Comfort in Contemporary Culture: The Challenges of a Concept 9783839449028

Citation preview

Dorothee Birke, Stella Butter (eds.) Comfort in Contemporary Culture

Culture & Theory  | Volume 212

Dorothee Birke is associate professor of English literature at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway. Her main research interests include political drama, digital book culture, and the history of the novel. She has held research fellowships at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies and the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies. Stella Butter is a professor of English and American literature at the University of Koblenz-Landau (Campus Landau). In her research, she is especially interested in representations of home in contemporary Anglophone literature, contingency and literature, and the cultural functions of the British novel in the process of modernisation.

Dorothee Birke, Stella Butter (eds.)

Comfort in Contemporary Culture The Challenges of a Concept

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http:// dnb.d-nb.de

© 2020 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover layout: Maria Arndt, Bielefeld Cover illustration: »Gemütlich«, Rowan / photocase.de Printed by Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-4902-4 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-4902-8 https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839449028 Printed on permanent acid-free text paper.

Contents

Introduction Challenging Comfort in Contemporary Literature and Culture Dorothee Birke / Stella Butter ............................................................. 7

Lexical-Semantic Analysis of ‘Comfort’ A Contrastive Perspective of English, European Portuguese, and Polish Zuzanna Bułat Silva ....................................................................... 21

On the Temptations of Comfort The Poetics of Slothfulness in Pynchon Burak Sezer.............................................................................. 43

“A sort of strange beginning out of time” Comfort as an Involuntary Cultural Memory Elisa Carandina .......................................................................... 65

Comfort in Contemporary Art Shadow Works Against the Background of Blumenberg’s Notion of ‘Comfort in the Cave’ Angela Breidbach ........................................................................ 85

Writing Dis/Comfort A Novelist’s Approach to Ageing Bodies and Un/Comfortable Places Sarah Butler ............................................................................. 101

Are You Dwelling Comfortably? Heidegger’s Home Comforts in The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt Andrew Liston............................................................................ 117

Subverting Late Capitalist Comfort Affective Connections in Deepak Unnikrishnan’s Temporary People Juliane Strätz ........................................................................... 133

The Politics of Comfort in J.M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year Didymus Tsangue Douanla............................................................... 149

Gothic Hauntings Post-9/11 Home Spaces and the Dis/Comfort of American History in The Walking Dead Dorothee Marx .......................................................................... 167

Embracing Mindful Discomfort Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird Nourit Melcer-Padon .................................................................... 187

“These Seats Are So Comfy” Livecasting and the Notion of Comfortable Theatre Heidi Liedke ............................................................................ 205

Discomforting Silences in Alt-Right America, 2019 Simon Strick ............................................................................ 227

Contributors ......................................................................... 249

Introduction Challenging Comfort in Contemporary Literature and Culture Dorothee Birke / Stella Butter

Comfort is a central mark of Western modernity. Indeed, one cannot but marvel at our determination and success in coming up with ever new ways of enhancing “a state of physical and material well-being” by developing ever more products “that produce […] or minister […] to enjoyment and content” (both definitions of “comfort” in the Oxford English Dictionary [OED]). Our aspiration towards comfort is particularly visible in the concept’s ubiquity in advertisements for a broad range of objects and services, from cars and hotel rooms to panty liners or fabric softener. Apparently, there is no such thing as being too comfortable. This is particularly noticeable in the area of home design: not only do house builders choose names like “Comfortable Living” for their company;1 we are also instructed on how to choose the “most comfortable flooring” (Canty 2017) and encouraged to expect “comfortenhancing technologies”2 in our bathrooms. But even in the competitive banking sector, to name only one further example from a long list, ‘comfort’ is the road to success: “America’s Most Convenient Bank”, as the Toronto Dominion Bank has successfully branded itself, is admired in the business world for having “achieved the deepest market penetration” in Canada with its catchy slogan “banking can be this comfortable” (Alexander 2015). In the bank’s advertisements, this slogan regularly gleams over a comfy chair, which is very similar to the one on the cover of this book. While these examples pertain to comfort as physical well-being, convenience, and ease, there is an equally lively discourse on acts of comforting people. Comfort in this context entails “relief or support in mental distress or affliction; consolation, solace, soothing”, to cite the OED once again. A google search yields 3.460.000.000 hits on “how to comfort people”, including a ‘wikihow’. Given that comforting those in distress can itself be deeply uncomfortable, as Val Walker writes in her prizewinning book The Art of Comforting (2010: vii), there seems to be a need for practical 1 2

https://www.comfortableliving.co.uk/about-us/ (accessed: May 5, 2020). https://www.duravit.co.uk/products/all_series/viu.com-en.html (accessed: May 5, 2020).

8

Dorothee Birke / Stella Butter

help with comforting. Such a need testifies, once again, to the high value that is placed on comfort in the first place. In the words of Val Walker, a “comforter’s embrace does the same thing” as “what a cast or a brace does for a broken arm”: “holding us together when we feel broken” (xiv; emphasis in original). In such a view, finding comfort through another appears as nothing less than a condition for psychological survival. Becoming a comforter when need be, in turn, becomes an ethical imperative. As diverse as these outlined discourses centring on comfort are, they are united in their emphatic endorsement of comfort as good. However, we seem to be equally obsessed with the benefits of discomfort. The idea that we need to ‘get out of our comfort zone’ has become a contemporary mantra in widely differing fields, be they public health, business management, political activism, or higher education teaching. At the same time, the physical comforts of modernity have themselves come under suspicion. There is a growing consciousness that material comfort may have costs beyond those that are visible in an individual consumer’s bank balance. A rising number of voices point to exploitative labour relations that enable comfortable homes and workplaces, not to speak of the thorny issues of sustainability and environmental protection. Comfort, then, is a challenging concept in more ways than one. It is challenging due to its multidimensionality, the many meanings it can take on in different settings, but also because the concept of ‘comfort’ serves as an arena for battling ideologies. A focus on comfort helps tap into neuralgic points of contemporary cultures. While research contributions centring on comfort can be found in architecture, anthropology, social geography, sociology, history, philosophy, and nursing studies, there is a need for an interdisciplinary dialogue that can explain how and to what ends comfort is valorised in different social fields and discourses. The aim of this volume is to explore what contributions cultural and literary studies can make to such a dialogue. It brings together essays by scholars of literary and media studies, art history, and linguistics in order to analyse the shaping of comfort as a cultural narrative and emotional touchstone. The volume thus pursues some fundamental larger questions: How do representations of dis/comfort in literature, the arts, or media connect to or complicate existing idea(l)s of comfort? How can relations between comfort and discomfort be conceptualised? Wherein lies the value of dis/comfort? How is the concept mobilised by specific discourses or ideologies? How may the semantics of ‘comfort’ help trace cultural formations? In the following, we will present a compact selection of recent theoretical approaches that represent different avenues of conceptualizing comfort in contemporary Western societies. On this foundation, we will then outline our take on the role of studies of literature, culture, and linguistics and introduce the individual contributions collated in the volume.

