
certain trickery, gamesmanship, involved whilst
testing. This is especially true when the levels of
both judoka are similar: since both basically know
the same things, one cannot use what the other
doesnt know against themby definition, you
wouldnt know it as wellbut rather, you have to
use what they know against them. In other words,
you have to turn their knowledge against them.
And this brings us back to the very beginning,
and Michel Foucault, as we recall his words: in
judo the best answer to an adversary manoeuvre

Randori with Franz Kafka

is not to retreat, but to go along with it, turning it


to ones own advantage, as a resting point for the
next phase. But since it is only a resting point
for the next phase, this suggests that the play
continues, the game continuesafter all, your
opponent-partner (for (s)he is both an adversary,
and at the same time completely necessary to
the game; you cannot play on your own)can
react in the same manner as well. And since your
partner-opponent is reacting, responding, at
the same time as you are, both of you are always
playing whilst blind to the attempts of the other,
until it happens. Hence, it is a dual relationality;
each attempting to play, to out-play, the other,
potentially in blindness to the other, in order that
the duel continues.
Here though, let me run the risk of exposing
myself, and potentially show all my cards, by
offering you an example of this play, of this
playfulness in testing, in relation with the law.
Whilst in middle-school, there was a rule that
ones hair could only reach a certain length:
being an all-boys mission school, it was strictly
enforced, and anyones hair that reached either
their collars, or beyond their eyebrows was
severely reprimanded. There were, of course,
those who didnt mind this: some people just like
wearing their hair short; and if one is fine with a

255

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On Reading

law there is really no need to oppose it (opposing


something for the sake of doing so is not only
rather silly, but is, in fact, a strict law onto
itself). Amongst those who felt that this was an
infringement of ones rights, there were two main
ways of resistance. The vast majority protested in
standard fashionby attempting to confront the
law head-on: they wore their hair long, and ended
up sacrificing their bodies and time, through
systematically offering themselves up to detention
and punishment (it was a time when one could
still get publicly caned, and whipped, by the headmaster). There was a small minority that had a far
more playful method: instead of going directly
against the law, they read it closely, and took it
extremely seriously. Since the prohibition was
regarding length, hair was cut extremely short;
some even went the whole hog and took it all off.
In this manner, the head-master knew that it was
clearly a protest, but could do nothing about it: at
no point were any laws broken. The only thing he
could do was to alter the law itself: a week later,
it stated that one could not grow it longer than
the collar nor the eyebrow, but neither could it
be shorter than an inch. The resistance was to go
along with it, turning it to ones advantage.
Of course, not all laws are quite so straight
forward. Some are downright tricky. Take

Randori with Franz Kafka

257

pedestrian crossing lights for instance: there are


basically two lightsgreen to signal go, and red
to signal stop. However, green is an invitation
(one can choose to walk, or not to, whenever
green is showing); red on the other hand is an
order, an imperative (when the red light is on,
one has no choice but to stop). In other words,
the law itself is not consistent. To compound
matters, if one is crossing the road (whilst the
light is green, so no law is being broken) and the
light suddenly turns to red, one cannot stopin
fact, at that point, the thing to do is to run like
hell. Hence, sometimes one is required to break
the law in order to follow the law. The problem
is: a policeman who has seen you crossing the
road whilst the light turns red on you can then
summon you both for not stopping, and also for
stopping. Either way round, you are infringing the
law. The policeman in this instance is the writer
of the law, as (s)he is judging you by the very law
that (s)he has just written.
After all, it is a game: so even as you are trying to
[turn] it to [your] advantage, so is the other.
Since every game happens in a particular time
and place, it is situational. But like everything,
there are patterns to this situationeven though
strictly speaking each day is a new one, and one

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On Reading

cannot predict the future based on the past, one


does get better and better at it the more days one
has seen. For, if we are speaking of patterns, it is
the significance of something that matters, and
not its signification. There is a parallel here to the
law. When enacted, the law occurs in a particular
situation, but it is written as a general statement:
for, in order for something to be law, it has to
have a certain universalityit has to apply to
in general to everyone, regardless of anything.
However, each application has a context, a time
and place. Hence, it is always applied in exception
to the general, and sometimes even undoes the
generality itself. This is why the policeman can
fine one person for crossing whilst the light is
red, and let another off scot-free for doing exactly
the same thing; this is also why every judgement
passed in court can only be passed beyond
reasonable doubtthere is no claim that the
judgment is absolute truth. And here, of course,
there is an echo of Kafkas earlier teaching in the
background: that the correct understanding of a
matter and misunderstanding the matter are not
mutually exclusive.19 This suggests that we can
perhaps only catch a glimpse of the significance
of a law (through its effects), without necessarily
ever knowing its meaning. But since it affects
19 Kafka. The Trial, 219.

Randori with Franz Kafka

259

us, we have no choice but to act as if we know


what it entails, as if we can understand what the
law requires of us: for, it is not as if claims of
ignorance (even if they may be real) will spare us
from being judged. Perhaps the only thing that
the man from the country could have done was
to have gone through the door, taking the notion
of the door being solely for you extremely
seriouslywhilst remaining blind to the fact that
he is always already blind to the law itself.
So, at the end of the day, the gapof
understanding is always already potentially
present in the law; the law that affects our
bodies, and our very lives. It is the gap that
sometimes works against us, but it is also this
very gap that allows us to continue reading,
thinking, negotiating. And what is this gap, this
space between, other than the gap of ironythe
distance that is needed in order to both take the
law seriously, and the non-seriously, within the
same breath, same time, even the same space. For,
at the end of the day, all we are doingall we can
dois test the other, test ourselves even; each
testing being situational, singular, sometimes even
testing the very test itself.
All we can do is randori.

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On Reading

And as I attempt to end off, perhaps it is only


appropriate to end at the beginningfor
there is rarely a necessary end to play; only a
momentary one, perhaps one that is necessitated
by circumstance, by situation. In order to do so,
we might invoke again other words, the voice of
another, different from the first, but still similar:
another judoka, the Dada artist Yves Klein. For
his Anthropometries series, he set up a camera,
and white canvasses: then he told models to cover
themselves in paint, roll on the canvas, and left
the room, whilst the camera filmed them. Later
on, at the gallery, he set up the canvasses, and
also played the film recording of the persons
rolling on the canvasses. His question to everyone
was, where is the art, when did it happen? His
suggestion is that we always see it, for it is always
already happening in the moment; and at the
same time it is always already past the moment
we try to cognitise it, know it, understand it. And
as a final peek at what we have been attempting
to do hereread the law, whilst playing with
itperhaps it is only whilst we are grappling
with it that we can out-manoeuvre it, even as it is
attempting its own moves on us. We play with it,
even whilst being blind to it. For, in the words of
Yves Klein, the painting is only the witness who

Randori with Franz Kafka

261

saw what happened.20

20 It was Giorgio Agamben who brought Yves Kleins phrase


to my attention at a seminar entitled Homo Sacer at the
European Graduate School, August 2005, Saas Fee, Switzerland.

Michael Kearney

263

The Unknown
Pleasures of
Interpretation:
Reading the Shadows
of Joy Division
Reading Icons(?)
I first heard Joy Division in the summer of 1978,
probably June, but it could have been July; actually, it might even have been 1979, or even as late
as the early summer of 1980, which would be just
after the death of Ian Curtis1, and which would
make a lot of sense. Anyway, it was definitely in
Ireland, and I am pretty sure I heard them on
a tape my friend Frank played in a car outside
his house; although, if my first exposure to Joy
Division was in 1979 or after, there is a good

1 Curtis committed suicide on May 18, 1980 at age 23.

264

On Reading

chance that it was through Dave Fannings2 radio


show rather than a tape Frank played. The truth
is that while I think I know that it was the song
Shes Lost Control from the album Unknown
Pleasures, it might have been Interzone from
the same album, or it could even have been Dave
Fanning playing the single Love Will Tear Us
Apart since it became somewhat of a hit3 after
Curtis hanged himself. I must admit, I am not
exactly sure; I know I am only reading my own
memories, and I want to be honest rather than
construct a reading that would be really cool, a
reading that would thicken the grand-narrative of
Joy Division, a reading that would further polish
the iconic aspect of Joy Division and Curtis.4
I am writing this piece as a reader of Joy Division, so a little about reader A (me), to assist in
reader Bs (you) reading of what I am timidly
2 Dave Fanning was an RTE Radio 2 DJ starting in 1979.
3 In an underground sense, not a Beatles, Michael Jackson,
Madonna, or Lady Gaga sense.
4 Here honest does not mean true as in the Real, as opposed to a reality (the difference will be explained a little later
in the chapter); what is meant here is that I will attempt to
guard against my reading being subjective for my own ends,
to be as completely objective as possible, without preconception, even though this is no longer possible.

The Unknown Pleasures of Interpretation

265

proffering, might be due. In a Barthesian5 sense, I


am here providing possible readings of my reading, at this moment,6 of Joy Division to myriad
readers, and I want to put forth plainly that I am
merely reading Joy Division and Curtis from my
own perspective(s), which have no more credence
than almost all other readings of Joy Division and
Curtis. No matter, it is where I, as a writer, want
5 In that you the reader will have authority over the
meaning of the notions expressed in this chapter; while I
the writer, relinquish upon submission, and perhaps even
before that, any authority over the text or iconic images that
it may discuss.
6 In the same vein as Harold Pinter stated at The National
Student Drama Festival in Bristol in 1962: Im speaking
with some reluctance, knowing that there are at least
twenty-four possible aspects of any single statement, depending on where youre standing at the time or on what the
weathers like. A categorical statement, I find, will never stay
where it is and be finite. It will immediately be subject to
modification by the other twenty-three possibilities of it. No
statement I make, therefore, should be interpreted as final
and definitive. One or two of them may sound final and
definitive, they may even be almost final and definitive, but
I wont regard them as such tomorrow, and I wouldnt like
you to do so today. John Russell Brown. Theatre Language:
A Study of Arden, Osborne, Pinter and Wesker, (New York:
Taplinger Publishing Company, 1972), 15 -16.

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On Reading

to lead you, as a reader; although I am rather sure


you will not follow. I was from New York, but
my parents were born and raised in Ireland and
every summer we went home. We, my extended
family, never said that we were going to Ireland;
we were always going home this summer. This
division of homes, New York and Ballymahon,
generated distinct multiple identities within me.
In New York, to some people I was Mike, a local
kid; to others, I was Mike, an Irish kid. In Ireland,
to some I was a Yank, a narrow-back: child
of an immigrant who does not know how to do
hard labour/labor.7 To the Ward children, I was
their friend Mike, who happened to live in New
York from September to June. People would read
who I was based on how their particular Symbolic
Orders programmed them as to how to interpret
other individuals.
The Wards lived down the road, a typical family
of the area and time: large, six boys and a girl, a
small farm, and the father had a trade. The eldest
7 Not merely the spelling of words, British as opposed to
American, were different between rural Ireland and suburban New York; the concepts of work, play, cool, existence,
what was good music, etc., were all vastly different; in hindsight, this was an excellent situation to experience, it greatly
shaped how I would read everything.

The Unknown Pleasures of Interpretation

three children, Frank, a year older than me, Jerry,


my age, and Deirdre, a year younger than Jerry
and I, were my Irish friends, as opposed to my
New York friends, and I spent most days while in
Ireland with them. Their fathers trade was automechanic and his shop was right behind their
house, just outside the small town of Ballymahon
in county Longford. The Wards yard was strewn
with cars, tractors and bits of cars and tractors:
it was oily and dirty and at times it resembled a
junk yard. However, there was always an available
car that had a working radio and cassette tape
player. Most days in Ireland, after helping out in
the garage with very minor tasks (for me, a young
teenager at the time, tinkering around with cars
and tractors was play) Frank, Jerry, Deirdre, and I
would listen to music in one of these cars. This is
where I think I am sure I first heard Joy Division,
for it is where I heard most punk, post-punk, and
alternative music for the first time. In the junior
and senior high schools I attended in suburban
New York, the music that was being listened to
by my peers was the Beatles, the Stones, the Who,
Led Zeppelin, the Doors, Ted Nugent, Aerosmith,
AC/DC and the core and remnants of the rock
genre.
Thus, to me, once back in New York, Joy Division
were a distant yet very personal group: no one

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On Reading

I went to school with knew of them, they were


not on TV, nor played on any radio station that I
was able to tune-in. There was no internet. I had
no access to music magazines like the NME or
Melody Maker in suburban New York to provide
me with any story or image of the band other
than those formed by myself from listening to
their songs and from gazing at the album covers8
alone in my room, as teenagers, I surmise, often
do. I did not know what any of the band members
looked like: there were no pictures of the band on
the albums covers nor on the records sleeves. No
lyrics were included in the albums, so often I was
unsure of what Curtis was singing. As it turns out,
his band members9 admit that they really did not
pay much attention to what Curtis was singing:
we never really talked about his lyrics, in fact
we never really listened to his lyrics that much.10
Between the summer of 1980, aged 14, and the
summer of 1982 the only new data on Joy Division that I received was a poster of Paul Slatterys
1979 photo of the band leaning over a chain-link
8 Unknown Pleasures (1979), Closer (1980), and eventually
in 1981, Still.
9 Bernard Sumner (guitar), Peter Hook (bass), and Stephen
Morris (drums).
10 Bernard Sumner interview: Grant Gee (director). Joy Division, (Santa Monica, CA: Genius Products, LLC, 2008).

The Unknown Pleasures of Interpretation

269

fence in Stockport, England. However, I could not


at first put the names of the band members to the
faces in the poster. It took a return trip to Ireland
and seeing New Order on Top of the Pops to
figure-out who was who. As I mentioned earlier,
my time-line regarding these points is very hazy:
I might have put the names and faces of the band
members together as early as late summer 1981 or
as late as the end of the summer of 1983. The only
other thing about Joy Division I was relatively
sure of was that they probably liked the Velvet
Underground since Still contains a live recording
of them covering Sister Ray.
Therefore, during my first few years of exposure
to Joy Division, the understanding of the band
that I formed was almost solely from the music
they made and the album artwork of Peter Seville.
I knew they were from England, but not necessarily the Manchester area, which would not have
really mattered since I, at that time, knew little
of Manchesters history or the punk/post-punk
music scene that was developing there: I had New
Order, Buzzcocks, and Magazine albums, but
knew little about them apart from the music. To
me, they were merely bands from England that
I liked, the same as I liked the Damned, the Sex
Pistols, the Cure, and Siouxsie and the Banshees,
and the same way that I liked the U.S. bands the

270

On Reading

Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, and the Dead


Boys. I knew that Curtis had committed suicide,
but I knew none of the particulars of his life,
such as that he was married, had a baby daughter, and that he had an extra-marital affair. I also
knew that New Order was comprised of the other
members of Joy Division plus a woman, Gillian
Gilbert, but that was all I had to go on. However,
I did form my own personal iconic reading of
Curtis. Why?
Before this why can be answered, I must first
foreground my reading of the concept of icon.
A dictionary entry defines it as a devotional
painting or carving, or an object of particular
admiration, esp[ecially] as a representative
symbol of something.11 This most suits religious
icons, but the popular culture icons of the 20th
and 21st centuries modernised, capitalist regions
follow the same process of generation. Two key
terms here are devotional and admiration:
the perceiver, or reader of the icon, must be a
fan. Therefore, let me propose that an icon is
comprised of a physical aspect (an image) and a
narrative aspect. Moreover, and most importantly,
there must be a gap, distance, between the
11 Della Thompson. The Oxford Compact English Dictionary, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 492.

The Unknown Pleasures of Interpretation

271

individual from which the icon is formed and


the fan, the perceiver or reader. There cannot be
a personal, intimate, relationship between the
individual upon which the icon is constructed
and the fan. The fan, or reader, cannot come to
know the Real of the icon. Jacques Lacan has
posited that the Real stands for what is neither
symbolic nor imaginary. The Real remains
foreclosed from the analytic experience because
this experience is one of language. The Real, in
being prior to the assumption of the symbolic,
may not be known. It may only be supposed.
The Real should not be confused with reality,
which is perfectly knowable.12 Reality is the
readers perception of the Real. The reality that is
held by a reader is then formed not of absolutes
but out of a mass of perceptions, with these
perceptions being based on images and narratives
which are attached to the Real. Thus, an icon is a
supposition that is based on images and narratives
that lead she/he to become a representative of
something (coolness, rebelliousness, sexiness,
successfulness, toughness, etc.) that evokes
admiration or devotional feelings in the reader,
the perceiver. Without the proper images and
12 Jacques Lacan. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-analysis, translated by Alan Sheridan. (London: Vintage
Random House, 1998), 280.

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On Reading

narratives, there can be no devotion. From this


point, let us refer to the grund13 upon which the
icon is situated as the image-narrative.
Moreover, the image-narrative should remain
relatively fixed or frozen. It is no problem for
aspects to be added that reinforce or enhance the
iconic position, but the icon may be tarnished
or destroyed by images and/or narratives that
undermine its status as a representative of
something that evokes admiration or devotion:
consider that Keith Richards having another
blood transfusion (did he have one, or is it merely
a myth in his narrative) will serve to maintain
his iconic status, but that if it were to be revealed
that for all of these years he was faking his wild
partying image, that he never imbibed a single
drop of alcohol or a single drug, then his iconic
status would be tarnished if not indeed destroyed.
The fixedness of the image-narrative is achieved
in the maintenance of the gap between the icon
and the reader. Regarding human beings, it is
13 In the strictest sense, this image-narrative is not a grund:
a grund must be set, timeless, unshifting. However, here
the image-narrative, arbitrary and fluid because of the
narrative aspect, acts as a grund for the fan: in this case, the
image-narrative is a groundless grund. I must thank Jeremy
Fernando for working with me on this point.

The Unknown Pleasures of Interpretation

273

best if they are dead. The main Catholic icons of


Jesus and Mary are set: Jesus died at thirty-three,
and we do not find paintings or statues of an
old, wrinkled, Mary.14 The icons of the capitalist
regions of the world in the 20th and 21st centuries
are mostly limited to sports figures, actors,
actresses, singers, and musicians. Many of the
actors, actresses, musicians, and singers died at a
relatively early age: James Dean, Marilyn Monroe,
Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, John Lennon, and
Kurt Cobain, for example. However, early death,
or even death for that matter, is not essential for
the construction of an icon; although it is very
helpful. Here are two examples to consider. John
Wayne is an icon of U.S. rugged masculinity;
however, the Duke did not die until the age of
72. His iconic status has been preserved because
even at an advanced age, in films like True Grit
(1969), Rooster Cogburn (1975) and The Shootist
(1976), his last film, Wayne remains a tough
and undaunted hero: of course this image is
constructed by the magic of Hollywood. Keith
Richards, contrary to all good sense and some
biological laws, is still alive. He is a living icon of
14 The doctrine related to Marys Assumption into Heaven
leaves open the question of whether or not she suffered
bodily death; however, this point is irrelevant since images
of her are fixed as a relatively healthy young woman.

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On Reading

the true rock and roll life style; haggard, wobbly,


wizened, he continues on: the one who did not,
would not die.
Finally, in order for the image-narrative to reach
true iconic status, in a strict sense of the term, it is
necessary to have an extended group of perceivers. This assemblage of perceivers (which may
be grouped according to nationality, ethnicity,
religion, a shared knowledge of a Hollywood film
star or sports figure, a shared taste in a particular music group or personality, etc.) must hold a
similar cultural knowledge that refer[s] back
to [the signified]15 upon which the icon has been
built. This similar cultural knowledge can be
held to be the narrative that is attached to the
image. Although any image may have a narrative
attached to it, in order to reach iconic status, the
image-narrative must be generally known and
must lead the readers to devotion or admiration,
to being fans.16 For the adorers, the fans, of the
icon, the icon is their reality.
15 Roland Barthes. Image Music Text, translated by Stephen
Heath. (London: Fontana Press, 1977), 35.
16 I have an image, a picture, of my grandfather, I know the
narrative that goes with that image, and I admire what he
represents; however, he is not an icon: unfortunately, he has
not achieved a sufficient number of fans.

The Unknown Pleasures of Interpretation

275

However, this reality is particular to the


fans. While aspects of the Real function in
the fans reality of the icon, these aspects are
only supposed by the fans; moreover, these
suppositions, functioning as reality, supersede
the Real because the Real can never be known:
it can only be perceived. Andy Warhols Marilyn
Diptych underscores this point and serves as
a fine example of how the concept of the icon
functions in our modernized capitalist world.
Placing the black and white photographic images
of Monroe next to his coloured productions of
the same photographic images, Warhol offers the
viewer the chance to consider similarities and
differences. The contrast strikes first, but then
the similarity between the two Marilyns becomes
evident. The notion can be formulated that one
image of Marilyn is just as contrived as the other.
Warhols Marilyn Monroes Lips pushes this point
even further. Reducing the portrait of the icon
to the most erotic symbol of her widely familiar
features,17 Warhol makes the point that the fan
can only ever grasp a part of the worshipped
figure. Warhol explains that [i]n the early days
of film, fans used to idolize a whole star they
17 Jos Mara Faerna. Warhol: Great Modern Masters, translated by Alberto Curotto. (New York: Harry N. Abrams,
Incorporated, 1997), 40.

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On Reading

would take one star and love everything about


that star [n]ow fans only idolize parts of
the stars.18 Warhols comments can be related
to the commodity driven environment of the
United States as he saw it: [b]uying is much
more American than thinking.19 Warhols
work exposed the institutional structures of
commodity capitalism20 through the repetition
of brand-images.21 He identified the world of
commodity capitalism as a world operating
on the worship of icons. People place their
faith in an icon whether it is a statue of Jesus,
or a can of Campbells soup. The icon is a sales
advertisement. The icon can be considered to be
as much of a commodity as Brillo or Campbells
soup. The Hollywood icon was a human brand-

18 Andy Warhol. The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to


B and Back Again), (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company,
1977), 84 85.
19 Warhol. The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and
Back Again), 229.
20 Steven Shaviro. Warhol Before the Mirror in Colin
MacCabe, Mark Francis & Peter Wollen (eds), Who is Andy
Warhol? (London: British Film Institute, 1997), 93.
21 Christopher Hitchens. The Importance of being Andy:
the Warhols Worlds Keynote Lecture, 1995 in MacCabe,
Who is Andy Warhol?, 5.

The Unknown Pleasures of Interpretation

image22 presented to the consumer through


fanzines, promotional clips and other forms of
advertisement, and sold to the fans in the form of
movies.

My Own Personal Icon


Now back to the why of how could I, with such
a limited narrative of Curtis available to me and
in almost complete isolation from any other fans
of Joy Division, hold him in iconic status prior
to 1984.23 The answer is that I was programmed
to do it. Having been raised in the world of
commodity capitalism, I imbibed the cultural
constructions, the institutional structures, of

22 Hitchens, The Importance of being Andy: the Warhols


Worlds Keynote Lecture, 1995, 5.
23

I entered college in September 1983; by the Spring term

of 1984 I had become friends with other fans of Joy Division, punk, post-punk, and alternative music, and I started
frequenting clubs and shows, so from this point on I was
imbibing the pre-constructed narratives attached to Curtis.

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On Reading

the rock music Symbolic Order.24 I listened to


the music of, read about, and knew about, the
deaths of Hendrix, Morrison, Janis Joplin, Brian
Jones, and in December 1980, John Lennon.
My brain was programmed to turn dead rock
stars into icons. Having been formatted with
the discursive formations of rock icon-dom,
I did not need to be provided with much of a
narrative. The knowledge of Curtiss early death,
the one image of Joy Division from the poster, the
stark album covers, and the songs were enough
material to raise Curtis to iconic status, albeit
almost solely on a personal level. Perhaps this is
the purest form of iconisation since it is derived
24

Symbolic Order in the Lacanian sense; however, Setsuko

Adachi, of Kogakuin University, and I have developed this


concept into what we have termed the Identity Matrixing
Model (IMM). In the IMM, individuals are programmed by
the myriad Symbolic Orders they encounter. This programming encompasses not only what they perceive as truths
and their processes of interpretation, but all of the discursive formations that govern their patterns of cognizant and
non-cognizant organization. For detailed discussions on the
IMM see: Michael Kearney & Setsuko Adachi. Mapping
Hybrid Identities: A Matrixing Model for Transculturality
in Michael Kearney, From Conflict to Recognition: Moving
Multiculturalism Forward, (Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary
Press, 2012).

The Unknown Pleasures of Interpretation

solely from the artistic creations of Joy Division:


no marketing was fed to me, except maybe
the poster, by business people or managers.
In the circumstances relative to my particular
situation prior to 1984, Curtis had escaped
being commodified. Peter Seville commented in
regard to Joy Division that there are two works,
Unknown Pleasures and Closer, everything else is
merchandising,25 and it is most solely from these
two works that Curtis became an icon to me,
not as a human brand-image, but rather as an
artist whose art struck a chord within an isolated
admiring fan.
After becoming too familiar with the Beatles,
Stones, Who, Kinks, Cream, Led Zeppelin, and
Black Sabbath in my early teens (I am not sure
why I was drawn so much to British groups),
the newer music I was exposed to through my
Irish friends in my mid-teens (the late 1970s)
refreshingly excited me. One of the newer (to me)
bands immediately became my favourite, New
Yorks26 Velvet Underground (actually a mid to
late sixties band). I loved the Ramones, Blondie,
and the Sex Pistols, but in the haunting sounds of
25 Gee. Joy Division.
26 While John Cale, a founding member of the Velvets, is
from Wales, the band was formed in New York City.

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On Reading

the Welshman27 John Cales droning viola and his


bass parts that were illogicalinverted almost,28
in Sterling Morrisons frenetic guitar riffs, in the
deep, rhythmic, driving of Moe Tuckers drums,
almost solely tom-toms, and in the dark content
of Lou Reeds lyrics, I found an affinity. The
Velvets cinematic technique of arranging music
to match the lyrical content of a song seemed to
me to coincide with the styles and sensibilities of
the writers in which I was most interested: James
Joyce, Joseph Conrad, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Albert
Camus, and William S. Burroughs. I identified the
same cinematic technique when I first heard Joy
Division.
As I explained earlier, I am not sure which song I
heard first. I might even have heard Joy Division
27 The other members of the Velvets, Lou Reed, Sterling
Morrison, and Maureen Tucker, were from Long Island,
New York, the same suburban sprawl from which I was
spawned. I have purposefully not included, although I do
really like her, the German chanteuse Nico, from Cologne,
because she was a Warhol add-on to the Velvets and only
appeared on the first album, The Velvet Underground and
Nico, Verve, 1967.
28 Sterling Morrison in an interview with Victor Bockris.
Victor Bockris & Gerard Malanga. Up-tight: The Story of the
Velvet Underground, (London: Omnibus Press, 1996), 142.

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281

songs a couple of times before I took notice of


them; however, I can be sure that at some point
I heard them, was interested in what I heard,
and procured the albums Unknown Pleasures
and Closer. While in actuality it is impossible,
because I am tainted with too much exposure
to their music and their narrative, I will try to
recount what drew me to Joy Division at that
point, how I read their music, and how Curtis
became a personal icon to me. Since the Real
of what occurred is lost to me, I will through
analysis of the song Disorder, the opening track
of Unknown Pleasures, construct a reality based
upon my reading of myself from that point in my
life.
Disorder begins with Stephen Morriss drums
for four measures. The sequence is comprised
of crisp, sharp shots to the snare drum, a quick,
steady, subtle ride on the hi-hat, and a double kick
to the bass drum that is similar to a heartbeat.
He ends these four measures with a flourish; at
which point, Peter Hooks bass enters into the
composition. Morris and Hook play together for
eight measures. Hook plays a bass phrase that
takes four measures. The first three measures
descend while the fourth measure rises; Hook
plays the phrase twice; thus, forming the eight
measures of drum and bass. Surrounding the

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On Reading

junction of the first playing of the phrase and


the second playing of the phrase, there is an
electronically produced swoosh.29 After the eight
measures of drum and bass, Bernard Sumner
begins playing a guitar riff that sounds slightly
shredded. The three instruments play eight
measures together; after which point, Curtis
begins singing. I will deal with Curtiss lyrics
separately; however, his voice, his style of singing,
must also be regarded as an instrument. The song
is structured along the following: introduction,
verse, instrumental, verse, instrumental,
verse, and ending. Throughout the song, the
instruments sound hollow, distant, yet crisp and
sharp. The song has a fast tempo; however, at
the beginning, as the instruments are layered,
the tempo seems to be slower than it actually is:
this has the effect of drawing the listener into the
music through a subtle build-up of sound. This
is unique for the punk/post-punk genre at that
time: consider the explosive beginnings of songs
by bands such as the Sex Pistols and Ramones,
which were aggressive, almost an attack on the
29 I did not know it at the time, but this was incorporated
into the song by producer Martin Hannet. For details on the
recording of Unknown Pleasures and Hannets recording
techniques see: Chris Ott. 33 Unknown Pleasures, (New
York, Continuum, 2008).

The Unknown Pleasures of Interpretation

listener. As the song progresses, the instruments


in conjunction with Curtiss singing, grow
harsher, more desperate. In the first verse, Curtiss
voice is calm, removed. The guitar solo in the first
instrumental is echoey, lonely. With the second
verse, Curtiss voice has grown tenser, but it is
still restrained. In the second instrumental, the
guitar solo, as it progresses, grows more ripping,
harsher. The final verse sees Curtiss voice intense,
almost frantic, on the edge of being frantic, but
it does not hit this mode until the repeated lines
that comprise the ending of the song. Here at
the ending, the music accompanying Curtiss
outburst rises in a frenzied crescendo: Sumners
guitar is strummed/struck rapidly and harshly;
Hook abandons the earlier phrasing and repeats
a quick bass riff; Morris thrashes the drums and
cymbals in an agitated flourish. Finally, voice and
instruments fade-out, and the song ends with a
soft swirling swoosh of electronics.
What I have just done in the preceding paragraph
in regard to Disorder, I can do for any Joy
Division song. Sitting here in Japan in 2011
listening to Unknown Pleasures and Closer
and trying to look back to around 1982, I do
remember becoming absorbed in the music. At
times I was not exactly sure of the lines Curtis
was singing, although the sentiment was, at

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On Reading

least I thought, and still do think, always clear


to me; however, I always had the music. It suited
me: it was heavy, yet subtle, sometimes fast,
sometimes slow, but always powerful, urgent,
and orchestrated in a cinematic manner. What
caught me about the music was that it was, yes,
dark, but it also had great energy. The music had
great power, but the musicians were not merely
pounding away at their instruments: they had
control and direction. I did not know it at the
time, but a substantial portion of the sound, of
the texture of the songs, on Unknown Pleasures
and Closer was due to Martin Hannets innovative
production: Martin Hannet proposed a way to
understand Joy Division: he heard something,
he saw something, he felt something from them
and was able to project in his mind what it could
be.30 While not knowing its origins, I discerned
the complicated technique utilized in meshing
together the three simple instruments and the
voice to produce something that as a collective
transcended the norm. However, the credit for
this aspect of the music cannot be given solely
to Hannet. The major portion must be given to
the band members (Curtis, Sumner, Hook, and
Morris) because when listening to live versions

30 Peter Saville interview: Grant Gee. Joy Division.

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285

of the songs that comprise these two albums,31


the intricate structure of the compositions, and
the blending of instrumentation and Curtiss
voicing, sans production, is evident: this meshing
is also evident on the tracks of the Warsaw CD,
which were recorded pre-Hannet;32 therefore, it
is obvious that this orchestration was occurring
during the song-writing phase, prior to the
application of any studio production techniques.
To a young man deeply interested in the intricate
methods of literary construction exemplified in
Joyces Ulysses, Conrads Heart of Darkness, and
Burroughss cut-up trilogy, I was enthralled with
having discovered Joy Division: they seemed to
me to be the musical equivalent of my favourite
writers.

