the rhetoric of Affirmative Resistance: Dissonant Identities from Carroll to Derrida

245 Pages·1997·23.2 MB·English

by  Julian Wolfreys (auth.)

the rhetoric of
AFFIRMATIVE RESISTANCE
Holbein: The Ambassadors.
(newly restored) The National Gallery.
the rhetoric of
Affirltlative Resistance
Dissonant Identities
from
Carroll to Derrida
Julian Wolfreys
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-0-333-69451-0 ISBN 978-1-349-25699-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-25699-0
THE RHETORIC OF AFFIRMATIVE RESISTANCE
Copyright © 1997 by Julian Wolfreys
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced
in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
For information, address:
SI. Martin's Press, Scholarly and Reference Division,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1997
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and
made from fuHy managed and sustained forest sources.
ISBN 978-0-312-17330-2 (cIothbound)
ISBN 978-0-312-17331-9 (paperbound)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wolfreys, Julian, 1958-
The rhetoric of affirmative resistance : dissonant identities
from Carroll to Derrida / Julian Wolfreys.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-17330-2 - ISBN 978-0-312-17331-9 (pbk.)
I. Carroll, Lewis, 1832-1898-Criticism and interpretation.
2. Derrida, Jacques-Contributions in criticism. 3. Criticism.
4. Identity (Psychology) in literature. 5. Narration (Rhetoric)
I. Title.
PN81.W56 1997
828'.809-<1c21 96-50909
CIP
To
J.B. & R.R.
Il Y a toujours quelque chose d' absent
qui me tourmente
Contents
List of Abbreviations ix
Preface and Acknowledgements x
Affirmative Resistances: an Introduction, in passing 1
• an undecidable scene or, resisting
postmodernism 1
• of sounds, sights and sites: reading other
identities 8
• paradoxical identities and surfaces of reading 17
• enabling texts 21
1 Alice: an architecture of knowledges? or, identities in
dispute 35
• the problem of the house 35
• the inexhaustible subject 45
• a dissonant dynamic or, anarchitecture's
trembling 53
• identities in dispute 66
2 The writing on the wall or, making a spectacle of
yourself: projection and The Yellow Wallpaper 70
3 'The nervous laughter of writing': Stephen Hero,
onions, laughter and other lawless affirmations 86
4 Ulysses: memory's identities 105
• Stephen's other city 111
• 'L'etranger, l'etrangete du chez soi': Bloom's
doubling/Dublin 118
• Molliloquy: 'this that and the other' 122
5 Meshes of the Afternoon: the dissonant identities of
avant-garde film and problems of interpretation 133
vii
viii Contents
6 Affirmative memories, resistant projections:
Sylvie Germain's La Pleurante des rues de Prague 155
7 The place between: sending love and resisting identity
or, between Jacques Derrida, Daniel Deronda, and
Michel Deguy 194
• rehearsing the preliminaries 194
• absolute aphorisms 205
• between identities: sending, posting, writing 209
• copulative correspondence 214
Works Cited 225
Index 0/ Proper Names 233
List of Abbreviations
AA Lewis Carroll. The Annotated Alice: Alice's Adventures in Won
derland and Through the Looking Glass. Edited by Martin
Gardner. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987.
YW Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The Yellow Wallpaper. In Four Stories
by American Women. Edited by Cynthia Griffin Wolff. New
York: Penguin, 1990.
SH James Joyce. Stephen Hero. Edited by Theodore Spencer, John
J. Slocum and Herbert Cahoon. New York: New Directions,
1955
U James Joyce. Ulysses. Edited and revised by Hans Walter
Gabler et al. London: The Bodley Head, 1986. Citations are
by episode and line number.
P Sylvie Germain. La Pleurante des rues de Prague. Paris:
Gallimard, 1992.
W Sylvie Germain. The Weeping Woman on the Streets of Prague.
Translated by Judith Landry. Sawtry, Cambs.: Dedalus, 1993.
ix
Preface and
Acknowledgements
To paraphrase Pierre Macherey, all the texts gathered here are
related in that they belong to the age of what we call 'popular
culture' (Macherey 1995, 7), whether they are immediately rec
ognisable - determined or interpreted - as 'popular', or whether
they can be comprehended as belonging to 'high culture'. Their
gathering, seemingly heterogeneous as this is in its presentation,
belongs in part, again in Macherey's words, to a 'study which
elevates the disparate to the level of a principle' (Macherey 1995,
8). If the disparate is thus elevated, this is not so as to render
what is disparate as a unified object, or to give it a homogene
ous identity. And, furthermore, if the disparate is raised to the
level of a principle, then this is not to say that the principle has
behind it a programme already worked out or thought through,
as a means of calming down the dissonance which is everywhere.
Rather the disparate is celebrated for its own resistances - and
its unceasing affirmations.
Thanks are due to a number of people whose names will suffice,
and who also know who and where (and what) they are; they
have contributed in a number of ways, over a number of years,
directly or indirectly, to greater or lesser extents: James Kincaid,
Jessica Maynard, Burhan Tufail, Peggy Kamuf, Vince Cheng, Jenny
Boume Taylor, Claire Jones, Virginia Mason Vaughan, Marcia
Butzei, Geoff Ward, Mark Currie, Andrew Roberts, Marion Wynne
Davies, Jane Goldman, Charmian Heame, John Nash, Alistair
Davies, Jane Stabler, Moyra Haslett, John Abercrombie, Ken
Newton, and of course those to whom this book is dedicated in
friendship, gratitude and affirmative affection, and whose own
dissonant identities, like those of the nameless others, are hidden
everywhere in plain view throughout the surfaces of this book.
Chapter 5 is a substantially revised version of an essay enti
tled 'Meshes of the Afternoon: Hollywood, the A vant-Garde and
Problems of Interpretation', first published in CineAction! (De
cember 1987, 11; 38-42). The author would like to thank the
Editorial Collective for permission to republish this material.
x