Introduction

1. Modern Comfort: Genealogies and Debates The need for physical comfort is, in the words of the philosopher and design theorist Tomás Maldonado, a distinctly “modern idea” (1991: 35). Maldonado is one of a number of scholars who posit close ties between a development of the ideal of comfort and processes of modernisation, such as technological advancement, urbanisation, the invention of the nuclear family, and the rise of capitalism and consumer culture. Anthropologists, historians, and sociologists in particular have contributed to mapping out these relations, stating that advances of modernisation led to shifts in the meaning of comfort, namely from spiritual support to a “privately experienced, sensory contentment” (Boni 2016: 138). As the anthropologist Stefano Boni argues, the broad availability of “technological-propelled comfort” (though not evenly distributed around the globe) is a modern phenomenon and its pursuit central to the forging of the contemporary self (ibid.: 133). Using Foucault’s terminology, Boni regards practices of comfort as a “technology of the self” that is tailored to effectively screen the subject from “the toil and impurity associated with direct contact with the organic world” (ibid.: 138). For the historian John E. Crowley (1999), the key period for this shift is the rise of “a new material culture” (750) in the eighteenth century. This consumer revolution, Crowley explains, should not be understood as merely driven by a ‘natural’ desire for physical comfort shared by humans across time, as there is a large extent of cultural variance in what counts as a comfortable environment (ibid.). Instead, “[p]hysical comfort […] was an innovative aspect of Anglo-American culture, one that had to be taught and learned” (ibid.). In his detailed analysis of the discourse on comfort in the eighteenth century, Crowley traces how the idea of comfort first served to legitimise new patterns of popular consumption by unsettling the previous economic and moral dichotomy between necessity and (insidious) luxury. Thinkers of political economy during that time pointed out that what counts as a luxury or a necessity depends on context: “Standards of living could improve. The term ‘comfort’ increasingly applied to those standards, and assessed their fulfillment.” (Ibid.: 751) Crowley (1999: 764) shows how the “extent and degree of convenience and comfort among the populace” came to be seen as a yardstick to measure Europe’s progress towards civilisation. This helps explain why, towards the end of the century, humanitarians regarded physical comfort, understood as a universal and natural need, as “a right of the unprivileged” (ibid.: 752) in their striving for social justice. Such a humanitarian construction of comfort still endures today, as can be seen by the name of a Nigerian human rights organisation, namely the “Comfort Human Right Foundation”, whose slogan “access to justice and development”

9

10

Dorothee Birke / Stella Butter

reflects their aim to further social justice in Nigeria, especially the protection of women and children.3 However, comfort did not just become a concept that could be mobilised in political agendas – scholars also point out its key function in defining social norms. For Maldonado, the ideal of comfort functions as “a scheme for social control” (1991: 35) and conditions disciplinary practices. In particular, he regards the comfortable home in bourgeois Victorian England as a site in which patterns of order (e.g. gender order and class values) and practices of hygiene are instilled. The worried concern with public hygiene during the nineteenth century, which was equally a discourse on social morality, posited the city and the house or home as “an intimate part of the same system of hygiene” (ibid.: 40). Other scholars also agree with Maldonado’s view that ideology of physical comfort can be associated with the rise of the middle-class in the nineteenth century in that it provided “crucial values, consumption patterns, and behaviors for the formation of a middle class” (Crowley 1999: 780). The continuing significance of the home as a “microcosm [that] perfectly exemplifies the relation between modernization and comfort” (Maldonado 1991: 36) also resonates through the work by the sociologist Elizabeth Shove, who focuses on the progress of comfort in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In her study Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience: The Social Organization of Normality (2003), Shove describes the sphere of the domestic as the central place where comfort is performed in daily rituals that have since the nineteenth century drastically changed perceptions of what are ‘normal’ standards of consumption and hygiene. Her study is notable for her astute conceptualisation of the complex interplay between everyday practices of comfort, sociotechnical objects, and sociotechnical systems (ibid: 48ff.). A similar interest for the interplay between practices and objects characterises Boni’s exploration of the significance of screens, i.e. “artificial shields separating humans from their surroundings” and thereby “disentangling the body from undesired sensuous interactions, mostly with the untamed organic” (2016: 138). His list of screens ranges from thermal control in buildings, the replacement of breastfeeding with milk bottles, to vaccines that protect against the experience of diseases. It seems to us that in the current Corona crisis with its focus on screens (be they plexiglass barriers in supermarkets or face masks), both the desire to control our encounters with the organic through shields and the limitations of such endeavours are becoming glaringly obvious. We can currently also witness the ways in which attempts to inhibit the “direct, […] sensuous involvement with organic materials [… and] environments” (ibid.: 139) are entangled with the ideology of consumerism.

3

http://co-hrf.org/ (accessed: May 5, 2020).