31 In the early 1980s live versions of Joy Division songs


could be heard on Still and on the video Here are the Young
Men, Factory (Fact 37) 1982; however, the best and the most
extensive concert recordings, that are not bootlegged, can
be found on the reissues/collectors editions of Unknown
Pleasures, Closer, and Still, London Records 90 Ltd., 2007.
32 Warsaw: Plus Bonus Tracks, (Portugal, MPG, 1995).
Before becoming Joy Division, the band was called Warsaw.
Bernard Sumner is listed as Bernard Albrect, and Steve
Brotherdale, Stephen Morriss predecessor, plays drums on
tracks 13 17.

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On Reading

Others obviously also saw something worthy


in Joy Divisions work: Unknown Pleasures
received critical acclaim when it was released;
however, Sumner and Hook did not originally
like the album. They thought it was, as a result
of Hannets production, too dark, too heavy, too
impenetrable: it was too subtle, not loud and
fast like playing live.33 According to Sumner
and Hook, they just wanted to play in a punk
band like some of their heroes, icons. This
makes perfect sense considering they were two
working-class youths influenced by seeing the
live Sex Pistols show at the Lesser Free Trade
Hall in Manchester on June 4, 1976. Hook and
Sumner wanted to play like Iggy Pop live: they
just wanted to lob peoples heads off [they were]
not interested in depth [they] just wanted to kick
em in the teeth.34 Yet, their compositions show
something far beyond this. I want to reiterate
that at the time, I had no knowledge of any
critics reviews, or that Sumner and Hook were
not pleased with the album: I did not get to read
reviews or interviews in the NME or Melody
33 Interviews with Sumner and Hook: Grant Gee. Joy
Division; also James Nice (director). Shadowplayers: Factory
Records & Manchester Post-punk 1978 81, (Norfolk, UK:
LTM Recordings, 2007).
34 Gee. Joy Division.

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287

Maker; I did not get to hear John Peel, and I only


got to listen to Dave Fanning a couple of times
a year. I only learned of Sumners and Hooks
original feelings regarding the production of
Unknown Pleasures in 2007. In New York, before
going to university, I was in complete isolation
with my Joy Division albums, and a single poster.
Yet something in the music drew me in, and then
the lyrics hooked me.
With Disorders opening line of Ive been
waiting for a guide to come and take me by
the hand, Curtis communicates that he is
looking for direction; not unusual at all when
you consider that he most probably wrote that
line between the ages of 20 and 22. However,
what is more important here is the listener, the
reader of that line. As a 15 year old sitting in a
darkened bedroom in suburban New York, feeling
somewhat isolated, feeling confused about in
which direction his life should/would go, never
mind the day to day turmoil of high school
life as a short, skinny, border-line geek/nerd, I
immediately read that Curtis was expressing the
same feelings that I had. For me at the time, the
next line, [c]ould these sensations make me feel
the pleasures of a normal man? was charged with
both physical and non-physical love. I wanted
to have sex; I wanted to have a girlfriend, but

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On Reading

relationships at that time were difficult to develop


and attempts were always awkward for me: it
was impossible to express how I felt because I
was always unsure of how the other felt. I was
probably thinking, is this what everyone goes
through or just me? Back then I must have
thought, well obviously not only me because
this guy in Joy Division is singing about what
I am thinking. The line most repeated in the
song is Ive got the spirit, but lose the feeling.35
The angst with which it is delivered by Curtis
is particularly alluring to youth, although the
sentiment it expresses is ageless. The coarseness
of the world scars the individual, hardens them.
They have the desire to connect with others,
to attempt new experiences, but the fear of the
possible pain that can ensue from connecting,
from venturing into new realms, makes them
reticent, leads to mental paralysis,36 to a loss of
feeling. As an uncomfortable youth, sitting in my
room, trying to write prose and poetry, trying
to learn how to play guitar, I wanted to become
like Jim Morrison, or Lou Reed, or William S.
35 When sung at the end of the first and second verse, the
but is omitted.
36 Paralysis is a theme that runs through all of the stories in
Joyces Dubliners, a book that I was very interested in at the
time.

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Burroughs, or James Joyce, or Ian Curtis:37 I


wanted to be talented and become cool. It was
easy to make Curtis my own personal icon: he
represented what I aspired to become. For me, his
death was irrelevant in making him a personal
icon: at that time, at least to me alone in my
room with Unknown Pleasures and Closer, Curtis
was not a commodity; he was a kindred spirit. I
treated him like an icon, but I was not aware of
what I was doing. It was only much later in my
life, that I became aware that I had been holding
Curtis in iconic status.

Ian Curtis, Icon(?)


It was not until 1985, at about the age of 20, that
I first saw Ian Curtis move. A friend of mine at
university loaned me his copy of the video tape

37 This type of idolisation is common among young people,


especially with young men in relation to music: consider the
lyrics from Radioheads Anyone Can Play Guitar from the
1992 album Pablo Honey, in particular I wanna be wanna
be wanna be Jim Morrison.

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On Reading

Here Are the Young Men.38 I was unsure of what


to make of his bizarre dance style: was he cool or
was he just weird? If I danced like that in a club,
would it be easier to pick-up girls, or would the
strange gyrations make it more difficult? Then I
learned he had epilepsy, so I decided the dance
was cool, artistic: he was utilising his illness as
a shamanistic performance piece. Among the
universitys literary, music, and art crowd, Joy
Division was trs chic, although no one would
ever have used that term: that would have been
very unchic. Rather than the typical rock and
roll icon, which represented wild excess that led
to an early grave, Curtis became an icon that
represented the tortured poet/artist, too sensitive
to exist in this world: Trying to find a clue, trying
to find a way to get out! Trying to move away, had
to move away and keep out.39 Instead of dying
accidentally from alcohol and/or drug use, Curtis
was the deep, contemplative rock/post-punk
icon who could just not take the cruel pressures
of the modern world any longer, so he decided
to leave it behind: for many of the fans, this was
considered a much better means of death, a much
38 Released in 1982 by Factory (Fact 37), it contained live
footage of the band and the video for Love Will Tear Us
Apart.
39 From Interzone, Unknown Pleasures.

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291

more aesthetic death than dying by suffocating on


ones own vomit. His suicide was read by many
of his fans as romantic. He was in love with two
women: his wife Deborah, mother of his daughter
Natalie, just over a year old when her father
abandoned her by killing himself, and his lover
Annik Honor, and it tore the poor lad apart.
Ian Curtis became more famous after his
suicide than he was before it. An industry of
merchandising sprang-up, and it is still generating
new aspects to the Curtis narrative. Appropriate
narratives must be generated and maintained for
this industry to sustain itself. Thus, beginning
with Still, we have album/CD releases of
outtakes, rarities, live performances, greatest
hits, remastered studio album reissues, books,
movies and documentaries. Here is a list, not
including the two studio albums to which Seville
referred, of what I have been able to procure
(legally): the CDs Warsaw: Plus Bonus Tracks,
Unknown Pleasures (Collectors Edition), Closer
(Collectors Edition), Still, Still (Collectors Edition),
The Best of Joy Division (includes Peel Sessions
and Richard Skinner interview with Curtis
and Morris), Joy Division: Let the Movie Begin
(includes excerpts of Mick Middless interviews
with Curtis, Sumner, Morris, Hook, Hannet,
and Rob Gretton, Joy Divisions manager), Heart

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On Reading

and Soul: Joy Division (the complete studio back


catalogue plus previously unreleased material)
and Factory Records: Communications 1978 -92
(an anthology of Factory music artists); the books
Touching from a Distance, 40 Joy Division Piece by
Piece: Writing about Joy Division 1977 2007, 41
Joy Division,42 The Haienda: How Not to Run a
Club,43 and the aforementioned 33 Unknown
Pleasures; the movies Control44 and 24 Hour Party
People,45 and the aforementioned Joy Division
and Shadowplayers documentaries. As I compiled
this extensive, though, I am sure, incomplete,
40 Deborah Curtis. Touching from a Distance. (London:
Faber and Faber Limited, 1995). Labeled as the inspiration
for the film Control.
41 Paul Morley. Joy Division Piece by Piece: Writing about
Joy Division 1977 2007. (London: Plexus, 2008). A collection of Morleys different pieces on the band.
42 Kevin Cummins. Joy Division. (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2010). A book of photos.
43 Peter Hook. The Haienda: How Not to Run a Club. (London: Simon & Schuster, 2009). While not directly related to
Joy Division, any true fan must have this.
44 Anton Corbijn (director). Control. (Santa Monica, CA:
Genius Products, LLC, 2008).
45 Michael Winterbottom (director). 24 Hour Party People.
(Japan: The Film Consortium/Revolution Films Limited,
2003), Japanese version.

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293

list, I grew ashamed at the thought that I was a


collector. I have been buying, both figuratively
and literally, the commodified image-narrative,
the icon, of Curtis/Joy Division. However, I then
rationalized my purchases: I like Joy Division, but
I am not, or have not been for the past say twenty
years, idolizing either Curtis or the band. Except
for the original versions of Unknown Pleasures,
Closer, and Still, and of course the poster, all of
the other purchases were done in order to find
out more about the narrative so as to be able to
write this chapter. However, in doing this, have I
not perpetuated the myth fuelled industry? Have
I not been the consummate consumer? Honestly,
the answer to these questions is no. Curtis in not
an icon to me, and he has not been one since the
mid to late 1980s.
A major element of the myth which forms the
Curtis icon is the grand-narrative of the early
death of the artist. In reading Curtis, we can say
that to some degree this aspect may be historically
accurate. However, until he actually committed
suicide, this part of his character, his interest in
death, was not read by those closest to him (at
least that is what the narrative communicates) as
anything too unusual: it was read as a common
trait among many young artists. His wife,
Deborah wrote that [t]he fact that most of Ians

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On Reading

heroes were dead, close to death or obsessed with


death was not unusual and is a common teenage
fad.46 However, two pages later she writes:
When Mott the Hooples All the Young
Dudes hit the charts, Ian began to use
the lyrics as his creed. He would choose
certain songs and lyrics such as Speed
child, dont wanna stay alive when
youre twenty-five, or David Bowies
Rock and Roll Suicide, and be carried
away with the romantic magic of an
early death. He idolized people like Jim
Morrison who died at their peak. This
was the first indication anyone had
that he was becoming fascinated with
the idea of not living beyond his early
twenties 47
Mott the Hoople released All the Young Dudes,
which was written by David Bowie, in July 1972,
almost eight full years before Curtiss suicide:
I suppose people read things differently in
hindsight, or at least in this case, more seriously.
Terry Mason, Joy Divisions manager before Rob
Gretton, and afterward their roadie, stated that
46 Curtis, Touching from a Distance, 5.
47 Curtis, Touching from a Distance, 7.

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295

its only years on, when you see them [Curtiss


lyrics] wrote down, when Debbie published them,
[that you think] oh my God, is that what he was
singing?48 Tony Wilson admitted to reading
Curtis incorrectly: in an interview where Wilson
discussed talking to Curtiss mistress, Annik
Honor, after she expressed how worried she was
about what Curtis was singing in his lyrics, he
said he told her no, no, no, dont worry its just
art: regarding his own reading of Curtis, Wilson
said how fucking stupid can you get.49
Perhaps the people closest to Curtis had difficulty
reading his state because of the mood swings
he suffered from after he was diagnosed with
epilepsy; although it must be noted that his
interest in death predates his epilepsy. There is
a chance that the mood swings were interpreted
as a natural part of his artistic temperament:
together with the band [he was] one of the lads,
joking, having a laugh. On stage, he became a
different person, possessed by some very strong
power.50 However, according to two of his
friends, Curtis did communicate to them that he
was struggling. Sumner revealed in an interview
48 Gee. Joy Division.
49 Gee. Joy Division.
50 Interview with Annik Honor. Grant Gee. Joy Division.

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On Reading

that for Closer Ian felt all his words were writing
themselves; [he] also felt he was in a whirlpool
being pulled down, drowning.51 Genesis P.
Orridge, from Throbbing Gristle and Psychic
TV, said that Curtis told him that he felt he was
becoming more and more shut-off from what
people perceived him to be: Orridge believes that
the actual Ian Curtis was hurt, angry, lost,
very lonely and didnt feel that people would treat
him with respect if he explained who he really
was;52 this reading by Orridge becomes very
important when we consider the phrase duel of
personalities53 and the notion of the shadow play,
both of which will be discussed a little later in the
chapter. It seems such a shame now that Sumner,
Hook, Morris and Mason never really listened
to what he was singing and that Wilson saw it as
merely art. It seems that only Honor was taking
things seriously. Yes, what a shame, because when
reading the lyrics a deep despondency is so clearly
evident; it courses through every song:
From Insight on Unknown Pleasures:
Guess your dreams always end.
They dont rise up just descend,
51 Gee. Joy Division.
52 Gee. Joy Division.
53 A line from Dead Souls from the album Still.

The Unknown Pleasures of Interpretation

But I dont care anymore,


Ive lost the will to want more,
Im not afraid not at all,
I watch them all as they fall,
But I remember when we were young.
From Passover on Closer:
Watching the reel as it comes to a close,
Brutally taking its time,
People who change for no reason at all,
Its happening all of the time.
Can I go on with this train of events?
Disturbing and purging my mind,
Back out of my duties, when alls said and
done,
I know that Ill lose every time.

This is the crisis I knew had to come,


Destroying the balance Id kept,
Turning around to the next set of lives,
Wondering what will come next.
Despondent may have been an understatement:
driven toward death may be more accurate. In
what could be viewed as a vicious type of circular
logic, his impending early death may have been
controlled by his own belief that an early death

297

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On Reading

was his destiny. To this reader, the lyrics of


Shadowplay, on Unknown Pleasures, standout as
being poignant regarding this point:
To the centre of the city where all roads
meet, waiting for you,
To the depths of the ocean where all hopes
sank, searching for you,
I was moving through the silence without
motion, waiting for you,
In a room with a window in the corner I
found truth.
In the shadowplay, acting out your own
death, knowing no more,
As the assassins all grouped in four lines,
dancing on the floor.
And with cold steel, odour on their bodies
made a move to connect,
But I could only stare in disbelief as the
crowds all left.
I did everything, everything I wanted
to,
I let them use you, for their own ends
The room with the window in the corner is in
the house in which Curtis and Deborah lived in
Macclesfield; it is the room where Curtis did his

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299

writing; where he would be introspective, where


I surmise that he discovered the truth about
himself and his situation(s), where he discovered
that he was living in multiple realties.54 From this
reading we can posit that Curtis was engaged in
an inner duel of personalities between multiple
Ians: for example public Ian and private Ian, and
the conflicting situations which these Ians faced.
Therefore, the I and the you in Shadowplay
can be read as referring to different Ians: for
example, the I who did everything that he
wanted is the public Ian, the Joy Division Ian;
the you, who has been used, is the private Ian.
The term shadowplay suggests many plausible
readings, which can work singularly or in union.
One could be Platos cave, where only the shadows
are known: was Curtis intimating that reality is
only our interpreting the shadows of the Real?
Another is strongly connected to performance,
the dramatic style of the shadow play where the
audience sees only the shadows of the puppets/
actors on a screen: remember the Orridge
comment that Curtis felt peoples perceptions
of the actual Ian Curtis were far removed from
how Curtis perceived himself. Of course, there is
also the possible reading that Curtis is referring
54 Consider the line That stretch all true realities from
Dead Souls.

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On Reading

to the shadows of and within the mind/soul: an


introspective questioning of ones own motives,
desires, etc, which could lead to the battle
between inner personalities. The assassins on the
dance floor and the crowd all leaving substantiate
the statements made by Orridge regarding
Curtiss concerns about the possibility of being
treated negatively if he did not give others, the
audience in this case, what they expected. Was
Curtis considering that the private Ian had to
die in order for the public Ian to exist and gain
acceptance? Is this to what the line acting out
your own death is referring? Does the knowing
no more that follows this line mean that all
Curtis foresaw was his own early death? Is this
the whirlpool to which Sumner referred in the
statement above? Is Curtis writing about losing
control over his Ians? No matter the reading, or
combination of readings, what is evident is that
Curtiss thoughts are infused with his own death.
I read Curtiss lyrics, as I believe Anton Corbijn
also does since he titled the movie Control, as
demonstrating that Curtis believed he was losing
control: epilepsy, romantic relationships, and
fame are just some points to be considered. On
stage, Curtis did not directly address the audience
other than the usual good evening, this songs
called ; however, he did say something very

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301

interesting, at least I read it that way, on July 13,


1979 at a concert at the Factory in Manchester:
during the drum introduction to Shes Lost
Control, Curtis says There are some things
youll never understand, Shes Lost Control.55 To
me, it is clear that Curtis is didactically attacking
the audience: a short brief utterance saying you
people dont get what this is about. That the song is
Shes Lost Control, with its obvious references to
an epileptic seizure, is poignant: Curtis is subtly
crying-out: look at me, tortured, twisting in agony,
losing control. What is the onus of this crying-out?
Why would one do this? The obvious, and most
probably correct, answer is that he was hoping for
help, hoping for someone to reach out to him, to
connect with him, to provide him with love and
security that could sustain him and get him past
his demons: read through his lyrics, this is a motif
that runs rampant through them.
But wait, if we hold on to this reading as accurate,
would it not cut against the reading that Curtis
wanted to die young, to establish himself as a rock
icon? According to his wifes book, Curtiss longtime friend, Helen Atkinson Wood was sure that
the ordinary held no magic for Ian and, though
he never actually said it outright, she suspected
55 Unknown Pleasures (Collectors Edition).

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On Reading

that he found the idea of dying young magic in


itself and was not surprised when he carried it
through.56 This statement was obviously given
after Curtiss suicide, so we must ask, is this what
she really discerned, read of Curtis, before he
killed himself, or is it only hindsight in action.
My reading, now at this point, on this day, at
this moment of writing, is that all of these points
were active components in Curtiss mind. He
was despondent, depressed, about his epilepsy,
his relationships with Deborah and Honor, the
possibilities of where his career with Joy Division
would lead him, with the everyday struggles
of a poet in the modern world; these type of
circumstances, sickness, love, career, are faced by
many people, and while they all too often lead to
one committing suicide, this is not an inevitable
end. Yet it is vital to note that, as dark as Curtiss
lyrics are, they express struggle through difficult
circumstances: struggle with the modern world,
struggle with relationships, struggle with the
other, which is often presented from the point of
view of righteousness, and while there is struggle,
there is still hope. I do not think the songs would
have become as popular as they did if these
elements of struggle and hope did not exist in the
lyrics. Consider The Sound of Music from Still:
56 Curtis, Touching from a Distance, 13 14.

The Unknown Pleasures of Interpretation

See my true reflection,


Cut off my own connections,
I can see life getting harder,
So sad is this sensation,
Reverse the situation,
I cant see it getting better.
Ill walk you through the heartbreak,
Show you all the outtakes,
I cant see it getting higher,
Systematically degraded,
Emotionally a scapegoat,
I cant see it getting better.
Perverse and unrealistic,
Try to make it all stick,
I cant see it getting better,
Hollow now, Im burned out,
All I need to break out,
I cant see life getting higher,
Love, life, makes you feel higher,
Love of life makes you feel higher,
Higher, higher, higher, higher,
Higher, higher, higher, higher,
Love of life, makes you feel higher.
Curtis is vacillating between continuing on and
ending the struggles. This inner conflict can be
seen as manifesting itself in the opening verse of

303

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On Reading

Dead Souls from Still:


Someone take these dreams away,
That point me to another day,
A duel of personalities,
That stretch all true realities.
This battle of personalities might have been
occurring between the different identities that
comprised Curtis: public (Joy Division) Curtis
and private Curtis; or it could have been between
Curtis husband to Deborah, Curtis father to
Natalie, Curtis lover of Annik, and Curtis lead
singer of Joy Division; or it could have been
between, what Curtis might have held as a single
complete Curtis and the personalities of dead
rock stars: the refrain they keep calling me
could be read as the voices of dead rock stars
calling Curtis to join them in icon-dom. This
last case helps to solidify the notion that his
idolisation of artists who died young helped him
to rationalise his act of suicide: it was his destiny
to join their ranks. On this point we can never be
sure; we can only suppose, interpret, read what
might have been occurring in Curtiss mind.
Perhaps it was all of the above, and perhaps Curtis
was astute enough to understand that all of the
above were acting upon him.

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305

The lyrics, the testimony from friends, the actual


act of committing suicide all clearly indicate that
Curtis was a deeply troubled young man, and now
at the old age of 45, this is how I view Curtis: a
talented, disturbed young man that threw his life
away; a youth so conflicted by his own existence
that he abandoned all hope and his infant
daughter, Natalie (this is the father aspect of my
identity that is reading Curtiss suicide). Yet there
still also lie shadow indicators that point toward
Curtiss suicide being, at least partly, motivated
by his desire to become an icon, and this mythpossibility, is perpetuated by the Joy Division/
Curtis icon production industry. In 24 Hour Party
People there is a scene where Curtis and Wilson
are sitting in the front of a car, Wilson driving,
listening to Shes Lost Control on cassette just
after Joy Division recorded the track so that
they can get the proper feel of the song. Wilson
remarks that the track is Bowie-like, to which
Curtis becomes upset because he considers Bowie
a liar for not dying at or before the age of 25:
Curtis: I hate fucking Bowie. In All the
Young Dudes, he sings about how you
should die when youre 25. Do you know
how old he is? 30, 29, hes a liar.
Wilson: Look, it doesnt matter; a lot of

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On Reading

great artists produce the best work when


theyre older, you know W.B. Yeats?
Curtis: I never heard of him, mate.
Wilson: Yeats is the greatest poet since
Dante, if hed have died when he was 25
Curtis: I wouldve heard of him, Tony 57
Did this conversation actually ever take place?58
The answer is irrelevant. There is enough
evidence supporting the supposition that Curtis
idolised dead rock stars; however, was this the
major contributing factor to Curtis committing
suicide? Only Curtis really knows. If it was his
plan to gain iconic status by dying young; then
his plan worked, but at what cost? That can
only be supposed. What is of more important
concern here is that from the moment of Curtiss
suicide, the wheels of human brand-imaging, of
commodity capitalism, of icon building began
turning. That this was done purposefully by
Wilson and Factory is clear. A scene from 24
57 Winterbottom. 24 Hour Party People.
58 I doubt that it did: Curtis was rather well read, consider
the allusions in his writing to Ballard, Burroughs, Huxley,
etc., so I would be very surprised if he never heard of Yeats.

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307

Hour Party People foreshadows the construction


of Curtis as an icon by displaying Wilsons and
Grettons understanding of the functioning of
symbol and sign systems. As Wilson enters the
Factory Clubs opening night, a female fan of his
Granada television show, So It Goes, which had
recently ended its run, accosts him in order to
tell him how she thinks they can get the show
back on the air, at which point Gretton enters the
exchange:
Gretton: He dont want it to come back.
He wants it to be gone forever, so it can
become a legend.
Wilson: There is a man with a grasp of
semiotics. 59
Again, whether or not this exchange actually
took place is not important: both Wilson and
Gretton did grasp semiotics and their role in
marketing. After Curtiss death, Wilson and
Gretton worked hard to ensure that Curtiss image
and the narrative of his life and suicide would
be circulated so that Joy Division would remain
a viable, and profitable, commodity. That this
tactic has obviously worked is witnessed in the
59 Winterbottom. 24 Hour Party People.

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On Reading

post-suicide position occupied by both Curtis


and Joy Division: they are more famous now then
when Curtis was alive, then when Joy Division
was an actual active band. The Joy Division/Ian
Curtis merchandising industry has been instilling
within fans a quest-like desire to understand the
events, emotions, and impetus that led Curtis to
hanging himself while on the verge of the musical
success he had craved for so many years: one
must admit, it is a great story, and one that is not
all that difficult to sell. Generating the market
to which you will sell your goods is a common
practice in the 3rd paradigm of economics:60 the
marketing sector programs consumers to feel/
think/believe they must procure the goods being
proffered. Marketing creates the feeling of a need
within consumers and then satisfies that need;
while I despise this system, I must admit that in
todays capitalistic world, it is proving to be very
successful.
However, perhaps Curtiss iconic status is not a
negative thing. Joy Divisions music is art, and
it does have a lot to offer readers/listeners. It is
surely not shallow, unlike so much of what is
60 The notion of the 3rd paradigm of economics is developed by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in Empire.
(Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2001).

The Unknown Pleasures of Interpretation

produced by the music industry. The iconic status


also ensures accessibility to new, younger, fans:
my own children, Patrick aged 16 and Michael
aged 13, are now fans, but that is more due to me
than to Curtis, and Joy Division, being icons. If
Curtis had indeed been motivated to kill himself
to adhere to some twisted rock/art ethos of dying
young to become, as the Gretton character in
24 Hour Party People terms the status of that
which is no longer with us, a legend; then he was
successful. However, reading this narrative at
the age of 45, I must admit that it is saddening
to contemplate the death/suicide of such a
young person, and I think it is lamentable that
Curtiss suicide destroyed the chance for Ian and
Natalie to experience a parent-child relationship.
However, objectively, in strict terms of analyzing
Curtiss iconic status, his suicide must be read as
having been successful because his act of selfnegation inscribed both the living and the dead,
both Joy Division and Curtis himself, as icons.
This past semester, Spring 2011, a number of
my students were wearing t-shirts and carrying
bags emblazoned with Ernesto Che Guevaras
image. However, none of the students knew
anything about Guevara, they did not even know
the name of this person on their shirts and bags.
They bought these items because the image was

309

310

On Reading

fashionable. Guevaras iconic status, as it is at this


point in time, is a much sadder state of affairs
than Curtiss iconic status. Imagine, Guevara
became an icon of Marxism, of anti-capitalism;
now forty-four years after his death, he has
become a brand-image. The original narrative of
the icon is lost to these fans, consumers. Guevaras
case is the ultimate commodification; what an
ironic twist, to go from the premier icon of anticapitalism to an empty signifier of consumer
society.

Paoi Wilmer

313

The Spirit of the


Exercise:
Ley-lines in Iain
Sinclairs Lights Out
for the Territory
At its very roots the existence of language is based
on people agreeing to read the same message
in the given signs. However, people often glean
different messages from an identical passage
because the meaning conferred by words is
open to interpretation. The true spirit of reading,
according to Jeremy Fernandos Reading Blindly, is
to give the text the power to lead its reader down
a spontaneous route of discovery, a route that can
never be repeated, not even by the same reader in
another sitting.
In order to read, the reader must be free
to respond fully to the text. In this way,
we face two contradictory demands:
one must read as if for the first time,

314

On Reading

that is, without any preconceived


notions of reading or of the text, but
at the same time, it is impossible to
read without any prior knowledge of
readingand this makes the situation
aporetic. After all, we are born into
reading; reading precedes us, and
much of reading relies on conventions.
But it is precisely in this space that
negotiation and choosing take place.
Each decision, and each choice, is
temporal, and each instance of reading
is a new oneno two readings will be
the same.1
By interacting with a text a person is given the
chance to explore outside the confines of the self:
it is an encounter with an otheran other who
is not the other as identified by the reader, but
rather an other that remains beyond the cognition
of the self. Hence, reading is a prerelational
relationality, an encounter with the other without
any claims to knowing who or what this other is
in the first place; an unconditional relation, and a
relation to no fixed object of relation.2 And, the
1 Jeremy Fernando, Reading Blindly (Amherst, New York:
Cambria Press, 2009), 2.
2 Fernando, Reading Blindly, 4.

The Spirit of the Exercise

ultimate pleasure of reading is the knowledge that


encounters with a single text are repeatable but
unique in every repetition: the very repetition
of this process (in the realization that it is never
completable) [] brings the reader pleasure, as
it is precisely the gapin the form of the fact
that the reader will never be able to totalize the
text into a bookthat ensures that the pleasure
principle is never ruptured.3
In many ways, psychogeography is the physical
application of this idea to a reading of the city
where the wanderer, or flanur, allows signs to
lead him down varying paths; which may reveal
the city to him in a new light. Christopher Gray
explains drifting as a sort of free association in
terms of city space, the idea being simply to
follow the streets, go down the alleys, through
doors, over walls, up trees [] that one found
most attractive [...] following no plan but the
solicitation of the architecture that one desired
unconsciously; psychogeography is the study
and correlation of the material obtained from
3 Fernando, Reading Blindly, 64. And, it is the attempt to
fully grasp the meaning of the textin order that words
contain a totality of meaning, under a particular category
of understandingthat ultimately destroys the text, that
destroys the potentiality of a text (26).

315

316

On Reading

drifting [] used on the one hand to try and


work out new emotional maps of existing areas
and, on the other hand, to draw up plans for
bodies of situations to be interlocked in the new
Utopian cities themselves.4 The implications of
psychogeography and reading are similar in that
both rely on a certain familiarity of meaning to
produce nuances of understanding, yet by its very
act, both are also very subjective and personal;
a profound irony lies in any attempts to capture
and relate ones experience of something that
is supposedly so fluid one cannot even be sure
of experiencing it in the next session. In other
words, if the spirit of spontaneity lies at the core
of an action, then one can, at most, promote
an experience by encouraging others to repeat
the action rather than attempt to tell them what
the experience was. Are pre-relationality and
the spirit of spontaneity the elusive ley-lines
that one can hope to get a grasp of in order to
find meaning in reading and drifting? Indeed,
the personal involvement in both acts makes it
impossible, if not futile, for any type of discussion
besides the relevance and authenticity of the
materials collected for an accurate repetition
4 Christopher Gray, Essays from Leaving the Twentieth
Century, in What is Situationism? A Reader (Edinburgh:
AK Press, 1996) 3-23, 8.

