Table Of ContentWALKER PERCY,
ARCHIVE FEELINGS FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
The Search for Influence
•
JESSICA HOOTEN WILSON
THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS
COLUMBUS
CLASSICAL MEMORIES/MODERN IDENTITIES
Paul Allen Miller and Richard H. Armstrong, Series Editors
WALKER PERCY,
ARCHIVE FEELINGS
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
A Theory of Greek Tragedy
The Search for Influence
• •
MARIO TELÒ JESSICA HOOTEN WILSON
THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS
COLUMBUS COLUMBUS
Copyright © 2020 by The Ohio State University.
This edition licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
License.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Telò, Mario, 1977– author.
Title: Archive feelings : a theory of Greek tragedy / Mario Telò.
Other titles: Classical memories/modern identities.
Description: Columbus : The Ohio State University Press, [2020] | Series: Classical
memories/modern identities | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Summary: “With readings of thirteen plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides,
including the Oedipus cycle, the Oresteia, Medea, and Bacchae; an eclectic synthesis of
Freud, Lacan, Derrida, Žižek, Deleuze, and other critical theorists; and an engagement
with art, architecture, and film, this book locates Greek tragedy’s aesthetic allure beyond
catharsis”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020024072 | ISBN 9780814214558 (cloth) | ISBN 081421455X (cloth) |
ISBN 9780814280812 (ebook) | ISBN 0814280811 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Greek drama (Tragedy)—History and criticism—Theory, etc. | Critical
theory. | Psychoanalysis and philosophy.
Classification: LCC PA3131 .T42 2020 | DDC 882.009—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020024072
Cover design by Christian Fuenfhausen
Text design by Juliet Williams
Type set in Adobe Minion Pro
CONTENTS
•
Acknowledgments vii
INTRODUCTION
Re-impressions of Greek Tragedy:
Toward Anti-cathartic Aesthetics 1
ARCHIVAL TIME
ONE Archiving Oedipus 43
TWO The Archive and the Loop 89
ARCHIVAL SPACE
THREE Anorganic Archives 135
FOUR Archival Crypts 183
ARCHIVAL ENDINGS
FIVE Tragic Jolts, Jouissance, Impossibility 237
EPILOGUE Reading Greek Tragedy, Reading Archivally 275
Bibliography 283
Index 315
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
•
I FIRST want to thank the two extraordinary anonymous referees of OSU
Press for their constructive and sympathetic reading of the manuscript. It
was a pleasure to engage with their suggestions in the process of revision.
The series “Classical Memories/Modern Identities” offers a model for intel-
lectual openness and fearlessness in the field of classics, and the enthusiasm
of the editors, Paul Allen Miller and Richard Armstrong, has uplifted me. At
OSU Press I found in Ana Jimenez-Moreno the most supportive and forward-
thinking editor. They all have my most profound gratitude.
Kathleen McCarthy carefully read the whole manuscript at a very busy
time, formulating with concision and insight the lineaments of the project.
Nelly Oliensis also generously read the manuscript during a semester of sab-
batical and provided many suggestions for improving content and form.
Brooke Holmes kindly discussed with me some of the book’s theoretical foun-
dations. Leslie Kurke prodded me to strive for greater clarity. Frequent discus-
sions with Mark Griffith energized me. A conversation with Jim Porter was
crucial in getting me started. I also owe to him a meeting with Jacques Ran-
cière, who has been a major influence.
Portions of this book have been presented as talks at UC Berkeley, the Uni-
versity of Edinburgh, UCLA (at the annual convention of the American Com-
parative Literature Association), Cambridge University, Université Lumière
Lyon 2, the College of the Holy Cross, UC Santa Barbara, and the Univer-
• vii •
viii Acknowledgments
sity of Georgia. My readings of Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus and Philoctetes
began to take shape in chapters I wrote for two edited volumes: Imagining
Reperformance in Ancient Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and The
Materialities of Greek Tragedy (Bloomsbury, 2018). My discussion of Francis
Bacon in chapter 4 is further developed in an article that appeared earlier this
year in Literary Imagination (22.2).
Throughout this project, Berkeley has loomed large—and here I refer not
just to inspirational faculty colleagues but also to the daring students who
helped me think through ideas: from the classics graduate students in my fall
2015 seminar on tragedy and affect to the undergraduates in my compara-
tive literature course on memory, destruction, and the archive in spring 2019.
Weekly conversations with my graduate advisees David Youd (in classics and
critical theory) and Christopher Scott (in comparative literature and critical
theory) have been continually stimulating. I benefited greatly from feedback I
received from the faculty writing group of the Berkeley Townsend Center, in
particular Églantine Colon, Marianne Constable, Whitney Davis, and Suzanne
Guerlac. Deepest thanks also go to the humanities division and the classics
department at UC Berkeley for supporting a sabbatical leave in the academic
year 2017–2018, during which most of the book was written. I would also like
to acknowledge a local wanderer whose archival physicality opened up a line
of inquiry around Oedipus that provided the basis of this book.
Thank you to Mark di Suvero for granting me the honor of displaying the
sculpture Che farò senza Eurydice? on the book’s cover and to Ivana Mestrovic
and Ana Jimenez-Moreno for their assistance in arranging the permissions. I
am very grateful to John Jacobs, a meticulous, astute, and sympathetic copy-
editor. Many thanks also to the team at the press, which has made the pro-
duction of the book such a pleasant experience: Laurie Avery, Tara Cyphers,
Kristina Wheeler, and Juliet Williams.
I dedicate this book to Alex Press, without whom it would never have
been completed or even begun. Alex was my first and most valued interlocu-
tor. Many of the ideas, both at the macro and micro level, come from him,
and he has never stopped sustaining and encouraging me, even in the most
difficult moments. A project as experimental and risk-taking as this could not
have come to fruition without the support of a guide as philosophically acute,
imaginative, exacting, and loving as Alex. His political consciousness and
daily practice of an authentic ethics of alterity have made me a better intel-
lectual and set me on a journey to become a better person. Strangely enough,
his archive fever, manifested in a mania for genealogy, has also connected
us, without ever really connecting us, with Freud himself—on the hundredth
anniversary of Beyond the Pleasure Principle, no less.
Acknowledgments ix
UNLESS OTHERWISE indicated, the texts of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Eurip-
ides are cited according to the most recent OCT editions—by Page (1972),
Lloyd-Jones and Wilson (1990), and Diggle (1981–1994), respectively—and the
translations are mine.
This title is freely available in an open access edition with generous support
from the Library of the University of California, Berkeley.