Introduction

Tellingly, the plexiglass screens are repeatedly described as not only ensuring a safe but also a “comfortable […] space for […] valued customers” (Geller 2020). The “collective restructuring of expectation and habit” (Shove 2003: 4) effected by an increasing global demand for comfort has obvious dark sides. Not least, the “escalation” of such demand, e.g. for the thermal comfort provided by heating and air conditioning, fuels unsustainable consumption (ibid.: 3). Roughly half of the energy consumption worldwide takes place in buildings and a substantial portion of this “is devoted to keeping people comfortable” (ibid.). This critical interrogation of how comfort practices contribute to environmental degradation underlines once again how comfort continues to be deeply politicised across different fields. Some thinkers even go as far as to posit the desire for comfortable consumption as the root cause of an alleged political passivity in Europe and the United States since the early twentieth century (Boni 2016: 147). All these inquiries are linked by their understanding of Western modernity as fixated on physical and material comfort. This certainly illuminates some of the main issues linked with modernisation and also helps to interrogate some of its problematic aspects, such as the focus on consumerism, the reliance on technology as a guarantor of progress, and the relation between growth and sustainability. However, we would argue that two points in particular should receive more attention: one, the continuing role of non-material dimensions of comfort and two, what in some ways seems to be the corollary of the obsession with comfort, namely an appreciation of discomfort. To start with the second point, as already briefly mentioned above, there are many contemporary discourses extolling the positive effects of discomfort, particularly those crystallizing around the catchphrase of the ‘comfort zone’. A comfort zone, in current parlance, is usually to be avoided rather than sought. According to the OED, early uses of the phrase link it to material conditions, as “the range of temperatures within which an environment is habitable”. However, this usage is now overshadowed by a figurative meaning, where the comfort zone is a “situation in which a person feels secure or at ease”, often with a negative spin: “an established pattern of (professional) behaviour which presents few difficulties or challenges and yields only acceptable results, but which one is reluctant to change” (all OED). Comfort, in this sense, is attributed to a mental state or cognitive condition; the model underlying the negative connotation of the comfort zone is that of growth or development needing to be spurred by a certain amount of stress. This figure of thought has been applied in various fields, from business management theory concerned with work performance (White 2009) to higher education, where students are encouraged to “push the boundaries of your comfort zone” and thereby “test and expand the limits of your mind and pave new experiences that are unsimilar in scope and breadth to your past” (Umelloh 2017). The notion of the ‘comfort zone’ as an impediment to development has been criticised as be-

11

12

Dorothee Birke / Stella Butter

ing based on simplistic understandings of principles from education theory, like Piaget’s concept of accommodation or Festinger’s concept of cognitive dissonance (Brown 2008). Brown cautions that it should not be understood as a proper part of a theory of education or an empirically proven finding, but a figure of thought whose popularity (as he argues for his own field, outdoor education) may even have detrimental effects: “I suggest that the adoption of the comfort zone model and the assumptions that underpin it have less than desirable consequences in terms of student engagement, psychological well-being and emotional safety.” (Ibid.: 10) However, it may be exactly the undertheorised character of the ‘comfort zone’ idea that makes it so amenable to being mobilised for a variety of discourses and their identity models, from a neoliberal interest in optimising the individual productivity of employees to an emancipatory rhetoric about students needing to be jolted into independent thinking. Our second contention, namely that a full investigation of the significance of comfort and modernity also needs to pay close attention to the relation between physical/material and other types of comfort, is bolstered by an important theoretical contribution from a field that by its nature has a strong interest in the practical applications of comfort: nursing studies. ‘Comfort theory’, an approach developed in the 1990s by the American nursing theorist Katharine Kolcaba, conceives of itself as a reaction against an increasingly technological approach to comfort in health care in the course of the twentieth century. As Kolcaba explains, comfort came to be seen as secondary to the “larger purpose of effecting cure” (2003: 22) and as geared towards facilitating “an absence of specific discomforts” mainly in a physical sense (ibid.: 20) – a tendency that fits perfectly with the historical and sociological models introduced above. Conversely, Kolcaba herself advocates a return to the holistic understanding exemplified in the work of the pioneer of modern nursing, Florence Nightingale, whose followers saw the ability to make a patient comfortable as essential and as encompassing attention to mental as well as physical factors. On this basis, Kolcaba proposes a model with four “contexts” of comfort that are interactional, i.e. indirectly enhance each other, and therefore all need to be addressed: the physical/organic (“pertaining to bodily sensations”), the psychospiritual (“pertaining to internal awareness of self, including esteem, sexuality, meaning in one’s life, and relationship to a higher order or being”), the social (“pertaining to interpersonal […] relationships”), and the environmental (which includes factors like light, noise, and temperature). (Kolcaba 1994: 1179) Debates on conceptualisations of comfort are flanked with research on further topics, such as patients’ experientiality of comfort (Morse 2000) or comforting strategies used by nurses (Hawley 2000), which deepen our understanding of comfort’s complexity. On the whole, the theorisation in nursing studies is a powerful reminder of the interactivity between physical and material aspects of comfort with spiritual and affective ones.

Introduction

2. Comfort Studies: New Perspectives Given the outlined cultural prominence and complexity of ‘dis/comfort’ as an ideal, it is surprising that there is a scarcity of extended studies exploring competing conceptualisations of comfort and their implications for practices of the self, social and ethical relations, and media or political spheres. In particular, there is a research gap on comfort in literary, media, and cultural studies as well as linguistics – hence the very disciplines that can offer a vital contribution in analysing the shaping of comfort as a cultural narrative and emotional touchstone. The present volume, then, can be understood as a first foray into proposing ‘comfort studies’ as a field to which cultural and literary studies play a central role. For this project, a holistic model like Kolcaba’s, with its keen attention to comfort as a multi-dimensional process with ethical implications, provides a useful starting point. It complements the sophisticated understanding of the central role of physical or material comfort developed in the historical and sociological studies we have outlined. In combination, those theories provide a solid foundation for analyses of the ways in which cultural artefacts – such as novels, TV series, or art installations – reflect on the contemporary significance and the relation between different kinds of comfort. In turn, as scholars of literature and culture, we are also particularly interested in how such imaginings in the realm of the arts can shape or broaden our understanding of what comfort and discomfort mean on an individual as well as social level. Our interest in the forms and functions of dis/comfort in these artefacts does not just include the level of that which is represented in the texts and other artefacts, but also poses the question of how these productions themselves may induce responses in their recipients that can be described in terms of comfort and discomfort. Understood as a state of mind, comfort pertains to at least two different dimensions, an emotional one (e.g. feeling relaxed and safe) and a cognitive one (e.g. experiencing a sense of familiarity and order). Reception theory has long been interested in the effects of literature and art. What may immediately come to mind is the idea that literature and art have consoling power. As the literary theorist Rita Felski writes in her manifesto Uses of Literature (2008): Reading may offer a solace and relief not to be found elsewhere, confirming that I am not entirely alone, that there are others who think or feel like me. Through this experience of affiliation, I feel myself acknowledged; I am rescued from the fear of invisibility, from the terror of not being seen. (33)4

4

That such views are popular far beyond the circle of literary critics is attested to by the fact that the already-mentioned ‘how to’-book, The Art of Comforting, written by the bereavement counsellor Val Walker, features a whole section on “The Comfort of Art” (2010: 135-177).