The Spirit of the Exercise

317

of the process. The first question to this then is


whether language is cut out to convey any kind
of authenticity. And, the second question is what
constitutes authenticity? Iain Sinclairs Lights
Out for the Territory is a fine example of a text
embroiled in both these issues.
Sinclairs main concern does not lie with the
beauty and promotion of the English language.
Rather, it focuses on the languages efficiency
as a tool for communication and the recording
of meaningful experiences. This is shown in
his endorsement of graffiti. Sinclair deals in
signs, with graffiti as the first true languagecontour.5 Graffiti is a language that is symbolic,
that carries the meaning of life; it is an ecstasy
of transcription that allows us to read places.
How it appears nobody can really say, when it
is erased it can be quickly replaced. Due to its
sparseness and ephemeral quality, reading graffiti
is largely about reading absence. With its presence
something is said; with its absence something else
is also being said. An important role for graffiti
has been to act as a voice for the powerless to
attack the hypocrisies of the powerful. Because
graffiti represents a volatile identity and is not
5 Iain Sinclair, Lights Out for the Territory (London: Granta
Books, 1998), 48.

318

On Reading

easily pinned down, it offers safety in anonymity.


The public autograph is an announcement
of nothingness, abdication, the swift erasure
of the envelope of identity.6 (1-2). As Sinclair
says, graffiti is a thirst for text, but this thirst
emphasises absence that is open to any kind of
interpretation that the reader desires.7 But, if a
voice belongs to nobody can it really be taken
seriously?
Graffiti is strictly speaking an unsophisticated
language, but what Sinclair hopes to convey with
it is its ability to capture meaning. Can graffiti
successfully carry messages? Yes. Can it convey
the same message to different readers? That is
very difficult to say; hence, its beauty and irony.
If this is the case, how does Sinclair himself hope
to capture graffiti and its messages? And, if he
attempts to interpret it for us what purpose would
6 Sinclair, Lights Out for the Territory, 1-2.
7 It can be a most objective tool since anything can be said
or read without authorial, grammatical or political censorship. No history and no future need interfere with the
message; with graffiti everything happens in the present
tense. However, is this truly possible since one is born into
a language and, as Fernando suggests, reading anything in
a language will always bring with it the histories that are
already tied to that language.

The Spirit of the Exercise

319

that serve? Surely, if we really want to understand


non-text we have to see it and read it for
ourselves. In Lights Out for the Territory, Sinclair
seeks to perfect a documentary form with his
observational note-taking through what he calls
writing on the march. The textually exhibited
article is genuine in the sense that it is a record
of all that he perceives without prejudiceECO
TEN HAT OEVE BELLE I OULD NO PB8
call it a new language, read from it what you
want, it is what he saw and it is what he records.
Without any intention of getting entangled in
philosophical debates about semiotics, Sinclair
also attempts to describe in simple terms what he
sees in order to convey the purity of the impulse
communication that graffiti is: Hammer and
sickle imposed on star. Karatas cartoon with
raised fist in universal salute. Neat black stencil
on blue hoarding.9 Unfortunately, even if the
graffiti were to be captured in photographs, which
Sinclair invites his friend Marc Atkins to do, what
has been captured would be full of omissions;
omissions that result from the photographer
failing to notice or choosing not to include certain
elements in his rendition.

8 Sinclair, Lights Out for the Territory, 31.


9 Sinclair, Lights Out for the Territory, 25.

320

On Reading

Of course, Sinclair admits to the occasional


mistake as well which, retrospectively, must be
forgiven because it is a human inadequacy where
even the act of admitting to mistakes is itself a
signal of honesty and goodwill:
I had to copy the EOKA glyph
into my notebook, so that I could
have it analysed by someone more
knowledgeable in the subtleties of
Turkish splinter group politics. And
then, looking more closely at the
letters, I realised that I had got it all
wrong. TOKi. The bandit penman
of Hackney was a tagger. A juvenile
smoker customising the word toke.
What I had taken to be an outburst of
political sloganeering was no more than
the territorial flourish of a peculiarly
persistent dope-freak. 10
However, as an example to the rest of his
endeavours, this passage is slightly worrying
on several levels. Firstly, what kind of writing
allows you to mistake EOKA for TOKi? Secondly,
if graffiti is more baffling than Shakespearean
spelling, is it really a reliable form of signification
10 Sinclair, Lights Out for the Territory, 13.

The Spirit of the Exercise

321

that we want to encourage and return to? Thirdly,


is the alley where we really hope to find the
last authentic materials of cultural expression?
And if so, who would be in the best position to
decipher serious political messages from dopefuelled impulses? Sinclair clearly has enough
knowledge to spot a bit of Turkish sloganeering
and is experienced enough to be able to identify
the work of a particular Hackney tagger, but, from
the example above, does his reading of politics
in conjunction with teenage ennui also suggest a
very personal take on the inseparability of what
are potentially diametric issues? Furthermore,
if the tagger was so persistent in his territorial
marking, how come such a well-read walker
as Sinclair didnt recognise the trademark
straightaway? Is Sinclair, after all, an unreliable
transcriber?
Despite his own obsession and earnest attempts
to textually capture and share graffiti, Sinclair is
quick to castigate Richard Makin for adorning a
university wall with publicised graffiti. Granted,
graffiti at its core is impulsive and private, it is
not something that can be commissioned and
sold without losing credibility. Yet, to desire
posterity and popularity for such a pervasive
form of expression is not far from what Sinclair
is attempting to achieve himself with his book.

322

On Reading

Sinclairs disdain for Makins sell-out move


reveals, maybe unintentionally, the shallowness of
the form itself.
I dont want to make it sound as if
we discussed and debated Makins
wall for as long as the intensity of his
involvement merited. A wall is as good
a place to publish as anywhere else, but
its difficult to browse. Annotation is out
of question. My take on the affair was
over with the nod of acknowledgement.
If the poet hadnt been around, wed
[sic] have been back in the corridor in
seconds. Fine, got it, nice plot; check
out the photo at home.11
Coming from someone who has spent countless
hours on the ephemeral trails of graffiti, who
would have us believe that random signs left
by disparate taggers can be collected to reveal
profound cultural messages, who has himself
dedicated a whole tome to the capture and
preservation of graffiti, this impatience with
someone elses commercial success reflects badly
on Sinclairs own claim to fame. The snubbing
of Makins work contrasts greatly with his own
11 Sinclair, Lights Out for the Territory, 46.

The Spirit of the Exercise

excitement at the prospect of analysing the fourletter EOKA, and the cutting remark at the end
effectively condemns his own lengthy readings.
When the content of an upheld piece of work is
called into question, style is often resorted to as
its saving grace: Mark Twains Huckleberry Finn
and Lights Out for the Territory both sharing this
reputation. Despite strong arguments to remove
Huckleberry Finn from the national school
curriculum for its racist portrayal of black people,
Twain supporters have argued that the work is
an invaluable asset to the American tradition
because of its authentic language and American
style.
The prose of Huckleberry Finn
established for written prose the virtues
of American colloquial speech It has
something to do with ease and freedom
in the use of language. Most of all it has
to do with the structure of the sentence,
which is simple, direct, and fluent,
maintaining the rhythm of the wordgroups of speech and the intonations
of the speaking voice [Twain] is the
master of the style that escapes the fixity

323

324

On Reading

of the printed page.12


In a similar and more recent argument about
Sinclairs rightful place in British writing, James
Wood has argued that anyone who cares
about English prose cares about Iain Sinclair, a
demented magus of the sentence.
So purely is he a stylist that he returns
prose to a state of decadence that is
to say, one can find Sinclairs mind
limited, his leftish politics babyish,
his taste for pulp writing tiresome, his
occultism untrue, and forgive all of this
because the prose, gorgeously amoral,
is stronger than the world it inhabits. It
consumes the world it inhabits.13
Certainly, literature is the arena where
champions for the preservation and the
innovation of a language battle for their causes,
but when language alone takes precedence in
12 Lionel Trilling, The Greatness of Huckleberry Finn
(1950). Reprinted in Huck Finn Among the Critics, edited by
M. Thomas Inge, 81-92. Frederick, Md: University Publications of America, 1985.
13 James Wood, Magus of the City, Guardian, 23 January
1997, 10:2

The Spirit of the Exercise

325

a writers claim to literary posterity we need to


cautiously weigh the other aspects of the writers
worthiness.
Sinclairs interest in language is engaging and his
writing style is unusual in that it tries to imitate
reality, but if we allow language to dominate the
discussion then we overlook the cultural spirit of
his endeavour. After all, he did not trawl the alleys
of London for lessons on English spelling and
grammar; he chased fleeting glimpses of graffiti
for cultural signs and elusive identities that no
textbook in a classroom could offer. And, in order
to preserve what he found, he not only wrote
about his subject but also collaborated with photographers and artists to better convey this spirit
of the exercise as he called it. Sinclairs writing of
London is meant to be the visible residue of his
actual experience living and walking it. Hence,
on the one hand, we can consider what it is that
Sinclairs walks and thoughts have brought to
the English language; but, on the other hand, we
need to examine the more tiresome, babyish,
untrue, or amoral qualities that are part of his
work and parcel to our own readings of the book.
Lights Out for the Territory not only challenges
the boundaries of writing but also the boundaries
of art and culture. London is the centre around
which many elements revolve, yet what is under
the London that we know?

326

On Reading

Sinclair believes that London has become a


tourist spectacle with officially marked historical
features that cater to commercial consumption.
As Robert Sheppard has pointed out, Sinclairs
cultural criticism rests on the principle that the
official map of the culture, at any time, would
always fail to include vital features. Thus, his own
writing of a more unofficial history of London is
the attempt to fill this gap.14 Sinclairs quest begins
with the idea that the only way to finding true
culture is going straight to the source, finding
the places where cultural operators reside; in
other words mapping the less trodden paths. As
Pierre Bourdieu has suggested, connections can
be made between vital nodes of local or repressed
cultural activity to visualise a ghostly template
of an alternative culture.15 In order to capture
the spirit of London, Sinclair borrows the idea of
drifting but gives it a twist. He invents a technique
employing premeditated spontaneity where,
instead of wandering, he prowls the streets with
clear intentions, even though at the same time he
welcomes accidental occurrences that may enrich
the meaning of the overall experience.
14 Robert Sheppard, Iain Sinclair (Devon: Northcote House
Publishers, 2007) 17.
15 Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production (Cambridge and Oxford: Polity Press, 1993) 29-73.

The Spirit of the Exercise

327

The concept of strolling, aimless


urban wandering, the flanur, had been
superseded. We had moved into the
age of the stalker; journeys made with
intentsharp-eyed and unsponsored.
The stalker was our model: purposed
hiking, not dawdling, nor browsing
The stalker is a stroller who sweats, a
stroller who knows where he is going,
but not why or how.16
Thus psychogeography is converted to schizogeography; and, instead of simply looking around
for random messages, the wanderer purposefully
connects vital nodes in the hopes of finding alternative perspectives on the city.
Sinclair presents Stewart Home as a bona
fide schizogeographer. Home lives in the
psychogeographical badlands where poets,
dole bandits, avant-garde musicians and all
the Invisibles mix amidst displaced Kurdish
restaurants and magnificent Eygptian cemetery
gates.17 This badland is a direct reference to
Hucks Ingean Territory, a space on the margins of
16 Sinclair, Lights Out for the Territory, 75.
17 Sinclair, Lights Out for the Territory, 26.

328

On Reading

civilisation where lawlessness provides room for


open-mindedness, and in the psychogeographical
case, creative freedom. Homes probing of the
badlands, or interzones as it is also called, is
Sinclairs best example of a writer stalking the
scent of creativity. The eccentricities of those
catalytically mixing in the badlands provide
Home with an endless source of stories that he
manipulates and is in turn manipulated by, as
Sinclair wryly commented: he had simply to
open his windows and plug in his word processor
[and t]he books wrote themselves.18 Significantly,
Homes works speak for The Unspeakable and
his voice belongs to those living on the margins.
Hence, his vision is purposely conveyed through
anti-language writing, where anything said is
not as important as the unsaid.19 Sinclair admires
Homes method of writing because it reflects his
own endeavours. Home has one client and its
name is London. The only character in my books
is the place itself. He wants to drop any notion
of impartiality. Hes hot to fuck the city. But he
is as frustrated as one of Buuels lecherous old
dons, he cant find a centre. Like Sinclairs own
observation of London as a sorry heart with
fissures in the brainpain, and his experiences
18 Sinclair, Lights Out for the Territory, 216.
19 Sinclair, Lights Out for the Territory, 216-218.

The Spirit of the Exercise

ambling along Londons waterways in Downriver,


Home experiences the sharp contrasts between
the variegated zones that make up the city,
which helps him realise that the hero and lover
of London undergoes psychic breakdown as the
price he must pay for acting as a cipher through
which various oppositional currents can pass.20
Sinclairs own schizogeographic explorations
reveal London to be a land once conquered by
Romans now reliant on Saudi oil coffers directed
by native British bankers; the London Stone
is a trophy of the Overseas Chinese Banking
Corporation; the new site of the displaced Temple
of Mithras houses Sumitomo Banking. Sinclairs
writing breaks down the illusion of a centre by
implying that London belongs to all. London is
shown to be made up of Scottish, Irish, English,
Japanese, Kurdish, Nigerian, Turkish, Pakistani,
Cypriot, Italian and Greek communities and
influences. London is an inverted centre, a
lacuna at its centre, a termite concourse for
passengers in transit.21 The London that Sinclair
20 Sinclair, Lights Out for the Territory, 220. Home is an apt
name for a schizogeographer after all, the whole notion
of the unhomely (unheimlich) is one of the hinges around
which Freuds notion spins.
21 Sinclair, Lights Out for the Territory, 221, 309.

329

330

On Reading

sees is not the traditional British image that


official sources promote, it is a fluid city inhabited
by a variety of foreigners mapping out their
various cultural incongruities. Sinclair brings
to light the relentless mythologizing of [the]
forgotten and re-forgotten and exposes London
as a text that can be endlessly recomposed,
ensuring that the city and what it stands for is
forever on the move with its boundaries being
forever redefined.22 London is a medium that
lends itself to everything and everyone; everyone
can read it differently and no matter how long
you may stay there or how much you may claim
to know about it, everyone is a foreigner there.
Sinclairs early conversation with his friend Jock,
who is Cockney and arguably an aborigine of
London, makes this clear: Were both foreigners
here Itll never change, no matter how long
we stick it out.23 Ironically, Jock has lost his
birth certificate and does not know his real
name, but he is not interested in justifying his
right to belong. This sense of being is the spirit
of London that Sinclair seems to promote
everybody can feel at home because they are all
aliens. It is the ability to hold everything and
22 Rod Mengham, The Elegiac Imperative, The Kenyon
Review 23:1 (Winter 2001) 173-177, 177.
23 Sinclair, Lights Out for the Territory, 21.

The Spirit of the Exercise

everyone, but have enough space to let each


individual assert their creativity, that allows
London to succeed as a good interzone.
However, official versions of London dont
only erase the presence of its more foreign
inhabitants but, more importantly, it overlooks
hidden streets where the untainted spirit of a
London past resides. The most crucial job for
self-appointed schizogeographers like Sinclair is
to ensure that these corners of the city survive,
even if that past is a spectre that can only be
momentarily glimpsed in the dappled sunlight
of an empty park. Phil Baker has traced Sinclairs
influences to the Earth Mysteries school, with
his seminal work Lud Heat (1975) carrying ideas
from John Michells The View Over Atlantis
(1969), which was influenced by Alfred Watkins
The Old Straight Track (1925); each explaining
in their own fashion their belief of a sacred
geometry drawn by ancient lore that allows us
to perceive ley-lines and energy alignments
in the landscape. Peter Ackroyds works best
exemplify Londons historical layering in this
manner. Ackroyd relates his psychogeographical
exploration of locations as a divining of the aura
possessed by a place in which energies have been
discharged by intense individual experience,
whose imaginary sedimentation over centuries

331

332

On Reading

has become the foundation of true historical


meaning.24 His London: The Biography presents
London as the Eternal City radiating an echoic
haunting process that controls human activity
within them.25 As artists who specialise in notforgetting, Sinclair similarly mines London for
its secrets, for parts that have been forgotten
and overlooked hence still retain their original
essence. Ironically, the notion of the secret
has, of course, been recuperated to give guide
books themselves extra frisson.26 As a result,
there has been a surge in interest for literatures
of conspiracy theories and paranoid systems:
twentieth century history is revised to conform
with an attempt to decode and render coherent
its alleged hidden meanings to the obsessional
fictions [] which attempt to reconstruct the
unofficial and encrypted histories of a specific
terrain.27 While Sinclairs documentary nonfiction lends itself to historical readings, it also
24 Rod Mengham, An Introduction to Contemporary Fiction
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999) 3.
25 Phil Baker, Secret City: Psychogeography and the End
of London in London from Punk to Blair (London: Reaktion Books, 2003) 323-333, 328.
26 Baker, Secret City: Psychogeography and the End of
London, 329.
27 Mengham, An Introduction to Contemporary Fiction, 7.

The Spirit of the Exercise

poses as an alternative to mainstream history


and cultural discourse and is meant to be antimainstream and anti-status quo.
What is happening with Sinclairs reading
of absence, his search for substance beyond
the superficial and his rebellion against the
mainstream is a condition that Jean Baudrillard
has so aptly described as the state of hyperreality.
Rather than creating communication,
it exhausts itself in the act of staging
communication. Rather than producing
meaning, it exhausts itself in the
staging of meaning [] More and
more information is invaded by
this kind of phantom content, this
homeopathic grafting, this awakening
dream of communication. A circular
arrangement through which one
stages the desire of the audience, the
antitheater of communication, which,
as one knows, is never anything but
the recycling in the negative of the
traditional institution, the integrated
circuit of the negative [] Thus not
only communication but the social
functions in a closed circuit, as a
lureto which the force of myth is

333

334

On Reading

attached. Belief, faith in information


attach themselves to this tautological
proof that the system gives of itself by
doubling the signs of an unlocatable
reality.28
The hyperreality of communication and of
meaning is the abolition of the real by making
the real more than real. In more ways than one,
Lights Out for the Territory can be seen as a quest
for absence: it is a book written in the name of
anti-language; its search for culture unveils anticulture; its faith in spiritual pasts does not extend
beyond sensations of the moment. As Sheppards
observation so astutely points out, Sinclairs
disparaging of celebrities only makes way for his
own batch of anti-celebrities, who inevitably fill in
the void left by their predecessors.29
Again, Sinclairs reading of Rachel Whitereads
work exemplifies his own endeavours: Her work,
whose essence was its privacy, its slow-cooking,
meditative acts of repetition, was stripped bare
on the street: asked to explain itself, when any
explanation would negate the enigmatic stillness
28 Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (Ann Arbor:
The University of Michigan Press, 1994), 80-81.
29 Sheppard, Iain Sinclair, 84.

The Spirit of the Exercise

335

she worked so hard to cultivate. 30


Whitereads artwork belongs with the
invisible church of St Mary Matfelon
in Whitechapel, a removed structure
from which that district took its name.
An absence, a brick outline in the grass,
that gave credence to the surrounding
crush of business and development.
The church appeared, disappeared, and
reappeared in many forms, soliciting
destruction All that is left is the
skeletal tracing, a psychic barrier []
The reservoirs of psychogeographical
energy are identified by being resistant
to the attentions of cameras and
recording instruments. Only when the
frame is blank can you be sure that
something worth looking is there.31
Like Rachel Whitereads House whose guarantee
to posterity resulted from the death sentence it
received with its conception, like Bill Drummond
whose artistic statement on money required his
burning a million pounds to ashes, like Davin
Jones who needed to vanish whenever his artwork
30 Sinclair, Lights Out for the Territory, 224.
31 Sinclair, Lights Out for the Territory, 231.

336

On Reading

about entropy got shown, Sinclair writes about


absence with the intention of erasure. To ensure
his posterity, he actually needs us to erase him
he needs to disappear from his work if only so
that he can reappear in some other guise. But,
the price of published fame, even when it is fame
acquired in the name of obscurity, means that
he undermines his own endeavour. If we were to
truly honour the spirit that he seeks, we would
have to forget him just so that we can stumble
upon him again one day, as he did on David
Rodinsky in Rodinskys Room.
Davin Jones fuels his art by sex and alcohol in
order to epitomise entropy; he knows that the
creative spirit cannot be summoned thus what
he produces lies in the hands of uncontrollable
forces. The insincerity of Sinclairs endeavour
lies in his knowledge thatLife was a series
of rehearsals for the kind of novel that is best
left unwrittennot only because such a novel
wouldnt do life justice but more importantly it
wouldnt serve any purpose either. The purpose
of life is to live it: hence, it is not possible to tell
another person about the meaning of life; it is
only possible to leave its impact, as you live it,
on what and who may be close enough to you
to react to its repercussions. Yet despite his
preferences or intentions, Sinclair has secured

The Spirit of the Exercise

a place for himself in posterity by writing about


London in such a way that he will henceforth
be called upon as one of the spirits of the city.
In order to survive in the capitalist climate that
he dislikes so much, Sinclair ultimately realises
that he has to make a choice between the path
taken by Stewart Home and the path taken
by Richard Makin; the former to genuinely
embrace and perpetuate obscurity or join the
latter as a mainstreamer in the advertising/
media/gallery/fashion nexus.32 As Sheppard
has indicated, Sinclairs dilemma lies in the
spirit of his endeavour. If Sinclair is able to
negate the dominant world of the culturally
validated historian and commercially successful
literary hack, who and what is he going to use
in replacement to justify his own version of the
map? Like all empiricism it is the slave of what
is discoverable, and what Sinclair finds first are
his artist-friends and immediate associates, and
through them he risks mythologising them, as
well as himself, but when the connections are
forced the results are wilful, even desperate. 33

32 Sinclair, Lights Out for the Territory, 215.


33 Sheppard, Iain Sinclair, 18.

337

Setsuko Adachi

339

Negotiating
Isolation:
A Reading of
Japanese Illusions
Surviving the Globalisation Force of
AICS
Watching BBC, CNN and/or cable TV anywhere
in the world, say Ontario, Oxford, Putrajaya,
Singapore or Tokyo in the first decade of the 21st
century, one would notice charming and alluring
invitations were made to international tourists
in English from Asian nations: India, Incredible
India, Korea, Be Inspired, Malaysia Truly
Asia, My Indonesia: Just a Smile Away, and
Uniquely Singapore. These catchphrases clearly
reflect the national readings of how to survive
and be successful politically and economically
in todays globalised world. The catchphrases
show their awareness of the globalised capitalistic

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On Reading

economic system that they are competing in:


to achieve their goals they utilise Advanced
Information and Communications Systems
(AICS), which reach any of those who have
access to AICS regardless of time and place in
the world, to disperse information or to advertise
commodities to consumers. Moreover, they are
aware that the lingua franca today is English.
Obviously increasing international tourism
means increasing foreign income and that will
stabilise their position not only domestically but
also in the world: unsaid, but understood, is that
inviting international tourists means transcultural
exchanges and hybridisations will occur through
direct human-human contact and through
interpersonal exchange, which means that
any regional cultural identity set holding onto
identity ideology myths claiming a homogenised
pure race and rejecting mutually respectful
consideration for coexistence will end in failure
under the globalising force of AICS.
Then, at Narita Tokyo International Airport, a
Japanese Tourist Bureaus catchphrase aimed
at the global market for the same purpose as
any other Asian nations catches ones attention:

Negotiating Isolation

341

Yokoso! Japan.1 My colleague and research


partner, Dr. Michael Kearney, quickly and
sarcastically commented, Why use yokoso? No
one knows what it means; so Yokoso! Japan could
be Visit! Japan, Beautiful! Japan, Exotic! Japan,
Exciting! Japan etc., but Welcome! Japan would
be strange because it would be Welcome to
Japan. Why not have both Japanese and English
welcomes so that people would learn something?
Indeed, how would the non-Japanese speaking
population know that yokoso is equivalent to
welcome?2
The catchphrase is off. Japanese are not reading
their targets in the world correctly; they believe
the phrase is written in English and that it is
1 Yokoso! Japan is the catchphrase for the Visit Japan
Campaign started in 2003 under Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi as the governmental promotion for global tourism. The phrase was painted on the bodies of international
airplanes and ads were posted on domestic transportation
(why target Japanese with it?) without any explanation of
the word yokoso; however, the awareness that yokoso needs
to be explained increased over the years. One witnesses
ads or websites with the added explanation, Yokoso Means
Welcome or supplementing the phrase with Japan Welcomes You or Visit Japan.
2 The comment was made on February 9, 2010.

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On Reading

exotic and attractive to lure non-Japanese tourists,


to bring in non-Japanese currencies. Later
that the same day after arriving in Singapore, I
turned the TV on in my hotel and I could not
help but laugh: there it was again, a visit Japan
campaign, an ad-show, a supposed infomercial,
targeting Singaporeans in Japanese. These
are good examples that exhibit the current
failures of Japanese identities in the paradigm
of globalisation. The catchphrase displays their
interest in the world in economic terms: to bring
in non-Japanese currencies to enrich Japan;
moreover, it also reveals that the interest is
somewhat a faade, making a convoluted effort to
invite non-Japanese speakers in a language that
the target audience, the readers of the ad, are not
expected to understand. A double standard is
at work: Japanese identities want to engage and
benefit economically but do not want to have
direct contact with non-Japanese identities: they
want to exclude, foreigners, gaijin, which literary
means outside people, or gaikokujin, outside
countries people, from entering their territory;
keep the nation isolated.
The Japanese identitys failure to read and adjust
to on-going globalisation lies deep within the
cultural psychological system that is constructed
as part of Japanese identity: they believe that a

Negotiating Isolation

double standard, where they interact solely to


earn money and in a strict one way direction, but
otherwise foster complete isolation, will secure a
safe and stable state. The idea is solely to benefit
Japan, screw everyone else. Japanese identities
operate in this illusion, and negotiate with nonJapanese, and within themselves, to maintain the
illusion. The catchphrase is a manipulation of
the mind, after all yokoso is a word to welcome
visitors. Between themselves the Japanese see
no exclusion of non-Japanese tourists, yet there
is. For the language used simply denies access
to its meaning. In reality, they are extending the
invitation only to those that will strike a deal
with the illusion, not quite an open invitation
to the global market. Furthermore, the illusion
rejects non-Japanese identities, which is not
compatible but rather in conflict with the AICS
interlinked world where interpersonal exchanges
are promoted and the respectful coexistence of
diversities is becoming ever more significant.
It is a critical situation for any regional cultural
set, which posits itself in illusions of isolation:
in order to survive, they need to make a shift to
exist within the structures of coexistence. Japan is
struggling in the already intertwined interrelated
global platform. This chapter delineates how
Japanese peripheral centrism came about, how

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On Reading

it functions as a controlling, and at times selfdestructive, discursive formation in Japanese


culture, and how Japanese peripheral centric
readings of intercultural situations inhibit Japan
from mutually respectful, benevolent coexistence
with non-Japanese cultures and peoples. The
chapter will cover pub-talk/communication
strategies, the Japanese Constitution, which can
be read as the legalisation of the Japanese illusion,
kamikaze attacks as a consummation of Japanese
national identity, and the confusion over Dr.
Yoichiro Nambu, a US citizen who won the Nobel
Prize. Hopefully, this chapter offers some insights
that will increase constructive engagement for
coexisting conversations.

Peripheral Centrism: Preference for


Isolation
Before considering the detailed readings of the
troubled discourse to maintain the opportunistic
isolation of Japanese identities, it is worthwhile to
look at why and how people become the beings
that behave in the way they do: the process
of identity formation. The Identity Matrixing

Negotiating Isolation

Model (IMM)3 was formed by Michael Kearney


and I based upon the developed understanding
that it is not one Symbolic Order4 that an
individual encounters but myriad Symbolic
Orders. The IMM is a theoretical model that
explains identity as an ever-changing process.
The encountering of the same Symbolic Order
by different individuals will create shared traits
in them because the cultural constructions of
the Symbolic Order will be matrixed into the
individuals identities; furthermore, the myriad
combinations of different Symbolic Orders
that are transmitted to individuals through the
Identity Matrixing processes create diversity and

3 For further details on Identity Matrixing Model (IMM),


see Kearney & Adachi, Mapping Hybrid Identities: A
Matrixing Model for Transculturality, in From Conflict to
Recognition: Moving Multiculturalism Forward. M. Kearney
(Ed), (Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2012).
4 Jacques Lacan postulated that human entities, after
birth, encounter a Symbolic Order, which is the culturally
constructed systems that transmit to the child the language, customs, concepts, and truths upon which identity is
founded; it is these that will be internalised and govern the
engagement of the child with the world; moreover, the medium through which the discursive formations of Symbolic
Orders are transmitted to individuals is language.

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On Reading

differences in individuals.5 Through the Identity


Matrixing process, the enculturation of interhuman relationships, the worldviews of respective
Symbolic Orders, and realities and truths, are
provided to individuals.
Thus, the question that needs to be asked here
pertains to the discursive formations that
construct an illusion as a reality in Japanese
identities. The perception of non-Japanese
existence for Japanese identities is strongly related
to the geopolitical state that historically was
available for them to exist in: it locally developed
a worldview that can be termed peripheral
centrism.6 Peripheral centrism derived from
China being the long-time regional cultural
power center in relation to Japan: it is a binary
5 In the paper titled Deconstructing the Frameworks
of Identity: The Identity Matrixing Model, Kearney and
Adachi address the complexity of identity and that combinations of Symbolic Orders operate beyond the laws of
spatial-temporal phenomena. Presented at the 5th Global
Conference, Multiculturalism, Conflict and Belonging
(MCB5), Mansfield College, Oxford University, September
2011.
6 The impetus for the concept of peripheral centrism
grew out of discussions and research conducted with my
colleague, Michael Kearney.

