Russell Samolsky
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823234790
- eISBN:
- 9780823241248
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823234790.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This book sets out to articulate a new theory and textual practice of the relation between literary reception and embodiment by arguing that certain modern literary texts have apocalyptic futures. ...
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This book sets out to articulate a new theory and textual practice of the relation between literary reception and embodiment by arguing that certain modern literary texts have apocalyptic futures. Rather than claim that great writers have clairvoyant powers, it examines the ways in which a text incorporates an apocalyptic event—and marked or mutilated bodies—into its future reception. The book is thus concerned with the way in which apocalyptic works solicit their future receptions. Deploying the double register of “marks” to show how a text both codes and targets mutilated bodies, the book focuses on how these bodies are incorporated into texts by Kafka, Conrad, Coetzee, and Spiegelman. Situating “In the Penal Colony” in relation to the Holocaust, Heart of Darkness to the Rwandan genocide, and Waiting for the Barbarians to the revelations of torture in apartheid South Africa and contemporary Iraq, it argues for the ethical and political importance of reading these literary works' “apocalyptic futures” in our own urgent and perilous situations. The book concludes with a reading of Spiegelman's Maus that offers a messianic counter-time to the law of apocalyptic incorporation.Less
This book sets out to articulate a new theory and textual practice of the relation between literary reception and embodiment by arguing that certain modern literary texts have apocalyptic futures. Rather than claim that great writers have clairvoyant powers, it examines the ways in which a text incorporates an apocalyptic event—and marked or mutilated bodies—into its future reception. The book is thus concerned with the way in which apocalyptic works solicit their future receptions. Deploying the double register of “marks” to show how a text both codes and targets mutilated bodies, the book focuses on how these bodies are incorporated into texts by Kafka, Conrad, Coetzee, and Spiegelman. Situating “In the Penal Colony” in relation to the Holocaust, Heart of Darkness to the Rwandan genocide, and Waiting for the Barbarians to the revelations of torture in apartheid South Africa and contemporary Iraq, it argues for the ethical and political importance of reading these literary works' “apocalyptic futures” in our own urgent and perilous situations. The book concludes with a reading of Spiegelman's Maus that offers a messianic counter-time to the law of apocalyptic incorporation.
Russell Samolsky
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823234790
- eISBN:
- 9780823241248
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823234790.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This introduction poses the problem of how the marked body in particular modern texts might imbue them with an apocalyptic destiny by absorbing marked and mutilated material (extralinguistic) bodies ...
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This introduction poses the problem of how the marked body in particular modern texts might imbue them with an apocalyptic destiny by absorbing marked and mutilated material (extralinguistic) bodies into the ambit of their future reception. It then questions whether these works might also be imbued with an internal metacommentary in which the authors reflect on the ethico-political destiny of their texts. The introduction poses the further question of how this fatal drive to power over bare life might be halted or, if it cannot be halted, at least arrested. It concludes by addressing the possibility of a countervailing redemptive or messianic force that might also be at work in these texts.Less
This introduction poses the problem of how the marked body in particular modern texts might imbue them with an apocalyptic destiny by absorbing marked and mutilated material (extralinguistic) bodies into the ambit of their future reception. It then questions whether these works might also be imbued with an internal metacommentary in which the authors reflect on the ethico-political destiny of their texts. The introduction poses the further question of how this fatal drive to power over bare life might be halted or, if it cannot be halted, at least arrested. It concludes by addressing the possibility of a countervailing redemptive or messianic force that might also be at work in these texts.
Russell Samolsky
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823234790
- eISBN:
- 9780823241248
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823234790.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter examines Heart of Darkness' apocalyptic drive to power by establishing a dialectic of “hollowing out” and “filling in” as the mechanisms by which the text incorporates the African ...
More
This chapter examines Heart of Darkness' apocalyptic drive to power by establishing a dialectic of “hollowing out” and “filling in” as the mechanisms by which the text incorporates the African genocide into its textual field in a radical inflation of its technique of delayed decoding. It considers the Kurtz/Marlow pairing as the text's meditation on its future reception and performs the political intervention of setting a limit to the power of this text to consume mutilated bodies. Using Freud's analysis of the uncanny, the chapter turns the text's incorporation of African genocide back on itself, releasing an ethical counter-history. What the incorporated bodies now call up is the repressed memory of colonial genocide in the Congo, which is overwhelmed by its will to power over the Rwandan genocide. The chapter concludes by analyzing Heart of Darkness in relation to contemporary discourse on messianism.Less
This chapter examines Heart of Darkness' apocalyptic drive to power by establishing a dialectic of “hollowing out” and “filling in” as the mechanisms by which the text incorporates the African genocide into its textual field in a radical inflation of its technique of delayed decoding. It considers the Kurtz/Marlow pairing as the text's meditation on its future reception and performs the political intervention of setting a limit to the power of this text to consume mutilated bodies. Using Freud's analysis of the uncanny, the chapter turns the text's incorporation of African genocide back on itself, releasing an ethical counter-history. What the incorporated bodies now call up is the repressed memory of colonial genocide in the Congo, which is overwhelmed by its will to power over the Rwandan genocide. The chapter concludes by analyzing Heart of Darkness in relation to contemporary discourse on messianism.