13

14

Dorothee Birke / Stella Butter

At the same time, there is also a long tradition of valorising discomforting reception effects in the arts, such as the technique of defamiliarisation (whereby the familiar is made strange through the way it is represented, thus arguably denying the reader the cognitive comfort of recognition) or the aesthetics of shock (which stages discomfiting phenomena like extreme violence and thereby tries to elicit emotional and ethical reactions from the audience). Examining creative work through the analytic lens of comfort, then, helps to focus on ethical, political, and social functions of art and literature. It enables us to understand how aesthetic artefacts operate in culture and how the modulations of comfort are bound to cultural norms and priorities, power dynamics, and to community building. The contributions to this volume take up comfort as a challenging concept to engage with key cultural developments and different creative productions. The point of departure is a detailed linguistic analysis of the meaning of ‘comfort’, which illuminates the cultural situatedness of the concept and provides a helpful frame of reference for ideas on comfort in the ensuing articles. Zuzanna Bułat Silva’s article “Lexical-Semantic Analysis of ‘Comfort’” explores the meanings of ‘comfort’ in different European languages, namely European Portuguese (conforto), English (comfort), and Polish (komfort). The methodological framework of Natural Semantic Metalanguage, which Bułat Silva adopts, allows to pinpoint subtle semantic differences between what seems to be the ‘same’ word. These comparisons help explain, for example, why the Polish komfort often has negative connotations, in contrast to the English comfort or Portuguese conforto. The next article shifts the focus from the semantic meanings of ‘comfort’ to the question of how a particular take on the concept may become productive for critical theory. Burak Sezer’s contribution on “Deceitful Sources of Comfort: The Poetics of Slothfulness in Pynchon” expands current conceptualisations of comfort through its critical discussion of Thomas Pynchon’s writings. Sezer shows how Pynchon’s typology and poetics of sloth outline a complex relationship between sloth and dis/comfort, troubling the widespread idea that sloth should be seen as a pathologising of comfort. By bringing into play the cognitive dimension of comfort, Sezer proposes that for Pynchon, sloth can be either comfortable or uncomfortable and that the difference has political implications: uncomfortable sloth becomes a politicised attitude, in some instances even an instrument of resistance. Pynchon’s multi-facetted approach to sloth, which comprises religious, socio-political, economic, and media aspects, helps calibrate the plight of the individual in contemporary life-worlds. A very different conceptualisation of comfort is developed in Elisa Carandina’s article “Comfort as an Involuntary Cultural Memory”, which draws on psychoanalytic theories to discuss the human yearning for a ‘comfort zone’ that she defines as that which is familiar. Carandina’s point of departure is the observation that we keep striving for comfort although it may not be good for us. In an innovative

Introduction

move, Carandina explains this curious dynamic by developing a new understanding of comfort that hinges on repetition compulsion, memory, and normativity. These key concepts are captured in the term she introduces to describe comfort: ‘involuntary cultural memory’. Carandina explains why life-writing bears particular affinities to this form of comfort and illustrates the explanatory value of her model by using Leah Goldberg’s diary and poems as a case study. The consolatory function of art is at the centre of Angela Breidbach’s art-historical essay “Comfort in Contemporary Art: Shadow Works against the Background of Blumenberg’s Notion of Comfort in the Cave”. Breidbach uses the term ‘shadow works’ to refer to artistic productions that evoke the play of shadows within a cave. By drawing on Hans Blumenberg’s philosophical anthropology, especially his concept of consolation (trostbedürftig) and his model of the cave, Breidbach teases out the complexity of the shadow as a figure in the works of the South African artist William Kentridge and the German artist Hans-Peter Feldmann. The viewer of an artwork, Breidbach argues, can draw comfort from the engagement with a work even if its contents are uncomfortable, as it can also be the form that can be comforting. In thus using comfort as a conceptual lens to discuss the effect of form, Breidbach continues a train of thought that could also be found in Sezer’s essay. It is also a central point in the contribution by Sarah Butler, who reflects on the role of dis/comfort in creative writing from the standpoint of a practitioner (“Writing Dis/Comfort: A Novelist’s Approach to Ageing Bodies and Un/Comfortable Places”). From her perspective as a writer, Butler discusses her own novel Jack & Bet (published with Picador in 2020), which explores the precariousness of home as a comfortable space in the increasingly uncomfortable landscape of contemporary London. Butler emphasises how the comfort of home derives not just from its material and spatial qualities, but first and foremost from its affective ones. Butler’s poetic and theoretical exploration of Jack & Bet identifies sources of comfort and discomfort within domestic and urban environments and foregrounds the ageing body as a site of potential dis/comfort. These themes are related to the process of literary production: she understands the novel as an un/comfortable home and the process of writing it as an un/comfortable act of homemaking. The novel, just like the home, she argues, both satisfies and eludes our desire for comforting order and stability. Andrew Liston’s article on “Are You Dwelling Comfortably? Heidegger’s Home Comforts in The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt” continues the exploration of comfort within the framework of home. Like Butler, he also foregrounds the idea that ‘home’ should be understood as a practice rather than a fixed entity, and that comfort as a defining feature of home needs to be understood holistically, in Kolcaba’s sense. Liston takes Heidegger’s concept of dwelling as a key to reading Tartt’s novel as negotiating physical and spiritual comforts of the domestic. The ecocritical implications of dwelling or the ‘embeddedness of being’ are addressed in Liston’s reflec-