Negotiating Isolation

positioning of a central-superior power, China,


as opposed to a peripheral-inferior power, Japan.
Japan was able to fabricate a false sense of being
the center of the world because China tended
to over-look Japan and/or be disinterested in
it. Japan was peripheral, a rural place on the
edge of the Chinese domain. The desire of the
Japanese ruling powers was to maintain control
over Japan. In order to secure their power, they
implemented policies and educational systems
that conveniently diminished and degraded
anyone and anything outside of Japan. Through
these, Japan was able to construct the illusion that
it was the center of the world. Furthermore, this
enhanced what would be a desirable relationship
with the central power, China, for the peripheral,
Japan: as long as Japan did not attract Chinas
attention, and China did not exercise power over
Japan, the Japanese peripheral authorities could
enjoy power and control over their territory.
Thus, the peripheral centric aim was to avoid
involvement with non-Japanese Symbolic
Orders, with those that were not constructed by
Japanese linguistic/cultural discursive formations.
Linguistic divides, as well as geographical divides,
were useful mediums for disconnecting with the
rest of the world and they aided in devising a
psychological isolation that maintained Japans

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On Reading

peripheral centric existence. Thus, peripheral


centrism is self-conclusive. It can be said that
peripheral centrism is a form of diminishing
coexistence; as will be explained later, it entails
identities focusing on being sycophantic with the
peripheral centric groups and oblivious to the rest
of the world. Peripheral centrism empowers the
local authorities and consolidates their rule: it is a
system that prevents its members from engaging
with those outside the system.

Peripheral Centric Harmony: Wa


The cultural and psychological implementation
of peripheral centrism, through creating
disconnecting mechanisms to seclude identities
into the illusion of isolation, thus undermining
non-peripheral centric power, can be traced back
to the Nihongi (Nihon Shoki), the Chronicles of
Japan, the second oldest piece of literature on
Japanese classical history, which was completed
in the year 720. It records the Seventeen-Article
Constitution drawn by Prince Shtoku, the
nephew of Empress Suiko, in the year 604. The
constitution is a series of precepts of social
behavior which he [Prince Shtoku] hoped his

Negotiating Isolation

countrymen would follow.7 Prince Shtoku


and his aunt, Empress Suiko, were working to
build a centralised system at the time. To build
a centralised system, they also introduced the
official twelve-rank system in the year 603, which
was a rigid hierarchical system with the Emperor/
Empress as sovereign.
The key concept, and a controlling mechanism
that appears in the constitution, is wa, translated
as harmony or peace. However if harmony in
English is a state of peaceful existence and
agreement8 with respect to differences, such
as those described more explicitly in musical
terms as the way in which different notes that
are played or sung together combine to make a
pleasing sound,9 wa is not harmony because it
rejects combinations of differences to constitute
harmony: equality is denied in wa and the
peace is a result of subjugated non-objection.

7 Hyman Kublin. Japan: Selected Readings, Houghton Mifflin, 1968. Found under, Traditional History: The Constitution of Prince Shtoku, http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/
japan/japanworkbook/traditional/shotoku.htm
8 Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary. (Oxford: Oxford
UP, 2000).
9 Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary.

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On Reading

The constitution reveals that wa is accomplished


through sycophantism which keeps its members
focus introverted and keeps them loyal to the
group that they exist in. The constitutions first
article introduces wa:
Harmony [wa] is to be valued, and
an avoidance of wanton opposition to
be honoured. [W]hen those above
are harmonious and those below are
friendly, and there is concord in the
discussion of business, right views of
things spontaneously gain acceptance.
Then what is there that cannot be
accomplished!10
The third article makes it explicit that the
ultimate power in this hierarchy is the Emperor/
Empress, and that what is translated as harmony
really means to harmonise sycophantically,
to enact the will of the Emperor/Empress, who
is the peripheral centric embodiment of the
transcendental signified:

10 Suiko, Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest


Times to A.D. 697, translated by W. G. Aston. (Tokyo: Tuttle,
1985), 129.

Negotiating Isolation

When you receive the Imperial


commands, fail not scrupulously to
obey them. The lord is Heaven, the
vassal is Earth. Heaven over spreads
and Earth upbears. When this is so, the
four seasons follow their due course,
and the powers of Nature obtain their
efficacy. If the Earth attempted to
overspread, Heaven would simply fall
in ruin. Therefore is it that when the
lord speaks, the vassal listens; when
the superior acts, the inferior yields
compliance. Consequently when you
receive the Imperial commands, fail
not to carry them out scrupulously. Let
there be a want of care in this matter,
and ruin is the natural consequence.11
The tenth article makes three significant points
regarding peripheral centric Japanese discursive
formations. One, individuals opinions and issues
of right or wrong do not count: what matters are
giving into the multitude, which is the correct;
the multitude is a reflection of the peripheral
centric power. Two, if not in concordance with
the multitude, the fault lies with the individual.
Three, that if an individual has a different
11 Suiko, Nihongi, 129.

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On Reading

opinion, it should not be made known, it should


be suppressed.
Let us cease from wrath, and refrain
from angry looks. Nor let us be
resentful when others differ from us.
For all men have hearts, and each heart
has its own leanings. Their right is our
wrong, and our right is their wrong.
We are not unquestionably sages, nor
are they unquestionably fools. Both
of us are simply ordinary men. How
can any one lay down a rule by which
to distinguish right from wrong? For
we are all, one with another, wise and
foolish, like a ring which has no end.
Therefore, although others give way to
anger, let us on the contrary dread our
own faults, and though we alone may be
in the right, let us follow the multitude
and act like them.12
Though the word wa is not mentioned in this
article, this article devised the basic psychological
structure for wa. The basis for identities to
develop a fear to be different and a fear to
engage those that do not adhere to the wa
12 Suiko, Nihongi, 131.

Negotiating Isolation

system is implanted. For example, Sogi (14211502), a scholar living in the Age of Civil Wars
and who sought for ideal human relationships
for peace, found wa as the ideal medium to
construct a sublime human relationship.13 Sogi,
commenting on a Japanese poem, said:
The part that says it is my fault teaches
us the essence of the Japanese poem. No
matter how bad human relationships
may be, no matter how cold the world
seems to you, never feel resentment
toward others or the world; this is the
utmost crystallization of the wa spirit.
It is the wa spirit that will best mediate
for the peaceful ruling of the nation and
good morals.14
Sogis wa explanation brought forth the second
point in the tenth article about when one is not
in concordance with others, it automatically
means the fault lies with the individual: never
find fault with others or the world, but singularly
blame yourself is the gist of wa when human
13 Keiji Shimauchi. Genjimonogatari monogatari. (Tokyo:
Shincho, 2008), 112. In the paper, unless it is noted, the
Japanese-English translations are mine.
14 Shimauchi. Genjimonogatari monogatari. 109-110.

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On Reading

relationships/communications do not go well;


in other words, keep yourself inferior and follow
the multitude/power: right or wrong does not
count and practicing individual autonomy is
to be avoided. Handing all the responsibilities
over to the peripheral centric multitude/power,
individuals blinded themselves from seeing
and reading any other that was not in concord
with the multitude/power. In this wa system,
everybody is subjugated into sycophantic oneness;
if not in the same wa group, the other is erased
from the mind and becomes what Japanese
call tanin, people that have no connection to
them, people that do not need to be given any
consideration, they are treated as non-existent,
which is the opposite of what Jeremy Fernando
says as being responsible in Reading Blindly:
In order to be responsible, one must
be able to respond to the needs of the
other without subsuming the other
under ones conception; in other words,
the other must not merely become a
reflection of ones self. That would be
merely the construction of the other in
order to react to her or him: the result is
a literal circle, a masturbatory circle, the
self responding to itself.

Negotiating Isolation

355

In order to have true responsibility,


one must maintain the otherness of the
other whilst responding. 15
Wa is a peripheral centric mechanism to erase the
other and their existence from peoples minds:
this peripheral centrism control functioning in
peripheral centric identities can be observed from
narrow levels, such as an individual, to the broad
levels, such as a nation. A feature of peripheral
centric identities in interpersonal relationships
is that they read the other in an acutely
subjective16 manner, a one-way projection of
the self onto the other,17 expecting the other
to hold and respect the peripheral centric wa
isolation. Even though the peripheral centric wa
mechanism erases the other from the peripheral
centric mind, the other does exist; the peripheral
centric individual pretends the other does not
exist, or pretends to not to see the other: this
occurs in order to keep the illusion of wa group
isolation going, this situation will be seen in the
next section. The problem is they expect nonperipheral centric identities to do the same.
15 Jeremy Fernando. Reading Blindly. (New York: Cambria
Press, 2009), 31.
16 In a conversation with Kearney on August 15, 2011.
17 Fernando. Reading Blindly, 31.

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On Reading

Peripheral Centric Communication


Rules: Rubber Dolls and
Nomunication
The implementation of wa discursive formations
produced what Yukichi Fukuzawa called
rubber dolls. Fukuzawa was one of the most
influential figures during the period of Japanese
modernisation: he introduced and explained
many Western concepts to the Japanese during
the Meiji era. In a section called They are like
a rubber doll he describes a typical peripheral
centric identitys communication traits:

It was in the fifth year of Meiji
(1872) when I was invited to visit Lord
Kuki, whom I had known intimately
for some time, of the clan of Sanda in
Settsu.

I first went to Osaka and from
there I was to travel some thirty-seven
miles over to Sanda with a nights
stopover in Nashio on the way.

After a while I began to feel
the lack of someone to talk with, so I
stopped a man who looked like a farmer

Negotiating Isolation

and asked him the way. Probably there


was something of the samurai manner
in my speech and, without realizing it,
I may have sounded commanding. The
farmer replied very politely and left me
with a respectful bow.

Well, this is interesting, I
thought. I looked at myself and saw
that I was not carrying anything but an
umbrella; I was very plainly dressed too.
I thought I would try again, and when
another wayfarer came up, I stopped
him with an awful commanding voice:

I say, there! What is the name
of that hamlet I see yonder? How many
houses are there? Whose is the large
residence with the tiled roof? Is the
owner a farmer or a merchant? And
what is his name?

Thus with the undisguised
manner of the samurai, I put all sorts of
nonsensical questions on the stranger.
The poor fellow shivered at the roadside
and haltingly answered, In great awe I
shall endeavor to speak to your honor


It was so amusing, I tried again
when another passerby came along, this
time taking the opposite attitude.

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Moshi, moshi, I began. But
may I ask you something, please?

I used the style of an Osaka
merchant, and began the same
nonsensical questions. I knew all the
dialects of Osaka, having been born
there and lived there as a student.
Probably the man thought I was a
merchant on the way to collect money;
he eyed me haughtily and walked on
his way without giving me much of an
answer.

So I proceeded, accosting
everyone who came along. Without
any allowance for their appearance,
I spoke alternately, now in samurai
fashion, now merchantlike. In every
instance, for about seven miles on my
way, I saw that people would respond
according to the manner in which they
were addressedwith awe or with
indifference.

Finally I became disgusted. I
would not have cared if they were polite
or arrogant so long as they behaved
consistently. But here it showed that
they were merely following the lead
of the person speaking to them.
Even though the situation was the

Negotiating Isolation

359

result of the unfortunate government


of hundreds of years in our history,
yet these poor farmers knew nothing
else but to bow and make apologies to
the persons accosting them. Not only
that but they would grow arrogant the
instant one talked to them modestly.
They were exactly like a rubber doll.
What hope for their future? 18
Fukuzawas depictions of the communication and
behavior of the people in Meiji are consistent
with what was formed in the seventh century.
Fukuzawa is pointing out the results of wa
implementation such as the inconsistencies
in individual behaviour, where integrity is
not an issue. The priority in cultural codes of
communication is to be sycophantic to the power
figure with whom one is engaging at the moment:
following the lead of the person speaking to
them; the hierarchically superior is right and the
hierarchically inferior is automatically wrong, so
bow and make apologies. Fukuzawa criticises
this tendency as the result of the fearful weight

18 Yukichi Fukuzawa. The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa, translated by Eiichi Kiyooka. (New York: Columbia UP,
1966), 244-246.

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On Reading

the old customs had with the people19 of Edos


centralised feudalism. Japan, in a romanticised
way, has marked this time period as an age of
peace and stability, and it is sometimes referred
to as the Pax Tokugawa. The Pax Tokugawa
flourished under the seclusion policy, which
actualised the peripheral centric ideal of
disconnecting itself from contacts with nonJapanese identities. The period served to enhance
the idea of only Japanese, that having no contact
with the non-Japanese world would bring success
and peace.
Fukuzawa depicted a typical communication
where no effort, automatic, programmed,
automaton behaviour is put into maintaining a
sycophantic sameness, to diminish the other. To
gauge the differences in communication systems,
compare it with the following conversation taken
from Flann OBriens Third Policeman; a quite
different inter-human communication system
where the focus is on engaging the other and this
is considered as, being human by the I:

Will you answer a straight
question? I asked. He stirred
somewhat, his lids opening slightly.
19 Fukuzawa. The Autobiography, 244.

Negotiating Isolation


I will not, he replied.

I saw that this answer was in
keeping with Joes shrewd suggestion
[Do you not see that every reply is in
the negative? No matter what you ask
him he says No.]. I sat thinking for a
moment until I had thought the same
thought inside out.

Will you refuse to answer a
straight question? I asked.

I will not, he replied.
This answer pleased me. It meant that
my mind had got to grips with his, that
I was now almost arguing with him and
that we were behaving like two ordinary
human beings.

Very well, I said quietly, Why
do you always answer No?
He stirred perceptibly in his chair
and filled the teacup up again before
he spoke. He seemed to have some
difficulty in finding words.

No is, generally speaking,
a better answer than Yes, he said at
last.20

20 Flann OBrien. The Third Policeman. (London: Dalkey


Archive Press, 1999), 28.

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On Reading

The expectation for ordinary human beings is


quite clearly stated here. I is pleased because
I was now almost arguing with him meaning I
is going to enjoy the engagement with the other,
enjoy the argument, which wa prohibits.
Fukuzawa, who worked to de-peripheral
centralise the populace, ended the chapter with:
At present the onetime rubber dolls
have developed into fine enterprising
citizens. Nowadays there would not
be a single one in the land who could
be cowed by this Fukuzawa however
much he wielded his umbrella or used
the most pretentious dictions of the
old samurai. That, to me, is the greatest
blessing of modern civilization.21
While the rubber doll mentality may have
diminished during the Meiji Era, it definitely
resurfaced during Japans militaristic period:
obviously because of its usefulness in controlling
a society through strict hierarchical parameters.
Moreover, it has become such a strong element
of the Japanese Symbolic Order that even today,
in the year 2011, well after the end of Japans
21 Fukuzawa. The Autobiography, 246.

Negotiating Isolation

imperialistic period, to what would surely be a


grave disappointment to Fukuzawa, rubber doll
communication is rampant.22
One easy place to observe rubber doll
communication in practice in todays Japan

22 Kearney utilised his knowledge of this Japanese trait


when he went to reactive his Japanese visa in early 2001. At
Immigration Office A, his wife, who is Japanese, presented
the necessary documents (as delineated over the phone by
the immigration bureau); however, she addressed the clerk
in a modest and apologetic tone, thus sending the signal
that the public servant was the superior. She was told by
the said clerk that not only were their documents incorrect,
even with the proper documents it would take at least three
months (which is outlandish). Throughout the exchange,
his wife kept apologising to the man. Kearney discerned
that rectifying the situation at Immigration Office A would
be nearly impossible as the bureaucrats would not backpeddle and lose face. Thus, he went to Immigration Office
B and addressed the clerk, who happened to be older and
of a higher rank than the clerk from Office A, as a professor; affably but authoritatively. The clerk quickly perused
the documents, stated that everything was in order and
promised to have the visa processed as quickly as possible.
And the visa, which would usually take a couple of weeks,
was ready the next day.

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is at the izakaya, Japanese style bars,23 where


nomunication, which is [a] portmanteau of
the Japanese word for drinking, nomu, and
communication,24 takes place. Nomunication was
explained in the New York Times on March 12,
2009:
The countrys business and political
culture has long depended on alcohol to
smooth out differences between bosses
and subordinates or between parties
in a negotiation, Nozaki [managing
director of Alcoholics Anonymous of
Japan] said.
Drinking is part of the job, said
Satoshi Miyazaki, an employee at a
Tokyo advertising agency who says he
accompanies his section chief to a bar
most week nights. If the boss invites
you, you dont feel comfortable saying
no.
The intimacy that drinking fosters

23 Izakaya behaviour has been pointed out to the author by


Kearney.
24 Jason Clenfield. Nomunication, New York Times. http://
schott.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/nomunication/
Viewed on July 24, 2011.

Negotiating Isolation

365

between friends, clients and colleagues25


has given rise to a new word:
Nomunication, 26
Every evening rubber dolls are busy at izakaya
engaging in peripheral centric communicative
strategies for wa. Sycophantic affirming sounds
are produced so that they will be secured in the
group and the group members can witness their
absorption into their group world, oblivious
to the other people in the bar, with the noise
level becoming louder and louder without any
consideration to those around them.27 The fact
that it is a public space is erased from their
minds; the illusion of isolation takes place
25 It should be noted that family is not listed. The importance of family is usually below any of these relationships.
26 Clenfield. Nomunication.
27 For cultural analysts eating out is always a good chance
to observe and in Singapore it was quite interesting that Lim
Lee Ching would pick out Japanese groups quite correctly
from far away where you cannot make out what they are
saying: he would read the behavior and the audible Japanese sounds, such as the sycophantic hai (yes) sound from
inferiors and the dictatorial grunts of the superior. I must
add that Lim, who does not speak Japanese, is very good at
reproducing these tones to quite the comical effect.

366

On Reading

and they behave loudly and obnoxiously as if


there were nobody else around: and for them,
psychologically there are no other people around.
Their main concern is pleasing the multitude/
power in the group. The intimacy between
friends, clients and colleagues is established by
forming an isolated group, which gives a sense
of security. Between rubber dolls, or peripheral
centric identities, loud and obnoxious behaviour,
as if nobody was around, is actually desired and
even essential: if you do not behave like this you
will be in trouble with your boss. Even though
this obnoxious behaviour is visible and audible,
the Japanese people around will remain obtuse
since they are doing the same thing. However,
non-Japanese are often uncomfortable with, even
shocked by, the behaviour being exhibited at the
surrounding tables. To the Japanese, the people
at the surrounding tables are tanin: non-existent.
Peripheral centrism maintains the isolation
illusion in this manner, and this is the proper way
to behave in peripheral centrism.
The erasing of the other to focus on a sense of
security created through isolated oneness is
a feature of peripheral centric identities. The
isolation illusion is only possible because the
peripheral centric other would collaborate in
maintaining the isolation illusion. Now, Japan

Negotiating Isolation

367

was not completely contactless with non-Japanese


materials: in fact, over the years the Japanese
were not reluctant to bringing things foreign in,
but these were processed through Japanification
and tuned to adhere to and serve the peripheral
centric power.28 Though the central power, China
and/or the rest of the coexistent others, did not
share the peripheral centric isolation illusion,
peripheral centrism was able to maintain the
isolation illusion because historically, peripheral
centrism did not face much threat from nonJapanese. The closest the Japanese came to
invasion and to being conquered was by the
Mongolians in 1274 and 1281, where stories say
that Divine Winds, kamikaze, took care of the
threat, thus leaving the Japanese with the myth
that they are untouchable. This, combined with
little interaction with foreign entities during the
Tokugawa period led to the Japanese self-delusion
that they have subtly negotiated with the rest of
the world to ensure their isolation and autonomy:
28 For how Japanification functions to undermine anti-peripheral centric elements, see Setsuko Adachi, Undermined
Empathy, Undermined Coexistence: Japanese Discursive
Formations Related to Empathy, forthcoming, The Need
to Belong: Perpetual Conflicts and Temporary Stability, A.
Wagener & T. Rahimy (Eds). (Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary
Press, 2012).

368

On Reading

that they had struck a deal to secure a peripheral


centric state.

Kamikaze: Negotiation Broken Off


For peripheral centrism, Japanese isolation is
a one-way subjective understood right. When
confrontations that invade the isolation illusion
take place and force interpersonal relationships
with non-Japanese, the peripheral centric focus is
on the survival and propagation of the peripheral
centric ideology/identities. A crucial encounter
occurred in the late 19th century, through the
US, with the West. Japan fortified itself from
the threat of being colonised by imperialistic
powers by swallow[ing] whole the entirety of the
Industrial Revolution29 and instituted economic
and social modernisation. Modelling itself
after the Western powers, Japan set forth on an
imperialistic movement to expand their territory
and to create colonies that would adhere to their
peripheral centric ideologies.
However, this modernisation effort ended in
29 William Gibson. Modern boys and mobile girls,
4/1/2001, http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Negotiating Isolation

369

a drastic failure with Japans unconditional


surrender at the end of the Second World War in
August 1945. Toward the end of the war, it was
not the enemies of Japan that were taking many
of the Japanese lives but Japanese peripheral
centric ideology. War is about survival, play
any video game, it is about the efficiency of
killing the enemy, the winner is the one that
lived, that gained control over the lives of the
enemy. Sacrifice is a valid fighting tactic when
that sacrifice can save the lives of other people.
However, toward the end of the war, when the
Japanese home islands were within the reach
of its enemies, Japanese slogans were preparing
the Japanese for death in the final battles on the
mainland (hondo kessen), pushing them toward
ichioku gyokusai (honourable death of 100 million
[all Japanese]). The media presented the idea
that Japans enemies would retreat in fear and
horror when they learned of all the soldiers and
civilians that would choose to die an honourable
death, and even if they all did die, the beautiful
spirit of the Japanese race would remain forever.
Rather than be captured or surrender, commit
honourable death.
What is seen in these discourses is that when peripheral centrism saw that the only chance for the
survival of Japanese people was to surrender to Ja-

370

On Reading

pans enemies, which meant to accept and adhere


to anti-peripheral centric ideas, the peripheral
centric power, instead of focusing on the survival
of the Japanese people, sought for the survival of
the ideology, even if only in the memory of the
world because Japan would be wiped away. Thus,
following true on the slogans mentioned above,
the peripheral centric ideology started taking the
lives of its own people. The focus was on keeping
the Japanese people loyal to the peripheral centric
ideology, on prohibiting them from engagement
with non-Japanese; within this system, it was out
of the question to think of survival at the mercy
of the enemy, to seek a path toward coexistence:
self extermination was a preferable course. As a
result, to prove you were loyal to the peripheral
centric ideology, you had to die for Japan, not die
in fighting for victory, but rather death instead of
existing in a system other than peripheral centrism; people were programmed to accept and
believe that it was shameful to remain alive. Thus,
the Japanese war against the US was filled with
kamikaze attacks and banzai charges, an ideology
of gyokusai, suicide attack, revealing peripheral
centrism would choose self-destruction rather
than coexistence.
Kamikaze pilots are an example of the ultimate
consummation of peripheral centrism. Many

Negotiating Isolation

kamikaze pilots knew the tactic was not effective


enough, but they were given only enough fuel
to reach the destination. Listen to the Voices
from the Sea30 is a collection of writings, most of
which are diaries and letters kept in private, away
from public eyes, by student-soldiers, including
kamikaze pilots during WWII. The collection
reveals the students doubts about the war, the
awareness of the realities of war situations, and
the frustrations of being treated as disposable
parts of the war machine, as disposable weapons,
it also testifies that they did not raise their voice
but chose to obey orders in silent subjugation:
they executed kamikaze attacks to prove their
loyalty to peripheral centrism. The survival of
the ideology became more important than the
survival of the people, which is a paradox because
without people a nation cannot survive.
It must be added that the peripheral centric
paranoia to keep the Japanese people loyal is
not without ground. The characteristics of the
rubber dolls are that they follow the lead of
that group and that inconsistencies are not that
30 Kike Wadatsumi no Koe [Listen to the Voices from
the Sea: Writings of the Fallen Japanese Students]. Nihon
Senbotsu Gakusei Kinen-Kai (Comp.). (Tokyo: Iwanami
Shoten, 2009).

371

372

On Reading

big a problem: betrayal is not a big problem for


individuals: following the powerful leader is the
key for survival. In other words, reading who is
the power figure to whom an individual needs
to be sycophantic is crucial for survival in the
peripheral centric system, and this pattern of
reading is matrixed into a person programmed
by the Japanese Symbolic Order. Thus, change the
leader and the following happens:
Schooled in the code of honor which
requires suicide rather than capture, the
Japanese cannot easily be taken prisoner. Even after capture under circumstances entirely beyond his control, (e.g.
a pilot who has crashed, and regained
consciousness only in hospital), the
well-trained Japanese officer may
still demand a pistol to shoot himself, though this attitude then smacks
somewhat of a theatrical flourish to
save face. But once beyond the reach
of help and the immediate opportunity
of self-destruction, a complete mental
reconstruction is not uncommon.
The following incident shows the typical attitude of the PW [POW] as soon
as the self-destruction phase passes.

Negotiating Isolation

One Japanese interrogated in Melbourne said he had no desire to return


to Japan. He believed that his former
friends would have nothing to do with
him because he had been taken alive by
the enemy and that he would be unable
to get back into the army. He preferred
to stay in Australia.
Coupled with the comparative leniency
of his captors, this conviction induces
in the prisoner a pliancy unusual in
PWs [POWs] from other nations, say,
Nazi Germany. The self-justification
is: Officially, I am dead; legally, I am
stateless: why not talk if I can thereby
mitigate or improve my position with
my captors.
In other words, his security has been
more a matter of external training than
of inner conviction. In an entirely new
environment the traditional supports of
his loyalty fall away and leave him ready
to answer most questions, though he
does occasionally salve his conscience
by showing unwillingness to reveal matters which, in his own words, he describes as firing a bullet at the heart of

373

374

On Reading

the Emperor. The names of his superior officers are revealed with reluctance.
The above remarks apply particularly to
Japanese officers, who have been given
some instruction on security. So far as
the rank and file are concerned, they
do not seem to realize that by talking
they may be betraying their comrades.
This serves to emphasize the necessity
of segregating officers from other
troops, as soon after capture as possible.
Segregation should be arranged
immediately and prisoners sent back to
the next higher echelon under separate
guard.
Aside from officers, information
has been forthcoming from straight
forward interrogation. Although the
Japanese soldier may prefer death to
capture, yet, when captured, he has
been a valuable source of information.31

31 Japanese Prisoners of War in Tactical and Technical


Trends, No. 10, Oct. 22, 1942. Retrieved from
http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/ttt08/japanese-prisoners-of-war.html. Viewed on September 10, 2010.

Negotiating Isolation

375

Peripheral Centric Negotiation for


Isolation: Japanese Constitution and
the United States
The Japanese defeat, which Japan calls till this
day the end of the war and not the defeat,32 was
followed by Allied occupation. The peripheral
centric reaction to the end of the war was that
Japan made a mistake of engaging non-Japanese
entities. For Fukuzawa, a Meiji man, the Tokugawa period of seclusion was a backward, stagnated, and uncivilised period, and he aspired to
be modernised. Once modern nation status was
established, then the Meiji enthusiasm was refocused to propagate an expanded peripheral centric hierarchy, which encompassed first East and
then Southeast Asia, where Japan held the apex
position in relation to its neighbours in Asia, with
the rest of the world being shut-out, being tanin.

32 The word choice reflects the peripheral centric tendency


to reject interpersonal relationships and/or the existence
of the other and keep the interpretation along the isolation
logic.

376

On Reading

Japanese peripheral centrism never considered an


equal co-existence with the other; in peripheral
centrism, everything is always hierarchical and
the idea of equality does not exist. However, the
failure of peripheral centrisms aspirations with
the defeat in 1945 brought about a view that regarded the Tokugawa period as a rosy ideal period of peace and stability: remaining in seclusion,
like Tokugawa, was the right behaviour for Japan;
it was a huge mistake to engage non-Japanese
identities. This is an opportunistic self-deceptive
lie to protect the peripheral centric ideology,
and it is also a marker of a national narcissistic
psychology, where the consequence of the brutal
imperialistic behaviour the Japanese initiated and
displayed is disregarded, erased from their minds:
the peoples atrocities were perpetrated against
do not count because they are non-Japanese and
therefore tanin.
In the Post-war era, the US plays a strange role
in protecting Japanese peripheral centrism. The
Japanese constitution was drawn up under Allied occupation. Junior high school students in
public schools are instructed to memorise a part
of the preface because it is an important part for
maintaining national peace. It is the part that was
drafted by GHQ:

Negotiating Isolation

Desiring peace for all time and fully


conscious of the high ideals controlling human relationship [sic.] now
stirring mankind, we have determined
to rely for our security and survival
upon the justice and good faith of the
peace-loving peoples of the world. We
desire to occupy an honored place in
an international society designed and
dedicated to the preservation of peace,
and the banishment of tyranny and
slavery, oppression and intolerance, for
all time from the earth. We recognize
and acknowledge that all peoples have
the right to live in peace, free from fear
and want.33
For the Japanese peripheral centric psychology,
this is perfect: the lie was bought. It is the first
time that an unsaid one-way agreement that
serves to maintain a peripheral centric isolation
illusion was endorsed: we have determined to
rely for our security and survival upon the justice
and good faith of the peace-loving peoples of the
world. Peripheral centrism understands this as a
33 The draft Constitution for Japanese by GHQ, Feb 12,
1946. Retrieved from http://www.ndl.go.jp/constitution/
shiryo/03/076a_e/076a_etx.html.

377

378

On Reading

strong back-up from the US; however, the US has


no idea about the opportunistic agreement that
the peripheral centric Japanese mind believes it
has struck with the US. They believe they have negotiated this with the US, but the US has no idea
of any deal. This particular psyche reads this deal
as having been approved. The Security Treaty
between the United States and Japan was signed
in September 1951. In the introduction it says:
Japan has this day signed a Treaty
of Peace with the Allied Powers. On
the coming into force of that Treaty,
Japan will not have the effective means
to exercise its inherent right of selfdefense because it has been disarmed.
There is danger to Japan in this situation because irresponsible militarism
has not yet been driven from the world.
Therefore Japan desires a Security Treaty with the United States of America to
come into force simultaneously with
the Treaty of Peace between the United
States of America and Japan.34

34 http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/ps/japan/bilateral_treaty.
pdf

Negotiating Isolation

379

The US provided the buffer to sustain Japanese


peripheral centricity. If Japan is attacked it is the
USs responsibility to keep Japan isolated: Japan
will not engage in a coexisting world order involving any militaristic internationalism. Japan wants
to have nothing to do with it but needs to be safe.
It is the responsibility of the US to maintain the
peripheral centric isolation. Japanese peripheral
centrism, through these frameworks, begins
working for peace and stability the way it knows:
through the double standard isolation illusion;
benefit economically from the global world but
avoid as much contact as possible with non-Japanese identities. Japan avoided direct contact as
much as possible even when it enjoyed economic
success in the 1980s. It was the products and the
money that flowed on the international market, not humans. One main inhibitor, a control
mechanism for the Japanese, is the preference
for monolinguism built into their identity, which
makes them dysfunctional in a global setting.35

35 For further discussion on Japanese monolinguism and


identity see Setsuko Adachi. A Monolinguistic Identity in
Transculturality: Japanese and Foreign Languages. Conference Proceedings for Malaysia International Conference on
Foreign Language (MICFL): Languages and Construction of
the Identities, (Malaysia: UPM, 2010).