15

16

Dorothee Birke / Stella Butter

tions on the etymology of ecology (derived from the Greek word for ‘home’) and on the importance of overcoming the Cartesian divide between self and world that underpins the exploitation of nature. He argues that Tartt’s novel stages the entanglement of self and environment in its depiction of homes, which embody the contention that only a home that enables Heideggerian ‘dwelling’ consonant with the (natural) environment is truly comfortable. Juliane Strätz’ contribution “Subverting Late Capitalist Comfort: Affective Connections in Deepak Unnikrishnan’s Temporary People” also deals with a contemporary novel, but her reading is informed by affect studies and an interest in how fiction critically engages with comfort as an instrument of social reproduction in late capitalism. Unnikrishnan’s Temporary People provides a damning critique of the dehumanizing migrant labour that underpins the material comforts enjoyed in rich Arab Gulf States and, by extension, also in the West. Strätz discusses how both the novel’s depiction of abject working conditions and its experimental form make for a deeply discomforting reading experience. Temporary People not only establishes the migrant workers as affective agents with a voice, but it also subverts the capitalist commercialisation of material and affective comfort through its particular uncomfortable evocation of reader response. The politics of comfort also take centre stage in Didymus Tsangue Douanla’s article, but with a focus on postcolonial diasporic identities (“The Politics of Comfort in J. M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year”). Coetzee’s novel Diary of a Bad Year, which incorporates political essays written by the protagonist JC, invites an autobiographical reading due to the parallels between JC and J.M. Coetzee, who emigrated from South Africa to Australia. Douanla shows how the ambiguous form of Diary of a Bad Year foregrounds that private comfort can never be fully detached from the public domain. He demonstrates how Coetzee develops an ethics of discomfort with regard to the socio-political realm and an ethics of comfort in the sphere of intimate relations, thus relating material and spiritual dimensions of the concept. This ethics of dis/comfort is combined with a metafictional perspective on the dis/comforts of the writer and reader. The uncomfortable presence of collective trauma in post-9/11 USA is at the centre of Dorothee Marx’ discussion of a very different kind of cultural artefact, a TV series about zombies. In “Gothic Hauntings: Post-9/11 Home Spaces and the Discomfort of American History in AMC’s The Walking Dead”, Marx develops a political perspective on discomfort, linking it to the return of the repressed in US-American cultural memory following the 9/11 attacks. She argues that it is actually the violent and racist past experienced by Native Americans in the twenty-first century that resurfaces in the gothic spaces comprising the setting of the series. On the level of response, viewers potentially experience discomfort because their longing for stable, secure, and comforting home spaces is repeatedly shattered. Thus, the series

Introduction

calls attention to the dubious legacy of its viewers’ own ‘comfort zones’, both in a material and a figurative sense. The shift from literature to television or film is continued with Nourit MelcerPadon’s article “Embracing Mindful Discomfort: Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird”. MelcerPadon is interested in the complex psychological relation between discomfort and comfort. Lady Bird, the teenage protagonist in Gerwig’s coming-of-age film, repeatedly puts herself in uncomfortable and precarious positions to achieve her goal of studying at an elite college. Melcer-Padon draws on discourses of hedonic psychology and mindfulness to explain why discomfort appears as Lady Bird’s means for advancement and as her comfort zone. Lady Bird’s shocking behaviour can be likened to the form of mindfulness practiced through challenging yoga positions, which require getting comfortable in an uncomfortable position. It is this kind of mindfulness, Melcer-Padon argues, that enables Lady Bird to focus on the present while working towards her future. The fairly recent and popular trend of live theatre broadcasting in cinemas is the focus of Heidi Liedke’s article “‘These Seats Are So Comfy’: Livecasting and the Notion of Comfortable Theatre”. The concept of comfort, Liedke argues, provides a helpful lens for examining the changes this trend brings for the experiences of the audience as well as for the public perception of theatre-going and the branding of theatre venues. Liedke’s discussion is based on audience responses to livecasts on social media, marketing moves of theatre companies, and her own experience of attending livecasts. By drawing on recent research on audience etiquette and ‘feels culture’, Liedke is able to identify how the marketing of the livecasting experience and the assessment of its cultural significance hinge on four sources of dis/comfort: physical, visual/aesthetic, emotional, and habitual. The final contribution to the volume, Simon Strick’s “Discomforting Silences in Alt-Right America, 2019”, is concerned with the performativity and political effect of discomforting silences in a mediasphere marked by attention-grabbing noise and a culture war waged by the Alternative Right. Strick makes use of affect theory to explain the workings of what he calls a politically ‘progressive’ and a ‘reactionary’ form of discomforting silence. The unexpected silence of Emma González at the beginning of her televised speech at the March for Our Lives protest event appears as ‘progressive silence’, whereas the “Lincoln Memorial Confrontation” of January 2019, where white Nick Sandman silently ‘stood his ground’ against Omaha tribe member Nathan Phillips, is a case of ‘reactionary silence’ instrumentalised by the Alternative Right. Strick rounds off his discussion by addressing the question of what the problem of un/comfortable silence might mean for his own position as a scholar of the humanities. As a whole, the contributions offer a kaleidoscopic view of comfort’s manifold qualities and the way it structures the fabric of modern life, from our most intimate relations to the theatre of political performance. What this specific mix of contri-

17

18

Dorothee Birke / Stella Butter

butions particularly highlights is the strong nexus between comfort and discomfort – whether they are seen as two sides of the same coin in a socio-political context or understood as interrelated affective reactions. To reflect on comfort means thinking about how we see ourselves, relate to our environment, and to each other. To speak about comfort is never neutral: saying that something is comfortable or uncomfortable entails a judgment on the part of the speaker. To participate in a book project on comfort in contemporary literature and culture is to take up the challenge of ‘comfort’ by using it as a lens to explore experientialities, attitudes, and value systems. *** Many of the contributions to this volume go back to papers held at the international symposium “Challenging Comfort as an Idea(l) in Contemporary Literature and Culture”, which was hosted by the University of Koblenz-Landau (Campus Landau) in 2018. We would like to thank the University of Koblenz-Landau for its generous funding of both the symposium and this edited volume. Our warm thanks also go to the team that provided invaluable help with the formal editing process: Friederike Kuban and especially Benjamin Bedersdorfer and Heidi Liedke, who did the lions’ share of the work of formatting the volume.

Introduction

Works Cited Alexander, Renee. 2015. “Banking in Comfort: 5 Questions with TD Bank CMO/EVP Dominic Mercuri.” brandchannel, November 26. https://www.brandchannel. com/2015/11/26/5-questions-td-bank-112615/ (accessed: May 5, 2020). Boni, Stefano. 2016. “Technologically-Propelled Comfort. Some Theoretical Implications of the Contemporary Overcoming of Fatigue.” Antropologia 3.1: 133-151. Brown, Mike. 2008. “Comfort Zone: Model or Metaphor?” Australian Journal of Outdoor Education 12.1: 3-12. Canty, Jill. 2017. “What’s the Most Comfortable Flooring?” BuildDirect Blog, June 12. https://www.builddirect.com/blog/whats-the-most-comfortable-flooring/ (accessed: May 5, 2020). Crowley, John E. 1999. “The Sensibility of Comfort.” The American Historical Review 104.3: 749-782. Felski, Rita. Uses of Literature. 2008. Malden, MA/Oxford: Blackwell. Geller, Stefan. 2020. “Grocery Stores Install Plexiglass at Checkout to Protect Cashiers, Customers from Coronavirus.” Boston Herald, March 24. https:// www.bostonherald.com/2020/03/24/grocery-stores-install-plexiglass-atcheckout-to-protect-cashiers-customers-from-coronavirus/ (accessed: May 5, 2020). Hawley, Patricia M. 2000. “Nurse Comforting Strategies: Perceptions of Emergency Department Patients.” Clinical Nursing Research 9.4: 441-459. Kolcaba, Katharine. 1994. “A Theory of Holistic Comfort for Nursing.” Journal of Advanced Nursing 19: 1178-1184. —. 2003. Comfort Theory and Practice: A Vision for Holistic Health Care and Research. New York: Springer. Maldonado, Tomás. 1991. “The Idea of Comfort.” Design Issues 8.1: 35-43. Morse, Janice M. 2000. “On Comfort and Comforting.” The American Journal of Nursing 100.9: 34-37. “Comfort.” Oxford English Dictionary online. https://www.oed.com/ (accessed: May 5, 2020). “Comfort zone.” Oxford English Dictionary online. https://www.oed.com/ (accessed: May 5, 2020). Shove, Elizabeth. 2003. Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience: The Social Organization of Normality. Oxford/New York: Berg. Umelloh, Nnenna. 2017. “Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone.” Pearson Students, September 7. https://www.pearsoned.com/getting-comfort-zone/ (accessed: May 5, 2020). Walker, Val. 2010. The Art of Comforting: What to Say and Do for People in Distress. New York et al: Tarcher/Penguin.

19

20

Dorothee Birke / Stella Butter

White, Alasdair. 2009. From Comfort Zone to Performance Management: Understanding Development and Performance. White & MacLean Publishing. [Ebook]

Lexical-Semantic Analysis of ‘Comfort’ A Contrastive Perspective of English, European Portuguese, and Polish Zuzanna Bułat Silva

1. Introduction ‘Comfort’ is an important concept for many people nowadays. Its special status is signalled through the ubiquitous presence of the word comfort in modern discourses on home, health and safety, social relations, and individual well-being. People seek to live and work in comfort. Accordingly, interior designers and architects strive for comfort in their projects of new homes (Rybczyński 1986). Shoes are designed for comfort. Health professionals point to the importance of comfort for the convalescence and mental stamina of patients (Kolcaba 1994, 2014). While the word comfort is frequently used, it is far from clear what exactly people mean when they say comfort. This matter is further complicated by the question of whether people who talk about ‘comfort’ in a language other than English also mean the same thing. The primary goal of this article is to analyse the meaning of ‘comfort’ in three languages: English, European Portuguese, and Polish. Such a comparative approach helps highlight the cultural particularities of how ‘comfort’ is used and understood in different languages. To capture what people want to say when they use the English word comfort, Portuguese conforto, and Polish komfort, I will examine dictionary definitions of these words, have a look at their synonyms, antonyms, and collocations, and investigate how they are used in texts, analysing the data from three linguistic corpora: British National Corpus, Corpus de Referência do Português Contemporâneo, and Narodowy Korpus Języka Polskiego. As a culture-neutral tool, Natural Semantic Metalanguage, or NSM, will be applied to explain the meanings and delineate the semantic differences between the three words in question. The article is organised as follows. In section two the NSM approach is described briefly. Section three is devoted to the analysis of abstract nouns; in this section the semantic template of abstract nouns is outlined and justified. Section four consists of a lexical-semantic analysis of the English term comfort. Then, in section five and six respectively, a similar analysis is conducted for Portuguese conforto

22

Zuzanna Bułat Silva

and Polish komfort. And finally, the concluding remarks are presented in section seven.

2. NSM as a Tool for Cross-Cultural Semantics Natural Semantic Metalanguage (Wierzbicka 1996, 2013; Goddard/Wierzbicka 2014) or NSM is a decompositional approach to studying lexical meaning, with more than 45 years of history (Wierzbicka 1972). Its originator, Anna Wierzbicka, says that NSM is like an alphabet of human thought (borrowing the term from Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz). It looks like a language in miniature, consisting of 65 semantic primes and a grammar that binds them. These semantic primes, which probably have linguistic exponents in all the world’s languages, include evaluators GOOD and BAD, IF and BECAUSE for expressing conditionality and causality, NOT for negation, THINK, FEEL and KNOW to convey human mental capacities, etc. (for the complete list of semantic primes see Table 1 below). Each prime has well-specified syntactic properties. Primes’ exponents are not lexemes but lexical units (pairings of one form with one meaning). They are not necessarily single words but can also be bound morphemes or phrasemes. And they can be morphologically complex. Each prime can have combinatorial variants or allolexes (indicated with ∼, see Table 1), depending on the language. Apart from these simple elements (sometimes called atoms, too), one can also use semantic molecules, which are more complex ‘chunks’ of knowledge, built on semantic primes. Within the NSM approach, it is assumed that the meaning of a word can be explicated and paraphrased entirely via the combination of semantic primes and molecules.