380

On Reading

Nobel Prize Winner Dr. Yoichiro


Nambu: Japanese or American
To end the chapter, here is a final example, and
this one is peripheral centrism being perplexed
at losing control over an individual. In October
2008, The Straits Times, a Singaporean newspaper
posted online, Three Japanese Laureates or
Two?
WHEN the three winners of this years
Nobel Prize for physics were announced
on Tuesday evening, the Japanese media
went wild with excitement.
Three Japanese have won, screamed
the Japanese headlines, blithely
ignoring the fact that one of the
three menYoichiro Nambuholds
American nationality.
Even those Japanese newspapers
and TV networks that cared to point
out that Nambu had acquired US
citizenship long ago, continued to
regard him as Japanese in their

Negotiating Isolation

headlines and reports.


However, foreign news media were
careful to note that Nambu is a Japanborn, American physicist. Their
headlines said: Two Japanese, One
American win Nobels.

The influential Asahi Shimbun daily is


so far the only major newspaper to have
brought up this issue of whether it is
correct to regard Nambu as Japanese.
In an article posted on its website, the
Asahi quoted a government official
as saying however that it would not
be right not to add Nambus prize to
Japans Nobel tally.

Curiously, the Japanese media


sometimes disowns a Japanese
even when he or she holds Japanese
citizenship.

381

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On Reading

A case in point is former Peruvian


president Alberto Fujimori, who never
gave up his Japanese nationality.
One wonders how the government
and the media would have treated
Fujimori had he turned out to be a great
statesman, instead of the diplomatic
embarrassment that he has become.36
Clearly there is a strong peripheral centric desire
to claim and own Nambu as a Japanese so that
he and his achievement can boost the sense of
national ego, to fortify the national achievement
in the global community, even going so far as
ignoring the fact that he is not a Japanese national
(in Fujimoris case Japan disowned its national
when it did not benefit the Japanese in the
global community). Nambu chose to become a
US citizen in 1970 and adhered to the Japanese
Constitutions Article 14, which requires that
Japanese renounce other nationalities by the age
of 22 if they wish to keep Japanese citizenship.
That Japanese peripheral centric desire to retrieve
Nambu is quite strong is evident, for this case
activated in Japan the discussion for multiple
36 Kwan Weng Kin. Three Japanese Laureates or Two?,
The Straits Times, October 10, 2008. http://blogs.straitstimes.com/2008/10/10/three-japanese-laureates-or-two

Negotiating Isolation

383

nationalities in order to keep Japan from losing a


good Japanese like Nambu to the non-Japanese
world.37
The reason Nambu obtained US citizenship was,
according to an interview,38 because he wanted
to be involved in the US community, and also
because he felt uneasy at being an alien (one can
read from the interview that Nambu means being
an Asian alien, during the Vietnam War era): this
demonstrates that Japans discursive formation of
peripheral centrism no longer had a strong grasp
upon Nambu, for if it did, he would have done as
most other Japanese nationals living in the US at
the time did: do their work, but remain generally
isolated from the US community surrounding
them: in other words, ignore the US community
just as you would ignore the next table at an
izakaya. Nambu is a case where an identity shifted
from the peripheral centric concept of nationality
to pro-coexistence. It is a case where the strong
37 Minoru Matsutani. Debate on Multiple Nationalities
to Heat Up, Japan Times, January 1, 2009. http://search.
japantimes.co.jp/print/nn20090101a1.html
38 Interview of Dr. Yoichiro Nambu by Babak Ashrafi on
July 16, 2004. Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American
Institute of Physics, College Park, MD USA, www.aip.org/
history/ohilist/LINK

384

On Reading

empowering method of the peripheral centric


system failed and the mechanism for containing
identity in an isolated illusion did not work.
It indicates that the attempts to disconnect its
members from the rest of the world do not work
when individuals are connected to the nonperipheral centric world. In the AICS interlinked
world, Japanese peripheral centric identities
are doomed; they need to shift from living in
the illusion of isolation and the negation of the
other, toward accepting diversity and enhancing
communication between themselves and the
other, to move toward respectful coexistence.

Shaoling Ma

387

Reading Chinese
Women in Two Maoist
China Ballets
Chinese women should not be criticized for not
finding that they need what Western feminists
think they ought to need or for not getting what
they havent asked for. It is of interest, however,
if Chinese women neither ask for nor crave the
liberties which we feel in their places we would.
Judith Stacey1

1 Judith Stacey, When Patriarchy Kowtows: The significance of the Chinese Family Revolution for Feminist Theory, Feminist Studies, 2: 2/3 (1975): 102, my emphasis.

388

On Reading

The most innocent of dances would thwart the


assignation residence [if only to] escape those
residences under surveillance; the dance changes
place and above all changes places. In its wake
they can no longer be recognized.
Jacques Derrida2

Prologue
If reading can no longer be understood as an act,
but an encounter with an unconditional relation
around which this collection of essays is gathered,
can it be a dance? What kind of dance would such
a reading be? Or rather, where would such a dance
take place, if it takes place at all?

Act I. Beginnings
In 1964 and 1965, two new ballets, Red
Detachment of Women and The White-Haired Girl
premiered in China, respectively. Together with
2 Jacques, Derrida and Christie V. McDonald, Interview:
Choreographies: Jacques Derrida and Christie V. McDonald, Diacritics, 12, 2, (1982): 69.

Reading Chinese Women

389

five modernized Peking operas and a symphony,


the two ballets would, as the eight model plays,
be the only stage works approved for performance
during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.3 The
impetus for conceiving a Communist-themed
ballet came from Zhou Enlai, who after attending
the Beijing Ballet Schools performance of
Notre-Dame of Paris, supposedly commented
to its choreographer that, surely, they could not
dance the roles of princes and fairies forever.4 He
continued to explain:
But of course, ballet is a foreign artistic
formation that would be too difficult
to completely nationalize from the
outset. Could you first revolutionize the
subject-matter, and then transition to a
nationalized ballet? [For instance], first
choreograph a foreign revolutionarythemed ballet that reflects the Paris
Commune, or the October revolution.5

3 Daniel S. P. Yang, Censorship: 8 Model Works. The Drama Review: TDR, 15, 2: Theater in Asia (Spri ng 1971): 259.
4 Zhong Yaoyun, Behind the Three Reds: Zhou Enlai and
Lin Mohan, Tongzhou Gongjin 3 (2008): 43.
5 Zhang, Behind the Three Reds: 43.

390

On Reading

Zhous bold proposal set the principals of the


Beijing Ballet School and the Central Music
School, as well as other dancers and intellectual
figures immediately to work. However instead
of skirting around the more difficult task of
nationalizing ballet as Zhou had suggested,
the discussants decided that since they were
unfamiliar with foreign countries, they might as
well be bold and create a piece based on modern
China. Zhang Mohan, an important literary critic
and government official in culture and the arts,
recommended the true story of an all-female
Special Company of the Chinese Red Army, on
which a popular film was already based, as a
suitable material to be adapted for a ballet. 6
A year later when Zhou sat in for the dress
rehearsal for the new ballet, Red Detachment
of Women, he was moved to tears. To think
that I am more conservative than you all in
thinking that we cannot immediately have a
nationalized ballet.7 Zhous emotions were
understandable. For, since the establishment
of Beijing Dance School in 1954 under his
patronage, the growing company had invited
six renowned Soviet balletomanes and had
6 Zhang, Behind the Three Reds: 43.
7 Zhang, Behind the Three Reds: 43.

Reading Chinese Women

successfully staged numerous European classics.8


It was an accomplishment for a young Chinese
ballet company to perform Swan Lake or Giselle;
to execute a Maoist-themed ballet like Red
Detachment of Women, on the other hand, could
only be revolutionary in every sense of the word.9
The redirection of ballet in new China away from
traditional princes and fairies did not end with
Red Detachment of Women. A conflict between
Zhou Yang, former Vice-Minister of Culture, and
Jiang Qing, Maos third wife, precipitated in the
1965 production The White-Haired Girl. Zhou
Yang, who prior to the Cultural Revolution was
responsible for much of arts censorship, was
attacked in the later years of the movement. He
was accused of openly lauding certain periods of
Western classical literature and art, and trying
to restore capitalism in China through capitalist
works of art and literature such as the Russian
ballet classic Swan Lake.10 Unlike Zhou Enlai
who also initially supported the Beijing Dance
Schools classical repertoire, Zhou Yang was
8 Zhang, Behind the Three Reds: 43.
9 Zhang, Behind the Three Reds: 43.
10 Daniel S. P. Yang, Censorship: 8 Model Works, The
Drama Review: TDR, Vol 15, No. 2, Theater in Asia (Spring
1971): 259.

391

392

On Reading

more unfortunate in that his involvement in the


Shanghai School of Dance came up against Jiang,
who was trying to launch revolutionary modern
ballets such as The White-Haired Girl in the same
school. During the years of 1963-1965, the proZhou and pro-Jiang camps fought for what they
thought of as genuine proletarian literature and
art.11 Chiang won, and from 1966 onwards, she
personally spearheaded the creation and revision
of the eight model plays.12 At the height of the
Cultural Revolution, both ballets were popular in
their filmed versions. Red Detachment of Women
became known in Western countries after it was
performed for U.S. President Richard Nixon
during his 1972 visit to China.
Zhou Enlai, Zhang Mohan, Zhou Yang and Jiang
Qingnone of them were enthusiastic ballet
lovers and patrons in the conventional sense. But
in the turbulent years leading up to the Cultural
Revolution, they found themselves directing
their political energies toward redefining a strict
art form very much rooted in the Romantic
tradition. This essay does not aim to judge if Red
Detachment of Women and The White-Haired
Girl achieved Maos call for art and literature
11 Yang, Censorship: 8 Model Works: 259.
12 Yang, Censorship: 8 Model Works: 261.

Reading Chinese Women

to be a component of the whole revolutionary


machine, delivered at his landmark address at
the Yenan Forum in 1942,13 or if the Cultural
Revolution eventually butchered any potential of
revolutionary art altogether. The larger question
of Maoist cultural politics of the period demands
another reading on another occasion. Since I am
only here attempting to understand reading
and writingas dance, allow me to remain with
the historicity of its figures, by which I am not
referring to the historical figures of the Cultural
Revolution discussed so far, but the figures who
were, literally, on the dance stage. I am referring
to dancers whose historicity comes from their
being called to change places with princes and
fairies, whose places, to evoke the epigraph from
Derrida, can no longer be recognized in dances
wake. For the real challenge, I would argue, to
nationalize the Western ballet on the eve of the
Cultural Revolution is to redefine the women
question so central to twentieth-century Chinese
politics since the May Fourth movement. If
recent dance criticism has questioned dances
construction of gender hierarchies and structures

13 Mao Zedong, Art and Literature (Honolulu: University


Press of the Pacific, 1960), 76.

393

394

On Reading

of power,14 what kind of women do Qinghua and


Xier, principle characters in Red Detachment of
Women and The White-Haired Girl respectively,
play? Through what kind of cultural translation,
or indeed, revolution, did fist-clenching
proletarian heroines in army fatigues come to
take the place of tutu-wearing queens, princesses
and sylphs?
In the following Acts,15 I propose reading as
dance, which is not the same as reading a text like
a dance. The difference to me spells the difficult
task of a properly materialist dialectical mode
of thinking. Here, Alain Badious thinking of
materialist dialectics according to structure and
tendency, or place and force, and Bruno Bosteels
patient analysis of it, are fitting for my purposes.
14 See Christy Adair, Women and Dance: Sylphs and Sirens
(New York: New York University Press, 1992); Sally Banes,
Dancing Women: Female Bodies on Stage (London and New
York: Routledge, 1998); Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight:
Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Helen Thomas, Dance,
Gender and Culture, ed (New York: St. Martins Press, 1993)
15 I use the word act here in mimicry of the different Acts
in theatre and dance, but my usage also echoes Jacques
Derridas Acts of Literature, for whom the question of reading has always been central to his thinking.

Reading Chinese Women

This is not because dialectics is an apt metaphor


for thinking about the politically charged Maoist
ballets. The interchanging of places and forces in
dancecan we think of any movement without
it?makes literal any attempt at understanding
reading as a figuratively dialectical act.16 Reading,
then, has always already been about the logic of
places, that is, the putting of one term in the place
of an unlikely and perhaps even unthinkable
other that constitutes the very possibility of
structure, and the logic of forces insofar as every
assigned place is constantly transforming as a
result of inner splits, breaks and changes.17
With this dual logic of places and forces in mind,
I approach Red Detachment of Women and The
White-Haired Girl to show how the diegesis of
16 In Politics of Friendship, Derrida unravels the false
distinction between the literal sense of a word, in his case,
fraternity, and its figurative sense. He calls the mechanism
by which the strict sense of friendship, that of the nature,
virile brother always adds something more to the literal
sense, thus exposing the figurative sense to be the same
as the literal hyperbolization or hyperbolic build-up.
Jacques Derrida, Politics of Friendship, translated by George
Collins (London: Verso, 1997), 62.
17 Alain Badiou, Thorie de la contradiction (Theory of
Contradiction) (Paris: Maspero 1975), 72-80.

395

396

On Reading

the storyline characterize the female protagonists


as individualistic figures who must be subsumed
under the greater patriarchy of the party and
the state on one hand, and how the fluidity
of the dance gives them the force to suspend
such assigned roles on the other. Not unlike
Althussers structural analysis of the interpellation
of individuals in a system, the two ballets
ideological aspect displaces traditional Western
femininity onto a Chinese revolutionary model.
However, the changing of places only refers to
a limited mobility within a closed system.18 In
other words, Zhous call for a nationalization of
princes and fairies as discussed earlier results
in an overemphasis of the structural logic of
the place of Chinese women in Chinese society.
Supplementing this logic is what Badiou detects
in Deleuzes Marxist dialectics: unlike Althussers
emphasis on structure, Deleuze and his following
of anarcho-desirers stress the thinking of
tendencies and differentials.19 This focus on the
logic of forces would sidestep the structural place
of the new Chinese women in favor of rupture,
transformation, and pure becoming. I recast
this dual logic of places and forces in the ways
18 Badiou, Theorie de la contradiction, 71.
19 Bruno Bosteels, Post-Maoism: Badiou and Politics, positions: east asia cultures critique, 13 (3), (Winter 2005): 588.

Reading Chinese Women

397

of reading dance itself: how are we to read the


story of Red Detachment of Women and The
White-Haired Girl in its ideological production
of the new Chinese women structurally while, at
the same time, paying attention to the discourse
of the dance in its movement of pure becoming,
in order to understand women as an affirmative
force? Place and force, force and place, how are
we to reconcile such a split correlation without,
in Bosteels words, allowing either side of the
articulation to deviate and lapse back into a
unilateral hypostasis?20
The philosophical language of materialist
dialectics has always moved with this double logic
of places and forcesone can think of Hegel,
especially the Hegel of The Science of Logic, as
a skilled dancer. It is simply that the physical
expression of dance allows us to read it more
directly. Rather than calling this definition of
reading embodied, I prefer to ask if there can be
reading at all without bodies in motion. One does
not apply reading to dance, or vice versa. One has
to mobilize reading in and as movement.

20 Bosteels, Post-Maoism: Badiou and Politics: 588

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On Reading

Act II. Places and Forces


Red Detachment of Women and The WhiteHaired Girl replace the classical ballet story
of individual romance with the revolutionary
socialist subject of women as fun . As Tani E.
Barlow points out, the Chinese term fun under
Communist rule is a feminist category for state
mobilization and normative class liberation.21
While Republican era (1911-1949) feminism was
concerned with a progressive, eugenicist mode in
order to understand women as individual sexual
agents in the struggle for social standing, women
in the communist state matrix was a normative
entity defined in communitarian social practice.22
The task for the Chinese Communist Party was
to develop the inherent human potential of the
masses of underrepresented and disenfranchised
laboring women who could then represent the
new collectivity of fun.23 In the context of the

21 Tani E. Barlow, The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 191.
22 Barlow, The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism,
191.
23 Barlow, The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism,
191.

Reading Chinese Women

399

two ballets, fun further takes on the proletarian


spirit of militancy that legitimates the Partys
political authority. In a 1967 speech to the
Peking Opera Company, Jiangs demand for the
transformation of education, literature, and art
and all other parts of the superstructure not in
accordance with the socialist economic base
exemplifies the proletarian spirit of militancy.24
Given the increasingly dominant role of the
Peoples Liberation Army in Chinese politics
from 1960 on, and the high pedagogical value
placed on learning from the PLA campaigns,
the extreme infiltration of the army rather than
the party was unprecedented in the history of
the world Communist movement.25 Ballet, as a
movement-based art with a highly disciplined
physical training, suitably demonstrates the
physical and mental demands of a militantrevolutionary education. However, as I propose
below, individual militancy is not acceptable and
must be re-mustered for the greater aims of the
revolution.
24 Margaret Chan, Negotiating Artistic Spaces: Beijing
Opera and the Cultural Revolution in China in Right to
Dance,Dancing for Rights, edited by Naomi M. Jackson
(Banff: Banff Centre Press, 2004), 104.
25 Chan, Negotiating Artistic Spaces: Beijing Opera and
the Cultural Revolution in China, 105.

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On Reading

Here I turn to Marxist-Feminist scholarship,


which foregrounds the relative autonomy of
the sex-gender relation in the Marxist study
of relations of production to explain my point.
According to Barlow, U.S., Japanese and
European historiography ... used to assume that
Marxism in China and Maoism were ideologically
incompatible with what critics termed Western
or bourgeois feminism in the 1940s, but later
Western scholarship and the history of Chinese
feminism itself have demonstrated otherwise.26
Judith Staceys 1983 work, Patriarchy and Socialist
Revolution in China is a prime case in point.
Her study offers a historical interpretation of
processes of family and transformation that focus
on a patriarchal sex-gender system as it shaped
and was shaped by revolutionary China.27 Like
her earlier article When Patriarchy Kowtows: the
Significance of the Chinese Family Revolution
for Feminist Theory, the book examines how the
contradictions of the Confucian Patriarchal order
contributes to its breakdown on the one hand,
and how that very form of contradiction halts
the development of a family revolution under
26 Barlow, The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism,
195.
27 Judith Stacey. Patriarchy and Socialist Revolution in China. (Berkeley: University of California Press. 1983),12.

Reading Chinese Women

401

Communist rule on the other.


Stacey uses the term patriarchal-socialism to
describe the nature of the Communist regimes
new democratic patriarchal alliance with
the peasantry.28 Further, she also refers to this
democratization and socialization of patriarchal
family life in rural China to as a kind of public
patriarchy.29 The latter is elaborated in the
metaphorical sense to refer to an important
aspect of authority under patriarchal-socialism
rather than to designate yet a new sex-gender
system, since public patriarchy merely introduces
a state-centered sex-gender system into the
patriarchal-socialist accommodation.30 Stacey
criticizes public patriarchy under Communist
China for paying lip service to the relative
autonomy of gender relationships from those
of production. Ultimately, a state-centered
sex-gender system, insofar as it emphasizes
productive power at the expense of sex relations
and identifies any sexual desire as anti-socialist,
fails to liberate women.31 Through a detailed
historical analysis of agrarian collectivist reforms
28 Stacey, Patriarchy and Socialist Revolution, 203.
29 Stacey, Patriarchy and Socialist Revolution, 227.
30 Stacey, Patriarchy and Socialist Revolution, 227.
31 Stacey, Patriarchy and Socialist Revolution, 230.

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On Reading

during the years of the Great Leap Forward,


Patriarchy and the Socialist Revolution concludes
that the former has a negative legacy on the
peasant family structure:
Cooperatives were formed around male
lineage links in natural neighborhoods,
hamlets, and villages. Families joined
as units and earned work points,
which were paid to their patriarchal
heads. Collectivization represented a
further democratization of patriarchal
authority in the countryside.32
In When Patriarchy Kowtows, Stacey attributes
part of Communist Chinas failure to consolidate
a truly revolutionary feminist movement to the
Maoist conception of social contradictions that
by focusing only on antagonistic contradictions
between people of different classes, overlooks how
there can be antagonistic contradiction between
the sexes of a similar class.33 According to Stacey,
the irreconciliation between sex antagonism
and class solidarity remains an obstacle for the
Chinese Communist Party, since it was also
during the time of the Cultural Revolution that
32 Stacey, Patriarchy and Socialist Revolution, 253.
33 Stacey, When Patriarchy Kowtows, 102.

Reading Chinese Women

the official Womens Movement was disbanded.34


It was exactly because women were organized
as women that their revolutionary commitment
was called into question.35 I argue that Red
Detachment of Women and The White-Haired
Girl take this conundrum further by staging the
problem of what happens when a woman, in
the singular, is not yet ready to be organized as
women in its plural form.
Red Detachment of Women is set in the Second
Revolutionary Civil War Period (1927-1937),
on Hainan Island.36 The story begins with the
enslavement of its protagonist, Wu Qinghua,
daughter of a poor peasant, by the Tyrant of the
South. Her memorable first solo while under
captive is punctured by a slow dvelopp en avant,
where the right leg is extended high in front of
her slightly inclined body before it balances en
34 Stacey, When Patriarchy Kowtows, 79.
35 Stacey, When Patriarchy Kowtows, 80.
36 China Ballet Troop, Red Detachment of WomenA
Modern Revolutionary Ballet (Peking: Foreign Languages
Press, 1972), 1. I follow this script for my description of
the scenes. The filmed ballet is also available, in ten parts,
for viewing on Youtube.com. http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=7DX9eIxW8lU (Accessed Sept 1, 2012). When describing specific movements, I will give the time of the clip.

403

404

On Reading

pointe and is joined by the left leg (5:24). But


instead of finishing the dvelopp with a classical
relev and arms in fifth position overhead, she
has one arm in front and one at the back in a
clenched-fist position. While the militant style in
defiance of the softness of classical port de bras is
consistent throughout the choreography, I argue
that this specific dvelopp en avant emphasizes
Qinghuas individualism by exaggerating her
leg extension, as if to extend herself with part of
her body. As we shall see, in scenes where she is
showing her allegiance to the Red Army, she goes
en pointe without the signature dvelopp, or high
extension of the right leg.
Escaping from cruel beatings and maltreatments
at the Tyrants house, Qinghua meets
revolutionary Hong Changqing and his comrade,
who welcome her to the rural base of the Red
Guard. Scene Two opens with a vigorous singing
of the March of the Womens Company.37 This
scene emphasizes the equality between soldiers
and citizens, men, women and child, and brings
out the militant but compassionate nature of its
community. A womens sword dance is followed
by a mens dagger dance before the entire corps
37 China Ballet Troop, Red Detachment of WomenA Modern Revolutionary Ballet, 16.

Reading Chinese Women

405

de ballet introduces Qinghuas embrace of the


red flag. Her quick steps, or courus, diagonally
across the stage toward the red flag is significant,
given how the diagonal crossing is most familiarly
associated with lovers in classical ballet crossing
the stage to meet each other in a pas de deux.
Instead, Qinghua moves toward the material
symbol of Maoist China, and her diagonal line
symbolizes her entry to this new, utopian society,
and more specifically, her desire to join the
women soldiers in their new uniforms and the
red star on their caps.38 She is no less technically
virtuous in this second scene, but lacking is her
clear pathos from the first. Even as she recalls
the mistreatments she has received under the
Tyrants oppression with forceful back kicks and
jtes, we do not see the dvelopp en avant that
accompanies her earlier solo. At this point of
the dance, banners appear on stage with sloganlike phrases, which tell the audience that Hong
and the Company Commander are planning to
infiltrate the Manor during the Tyrants birthday
celebration.
Even though the entire ballet consists of six
fairly lengthy Acts, Act III is most significant as a
38 China Ballet Troop, Red Detachment of WomenA Modern Revolutionary Ballet, 22.

406

On Reading

turning point of the storyline. After successfully


sneaking into the Tyrants manor with the
Red Army, Qinghua watches the Tyrants men
savagely beat up another bondmaid, and charges
out to save her suffering class sister.39 In this
scene, Qinghuas pas de chat and attitude basse
resemble the steps that she previously executes
in her escape from the Manor. Starting out with
perfectly turned-out grand jets, the ballerinas
usual softly-held wrists give way to fists. At one
point, the striking dvelopp en avant appears
again, much quicker than it did during her first
solo, and ends in an attitude derrire en pointe
(with one leg standing, the working leg extends
backwards) (7:47). In my reading, this scenes
technical aspects are similar to the first, and
diverges from the Second Scene where Qinghua
is introduced to the womens army. While in
the First Scene, her slow, exaggerated extension
demonstrates her revolutionary nature to escape
feudal domination; here the same move becomes
a disruption in the well-conceived plan. At the
sight of the Tyrant, Qinghuas whole being cries
out for vengeance. She has only one thought:
Kill the Tyrants of the South! Get revenge!

39 China Ballet Troop, Red Detachment of WomenA Modern Revolutionary Ballet, 29.

Reading Chinese Women

407

Revenge!40 Because of Qinghuas uncontrollable


rageand not just any rage, but revenge
she prematurely gives the signal for her other
comrades to surround the Manor, which results in
the Tyrants escape. Qinghua is reprimanded for
a breach of discipline.41 Subsequently, the next
scene opens with Hong conducting a political
class for the women soldiers. Fittingly, one of the
goals of the proletarian revolution, written on
the blackboard in bold Chinese characters, says:
Revolution is not simply a matter of personal
vengeance. Its aim is the emancipation of all
mankind.42 In this context of womens education,
Qinghua performs several attitudes holding her
arm high up with closed fists, but her legs are kept
low and controlled without the high extensions
that I have highlighted in the First and Third
Scenes. As a result of her reeducation, her steps
are now steadfast, and also more subdued as
if to communicate the very process of humble
reflection. In the whole world is there any
proletarian who hasnt been steeped in blood
40 China Ballet Troop, Red Detachment of WomenA Modern Revolutionary Ballet, 30.
41 China Ballet Troop, Red Detachment of WomenA Modern Revolutionary Ballet, 35.
42 China Ballet Troop, Red Detachment of WomenA Modern Revolutionary Ballet, 39.

408

On Reading

and tears? Why do I think only of vengeance for


myself?43
Part political maturation, part imposition on
what was her natural, untrained instinct, this
scene reinterprets womans consciousnessraising. On the level of the ballets narration, this
scene also marks the significant transformation
of Qinghua as an enslaved bondmaid to a freed
woman, that is, freed from her individualistic
desire for self-vengeance. Insofar as the element
of the ballerinas transformation is central in
classical ballet repertoires such as Swan Lake,
Giselle, Les Sylphides, and The Nutcracker,
Qinghuas transformation is a detachment in
two literal senses. First, as a detachment from
the bourgeois ideology of land-ownership and
slavery, and secondly, as a detachment from the
ideology of individualism that is still considered
too bourgeois and not proletarian enough.
I argue that theater and dance enact this problem
of individuality at their very core. For, how to
distinguish the principal dancer from his or her
fellow artistes without idealizing him or her
beyond what must be ordinary men and women
43 China Ballet Troop, Red Detachment of WomenA Modern Revolutionary Ballet, 40.

Reading Chinese Women

409

of the proletarian revolution?44 How does the


principal dancer stand out just enough without
alienating his or her art from the masses? Hence,
although Qinghua is always foregrounded as the
principal dancer, such foregrounding weakens
after her reeducation. The second to last scene
that opens with the Companys unsuccessful
attempt to find the escaped Tyrant subsumes
her advanced ballet technique under Hongs
masculine sacrifice. Choosing to die rather
than to write a recantation of total defeat at the
hands of the Tyrant, this scene contrasts with the
earlier scene of Qinghuas breach of discipline.
Despite how Hongs sacrifice clearly isolates him
as a martyr, his death, once elevated to the greater
good of the people, is clearly far from being
vengeful and impulsive. Hong has given his life,
but millions of new revolutionaries rise. Beneath
the red battle flag, the hard-working women who
have just been freed step forward to join the ranks
of the Red Company of Women.45
The White-Haired Girl shares with Red
44 The danger of hero-worship is, of course, a dramatic
irony that a decade of the Cultural Revolution eventually
accomplishes with the Gang of Four and the Cult of Mao.
45 China Ballet Troop, Red Detachment of WomenA Modern Revolutionary Ballet, 77.

410

On Reading

Detachment of Women the liberation of women


from feudal oppression and at the same time,
from their own personal desires for revenge.46
The ballet is adapted from a legend originating
from the liberated area of northwest Hebei, circa
1939. There, the progress of rural reform was
hindered due to the peasants preoccupation
with a local deity, a white-haired goddess who
occupied a local temple. The peasants, instead
of attending a meeting to elect village officers,
had gone to the temple to set out food and drink
for their goddess.47 One of the cadres followed
the peasants and discovered that the goddess
was a young woman whose father was killed by
a landlord and who was taken into the landlords
household where she was raped and tortured.
After escaping to the mountain, the girls hair
turned white due to the cold and malnutrition.48
46 I have not managed to find a similar script for The
White-haired Girl. I have thus relied on my own memory of
the ballet when describing the main plot and actions. My
analysis of specific technical aspects of the ballet is drawn
from the filmed version available on youku.com, as referenced below.
47 Norman J. Wilkinson, The White-Haired Girl: From
Yangko to Revolutionary Ballet. Educational Theatre Journal 26. 2 (1974): 168.
48 Wilkinson, The White-Haired Girl: 169.

Reading Chinese Women

411

The legend ends with the girls reintroduction


into society. I am of the opinion that while Red
Detachment of Women has superior choreography
and dancing, The White-Haired Girl is no less
captivating in its dramatic, Gothic-like, portrayal
of the mad woman isolated in the mountains. It
also narrates a sentimental back-story of domestic
bliss and paternal love.
When The White-haired Girl was adapted for
ballet and set during the period of Chinas War
of Resistance against Japan, the part of her rape
by the landlord was cut while retaining the story
of her loving relation with her father.49 In the
opening scene, the ballerina playing the central
role of Xier dances to the traditional Chinese
Yangge (planting song), accompanied by her
father who lovingly buys her a red string for her
hair.50 The color red is traditionally significant
for Chinese societies, representing not just good
fortune, prosperity, but also fertility and feminine
virtues. As Wilkinson observes,
Love for the state, for the Party, or
for Chairman Mao is usually spoken
of quite vehemently, and countless
49 Wilkinson, The White-Haired Girl: 169.
50 Wilkinson, The White-Haired Girl: 165.

412

On Reading

attempts are made to depict such


allegiance, but true affection between
individuals is practically non-existent.
The warm, endearing love between Hsierh and her father is a rarity in modern
Chinese drama.51
With such rarity of expressed affection between
individuals, it is not insignificant that the
White-Haired Girl will be quick to subdue the
individualistic desires of the said protagonist.
The ballet also features Xiers sweetheart, her
neighbor of a poor peasant family, who leaves the
village to join the Eighth Route Army in anger
after the death of Xiers father. In addition, the
plot complicates the typical patriarchal setting
of family dramas. The landlords family to which
Xier is subsequently sold to work as a bondmaid
features a matriarch whose unreasonable
demands and tortures made Xiers life utterly
unbearable. The matriarch seems to rule over
the family, towering over even her son. Since
the ballet begins with the introduction of the
female protagonist in the loving care of her father
absent of a mother, the role of the cruel matriarch
underscores the impossibility of Xier finding
consolation in any external, maternal figure.
51 Wilkinson, The White-Haired Girl: 170.

Reading Chinese Women

413

The sixth scene of the ballet proceeds with the


Eighth Route Army taking over the landlords
manor, and the landlords subsequent escape to
the same temple where Xier hides. With the stage
shrouded in darkness except for a spotlight shone
on Xier, the contrast between the darkness of
feudalism and the outburst of the lone woman
is heightened. When the white-haired girl
recognizes her previous master, she bursts into a
rage not unlike Qinghuas breach of discipline
in the Third Act of Red Detachment of Women,
and prepares to attack and possibly murder her
adversaries. Here we must note the ballerinas
signature backward jump-kick: she jumps in
the air with her legs making almost a straight,
diagonal line from the ground, and her arms in
clenched fists (4:10).52 When she finally appears in
front of her enemies by breaking out from behind
the altar, the stage direction can possibly to read
to execute the Cultural Revolutions message
of destroying Taoism and Buddhist temples
under feudalism. A jump up in the air with one
leg raised to the side, turned out, and the knee
sharply bent (retir devant), she approaches her
enemies in moves, which like the previous jumps,
52 Youku.com, The White-Haired Girl. Film Version.
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMjc1MDc4MA==.html
(Accessed Sept 01 2011).

414

On Reading

are maddening and more acrobatic than graceful.


With the dramatization of the white-blond wig
on the Chinese ballerina, The White-Haired
Girl teases the extremity of untamed wildness
and desire for vengeance to its bare threads.
However the transformation of the female
protagonist occurs not only on the level of
her appearance, but also on the level of her
technical flamboyance. Once again, it is her
private desire for vengeance that needs to be
transformed, or in this case, her unruly whitehaired madness that must be reddened. Heidi
Hartmann cannot be more wrong when she
writes: only in a capitalist society does it make
sense to look down on women as emotional and
irrational.53 Her observation that A society
could undergo transition from capitalism to
socialism, for example, and remain patriarchal54
needs to account for the denigration of womens
emotionality and irrationality under patriarchalsocialism.
53 Heidi Hartmann, The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism
and Feminism: Toward a More Progressive Union in
Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives, eds.
Carole Ruth McCann, Seung-Kyung Kim (London: Routledge, 2003), 217.
54 Heidi Hartmann, The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism
and Feminism: Toward a More Progressive Union, 214.

Reading Chinese Women

415

At this point of the ballet, the Eighth Route Army


appears in the temple to pursue the landlord.
Xier seeks to fight off the unknowing army, and
is surprised to find that one of its cadres is her
former sweetheart who left their village before she
is sold as a bondmaid. A rather passionate pas de
deux ensues, where it is unclear if there might be
a romance underlying the two principal dancers.
Together with the successful capture of the
landlord, Xier is led back to the village commune,
where former neighbors and relatives express
their alarmed sadness at her white hair. I take the
stark discoloration of Xiers hair as indicative of
an alienation from her place in the proletariat
army that must be re-colored. Hence one of the
elderly village women proceeds to dress her hair
in a red handkerchief, as if all of her previously
experienced trauma can thereby be erased. While
the ballet does not show Xier going through
reeducation in Maoist thought, the underlying
statement that subsumes the individual under the
greater good of the collective is equally forceful.
Once reintroduced into society and shrouding her
white-hair in red, the white-haired girl, instead
of previously haunting the local temple, claims
her place in the communist collective. Precisely
because of this ballets particular recasting of
private, paternal love under the larger context of
benevolent rule under the Communist Party, the

416

On Reading

haunted ruins of the temple signifies the natural,


pre-socialized state of womens consciousness.
Julia Kristevas observation on the subject of
women during the Cultural Revolution in general
seems accurately suited for The White-Haired Girl:
This grief-ridden heroine becomes the
true champion of the Revolution: the
armed militants who seize power for
her (and for the people) seem like clever
but abstract technicians, agents of an
impersonal gesture which she inspires,
but does not execute.55
It is all very well to argue that both the Red
Detachment of Women and the White-Haired
Girl downplays the feminist-will-to power
while ostensibly stripping the ballerina of her
traditional, somewhat fetishized tutu and frills.
However, the question remains, following Stacey,
if the two ballets nonetheless highlight the desire
for a semblance of individualism that despite the
covering of the red handkerchief, will stubbornly
be unsocialized.

55 Julia Kristeva, About Chinese Women, translated by Anita


Barrows. (New York: Urizen Books, 1977), 153.

Reading Chinese Women

Act III. The Third Term


Both Red Detachment of Women and The WhiteHaired Girl seek to reinforce gender equality
in the PLAs military trainingimages of riflebearing men and woman in Maoist uniforms
would become a standard poster image of the
Cultural Revolution. Their reinterpretation of
the female ballerina from traditionally feminine
roles to that of the modern, revolutionary solider
is reliant on the dramatization of her rebellious,
unreformed nature. For it is in these scenes where
Qinghua or Xier fights her enemies alone that
the ballet comes to life. I have tried to show how
the choreography for the two lead dancers in
these scenes indicates an upstaging of the forces,
disruptions, and ultimately, female desires for
revenge. Yet the ballets final messages must treat
the female protagonists individuality as one
term in the structural contradiction between the
collective and the individual. No longer willful in
her long, dramatic extensions, dvelopps, jumps
and diagonal splits in the air, the new Chinese
woman takes her place among others in the larger
proletarian struggle. Like Badious critique of
Deleuzian leftisim in 1960s France for forgoing
the structural element inherent in every tendency

417

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On Reading

for an unrestrained, affirmative becoming, and


his evaluation of Althusserian rightism for
neglecting the tendential element in the name
of objective structure, we are left with either a
naively aesthetic view of the two Communist
ballets without structure or place, or a vulgarly
politicized analysis without tendency, or force.56
For Badiou, places and forces are complementary,
but they cannot synthesized in Hegelian unity:
The central dialectical problem is thus the
following: how can the logic of places and the
logic of forces be articulatedwithout fusion?57
At a time when we are still trying to understand
the Cultural Revolution, whose history, as the title
of a 2006 international symposium attests,58 may
still be impossible to reconstruct, the question of
Chinese women in the two Maoist ballets may
force us to look at the tumultuous decade dialectically. Between the torn articulations of womans
place in the revolutionary structure, and her
movement-in-flux on stage, I propose an attempt
at locating a third term by way of conclusion.
56 Bosteels, Post-Maoism, 599,
57 Quoted in Bosteels, 600.
58 I refer to the conference held at University of Washington, Feb 23-26, 2006, with speakers such as Badiou. Mobo
Gao, Wang Hui, and Rebecca Karl.

Reading Chinese Women

As I have suggested at the beginning of this


paper, a new way out is by no means guaranteed
by the task of dialectical thinking; but without
this possibility, there would be no impetus for
thinking to speak of. Badious solution, for
lack of a better term, is to make room for a
diagonal term between rightist structuralism
leftist pure becoming.59 This diagonal term is
not therefore middle-of-the-road and moderate.
Instead, through a thinking of the concept of
deviation and logic of scission, the diagonal
term works such that every entity be split
between that part of it that can be understood
according to the logic of places and that part
that cannot be accounted for without resorting
to a logic of forces.60 What I have preliminarily
called the third term is thus not quite the third,
but a divided correlation between the two as
split.61 As Bosteels explication of Badious work
demonstrates, such a split correlation can take on
other names, such as a symptomatic torsion that
cannot remain within the topology of either the
inside or outside.62

59 Bosteels, Post-Maoism, 602.


60 Bosteels, Post-Maoism, 604.
61 Bosteels, Post-Maoism, 604.
62 Bosteels, Post-Maoism, 606.

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On Reading

I very much like this term symptomatic torsion,


since it brings us right back to the language of
dance with which this paper is preoccupied. But
I want to suggest another name with which we
can think of the third term beyond the logic of
places and forces, one that is less philosophically
sophisticated, but more historically amenable
to what I have been discussing: culture. It is
culture, that is, the question of what happens
when Western discourses of gender assumes
certain values and affects when it encounters
the other, which is at the heart of my reading
of the twin logics of places and forces. It is for
this reason that I choose Staceys establishment
of cultural differences between Chinese women
and Western feminists as one of the epigraphs of
this essay.63 In the same passage, her admission
that Western feminists can and ought to put
themselves in the place of Chinese women in
craving for a liberty like individualism thus
adds the question of the reader to the dialectics
of places and forces.64 By what authority do I
levy my critique on the ballets usurpation of
individualism? Is individualism something that
63 Judith Stacey, When Patriarchy Kowtows: The significance of the Chinese Family Revolution for Feminist Theory, Feminist Studies, 2: 2/3 (1975): 102.
64 Stacey, When Patriarchy Kowtows: 102.

Reading Chinese Women

421

only Western feminists or someone like myself


who is ethnically Chinese but considers herself
Western-trained crave? If so, how does one even
begin to place oneself in the place of Chinese
women? And with what force of desire?
Reading as dance allows me to leave these
questions open for now. Describing About Chinese
Women as a journal of facts and inquiries that
do not make up a book, Kristeva writes: I would
have done well to have it reflect the prudenceif
not the hesitationthat I believe is warranted
by any attempt to speak about women as well as
about China.65 This is not at all to suggest that
the question of Chinese women is a singularly
Chinese question, but that the question is less
interesting if we take for granted what we mean
by Chineseness, or for that matter, women
in its plural form. I do not think it is possible to
speak about Chinese women without this element
of hesitation.
A cultural hesitation, that, to risk punning, is one
symptomatic torsion of the artistic legacies of
the Cultural Revolution.

65 Kristeva, About Chinese Women, 1.

Su Cui

423

Printed Matter Or,


Towards A Zineic
History Of Reading.
This is an awkward defense of print. As tactics
and strategies of defending go, this is an odd one
because it is not so much provoked by an attack
than it is by the lack-of attack. On the one hand,
it comes a little late. Proclamations of triumph,
of the proverbial Game Over have been sounding
throughout the land for years. Elegies have been
written. When there is nothing to defend, writing
to defend comes across as being obtuse, like a
raving lunatic and indeed, this has all the familiar
hallmarks of madness: illogical, repetitive, fixated
on a single, somewhat unrelated thing, and prone
to anachronisms. Yet the most consummate
raves in history were undeterred by the fact that
no ones listening (see Nietzsche) and the best
defenses were never the ones directly opposed
to a single attack. What follows is, in this sense,
a positive defense, an affirmative spin on the
negative, a series of thoughts that aims to not to
win (or lose) the game, but to keep it going.

424

On Reading

Printlessness
Many are declaring that print is already dead.
Content producers have been migrating in droves
towards the World Wide Web since blogs were
invented in the late 90s with fervent belief in
the power of the online universe for offering
new freedoms for reading and writing content:
quick, easy and mobile, as the advertorials say.
The old and clunky book, the print text, has
nosedived in the trend stakes. Print has been
abandoned in favor of hypertext; physical content
is now regarded as something for old-fashioned
hobbyists, nostalgic librarians or stubborn
academics.1 Apparently, bookless-ness has arrived.
To self-proclaimed digital savvies, Free and
Fast has come to characterize the experience of
paperless reading and writing, thus explaining
the name of one of the most famous and most
used online manifestations, Wikipedia: in
Hawaiian wiki means quick or fast. Like a closed
1 According to The Guardian, UK academics got together in
July 2010 to advocate what they call slow readingreading
in print form because they thought that skimming online
texts is making people stupid. Patrick Kingsley, The Art of
Slow Reading. (The Guardian, 15 July, 2010), 1.

Printed Matter

425

murder case, the killing of print has lapsed into


a distant memory of the excited evangelist who
is too busy tweeting the revolutionary promises
of the digital age on her well-worn keyboard to
for a verdict written down on paper. Before the
Internet, it was the Word (of God) rather than the
paper that has always been extolled as the soul of
communicable existence. In the New Testament,
we are told In the beginning was the Word, and
the Word was with God, and the Word was God2
Now evangelists of Internet communications
treat the hypertext similarly as if infinite and
transcendental. Many students schooled in the
language medium of English today will be able
to attest to online reading: as long as you have a
connection and a computer, you can Wikipedia
or Google anything anywhere for any assignment.
For them, reading hypertext enters the intuitive
level of individual skill, and is as ingrained in
their sense of self as learnt habits such as eating
and sleeping. A defense of print chases a mode of
being in spite of these conditions in which we find
ourselves: how do advocates of print make a case
for the value of printedness?
Not so long ago, Books experienced a similar
kind of death against the voracious spread of the
2 John 1:1

426

On Reading

Printed Copy. Prior to mechanical reproduction,


as Walter Benjamin tells us, a material presence
has aura which makes it beautiful and unique
The Original Hard Copy is priceless by virtue
of being original and authentic. Indeed, early
Christian religious life also gave us one of the
first valuations of ink-on-paper derived from the
Original Material that was Jesus Christ. Hillel
Schwartz tells us that over one and half millennia
ago, Jesus was believed to be the body incarnate
of God; Christ was espoused as a Son identical
and coeternal with the Father and though in
human form, He is both fully divine and fully
incarnate. Jesus is the embodiment of God and
consequently, of his Word.3 The early Christian
bishops, the Council of Nicaea, articulated this
first personification of God and from the careful
meditation and consideration of this JesusGod equation, inscribed twenty Church Laws.
Those who held these canonsthe original hard
copiesalso held religious authority.4 As the
book form moved outdoors, into rich hands and
later into the mass market, it moved from Divine
Word to Literature. Rolf Engelsing describes
how Europeans in the eighteenth century shifted
3 Hillel Schwartz. The Culture of Copy, (New York: Zone,
1996), 212-213.
4 Schwartz. The Culture of Copy, 214.

Printed Matter

427

from intensive reading of a small circulation


of religious books to extensive reading of many
secular works.5 Yet faith towards the Original
Hard Copy endured in the practice of book
publishing in what Moylan and Stiles calls a
given, hierarchized arrangement privileging a first
edition or an authentic text.6 Followers of the
Printed Book still cling to the materials fidelity
to authored subjectivity; the Will to Divined
knowledge, the fevered desire to lead the world
through the myth of authenticity and Original
Reads.
In the face of the Digital, these days we see new
attempts to bring printed books back from the
dead (a transposed desire to resurrect Jesus
perhaps?) via another moralized hierarchy. No
longer able to make claims for auratic qualities
of books, there are voices who directly opposing
wiki reading and virtual texts by rousing a moral
panic: a belief these days that we have a reading
crisis1 This phrase was recently coined by The
5 Rolf Engelsing cited in Ian Jackson. Approaches to the history of readers and reading in eighteenth century Britain.
In Historical Journal, 47(4), 2004, 1050.
6 Michele Moylan and Lane Stiles. Reading books: essays on
the material text and literature in America. (USA: University
of Massachusetts Press, 1996), 6.

428

On Reading

Evening Standard on the basis of such shocking


figures in London as: only one in three teenagers
read two books or fewer a year.7 The allegation
is that our future generations (children) have
forgotten that reading books is the path toward
wisdomthis view now has an effect akin to that
of parental nagging: falling on deaf ears. Adding
insult to injury, the Standard emphatically points
out, that many of these illiterate teenagers have
blogs or use Facebook; that is to say, kids these
days are engaging in illegitimate or improper
forms of reading and writing.8 More and more
critics are venturing to ask what is lost when
reading becomes devoid of labour, suggesting
Quick and Easy reading might be the formula for
breeding the Slow and Stupid. Here, the premise
against wiki reading is that the reading of online
hypertexts is fragmented and offers too many
hypertextual distractions, taking out the laborious
in the experience of reading, and is therefore
ephemeral and meaningless. Not so astonishingly,
it is worth nothing that this moral panic is
invoked in the domain of public education, where
7 Tom Harper. Shock figures that spell out the extent of
Londons reading crisis (The Evening Standard, 1 June
2011), 1.
8 Harper. Shock figures that spell out the extent of
Londons reading crisis, 1.

Printed Matter

429

the mechanisms of professional publication,


public validation and critical literary reception
indeed, the capital labours of production,
circulation and consumptionactivate and
confer cultural and moral status to the experience
of reading, therefore instrumental to learning and
knowledge acquisition.
The Story of Rising Illiteracy may have been
exaggerated but even when we discount the
sensational journalism, it still misses the point.
While quick may be an aspect of reading
online texts, this does not make it the opposite
of reading print. Online texts have their own
materiality and our engagement with them
cannot be measured against the [Biblical] fetish of
the book. All the accusations of meaninglessness
and stupidity leveled against reading and writing
on blogs may just as easily be used against printed
texts: an example of this comes from literary
critic (and a fan of the leather-bound, Original
Hard Copy, no doubt), Harold Blooms famous
put-down of J K Rowling and Stephen King:
why read, if what you read will not enrich mind
or spirit or personality?9 Equally, the assertion
that the wisdom gained from slow-reading
9 Harold Bloom. Can 35 million book buyers be wrong?
Yes. (Wall Street Journal, 11 July 2000), 1.

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On Reading

reading printsomehow eludes quick reading


borders on technological determinism; the
assumption that skimming denies the reader
deep and proper meaning furthermore reduces
the aim of all reading to the reading of authorial
content. Reading cannot be reduced to the
process of extracting meaning from a conduit,
i.e. a document, whether print or digital. At the
same time, this is not to say we should be, as
poststructuralists often are, allergic to meaningful
meaning and place all claims of prints importance
in quotation marks.
The quarrel about whether (book) reading is
interpretation or explanation originated roughly
thirty years ago, when literature and its scholars
underwent a kind of existential crisis that now
seems like an ironic reversal of the Standards
reading crisis. It was an anxiety about loss:
what is lost when our engagement with literary
texts succumbs to a fixation on meaningful
meaning? Poststructuralists such as Derrida
have tried to respond to this by dismantling the
status of literature, through the question: what
is literature?10 Using Kafkas parable in The Trial,
Before the Law, Derrida suggests there are
10 Jacques Derrida and Derek Atteridge. Acts of Literature,
(London: Routledge, 1992), 181.

Printed Matter

431

conventions in place that predetermine what may


be considered a literary text or given the name of
literature. For Derrida, these conventions behave
like rules or laws and readers must necessarily
know these laws before even readingentering
the text.11 Reading literature involves crucially,
with Derrida, a contract with an abstract textual
notion which acts like a law: inaccessible,
decipherable and repeatable at the same time.
Thus literature is, for Derrida, a possibility rather
than a type of text; it refers to the possibility for
any text to be readwhether authorial intent,
readers interpretation or both. His approach
renders the worries and doubts about meaningful
meaning moot because for Derrida not knowing
is half the fun; not knowing which way to enter
the text makes it possible to read it: the text is
the law, the law is the text. Instead of framing the
issue around the crisis of loss, Derrida proposes
a celebration that we can, in fact, have a dialogue
with all texts, that we can read readability.
The value of Derridas stance may arguably
be extended beyond the realm of textual
examination. His emphasis on possibility and
transfer rather than on textual meaning allows
one to use these qualities to account for the
11 Derrida and Atteridge. Acts of Literature, 197.

432

On Reading

physical properties of a text: can we propose a


readability of material and if so, what does it
mean to read a material? Of course, there have
been claims for both medium and materiality in
the 1960s such as Marshall McLuhans argument
that media technologies transform content
and therefore, the subjectivities those content
imply.12 However, literary scholars who treated
their books as immaterial constructs largely
ignored this. Nevertheless, while ink and paper
or screen pixels may not be able to think, feel,
or act, as humans impact the world, the print or
online text cannot be reduced to pure object or
subjectnot only is it impossible to sieve out
the contributions of either reader, author or text
in any discussion of meaning, one also cannot
ignore the impact of the material which delivers
it. The value of reading a text cannot merely be
the result of pitting one materiality over another,
of pitting its form against other forms. These are
rhetorical tricks rather than dialectical debates.
Discussions about print has been too often shoehorned into false dichotomies of form versus
content, authority versus freedom, physical
versus virtual, such that the lived projects of
readingencompassing uneven intelligibilities,
12 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding media: the extensions
of man. (London: Routledge & Regan Paul, 1964).

Printed Matter

and singular moments in time and spaceare


compromised rather than celebrated or heaven
forbid, enjoyed.

Textures and Readability


I want to propose a justification of print by
pointing out its inextricability from meaning,
and not just internal meaning of the text, but
also meaning forged externally, in fickle ways;
a starting point that displaces the separation of
form and content with only the former. By form,
I mean not only to take the shape of printpaper
and inkbut also the way they are combined to
give both physical and abstract meaning. To be
sure, scholars of bibliography already attempt
to account for materiality via historicist and
sociological projects about the book form. G
Thomas Tanselle is particularly instructive in
noting the odd neglect of physical materiality:
Presumably many readers do recognize
or would quickly do so if they gave
thought to the matter that the design
of any book is worthy of study as a
reflection of the taste of its time, as
an indication of the statures of the

433

434

On Reading

author and genre represented in it,


and as a clue to the nature of the
audience expected for it. They would
then assume that specialized studies of
these matters must exist In the first
of these assumptions they would be
correct, but not in the second.13
Moylan and Stiles tried to fill this gap in their
seminal examination of print culture, Reading
Books, asserting their support for the view that
the text and material are inseparablethat texts
are always material and that materiality is itself a
kind of textuality.14 I hope to develop this further
to ask: is materiality only understandable in
textual terms? In other words, I am asking what
does it mean to see a text as both textured and
textual? What is a printed text and what does
it mean to read it? I am re-casting the notion
of the print form from the purely tangible and
technological definitions. For a printed matter
rather than printits form or materiality does
not only refer to tangible qualities of paper, ink
and their delivery, but also to the momentary and
13 G. Thomas Tanselle, A Description of Descriptive Bibliography, Studies in Bibliography 45(1992), 4.
14 Moylan and Stiles. Reading books: essays on the material
text and literature in America, 4

Printed Matter

singular qualities that emerge between reader and


the physical constructs of the text: grain, surface,
pagination, binding, colours, smell, and so on.
Ironically, some of the most interesting attempts
to tackle pre-digital materialities should come
from those most outspoken about the digital.
These voices are futuristic and anticipatory, rather
than nostalgic about print, and they set about
debunking the commonplace assumption that
Internet communications necessarily implies
disembodiment or immateriality: the idea that
digital is the separation of words from paper into
an intangible cyberspace. Sean Cubitt makes
the case for the material of books while writing
Digital Aesthetics and in particular, for the idea of
texture:
The space of the book, the material
between its covers, has been for
centuries not just a repository, a
mnemonic store, but an interactive
playground. The whiteness of white
sheets has been a lure for doggerel,
commentary, digression and refusal.
The book is not, and has never been,
a self-contained thing. It has always
required the services of its readers, the
interplay between the way the book
unfurls the text materially and the way

435

436

On Reading

the reader reassembles it mentally,


a conflictual or negotiated interface
which, for two generations since
the massive expansion of university
education after World War II, made the
study of literature the most popular of
the humanities.15
Manifest as books, the Gutenberg printing
press detached literature from the single source,
allowing literature to develop, as Cubitt points
out, into an object of study. Literary-ness soon
eclipsed the books thing-ness and soon gained
its own reified status; thing-ness is treated as
constructed or represented, a thing is something
outside the literary text. Our interactions with a
bookreadinghas most often been described
in non-physical terms. Cubitt defies this by
proposing what he calls a materialist account
of reading in order to [expose any] theological
concept of the infinite text that inhabits
cyberspace.16 Given that Digital Aesthetics was
published in 1998way before Facebook or
blogging were inventedCubitts argument that
15 Sean Cubitt. The Materiality of the Text: Outtake from
Digital Aesthetics. 22 June 2011. < http://www.ucl.ac.uk/slade/digita/materiality.html>.
16 Sean Cubitt. Digital Aesthetics, (London: Sage, 1998). 6

Printed Matter

437

the material of the textpaper, ink, pixels, etc.,


affects reading no less profoundly than textual
abstraction, seems prophetic. In fact internet
reading or wiki reading, Cubitt argues, still
respects older distributions of reading since the
Internet borrows its metaphors of surfing and
browsing from nomadic reading, neither negating
place nor universalizing it, but wandering, and
taking the hereness and newness of place with it
as unstill reference point.17 By reminding us of
the geographies and histories of reading, Cubitt
shows how reading can be understood as having
different modessuch as wiki reading and book
readingwhilst sharing similar functions and
language cultures. And within each mode, the
physicality of the interface is an undeniable
function of the many heres and the nows. Just
as we recognize the flickering computer screens,
[w]e can recognize in the physical characteristics
of books that that is what they arebooks
they must have destinations, or they fade away
they are both strangers and familiar18.
It would take another four years before N.
Katherine Hayles embarks on a systematic
dismantling of the unrecognized assumption
that print texts are embodied texts; she does this
17 Cubitt. Digital Aesthetics, 6
18 Cubitt. Digital Aesthetics, 7

438

On Reading

by combining traditional textual concepts with


cybernetic terms. Implicitly, Hayles recognizes
the inherent challenge of making a move towards
materiality: no matter how strong the plea, the
phrase the materiality of the text is essentially
a theoretical statement, it is an abstraction of
the thing we want to focus on. We access and
speak about things using names and in doing
so, commit a gesture of abstraction. Things and
their names are inseparable. Likewise, Hayles
also notes the reverse: to change the physical
form of the artifact is not merely to change the
act of reading but profoundly to transform the
metaphoric network structuring the relation
of word to world.19 Therefore, some notion
other than textualitya term that carries a
lot of literary baggageis required for reading
materiality; extending materiality beyond the
physical necessitates a Derridean move; what is
the metadata of this new, embodied literature?
Where and what is the information that gives us
recognition of its readability?
In their own ways, Cubitt and Hayles both
refute the age-old quarrel among critics about
whether reading is interpretation or explanation
19 N. Katherine Hayles, Writing Machines, (Massachusetts
Press, 2002). 23-25.

Printed Matter

439

by tethering the meaning to physical form and


its materiality. This immediately discounts the
authority of the text as something that can be
specified in advance. In its place is, however,
no stable notion of materiality either. Hayless
insistence on what she calls the emergent
property of materiality focuses on how a text
mobilizes its resources as a physical artifact as
well as on the users interactions with the work.20
In this sense, the notion of an embodied text is
not simply a book or webpage to be read by a
reader or user. The reader also becomes maker,
creator and writer, rather than merely the reader
of a book. Thus, the notion of materiality as an
emergent property of the print text reflects a
mutual de-emphasis of reading as a gesture that
privileges the readers needs and actions, and
that of our (Biblical) fetish of physical objects.
Materiality is not so much a state of being as it
is a possibility between the two, like Derridas
notion of readability. The unit of analysis for
any reading is no longer the book or the reader
but both, which also calls for a rethinking of the
notion of a book as a self-contained object. The
reader is the book and the book is the reader. This
conception of reader/book also diminishes the
authorial view of writing with echoes of Barthes
20 Hayles, Writing Machines, 33.

440

On Reading

famous claims: [Unlike the Author] the modern


scriptor is born simultaneously with the text, is
in no way equipped with a being preceding or
exceeding the writing, is not the subject with
the book as predicate.21 Although his focus was
not on materiality, Barthes refusal to treat the
book as a mere predicate for meaning (being)
does pave the way for materialityas opposed
to authorityto join interpretative strategy of
the printed text. Of course this is a big challenge.
Like Hayles, Christopher Pinney is very much
cognizant of the fact that the purification of the
world into objects and subjects cannot be easily
undone and in fact for Pinney, our concerns with
materiality deal with questions that are not only
ontological but also ethical and epistemological:
the more objectively the object appears, the more
subjectively the subject arises, and the more our
teaching about the world turns into a doctrine of
man.22 This leads us to a radical break from the
efforts of bibliographic studies to treat materiality
as part of textuality because the material remains
subordinate to the same cultures and histories
21 Roland Barthes, Image, Music Text, (London: Fontana,
1977). 145
22 Christopher Pinney, Things happen: or, from which
moment does that object come?. In Daniel Miller, ed., Materiality (London: Duke University Press, 2005), 257-258.

Printed Matter

441

that spawned literary studies. In this sense,


Hayles is more useful than Tanselle, Moylan
and Stiles, because her notion of the emergent
property of materiality (used to create notions
of material metaphors and technotexts23 )
may be taken to suggest she does not decide in
advance that materiality is a manifestation of a
textual force. Rather, it is the materiality of the
print book that creates its own systemic force
field. Materiality is not just another sign in the
books textual system and its comprehensibility, or
readability cannot be reduced to the triumph of
semiology over corporeality. 24
Keeping this view in mind, I want to use the
zine form as an example of the kind of textured
and textual form requiring an act of reading that
involves uniting material and text, form and
content, in which it is their printedness that
can drives a history of reading. Temporarily,
I will call this a shift towards zineic history
of reading. Crucially, this approach builds on,
but moves away from the work of bibliographic
studies. Borrowing ideas from Cubitt, Hayles
and Pinney, I argue that there are two properties
23 Hayles, Writing Machines, 18-34.
24 Pinney, Things happen: or, from which moment does
that object come?. In Daniel Miller, ed., Materiality, 266.