Lexical-Semantic Analysis of ‘Comfort’

Table 1. English exponents of semantic primes (Goddard/Wierzbicka 2014 ) I, YOU, SOMEONE, SOMETHING∼THING, PEOPLE, BODY

Substantives

KIND, PART

Relational substantives

THIS, THE SAME, OTHER∼ELSE

Determiners

ONE, TWO, MUCH∼MANY, LITTLE∼FEW, SOME, ALL

Quantifiers

GOOD, BAD

Evaluators

BIG, SMALL

Descriptors

THINK, KNOW, WANT, DON’T WANT, FEEL, SEE, HEAR

Mental predicates

SAY, WORDS, TRUE

Speech

DO, HAPPEN, MOVE

Actions, events, movement

BE (SOMEWHERE), THERE IS, BE (SOMEONE/SOMETHING)

Location, existence, specification

(IS) MINE

Possession

LIVE, DIE

Life and death

WHEN∼TIME, NOW, BEFORE, AFTER, A LONG TIME, A SHORT TIME, FOR SOME TIME, MOMENT

Time

WHERE∼PLACE, HERE, ABOVE, BELOW, FAR, NEAR, SIDE, INSIDE, TOUCH

Space

NOT, MAYBE, CAN, BECAUSE, IF

Logical concepts

VERY, MORE

Augmentor, intensifier

LIKE∼AS∼WAY

Similarity

This analytic grid, consisting of what are posited as abstract, conceptual universals, enables one to break down the meaning of words into their most basic components. As the identified semantic primes are assumed to exist in all human languages, word meanings become cross-translatable and intuitively intelligible to people from different cultures. NSM thus allows us to analyse cultural concepts and words in terms which are non-ethnocentric and free of ethnolinguistic bias. This constitutes the particular strength of an NSM approach. Here, I am going to use NSM to explain the meaning of the English word comfort and to compare it to its Portuguese and Polish counterparts, conforto and komfort, respectively. This will allow us to see precisely the differences between these closely related, yet surprisingly distinct word meanings. In the following section, I will shortly discuss the NSM approach to the semantics of abstract nouns.

23

24

Zuzanna Bułat Silva

3. The Semantics of Abstract Nouns As Goddard and Wierzbicka (2014: 230f.) rightly note: To converse about abstract matters, people need abstract nouns. The abstract nouns lead people to speak about abstract matters as if they were speaking about ‘real entities’. This saves time and make conversation about complex and abstract matters feasible. But the utility of abstract nouns should not prevent us from recognizing that their logical and linguistic status is quite different from that of concrete nouns. Comfort is a mental construct, an abstract noun. In comparison to concrete nouns, such as armchair or bed, which assume the existence of an entity independent of discourse, comfort does not name a pre-existent thing.1 It categorises and reifies a certain scenario (‘it can be like this:…’), it is a fictitious entity which is treated by people as a distinct category precisely because there is a word that names it (‘people can say what this something is with the word comfort’). Comfort reflects the same kind of reality as constructs such as love, honesty, pride, and numerous other intangible states that we generally agree exist, for we see them as regularities in the world. We know these regularities in their manifestations and, in a sense, create them to explain the regularities. (Cain 2002: 15) From the NSM perspective, if we want to explain the meaning of an abstract noun to someone, we need to “paraphrase [it] away”, offering “explanations phrased in terms of people, things (tangible things), bodies, or places” (Goddard/Wierzbicka 2014: 232). Goddard and Wierzbicka (2014: 226) propose the following semantic frame for abstract nouns representing “reified discourse topics”:   a.

something

b.

people can say what this something is with the word X

c.

someone can say something about something with this word when this someone thinks like this:

d.

“it can be like this: …”

The indented part of the above definitional frame (see line d.) describes prototypical scenarios. This means that if one wants to develop an NSM definition of

1

More on the distinction between concrete and abstract nouns in Goddard/Wierzbicka (2014: 221).

Lexical-Semantic Analysis of ‘Comfort’

comfort, then one needs to describe a prototypical comfort scenario, i.e. what it is like when someone experiences comfort. “Comfort is simply a verbal invention”, writes Rybczyński (1986: 230). “Like all cultural ideas – childhood, family, gender – it has a past, and it cannot be understood without reference to its specific history.” (Ibid.) Yet, he adds, there is a “problem with understanding comfort and with finding a simple definition. It is like trying to describe an onion. […] It incorporates many transparent layers of meaning – privacy, ease, convenience – some of which are buried deeper than others.” (Ibid.) In the following section, I will try to describe this “onion”, looking both at the layers of comfort and at its historical development.

4. English comfort The origins of the noun comfort are Latin. The word stems from conforto, confortare, ‘to strengthen’, which in turn comes from cum, ‘for’, ‘with’ and fortis, ‘brave’, ’strong’ (Plezia 1959). English borrowed it from French (Maldonado 1991: 35), and the first attested examples of its use in English are from the thirteenth century (Oxford English Dictionary [OED] 1961).2 Originally, to comfort meant ‘to strengthen’, ‘to encourage’, ‘to support’, ‘to cheer’, ‘to relieve the pain’, ‘to soothe in grief or trouble’. This meaning of comfort, i.e. helping or soothing in times of trouble, goes a far way in explaining why one of the designations of the Holy Spirit is Comforter (OED 1961).3 The widespread use of this name for the Holy Spirit endowed comfort with a strong religious hue. Due to shifts in meaning, it was already possible in the sixteenth century to speak of a bed of comfortable width that meant ‘of sufficient width’, but not about a comfortable bed in the modern sense of that word (Rybczyński 1986: 20).4 The major evolution of the meaning of the word comfort in English (and many other European languages) began in the late eighteenth century, when the Christian hierarchy of values was turned on its head. A search for material well-being and ease – made possible by the Industrial Revolution – became more important than spiritual consolation (Maldonado 1991; Rybczyński 1986; Van der Linden et al. 2005). It is this preoccupation with material commodities that gave comfort its new meaning. All the mechanisation of work which made people’s life so different in the nineteenth century called for a new aim, new vision – a wish to have more possessions that would enable material well-being, not only a moral and spiritual one.