442

On Reading

at work in reading the zine medium: materiality


and texturality. The former refers to the fused
relationship between the zine and the reader
while the latter provokes an inquiry into what
sort of history of reading may be determined
by the struggles occurring at the level of print
textures. For this purpose, texturality helps to
construct a historical representation of reading in
which textures are not simply the set of evidence
of closed cultural, social and indeed, religious
contexts at work.

Towards a Zineic History of


Reading
Historians and archivists have traditionally
categorized zines as ephemeral print among
posters, flyers, brochures, comics, newsletters
and all kinds of publication that cannot be
comfortably classified as books or literature. In
the category of ephemera, zines is a relatively
recent invention evolved from the comics and
fan zines of the 1940s to gain roughly defined
dimensions in the punk movement of the 1970s.
A zine is usually handmade using rough and
ready methods of collage, handwriting, scanning

Printed Matter

and photocopying. Like the term ephemera


suggests, a zine is not made for the purposes of
enduring posterity or commercial profitability.
Early zine makers create zines at their own
expense for no other reason except because
they can and want to write/make and publish
whatever they want for whoever chooses to
read them. From the standpoint of the politics
of culture, Amy Spencer explains that a zine is
a format created for defying the mainstream
of published content and for the celebration
of the amateur writer.25 This attitude, Stephen
Duncombe explains, is carried over from low
production values in the punk music movement
of the 1960s and 1970s both in America and in
the UK, lending the term lo-fi for describing the
aesthetic principle of zine-making.26 The lo-fi zine
is an adamantly unpolished object that operates
against fetishistic archiving and exhibiting of the
high art world.27 Visually, Teal Triggs identifies
zines as having a graphic language of [cultural]
resistance in which the small, stapled format,
25 Amy Spencer, DIY: The Rise of Lo-Fi culture (London:
Marion Boyars, 2008), 17.
26 Stephen Duncombe, Notes from Underground: Zines and
the politics of alternative culture (Bloomington: Microcosm
Publishing, 2008), 125.
27 Duncombe, Notes from Underground, 134.

443

444

On Reading

spontaneous page layout, the production values


of the photocopier are visual reflections of
punk identity and anti-capitalistic politics.28 Any
typographic and design errors or tears in the
pages and binding are deliberate, and instead
of allowing readers to relax and slip into the
medium, zines push them away zines are
dissonant, their juxtaposition in design and strong
feelings in content are unsettling.29 Duncombe
considers this the punk zines Brechtian strategy
of instigating reading-as-acting, as Mark G of
the 1976 British zine, Sniffin Glue, declares: All
you kids out there who read SG dont be satisfied
with what we write. Go out and start your own
fanzines.30 Evidently, these examinations of zines
demonstrate a keen awareness of the physical
qualities of the interface between maker, zine and
reader; Duncombes Brechtian interpretation of
punk zines does go some way to giving focus to
the materiality between the zine and reader as
a force that mobilizes both the readers cultural
subjectivity and zine object, an effect not unlike
the emergent property of print as earlier pointed
out by Hayles. Nevertheless, the cultural-social
28 Teal Triggs, Fanzines (London: Thames & Hudson,
2010), 46-49.
29 Duncombe, Notes from Underground, 134.
30 Duncombe, Notes from Underground, 125

Printed Matter

445

approach risks treating the reading of zines


to the interpretative tool of literary textuality.
For example, in Alison Piepmeiers argument
for zines and their makers as an embodied
community, she stresses the importance of
bindings, illustrations, paper, typeface, layout
as parts of a semiotic system, parts of the total
meaning of a text.31 Piepmeier gives the example
of how in the mid-1990s Nomy Lamm used her
zine, Im So Fucking Beautiful, to document
her frustration with being a large woman in a
culture that derides fat deploying visual and
spatial properties of her medium to resist social
conventions of female representation.32 The zines
material qualitieshandwriting, angry scribbles
and scrawls, visible typos and small 4by 3 size
is viewed as an enabler of a human community
of social affectin Lamms case, a community of
womenand therefore the zine remains treated
as an empty object that owes its significance
to pre-given discursive structures of meaning.
There appears to be a dialectical process in which
31 Alison Piepmeier, Why Zines matter: materiality and
the creation of embodied community, American Periodicals: A journal of History, Criticism and Bibliography, 18(2),
2008, 216-217.
32 Piepmeier, Why Zines matter: materiality and the creation of embodied community.

446

On Reading

(punk/female) subject makes (zine) object makes


(punk/female) subject but as Pinney warns, to
stress the smoothness of this process is to fully
assimilate the objects disparate specificities
of time and places into a cotemporaneous
context.33 As such, the materiality of zines could
all too easily be absorbed into the disembodied
histories such as punk culture or feminism. These
are valuable polemic projects, but such endeavors
act as an ahistorical demand of zines.
Thanks to work such as Duncombe, Spencer,
Piepmeier and Triggs, the significance of zines as
an instrument for deterritorializing culture is now
more widely understood than before but arguably,
their work produce histories of punk, DIY, craft,
politics of the individual rather than that of
zines as material and printed (or photocopied)
textures. Within these narratives, reading is
understood a cultural retaliation affirming both
human agency and subjectivities of networked
communities both online and offline. And even
such claims can be qualified in many ways. For
example, these communities are less sharply
defined than suggested, since crafted, punk and
self-styled autographical zines today are also
widely circulated and consumed by new cultural
33 Pinney. Materiality, 268-269.

Printed Matter

447

intermediaries within art and design practice and


the creative elite who appropriate white space,
typefaces, Xerox ink and paper grammage into
markers of class taste for visual feasting rather
than real commitment to a (or against) unified
big idea, if such a thing even exists. A more
complex account of zines might stress the factors
of cultural and commercial economy that both
constitute and fragment these zine communities.
This may go some way to suggesting that reading
is a differentiated and situated material practice as
much as it is a textual one.
The task of understanding the materiality and
texturality of printed matter is still largely
untouched. The readability of zines remains
strictly a privilege of specific groups (punks) or
individuals (fans) who make culture and history
and we are nowhere nearer to dissolving the
textual primacy of (non)histories of printed
matter. For example, less often emphasized in
popular zine histories is the fact that the punk
movement had perhaps less to do with the zine
revolution than the photocopier machine. As
Roger Sabin points out:
One other factor probably fuelled the
small press boom more than punk: the
photocopier, increasingly available in

448

On Reading

offices, libraries and high street shops


after 1980. The small press equivalent
of punk fanzine Sniffin Glues famous
rallying call, This is a chord. This is
another. This is a third. Now form
a band would be, This is a felt tip
pen. This is a piece of paper. This is a
photocopier. Now start a comic.34
Furthermore, we can also remove the
photocopied materiality of zines from Sabins
context of punk legacy to show how the Xeroxed
surface did not always read as Anti-Establishment
and Anti-Design Materialized. The (lo) fidelity of
a photocopied copy is to light not to the textual
substance and meanings. Chester Carlson, while
meditating on psi a term from parapsychology
denoting the transfer of information or energy
via unknown mechanismsin 1967 wrote of his
pursuit for true painless copy. His invention
of the photocopy process that would later give
offices all over the world the Xerox copier, held
the aim to reflect a higher-order transcription,
its metamorphosis of light into charge into image
into record akin to the metamorphosis of spirit

34 Roger Sabin, Punk rock: so what? The cultural legacy of


punk. (London: Routledge, 1999), 111.

Printed Matter

from one body to the next.35 By 1971, billions


pages were annually photocopied all over the
developed world and somewhere among them
were perhaps the photocopies of Sniffin Glue
zines, moments belonging to True, Painless
Photochemical Copies of Corporate Documents
on the one hand, and that of DIY Revolution on
the other. And while I am being rather flippant
here of Schwartzs superb history of Copy,
Carlsons story shows how photocopied objects
diffract, like light, in unpredictable ways to
implicate a complex reading of zine materiality
and texturality that is not sufficiently explained
by the histories of counter-cultural resistance
or subcultural movements. My critique is not to
suggest that zines are completely unconnected
to these cultural histories. What I am positing
is that zines are also a part of a textured and
material territory that can produce no less
political histories of our engagement with printed
matter than the usual cultural timelines. This has
important implications on how we understand
the notion of reading.

35 Schwartz, The Culture of Copy, 232.

449

450

On Reading

Spatializing Textured Reads


The zine form is such that reading them often
takes place in bedrooms, pubs, fairs, out of
cardboard boxes and specialist bookshops. The
idea of preserving, organizing and cataloguing
zines is paradoxical since they have such low
monetary value and are not usually made to
last, however lovingly they are put together by
zinesters. Unlike books, the practice of building
archives and designating reading areas for zines
is a fairly recent phenomenon. In 1993, avid zine
collector, reviewer and maker of Factsheet Five
zine listing, Mike Gunderloy, donated about
10,000 zines to the New York State Library.36
This donation marks the beginnings of printed
zines into public reading spaces. However, before
Gunderloy, zines might have snuck into library
archives under the umbrella label of ephemera.
Institutions have been building collections
of printed ephemera over the last 100 years.
Oxfords Bodleian acquired the John Johnson
collection of printed ephemera in 1968 and it
contains over a million items that date from
1508 to 1939. It is hard to say whether zines, as

36 Spencer, DIY: The Rise of Lo-Fi Culture, 40-41.

Printed Matter

451

we understand it today, existed that long ago


but much of the archived material, such as 19th
century entertainment, book trade publications,
pamphlets, advertisements and popular prints,
certainly share some formal qualities with zines.
These value of these collections is not dissimilar to
book libraries who, in their founding statements,
express a conception of reading as knowledge,
a view that Cubitt reminds us, is an imperial
conception.37 Libraries value printed ephemera
as a research instrument for scholars interested in
popular culture, gender, print and visual culture,
architecture, consumption and many other types
of subject matter. Modern libraries view zines in
much the same way. Stoddart and Kiser assert
that zines should be in libraries because they
provide insight into todays modern popular
culture and zine collections will help preserve
an alternative point of view, celebrate individual
expression, or provide a written document of
our accelerated culture.38 Nevertheless, the
challenges of translating library devices for
bookscatalogues, index, bibliographies, access,
preservationinto those for zines is a often an
37 Cubitt, Digital Aesthetics, 9.
38 Richard A Stoddart and Teresa Kiser, Zines and the
Library, in Library Resources & Technical Services, 48(3),
July 2004, 193.

452

On Reading

awkward and unwieldy task. Although some zines


can be treated as a periodical itemized by author,
title, serial number and subject matter, such a
catalogue will completely ignore the material and
textured aspect of zine reading, turning them into
objects of specific reading subjects. The catalogue
design in libraries is usually organized based on
the assumption that reading is a purely textual
experience. Even if we accept for the moment
that zines should be in public reading spaces, the
consideration of how must avoid effacing the
readability of the zine material under the sign of
the Text. According to Cubitt,
We read quite often for the purposes
for which originality, authenticity,
the formal properties of the text or
quality of experience are unimportant
and in focusing on communication
over medium, negates at once the
specificities of the interface evokes
a social world in which neither text
nor place of reading is specified, and
potentially all places become the same.
But rather than make a map the size of
the world, we construct social places
which can function as universal; the

Printed Matter

453

library foremost among them.39


Classifying and storing zines as printed ephemera,
especially in the space of great libraries such as
the Bodleian, may in fact result in a space in
which no zine reading occurs at all, since the
textures and materiality of the printed form will
be subordinate to the usual meta markers of
textual readability. Along with a reconfiguration
of our notions of reading comes the necessity
of recasting our notions of access, catalogue,
preservation and crucially, our notion of archive.
Acknowledging the fact that the Internet is
changing the way reading environments are
configured, libraries including the Bodleian and
the British Library are digitizing large quantities
of their print holdings, especially those printed
ephemera whose degradation is inevitable due
to paper quality, usage and storage conditions.
Converting ink and paper to pixels and putting
them online is seen as a way of overcoming
material ephemerality; the underlying assumption
in such digitization projects is: once we remove
materiality and texture, the content is set free into
the realm of immaterial, electronic permanence
and reading can now take place anywhere and
39 Cubitt, Digital Aesthetics, 10.

454

On Reading

anytime outside the brick and mortar library


spaces. On the one hand, this seems like an
obvious solution for zines as well; not only are we
able to preserve these valued evidences of culture
and society for future study, reading zines
which are often short, mostly visual and only
loosely linearseems to bear some resemblance
to Net surfing or browsing. On the other hand,
some zines are already designed to be natively
digital. Triggs describes e-zines emerging from
the late 1990s made by producers who applied
the DIY principles to the Internet medium. 40
Alongside these digital zines emerged online
discussion groups, newsgroups and cover page
zine listings, taking full advantage of technology
for interactivity, feedback and distribution. They
allow for a greater flexibility to move in between
texts or through links to external sites and thus
producing a different sort of connection between
reader and producer.41 E-zine makers who do
not know how to program their own websites
use blogs as handy interfaces with their readers
and other zine makers. E-zines are so popular
nowadays that its fans claim that printed zines are
just paper blogs. This leads us to an interesting
scenario: a quarrel has emerged between digital
40 Triggs, Fanzines, 171.
41 Triggs, Fanzines, 175.

Printed Matter

455

zines and print zines not unlike the quarrel


between purveyors of books and online reading.
There are print purists, to borrow Triggs phrase,
among fans of paper zines who deride digital
zines for their lack of material design and argue
that the virtual interaction of zine readers is
inferior to the laboured experience of meeting
and swapping zines face-to-face, reading them in
zine fairs.
Again, the divide between virtual reading and
print reading is a false one because each mediums
specific materiality interacts with that of the zine.
In other words, a printed zine becomes a wholly
different zine when scanned and digitized and
likewise, a natively digital zine is fundamentally
transformed when converted into printed matter.
Furthermore, the digitized-from-print zine is
also different from the natively digital zine. Why?
Because a new object is formed in each mediums
materiality. The dream of digitized and eternal
ephemera, freed from the mortality of bodily
decay and age is a readers textual fantasy. As
Richard Rogers reminds us, web archives are in
fact, fed and sustained by both hardware and
software, the fixed ephemerality is a precarious
material state, more undead than dead, more

456

On Reading

zombies than ghosts.42 The easy clicks, categorized


hyperlinks and fast-scrolling through listings hide
the material mechanical workings of the fixed
ephemera from view, privileging the virtual pages
of print as a stable, separate and non-physical
objects. For libraries attempting to archive and
catalogue printed zines, there is a risk of taming
the experience of reading by taming zines into
objects separate from subjectivity.
Therefore, if we indeed have a reading crisis,
it should have more to do with the fact that
readability is often only recognized when it has
a reading subject who perceives either the text
or the material in arbitrary hierarchies; and the
reliance on perception rather than reading as a
specific practice instantiated by both material
and textual properties, that our notion of reading
should account for the textures and material we
take in using, as Hayles points out, our vision,
tactility, smell and proprioception.43 Just as paper
and ink manuscripts and printed books expanded
empires by creating, colonizing and organizing
knowledge, the wholesome ubiquity of zines
is so easy to love but if such printed matter are
42 Richard Rogers, The End of the Virtual: Digital Methods,
(Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009), 10.
43 Hayles, Writing Machines, 75.

Printed Matter

to be valued, rather than purified, we must ask


ourselves, what mode of reading dominates our
love?44

44 Indeed, the love of zines is also the love of the amateur,


a person whose name is derived from the French word for
love: amour.

457

Wernmei Yong Ade

459

Obscenity, Ruin and


the Metaphor of the
Eye
If language is beautiful, it must be
because a master bathes ita master
who cleans shit holes, sweeps offal and
expurgates city and speech to confer
upon them order and beauty.1
It is to be noted that M. Bataille miuses
adjectives with a passion: befouled,
senile, rank, sordid, lewd, doddering,
and that these words, far from serving
him to disparage an unbearable state
of affairs, are those through which his

1 Dominique Laporte. History of Shit. translated by Nadia


Benabid & Rodolphe el-Khoury. (Massachusetts: MIT Press,
2000), 7.

460

On Reading

delight is most lyrically expressed.2


Having spent most of his early career opposing
the idealism of Andre Breton and the surrealist
group, Georges Bataille was certainly no master
of beautiful language. In any case, being master
of anything was antithetical to a thinker whose
entire intellectual career was spent opposing
dialectical thought in all its forms. If anything,
Bataille abandoned himself to the obscene, though
not, as Breton assumed, to delight in it, nor, in
the words of the narrator of Story of the Eye, in
pursuit of pleasures of the flesh:
But as of then, no doubt existed for
me: I did not care for what is known
as pleasures of the flesh because they
really are insipid; I cared only for what
is classified as dirty. On the other hand,
I was not even satisfied with the usual
debauchery, because the only thing it
dirties is debauchery itself, while, in
some way or other, anything sublime
or perfectly pure is left intact by it.
My kind of debauchery soils not only
2 Andre Breton, Second Manifesto of Surrealism. translated
by Richard Seaver & Helen R. Lane. (Michigan: University
of Michigan Press, 1972), 184.

Obscenity, Ruin and the Metaphor of the Eye

461

my body and my thoughts, but also


anything I may conceive in its course,
that is to say, the vast starry universe,
which merely serves as a backdrop.
I associate the moon with the vaginal
blood of mothers, sisters, that is, the
menstrua with their sickening stench... 3
Preferring the hideous and the frighteningly
ugly4 to the marvellous and the beautiful offered
by surrealism, Batailles language was nothing
if not dirty (incidentally, the heroine of his first
dirty short story, W.C., is named Dirty), and
Story of the Eye (1928) is a dirty book, authored
by the pseudonymous Lord Auch: God
relieving himself.5 This reading of Story of the Eye
will engage with the dirty and the debauched in
Batailles writing, in excess of his pornographic
imagination, to uncover obscenity in the novels

3 Bataille, Story of the Eye, 42


4 Georges Bataille. The Lugubrious Game. Visions of
Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939, translated by Allan
Stoekl, Carl R. Lovitt & M. Leslie Jr., edited by Allan Stoekl.
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 27.
5 Georges Bataille. Story of the Eye. translated by Joachim
Neugroschal. (London: Penguin Books, 1982), 76.

462

On Reading

metaphorical composition6.

The Story of Batailles Eye


Story of the Eye comprises two parts: The Tale,
and Coincidences, the latter purportedly
serving to explain Batailles fictional composition,
specifically the relationship between eyes, eggs,
urine and other apparently disparate objects that
appear as the story unfolds. A singular image
stands out in Batailles early writing:7 lifeless
eyes in a state of abandon. In Coincidences,
Bataille exposes the putative origins of his
ocular obsession: A visual memory of his blind
paralytic father relieving himself, his lifeless
6 Roland Barthes, The Metaphor of the Eye. Story of the
Eye. translated by J.A. Underwood. (London: Penguin
Books, 1982), 76.
7 Michel Surya, Batailles biographer, suggests that all the
texts between 1927 and 1930 can be read as a group of texts,
being part of one and the samealbeit unfinishedbook
(in the uvres Compltes they have been gathered together
under the title of Dossier de loeil Pinal (The Pineal Eye).
(Michel Surya, Georges Bataille: An Intellectual Biography.
translated by Krzysztof Fijalkowski & Michael Richardson.
(London & New York: Verso, 2002), 107.

Obscenity, Ruin and the Metaphor of the Eye

eyes turned up, with a completely stupefying


expression of abandon and aberration in a
world that he alone could see and that aroused
his vaguely sardonic and absent laugh.8 This
upset[ting]9 image appears to have affected in
Bataille a kind of terrific love for his father, and
he admitted being the very contrary of most
male babies, who are in love with their mothers,
I was in love with my father.10 For Bataille, his
fathers acts of relieving himself (pissing), and
the state of abandon observable in the way he
turned his empty gaze to the sky, are closely
related as experiences of ekstasis; experiences of
relieving himself of himself. More than the eye,
the object of Batailles obsession was perhaps
more accurately the experience of ekstasis itself.
On May 7th 1922, Bataille had the opportunity to
witness a bullfight in Spain, and saw the matador
Manolo Graneros eye being taken out by the
bull, an event he would later describe in The
Tale: Granero was thrown back by the bull and
wedged against the balustrade; the horns struck
the balustrade three times at full speed; at the
third blow, one horn plunged into the right eye
and through the head. [...] men instantly rushed
8 Bataille. Story of the Eye, 72.
9 Bataille. Story of the Eye, 76.
10 Bataille. Story of the Eye, 72.

463

464

On Reading

over to haul away Graneros body, the right eye


dangling from the head.11 In the novel, the climax
of Graneros freak accident is accompanied by
a shriek of unmeasured horror that coincided
with a brief orgasm for Simone, who was lifted
up from the stone seat only to be flung back with
a bleeding nose, under a blinding sun.12 For
Bataille, the enucleation clearly had an affective,
and communicative value, just as the image of his
fathers upturned lifeless eyes did, one he would
return to over and over again: in 1925, he was
given a picture of a Chinese man being tortured,
with whom he confessed to being in love, and
whose state of abandon matched, coincidentally,
the visual memory of his father relieving himself.
In 1926, Bataille wrote a short story W.C. which
had a cover decorated with the sketch of an eye:
the scaffolds eye. Solitary, solar, bristling with
lashes, it gazed from the lunette of a guillotine.
The drawing was named Eternal Recurrence,
and its horrible machine was the cross-beam,
gymnastic gallows, portico. Coming from the
horizon, the road to eternity passed through it.13
I have recounted each of these descriptions to
draw attention to the substitutive value of each
11 Bataille. Story of the Eye, 53, italics mine.
12 Bataille. Story of the Eye, 53. italics mine.
13 Bataille. Story of the Eye, 76.

Obscenity, Ruin and the Metaphor of the Eye

of them. Neither one appears as an explanation


(a final thing signified) for the other; rather,
each is at once similar (involving lifeless eyes
in a state of abandon), but different (involving
various individuals) at the same time. In other
words, all of these descriptions exist in relation
to each other as terms in a metaphorical chain,
presenting themselves as substitutes for each
other. Let us not forget that even Coincidences,
while apparently biographical, is merely another
narrative reproduction and thus substitutive,
rather than explanative of The Tale. Even if
we insist on preserving the hierarchical relation
between the two, The Tale in fact informs
Coincidences, since the latter narrative is a
result of Bataille having been struck by several
coincidences, 14 while writing The Tale. Placed
after the main narrative, posthumously we might
even say, Coincidences formally destroys its
own originary status.
But what did these lifeless eyes communicate to
Bataille? To communicate is better understood
as to be in commune with, hence involving a
state of ekstasis, an experience of the outside-self.
In 1925, Batailles psychoanalyst Adrien Borel,
gave him a picture of a Chinese man, Fou14 Bataille. Story of the Eye, 69.

465

466

On Reading

Tchou-Li, undergoing slow death by Leng-Tche,


otherwise known as The Torture of the Hundred
Pieces. Bataille confides: I have never stopped
being obsessed by this image of pain, at once
ecstatic(?) and intolerable.15 Simultaneously
drawn, and repelled by the picture, the object of
his fascination alternated between the torturer:
The Chinese executioner of my photo haunts me:
there he is busily cutting off his victims leg at the
knee...; and the victim: The young and seductive
Chinese man... left to the work of the executioner,
I loved himI loved him with a love in which the
sadistic instinct played no part: he communicated
his pain to me or perhaps the excessive nature
of his pain, and it was precisely that which I
was seeking, not so as to take pleasure in it, but
in order to ruin in me that which is opposed to
ruin.16 Batailles description of his blind father
relieving himself, and Granero being thrown
back while having his eye gouged out by the bull
(accompanied by Simone being lifted up and
flung back down) might have substituted for the
15 Georges Bataille. The Tears of Eros. translated by Peter
Connor. (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1989), 206;
italics mine.
16 Bataille. Inner Experience. translated by Leslie Anne
Boldt (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988),
20.

Obscenity, Ruin and the Metaphor of the Eye

467

picture of Fou-Tchou-Lilifeless eyes upturned,


in a state of abandon and most anguishing17
ecstasy, likely to have been caused by the opium
administered in order to prolong the torture.
More importantly, each of these described
episodes of abandon and aberration are affective:
to ruin in him, and us (to, and with whom Bataille
communicates) all that is opposed to ruin, in an
experience of ekstasis.
Story of the Eye lays bare our relationship with
obscenity that tears us away from ourselves:
Obscenity is our name for the uneasiness which
upsets the physical state associated with selfpossession, with the possession of a recognised
and stable individuality.18 Story of the Eye
is an obscene text, least of all because of the
transgressive nature of Batailles pornographic
imagination; obscenity also communicates in
Batailles metaphorical composition, itself driven
by excess and transgression. More than a poem
(Barthes preferred word for Batailles prose),
one might better designate Story of the Eye a
form of visual, or imagistic, fiction; perhaps a
17 Bataille. Tears of Eros, 205.
18 Georges Bataille. Erotism: Death and Sensuality. translated by Mary Dalwood (San Francisco: City Lights Books,
1986), 17-18.

468

On Reading

poetic film, belonging to the same genre as the


surrealist film and its use of unusual lighting,
bizarre camera angles, strange confrontation of
objects, alternative sequencing of events and slow
motion.19 In fact, Un Chien Andalou (1929), the
silent surrealist short film by Spanish director
Luis Buuel and artist Salvador Dal, opens
with a scene reminiscent of Don Aminandos
enucleation in Story of the Eye, a scene at the
centre of Batailles short essay The Eye, written
probably in 1930. In it he describes the eye as
being at once an object of extreme horror, and
object of seduction, able to evoke both horror
and attraction. The eye could be related to the
cutting edge, whose appearance provokes both
bitter and contradictory reactions.20 Describing
the opening scene of Un Chien Andalou: That a
razor would cut open the dazzling eyes of a young
and charming womanthis is precisely what a
young man would have admired to the point of
madness, a young man watched by a small cat, a
19 Bruce Morisette. Novel and Film: Essays in Two Genres (Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press,
1985), 13.
20 Georges Bataille. The Eye. Visions of Excess Selected
Writings, 1927-1939, translated by Allan Stoekl, Carl R.
Lovitt & M. Leslie Jr., edited by Allan Stoekl. (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 17.

Obscenity, Ruin and the Metaphor of the Eye

young man who by chance holding in his hand a


coffee spoon, suddenly wanted to take an eye in
that spoon.21 The act of substitution is invoked in
the young mans desire to displace the eye, from
its socket, into that spoon, and recalls precisely
the way the metaphor of the eye works in Story
of the Eye. In the opening chapter Simone lifts
her pinafore and sits in a bowl of milk (since,
according to her, Milk is for the pussy), and
later inserts an egg into her vagina, followed
by the testicles of the bull in Spain, and finally,
the eye of the Spanish priest Don Aminando.
In fact, it is only when Batailles story takes us
to the church of Don Juan in Spain that we see
the confluence of the substitutive terms milk/
egg/ testicle/ eye and cat/ pussy/ vagina, with
the opening act (aptly entitled The Cats Eye)
of Simone sitting in a bowl of milk. It is only at
this climactic moment of the novel that the eye
shows itself physically, and the object of the story
is restored to its self (in so far as the word eye
finally refers to the eye, the thing signified), but at
the same time, remains displaced (into Simones
vagina).

21 Bataille. The Eye, 17.

469

470

On Reading

The Story Is the Eye


This double property of being at once itself,
and not itself, lies at the centre of the eyes
metaphorical journey throughout the text. In
1963, Barthes published an essay The Metaphor
of the Eye, in which he claims that although
Story of the Eye features a number of named
characters with an account of their sex play,
Bataille was by no means writing the story
of Simone, Marcelle or the narrator (as Sade,
for example, wrote the stories of Justine and
Juliette). Story of the Eye really is the story of an
object.22 According to Barthes, as the eye makes
its metaphorical journey through the text, it is
varied through a series of substitutions, where
the objects stand in strict relationship with
each other based on similarity. However, being
called something different (on the level of the
signifier) they are dissimilar at the same time:
saucer, milk, egg, sun, moon, testicles, urine,
tears, sperm, and finally the eye of the Spanish
priest Don Aminando. Each station of the ocular
metaphor that the eye occupies speaks of a
new usage, one following the next based on an
22 Barthes. The Metaphor of the Eye, 119.

Obscenity, Ruin and the Metaphor of the Eye

associative development. The eye is precisely torn


from its self as it moves from one metaphorical
station to the next. Batailles text, Barthes thus
concludes, is a kind of open literature out of
reach of all interpretation, one that only formal
criticism canat a great distanceaccompany.23
Kristeva, perhaps, might have kept more faithful
company. Story of the Eye really is the story of an
abject, the abject being the object of obscenity
par excellence: radically excluded, [it] draws
me toward the place where meaning collapses.
[...] Thus it is not lack of cleanliness or health
that causes abjection but what disturbs identity,
system, order. What does not respect borders,
positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous,
the composite.24 But what Story of the Eye really
is, is the eye, rather than being a story of the eye.
Batailles story contains no object, only an abject,
the violence of mourning for an object that
has always already been lost.25 There is no story
of to speak of, only a transgressive copulation of
the story (the signifier) and the eye (the signified;
23 Barthes. The Metaphor of the Eye, 123.
24 Julia Kristeva. Powers of Horror. translated by Leon S.
Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 2, 4.
It should be pointed out that Kristevas notion of the abject
is derived from Batailles notion of transgression.
25 Kristeva. Powers of Horror, 15.

471

472

On Reading

what the story is supposedly of), since the abject


destroys any hierarchical privileging in the
relationship between the two. As metaphorical
composition and obscene text, Story of the
Eye necessarily ruins its self, precisely because
metaphorical language is always in excess of its
self. Always exceeding, transgressing and ruining
its self, metaphorical language is ecstatic.
If, for Bataille, the obscene is that which upsets
self-possession, then metaphor, whose meaning
is never merely its self, being simultaneously itself
and not itself, is language at its most obscene.
Metaphor ruins the self-assured logic of language,
and being ruinous, metaphorical language is
obscene even at its most sublime. In this, Bataille
is perhaps indebted to Longinus (50 AD), for
whom the sublime does not convince the reason
in the reader, but takes him out of himself.26 The
sublime, Breton would have been disappointed
to discover, is obscenity at its most potent. The
metaphor is thus not simply of the eye, it is the
eye. The logic of metaphor afterall functions

26 Longinus. On the Sublime. translated by H. L. Havell.


The Project Gutengurg e-book of On the Sublime. 10 March
2006.

Obscenity, Ruin and the Metaphor of the Eye

according to the copula is; 27 in Batailles text,


the linguistic copula is links two (and more)
disparate objects: eye, egg, milk, sun, testicles,
urine etc. But the copula to be is also invoked
here. Is, being, to be; similarity, but at the same
time, a difference, and a slippage. Metaphor is the
object-abject (the place where meaning collapses,
the in-between, the ambiguous) of obscenity
par excellence, and in Batailles metaphorical
composition, the egg is the eye, both its self and
not its self. The novel forces us to think about
sexual, and textual, copulation in unusual28
ways: Simone asks the narrator to pee up her
vagina; she copulates with eggs, testicles and
eyes. Sharing the similar status of object-abject,
the metaphor is the eye, as simple as Simones
revelation at the novels climactic scene:
Do you see the eye? she asked me.
Well?
Its an egg, she concluded in all
27 Patrick ffrench first makes this observation: it is the
force of this transgressive copula is which generates Histoire de loeil, which is not the sign of equivalence nor of
difference, but both at the same time. Patrick ffrench. The
Cut/ Reading Batailles Histoire De Lil (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1999), 21.
28 Bataille. Story of the Eye, 11.

473

474

On Reading

simplicity.29

Coincidences
As such, the novel is replete with coincidences;
being a concurrence of events with no apparent
connection. Perhaps the most significant of
these in The Tale are the (co)incidents of death
experienced by Granero, and Simone:
The events that followed were without
transition or connection, not because
they werent actually related, but
because my attention was so absent as
to remain absolutely dissociated. In just
a few seconds: first, Simone bit into one
of the raw balls, to my dismay; then
Granero advanced towards the bull,
waving his scarlet cloth; finally, almost
at once, Simone, with a blood-red face
and a suffocating lewdness, uncovered
her long white thighs up to her moist
vulva, into which she slowly and
surely fitted the second pale globule
Granero was thrown back by the bull
29 Bataille. Story of the Eye, 66.

Obscenity, Ruin and the Metaphor of the Eye

and wedged against the balustrade; the


horns struck the balustrade three times
at full speed; at the third blow, one horn
plunged into the right eye and through
the head. A shriek of unmeasured
horror coincided with a brief orgasm
for Simone, who was lifted up from the
stone seat only to be flung back with a
bleeding nose, under a blinding sun;
men instantly rushed over to haul away
Graneros body, the right eye dangling
from the head.30
The events of Graneros death and Simones
orgasm (little death) are interchangeable. In
other words, these events are related not by
causality (that Simones orgasm follows from
having witnessed Graneros fatal attack), but as
substitutes, precisely in being both similar (at
the level of signifier, both being death, and
hence simultaneous) as well as different. What
is crucial here is that the substitutive value, and
hence similarity, lies entirely in a metaphorical
substitution between orgasm (le petit mort) and
death (mort). That the interchangeability of
the two events is based entirely on a linguistic
copulation (orgasm is death, and so Simones
30 Bataille. Story of the Eye, 53.

475

476

On Reading

orgasm is Graneros death), accounts for what


is an apparently unexplainable event: Simone
being lifted out of her seat and flung back down
again. There is no need to explain this bizarre
occurrence precisely because its explanation is not
to be sought in answering the question how did it
happen? Rather, it is sought in the metaphorical
substitution between the two terms, his death and
her orgasm. Obscenity here is conveyed as a series
of transgressions and displacements, both sexual,
and textual: the horn plunges into Graneros right
eye, as she reaches orgasm copulating with the
bulls testicle, referred to as a pale globule. The
displacement here, on the level of signifiers at
least, of Graneros eye into her vagina (the pale
globule that she inserts), anticipates the final
obscene act of Simone inserting Don Aminandos
eye into her vagina.
What is interesting too is that although the
experiences of ekstasis described here belong
to Granero (in dying) and Simone (in her little
death), there is in fact a third: the Is dissolution
in the presence of obscenity. We witness these
(co)incidents from the perspective of the I
precisely at a moment when his attention was
so absent as to remain absolutely dissociated,
that is, at a moment of self-loss. This dissolution
is reflected in him occupying what I read to be

Obscenity, Ruin and the Metaphor of the Eye

contradictory states of being dissociated, while


nonetheless able to remain (in a particular state),
which assumes a presence of mind (or precisely
attention). And even as he tells us that the
events that followed were without transition or
connection, the events that do follow, as they are
being narrated, unfold themselves to us in a way
that can only be described as transitional, and
connectional. More than the dissolution of the
I in the presence of obscenity, what we observe
is specifically the dissolution of the narrative I,
whose attempts to get across to usprecisely to
connect with usis marked by paradox.
This is once more highlighted in the climactic
scene of the novel, when narrative point of view
becomes ambivalent:
Simone gazed at the absurdity and
finally took it in her hand, completely
distraught; yet she had no qualms, and
instantly amused herself by fondling
the depth of her thighs and inserting
this apparently fluid object. The caress
of the eye over the skin is so utterly, so
extraordinarily gentle, and the sensation
is so bizarre that it has something of a
roosters horrible crowing.

477

478

On Reading

Simone meanwhile amused herself


by slipping the eye into the profound
crevice of her arse ... 31
Simones experience of inserting the eye into her
vagina is displaced to the narrators experience of
handling the eye, specifically an experience that
appears to be taking place in the present moment
of re-collection, signalled by the change in tenses.
Simones actions as described here are however by
no means a disconnected memory, suggested by
the phrase Simone meanwhile, which indicates
that the two events, his present recollecting of the
past, and Simone amusing herself in this particular past, are in fact taking place simultaneously.
This illogical break in the temporal sequence in
the narrative (incidentally, characteristic of surrealist films, as previously mentioned) alludes once
more to the dissolution of the narrative I, again in
the presence of obscenity. It seems then, that we
are dealing not just with one eye, and I, nor with
multiple eyes (the one Simone amuses herself
with in the past, the other the narrator caresses
in the present), and Is (the past and the present);
rather, we are dealing with the eye, and I, divided
while paradoxically remaining whole: precisely
fluid, dissolved, and abject.
31 Bataille. Story of the Eye, 66. italics mine

Obscenity, Ruin and the Metaphor of the Eye

In Coincidences, Bataille says that in writing his


book, he had substituted one scene for another:
I was very astonished at having unknowingly
substituted a perfectly obscene image for a vision
apparently devoid of any sexual implication.32
As already suggested at the start of this piece,
Coincidences, like the various objects in
The Tale (saucer, egg, testicles, urine etc.) is
better read as another metaphorical station,
one amongst many possible substitutions,
and not the meaning of the story preceding it.
More importantly, implicated in coincidence
is the element of improbability. In any chance
similarity, there lies the equal risk of difference;
at the centre of any probable situation, lies
infinite improbability. Implicit in Coincidences
is thus self-ruin, precisely a reminder of the
improbability of the I whose story this
supposedly is. I is precisely both self and notself; in a state of ekstasis, I is always dissolved,
always ruined and abject. We might want to recall
at this point too that Story of the Eye is composed
by the pseudonymous Lord Auch, being both
Bataille, but also not Bataille. I cannot be the
origins of this text, since no such stable I exists.
If Coincidences (biographical and thus the
supposed true story of I) cannot claim to be the
32 Bataille. Story of the Eye, 70.

479

480

On Reading

origins of the story, then perhaps an analysis of


the first erotic encounter in the novel, between
Simone and the narrator, might give us a hint as
to the beginnings of the metaphorical chain
that is the story. Alone in Simones villa, the
narrator and Simone spy a saucer of milk for the
cat in hallway. Simone lifts her pinafore and says,
Milk is for the pussy, isnt it? and proceeds to
sit atop the saucer of milk. This first erotic act
culminates in both reaching orgasm, without
either touching the other at all. While sexual
copulation is absent here, what we witness is the
transgressive copulation of metaphor: Pussy (cat)/
pussy (cunt) in a saucer of milk (which later is
the egg, and is the eye). Sexual copulation gives
way to textual copulation, deliberately perhaps
to dismiss any assumption of the sexual being at
the origins of this chain. This is the first obscene
act of the novel, based entirely on a copulative
act of metaphorical substitution, and from here
all other obscene acts that follow will be of a
similar nature. Sealing the relationship between
metaphor, and the obscene, Story of the Eye opens
with a chapter entitled The Cats Eye, the cat
being Simones pussy/ cunt, into which she later
inserts an egg, the testicles and lastly the priests
eye. Unsurprisingly, neither cat nor eye appear
in this first chapter; at least we dont see them,
since being able to see at all (both physically,

Obscenity, Ruin and the Metaphor of the Eye

but also in the sense of gaining insight) assumes


a language that is self-assured, contained and
guaranteed by a thing signified, none of which
the texts metaphorical language is. So the point
here is precisely that we do not see the eye at the
start of the novel, and when we finally do see it at
the novels climactic scene, it is an eye is gouged
out, displaced: the lifeless, obscene and abject
eye. Displaced into Simones vaginathe eye in
the pussy at the end of the novelwe are thus
brought back to the beginning of the novel: The
Cats Eye. The metaphorical chain does not begin
in the beginning, and in fact has no beginning to
speak of. It takes us full circle; the displaced eye,
the story itself, as Eternal Recurrence. Returning
to itself, turned in on itself, nothing is concluded,
and nothing revealed by either story or eye.
The horror of Batailles eye, lies precisely in
its own self-ruin, being both abject (object of
horror and attraction) as well as that which
enables an experience of the abject, at least a
visual one, through the act of seeing. The readers
encounter with the abject and the obscene in
the text is based largely on acts of seeing. As
already suggested, this composition is better
read as a film, which then gives rise to another
metaphorical substitution: the narrative eye/ I, of
whose dissolution I have spoken at some length.

481

482

On Reading

Figured in terms of the observing eye of the


camera, our sight, and insight, is based entirely on
what the eye in the text sees. The journey of the
eye through the story, I suggest, also details the
progressive self-ruin of the seeing eye. The novel
opens with the only possessive reference to the
eye in the text: The Cats Eye. This is of course
a cat that never appears in the text except, in the
end, as Simones pussy/ vagina. So while the eye
finally returns after its metaphorical journey to
its self (in so far as the word finally refers to the
thing signified), and returns to being possessed by
the cat (the cats eye, and thus apparently restored
to its function of seeing), it nevertheless remains
displaced, by the metaphorical substitution of
the terms cat and vagina. Like the abject eye in
the text, the seeing (observing) eye/ I is likewise
displaced, thus preventing the reader from
gaining any (in)sight into the story even as the
story reaches its conclusion.
Of my own journey, I offer the following
conclusion, with reference to an early episode in
The Tale:
A few days later, however, when Simone
was doing gymnastics with me in the
rafters of a garage, she pissed on her
mother, who had the misfortune to stop

Obscenity, Ruin and the Metaphor of the Eye

483

underneath without seeing her. The sad


widow got out of the way and gazed at
us with such dismals eyes and such a
desperate expression that she egged us
on, that is to say, simply, with Simone
bursting into laughter, crouching on
all fours on the beams and exposing
her cunt to my face, I uncovered that
cunt completely and masturbated while
looking at it.33
This particular image brought to my mind the
etymological origins of the word sublime, which
in its English, and I believe, French usage, has its
origins in the Latin sublimis, possibly from sub
(up to) and limen (lintel, a beam that forms the
upper part of a window or door). Simone pissing
from the rafters above, onto her mother below:
is this Bataille taking the piss, as it were, out of
idealism and the sublime? From not seeing, the
widow then turns her dismal eyes on them. Her
eyes [...] egged them on; a playful pun intended
in the original French, or an addition on the
part of the translator? The answers are not as
relevant as what the playing here implies, which is
precisely the ambiguity, and fluidity, my reading
necessarily invokes. It matters little, therefore,
33 Bataille. Story of the Eye, 15.

484

On Reading

what I see in the text (which might not be there),


or do not see (which might be there) by the time I
come to the end of the story, since my journey has
led me, and my (in)sight, towards blindness. Face
to face finally with an eye in a cunt, I experience
ruin precisely where my understanding loses
itselfin my blind spot.

Jeremy Fernando
21 October, 2011
Singapore

487

Afterword
With friends like
these .
Plato teaches us that there are 3 kinds of
friendships: agape, eros, and philia. And in each
of these relationalities lies a certain condition:
divinity, madness, and reason. It is not so much
that the condition determines the friendship,
but it certainly has an effect on the nature of the
relationalities.
So, as I receive responses to my calls to think
readingeven as I am one of those responding to
the said callthe question of why would one do
so, the conditions of the responses, continues to
haunt them.
Even as the responses were kind, much like the
people responding, there were surely not of the
order of the divine. For, part of the deal, as it
were, was for their responses to be published
and even though this is not the place to open
that question, we should allow notions of

488

On Reading

exchangeability, returns, production, to resound


with us. And even as one might desire a response
to ones call to be of the order of eros, a response
in writing would hardly qualify. However, we also
should never forget the teachings of von SacerMasoch and Roland Barthes: words are, language
itself is, sensual. Thus, even as we are reading,
we should allow our reading to engulf us, affect
us: perhaps we dont even have any control over
thiseven as we would like to believe that we are
rational, scientific, clear-headed, our readings
are having an effect on us, onlyas Wolfgang
Schirmacher would put itbehind our backs.
It would be appropriate to call their responses
to my call a moment of philia, friendship. For,
there is no doubt that it is a measured, calculated,
response: not in a mercenary sense of I will
respond as I want to be published (there was
never any guarantee of that happening; in fact,
with the current state of publishing, there was
a greater chance of their work remaining in the
proverbial side drawer), but in the sense of their
response needing to match the call. And here, one
must not forget the fact that they have no ability
to respond to my reading of their responses:
and for the violence of the appropriation, I must
apologise. In this seizing though, there is an echo
of a seizure as well: in every attempt to respond

Afterword

lies a moment that is beyond uswe can never


quite be sure if the call was ever meant for us, if
there was even a call to begin with. Perhaps the
fact that we attempt to respond suggests that we
are either grasped by the call orsince we can
never be sure if there was even a callarrested by
the need to respond. In either case, by opening
ourselves to responding, we run the risk of
momentarily ceasing.
But it is not as if there is no risk in friendship, of
being friends. As Jacques Derrida reminds us: to
have a friend, to look at him, to follow him with
your eyes, to admire him in friendship, is to know
in a more intense way, already injured, always
insistent, and more and more unforgettable, that
one of the two of you will inevitably see the other
die.1 One can read this collection as an attempt
to preserve these friendships, to capture them at a
particular moment, lock them in time as it were.
Which might have been one of the impetuses for
sending out the callone that might well have
been unknown when it was issued. However, that
opens yet another risk: in attempting to seize
these friendships, there is no guarantee that we
1 Jacques Derrida. The Work of Mourning. edited by
Pascale-Anne Brault & Michael Naas. (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2001), 107.

489

490

On Reading

might not just be grasping at straws.


It is not as if Plato was unaware of this though.
For, even as philia is the most reasoned of
relationalities, true friendship still requires a
touch of the divine. So, even as one might be able
to say with certaintyand that itself could be
called into questionthat one treats another as a
friend, the very reason for that friendship might
remain unknown. Let alone whether the other is a
friend to you.
Who ever said that relationalities had to be twoway?
Then again, can one ever know if the daemon
actually whispered into ones ear? Perhaps, at best,
one can open oneself to the possibility of being
a friend to another. Which might well be why
with friends like these, who needs enemies? For, it
is not that the enemy is necessarily the antonym
of a friendboth are still states of relationalities.
Sometimes one has to oppose a friend to be a
true friendperhaps even to the extent of having
to cut, kill. Ask Brutus. Or Judas. After all, one
can read their acts as attempts to stop Julius
Caesar and Jesus of Nazareth from becoming a
despot and a demagogue respectively. Performing
caesurae in friendship. Perhaps this is a risk of

Afterword

491

having a friend: one day they might just turn out


to be a true one. And here, it is not too difficult to
hear an echo of Elie Wiesel who teaches us that
the opposite of love is not hate; its indifference.2
In this sense, it matters little whether their
individual pieces, responses, agree with me or
not, whether they undercut my claims, or even
cut mewhat matters is that they picked up my
call.
Admitting to the fact that admission into this
collection is an indication of friendship opens yet
another risk. Foregrounding friendship opens the
collectormeto accusations of bias: charges
that the academy desperately avoids by playing
at objectivity, performing open calls, peer review,
and so forth. All of these measuresand make no
mistake they are calculated strategiesare aimed
at distancing the collector from responsibility;
from the fact that it is (s)he and no other than
assembled the book. But it is not as if pointing
out the usual strategies will exonerate me from
these possible indictments: there is nothing that
the Law dislikes more than its own exposure.
This is, after all, the lesson of Han Christian
Andersens The Emperors New Clothesthe little
child was silenced not to protect the modesty of
2 US News & World Report (27 October 1986).

492

On Reading

the Emperor (everybody knew that he was naked)


but to prevent the fact that he is only Emperor
because the people willingly submitted themselves
in the absence of any reason (or even sign; there is
no mention of his crown nor sceptre) from being
foregrounded. This means that anyone could have
been Emperor: the power lay in the hands of the
people, and not the sovereign. However, it is not
as if shattering this illusion would bring about
a democratically chosen rulermost everyone,
if not all, would have wanted to be Emperor,
or at least wanted someone other than the one
standing there to be sovereign, and no one
person would never have been able to garnered
universal consensus. And consensus is the very
illusion that had to be protected: the illusion that
it really mattered what the people thought, that
they willingly bowed before the Emperor. If they
actually exercised their will, not only will the
Emperor not have his position, the entire empire
would come crashing down.
And this opens just one more question for us. In
a hypothetical situation of the child managing to
utter his statementthe Emperor is nakedthe
problem that the crowd would have faced is that
of trust. Firstly, whether to believe the childjust
because what he says is true doesnt mean that
others will agree. In fact, the converse is what

Afterword

most often occurs: people will go to boundless


lengths to protect their beliefs, their illusions.
Which brings us back to yet another notion of
trust: that of believing in one self rather than
another; sometimes in the face of all evidence.
This suggests that trust has no referentialityyou
either trust someone (whether that someone is
your own self or another) or not.
Which suggests that at the end, since we are
almost at the end of this text, this book, you
have to decide whether to trust me, us, or not.
Regardless of what you have read. Based on
nothing but the fact that you have read, that you
were reading. For, it is not as if all of were, will
ever, say the same thing about readingnot as if
we have even attempted to provide a united front.
All the sameno matter what your decisionI
would like to thank you for opening yourself in
reading, through reading.
And offer my friendship.
Whilst leaving you with the immortal words of
Fidel Castro: you shouldnt trust someone just
because hes a friend

493

Contributors

Setsuko Adachi is a member of the Critical


Theory Center Japan, and an associate professor
in the Department of Languages and Cultural
Studies at Kogakuin University, Tokyo. She
obtained her MA in Comparative Literature
from Tokyo University; and teaches courses in
critical and cultural theory. Her main research
interests are identity formation and cultural
systems analysis. Recent publications include:
Forging Global Hodological Maps for the MetaSymbolic Order, Globalization and Identity: A
Case Study of Japanese Amae and Undermining
Coexistence: Japanese Discursive Formations
Related to Empathy.
Mark Brantner is a Lecturer in the
University Scholars Programme at the National
University of Singapore. Before his current
appointment, he was the Interim-Director
of First-Year Writing and Visiting Assistant

Professor in the Writing Initiative at Binghamton


University, State University of New York. He
earned his BA and MA (American literature and
critical theory) from West Virginia University
and his PhD (Rhetoric and Composition) from
the University of South Carolina. He has done
additional graduate work in philosophy and
communication at The European Graduate
School. He has previously held faculty positions at
Potomac State College of West Virginia University
and Eastern West Virginia Community and
Technical College. His scholarly interests include
ancient rhetoric, psychoanalytic theory, and
writing program administration.
Yanyun Chen is a full time freelancer. Her
clients include IDEO Singapore, Nexus Singapore,
Shyalala, byFlo, Audi, Propellerfish, Proteus
Technologies, Search Ventures and more to
produce flash games, animations, trading card
games, illustrations, UI for app and web layouts.
She also contributes to the online magazine One
Imperative, and does book layouts for wonderful
writers, such as Peter Van De Kamp, Jeremy
Fernando and Anila Angin. She works under
the artist name Stick and Balloon, with her long
time creature pal Sara Chong, and is establishing
a dramatically illustrated ebook publishing
named Delere Press, with writer-dictator Jeremy

Fernando, who has been said to make philosophy


sexy.
Jeremy Fernando is the Jean Baudrillard
Fellow at The European Graduate School.
He works in the intersections of literature,
philosophy, and the media; and is the author of
Reflections on (T)error, The Suicide Bomber; and
her gift of death, Reading Blindly, and Writing
Death. Exploring other media has led him to film,
music, and art; and his work has been exhibited
in Seoul, Vienna, Singapore, and Hong Kong. He
is the general editor of both Delere Press and the
thematic magazine One Imperative; and a Fellow
of Tembusu College at the National University of
Singapore.
Julia Hlzl is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the
European Graduate School. Currently pursuing
a second doctorate at the Centre for Modern
Thought at the University of Aberdeen, her
present research project focuses on the notion of
finitude in Blanchot and Heidegger. She is also a
Visiting Professor at the Institute of International
Studies at Ramkhamhaeng University, Bangkok.
Book publications include Transience. A poiesis, of
dis/appearance (Atropos Press, 2010).

Michael Kearney is an associate professor


in the School of Architecture at Kogakuin
University in Tokyo and a research associate
professor at the SUNY Stony Brook Institute
for Global Studies. He obtained his PhD in
Critical Theory from the University of Limerick,
Ireland. He has published numerous articles on
identity formation as well as pieces on William
S. Burroughs, Charles Bukowski, Lydia Lunch,
and the Velvet Underground & Andy Warhol.
Book chapters include The Undermining of
a West Briton: The Deconstruction of Joyces
Gabriel Conroy, A Japanese Concept of the Self ,
and Mapping Hybrid Identities: A Matrixing
Model for Transculturality. He is the editor of
the book From Conflict to Recognition: Moving
Multiculturalism Forward.
Lim Lee Ching teaches interdisciplinary
subjects in Singapore. His research interests
include: poetry and poetics, Modernism and
violence, literary aesthetics and South-East Asian
literature.
Robert Lumsden, B.A., M.A., University of
Sussex, Ph.D., University of East Anglia, lectured
in literature for several decades at the National
University of Singapore and the National Institute
of Education, Nanyang Technological University,

in Singapore and currently lives in South


Australia. He has published articles and chapters
in books on critical theory, poetry, modernism
and practical criticism, has co-edited, with Rajeev
Patke, a collection of essays on the relation
between critical theory and society: Institutions in
Cultures: Theory and Practice (Rodopi, 1996), and
more recently a book length study of the relation
between reading and self-fashioning, Reading
Literature after Deconstruction (Cambria, 2009).
He has published poetry and short fiction, and is
at work on his third novel.
Shaoling Ma is a doctoral candidate in
the Comparative Literature department at
the University of Southern California. Her
research interests include Marxism, continental
philosophy, French theory, late nineteenth and
early twentieth century American and Chinese
literature, late Qing intellectual thought,
and twentieth-century Chinese cinema. She
is currently finishing her dissertation The
Social Life of Nations: A Comparative Study of
American and Chinese Utopian Novels, 18881906.
Nicole Ong is a graduate student at the
English Department of the School of Humanities
& Social Sciences at the Nanyang Technological

University in Singapore. She is currently working


on a project exploring reading, ethics, and
literature.
Cui Su is a Senior Teaching Fellow at the
Winchester School of Art, University of
Southampton. She has an MA and PhD both in
Media and Communications from Goldsmiths,
University of London. She taught textual and
visual analysis on various BA courses in London
Central Saint Martins and Goldsmiths. Su is also
a reviewer and writer at Zineswap, a Londonbased zine archive and blog that has exhibited
and conducted workshops in Tate Britain, Orange
Gallery, Somerset House and actively participates
in zine fairs such as the London Zine Symposium
and the International Alternative Press Fair. She
has co-edited a book entitled Future: Content;
which was published by the highly acclaimed
creative magazine and design blog, Its Nice That.
W. Michelle Wang is a Ph.D student
in the Department of English, at The Ohio
State University who earned her B.A.
(Communications) and M.A. (English) from
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
Her research interests are in aesthetic theory
and narrative theory, philosophies of art as they
relate to literature, and the relationship between

literature and the fine arts.


Paoi Wilmer was a full-time assistant
professor at National Taiwan University from
2003-2009. She currently resides in Durham and
regularly publishes academic papers, reviews
and creative stories. She also reviews for several
journals in Taiwan and continues to serve on the
advisory board of Encounters.
Wernmei Yong Ade received her PhD from
the University of Edinburgh in 2006. Her thesis
focused on the subject of communication in the
philosophical writings of Georges Bataille and
the fiction of Angela Carter. She is currently an
Assistant Professor at Nanyang Technological
University of Singapore, where she lectures in
feminist studies and contemporary womens
writing. Her recent publications include Writing
Woman, Reading Woman: Re-vision in the poetry
of Lee Tzu Pheng (SARE, no. 50Singapore and
Malaysia Special Issue, 2011), The Sacred: Of
Violence, Intimacy and Love (Special issue on
the Sacred, Philosophy Today, 2011), and Reader
Responsibility in James Hoggs The Confessions
of A Justified Sinner (Studies in Hogg and his
World, 2010). Her current research interests lie
in womens writing, particularly in the subject of
love as a discourse of alterity.

Think Media: EGS Media Philosophy Series


Wolfgang Schirmacher, editor

A Postcognitive Negation: The Sadomasochistic Dialectic of American Psychology,


Matthew Giobbi
A World Without Reason, Jeff McGary
All for Nothing, Rachel K. Ward
Asking, for Telling, by Doing, as if Betraying, Stephen David Ross
Memory and Catastrophe, Joan Grossman
Can Computers Create Art?, James Morris
Community without Identity: The Ontology and Politics of Heidegger, Tony See
Deleuze and the Sign, Christopher M. Drohan
Deleuze: History and Science, Manuel DeLanda
DRUGS Rhetoric of Fantasy, Addiction to Truth, Dennis Schep
Facticity, Poverty and Clones: On Kazuo Ishiguros Never Let Me Go, Brian Willems
Fear and Laughter: A Politics of Not Selves For Self, Jake Reeder
Gratitude for Technology, Baruch Gottlieb
Hospitality in the Age of Media Representation, Christian Hnggi
Itself, Robert Craig Baum
Jack Spicer: The Poet as Crystal Radio Set, Matthew Keenan
Laughter and Mourning: point of rupture, Pamela Noensie
Letters to a Young Therapist: Relational Practices for the Coming Community,
Vincenzo Di Nicola
Literature as Pure Mediality: Kafka and the Scene of Writing, Paul DeNicola
Media Courage: Impossible Pedagogy in an Artificial Community, Fred Isseks
Metastaesthetics, Nicholas Alexander Hayes
Mirrors triptych technology: Remediation and Translation Figures, Diana Silberman Keller
Necessity of Terrorism political evolution and assimilation, Sharif Abdunnur
No Future Now, Denah Johnston
Nomad X, Drew Minh
On Becoming-Music: Between Boredom and Ecstasy, Peter Price
Painting as Metaphor, Sarah Nind
Performing the Archive: The Transformation of the Archive in Contemporary Art from
Repository of Documents to Art Medium, Simone Osthoff
Philosophy of Media Sounds, Michael Schmidt
Polyrhythmic Ethics, Julia Tell
Propaganda of the Dead: Terrorism and Revolution, Mark Reilly
Repetition, Ambivalence and Inarticulateness: Mourning and Memory in Western Heroism,
Serena Hashimoto
Resonance: Philosophy for Sonic Art, Peter Price
Schriftzeichen der Wahrheit: Zur Philosophie der Filmsprache, Alexander J. Klemm
Scratch & Sniff, Peter van de Kamp
Shamanism + Cyberspace, Mina Cheon

Sonic Soma: Sound, Body and the Origins of the Alphabet, Elise Kermani
Sovereignty in Singularity: Aporias in Ethics and Aesthetics, Gregory Bray
The Art of the Transpersonal Self: Transformation as Aesthetic and Energetic Practice,
Norbert Koppensteiner
The Ethics of Uncertainty: Aporetic Openings, Michael Anker
The Image That Doesnt Want to be Seen, Kenneth Feinstein
The Infinite City: Politics of Speed, Asli Telli Aydemir
The Media Poet, Michelle Cartier
The Novel Imagery: Aesthetic Response as Feral Laboratory, Dawan Stanford
The Organic Organisation: freedom, creativity and the search for fulfilment, Nicholas Ind
The Suicide Bomber; and her gift of death, Jeremy Fernando
The Transreal Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities, Micha Crdenas
Theodore, Sofia Fasos
Trans Desire/Affective Cyborgs, Micha Crdenas
Trans/actions: art, film and death, Bruce Barber
Transience: A poiesis, of dis/appearance, Julia Hlzl
Trauma, Hysteria, Philosophy, Hannes Charen
Upward Crashes Fractures Topoi: Musil, Kiefer, Darger, Paola Piglia-Veronese

Other books available from Atropos Press


5 Milton Stories (For the Witty, Wise and Worldly Child), Sofia Fasos Korahais
Che Guevara and the Economic Debate in Cuba, Luiz Bernardo Perics
Grey Ecology, Paul Virilio
heart, speech, this, Gina Rae Foster
Follow Us or Die, Vincent W.J., van Gerven Oei
Just Living: Philosophy in Artificial Life. Collected Works Volume 1, Wolfgang Schirmacher
Laughter, Henri Bergson
Pessoa, The Metaphysical Courier, Judith Balso
Philosophical Essays: from Ancient Creed to Technological Man, Hans Jonas
Philosophy of Culture, Schopenhauer and Tradition, Wolfgang Schirmacher
Talking Cheddo: Teaching Hard Kushitic Truths Liberating PanAfrikanism,
Menkowra Manga Clem Marshall
Teletheory, Gregory L. Ulmer
The Tupperware Blitzkrieg, Anthony Metivier
Vilm Flussers Brazilian Vampyroteuthis Infernalis, Vilm Flusser

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