2 3 4

E.g. “Hare confort & hare delit hwerin is hit al?” (Hali Meidenhad 1230). See “comfort”, OED. It is interesting that now, instead of finding solace in the Holy Spirit, we find it under the quilt (see “comforter” in LDOCE 2009). The meaning of comfortable as ‘sufficient’ can still be found in an expression like comfortable income.

25

26

Zuzanna Bułat Silva

In Boni’s (2016: 138) words, “comfort is increasingly understood as a, privately experienced, sensory contentment rather than being grounded on social or spiritual interaction”. According to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE 2009), the noun comfort has seven different meanings: 1. feeling of being physically relaxed and satisfied, so that nothing is hurting you, making you feel too hot or cold; 2. if someone or something gives you comfort, they make you feel calmer, happier, or more hopeful after you have been worried or unhappy; 3. someone or something that helps you feel calmer, happier, or more hopeful; 4. a way of living in which you have all the money and possessions that you need or want; 5. comforts – the things that make your life nicer and more comfortable, especially things that are not necessary; 6. to close/near for comfort – something that is too close for comfort makes you feel worried, or uncomfortable, because it is dangerous in some way; 7. cold/small comfort – a small piece of good news that does not make you feel better about a bad situation.

This distinction of different meanings may be pared down due to significant overlaps. Cold comfort (7.) is a kind of comfort described in point 3., the expression too close for comfort refers to point 1., and comforts in 5. refer to the meaning of comfort as described in 4. Therefore, there is no need to posit seven but only four key meanings of comfort: 1. satisfaction of physical needs, 2. consolation, and by metonymy, 3. someone or something that brings you that consolation, and finally 4. life of luxury and ease. As we can see, LDOCE gives ‘feeling’ as genus proximum of comfort1. But is that really so? Is comfort in its first meaning really a ‘feeling’? Or is it rather a state of relaxation, of ‘not feeling’ anything in one’s body? What we can be sure of is that the primes FEEL and BODY will play an important role in the definition of comfort1. Among the most prominent collocations of ‘physical’ comfort1, one can find live in comfort, comfort of home, and offer comfort (WordReference 2018). As for the synonyms of comfort1, one may enumerate ease, cosiness, and convenience (Wordnet Dictionary 2013). Its most salient antonyms are discomfort and uncomfortableness (ibid.). When looking at the following two examples from the British National Corpus, one can see clearly that comfort1 is related to the absence of unpleasant sensory experiences, such as cold (1), or hardness (2). In NSM terms, one could phrase it as ‘I don’t feel anything bad in my body’:

Lexical-Semantic Analysis of ‘Comfort’ 1) The ancient boiler had sat in sullen silence for ten days, a drifting cave under a mountain would have offered more comfort. The rooms were too chilly for the youngsters […]. (Bushey Writing Group 1994) 2) The amount raised at the centenary had enabled quite large items to be bought, for example a special bed constructed in such a way that the patient lies in a hammock above the base. This was in constant use for emaciated patients who were just skin and bones and for whom a normal bed provided no comfort at all. (Smith 1989)

See also comfort1 in LDOCE (2009): “feeling of being physically relaxed and satisfied, so that nothing is hurting you, making you feel too hot or cold”. This characteristic of physical comfort is also corroborated by what the researchers say, see e.g. Cain (2002: 17): “we can define sensory comfort as the absence of sensory discomfort” (emphasis added in both quotes). In the above examples we can also notice one more important characteristic of comfort – it can be related to both places (1) and things (2). There is a difference between relaxing in the comfort of one’s home and a comfort a special bed can provide (or shoes designed for comfort). Therefore, two definitions of comfort1 should be posited, one referring to places (see [A.]), and the other one to things (see [B.]). [A.] comfort1a (as in: relax in the comfort of one’s home)5 a.

something

b.

people can say what this something is with the word comfort,

c.

someone can say something with this word when this someone thinks like this:

d.

it can be like this:

e.

when someone is in a place, they can feel something good because of this, like someone can feel when they think like this:

f.

when I am in this place, I don’t feel anything bad in my body because of this,

g.

I can do many things as I want,

h.

I feel something good because of this

i.

this is good

27

28

Zuzanna Bułat Silva

[B.] comfort1b (a bed which provides comfort; to dress for comfort) a.

something

b.

people can say what this something is with the word comfort,

c.

someone can say something with this word when this someone thinks like this:

d.

it can be like this:

e.

when some parts of someone’s body touch something, they can feel something good because of this, like someone can feel when they think like this:

f.

when some parts of my body touch this thing, I don’t feel anything bad in my body because of this,

g.

I can move my body as I want,

h.

I feel something good because of this

The comfort that a place can provide or offer is certainly connected to ‘feeling something good’ (see line h. in [A.]). This good feeling (or well-being) results from two factors: the already mentioned lack of discomfort, stemming from the absence of unpleasant odours, noises, views, and other sensory experiences (line f. in [A.]),6 and a certain kind of freedom or ease you may enjoy at home, but also in a hotel room, where ‘you can do many things as you want’ (line g. in [A.]).7 In English culture, the comfort offered by a place seems to be perceived as a value (see line i., ‘this is good’). There is a difference between the physical comfort you can feel in a place – your home, a hotel room, a nice café – and the physical comfort offered by things you wear, or use. Both of them refer to ‘feeling good’ (line h. in [A.] and [B.]), but in the case of a thing, it is more of a sensory experience, ‘when some parts of my body touch this thing, I don’t feel anything bad in my body’ (line f. in [B.]), whereas for a place it is about ‘being there’ and not experiencing bad bodily sensations (that you can experience, e.g., in a crowded and noisy railway station). In both kinds of comfort there is the absence of bad bodily feelings, and there is a certain kind of ease. But while in a place this ease or freedom refers to any actions you can undertake – make yourself a cup of tea (or ask for one), read a book, or rest (line g. in [A.]) – in the case of things it is more about liberty of movement. In NSM terms, ‘I 6

7

The anthropologist Stefano Boni discusses how modern environments are designed to generate comfort by regulating sensory experiences: “Screens generate comfort by disentangling the body from undesired sensuous interactions, mostly with the untamed organic” (2016: 138). See also “‘transparency’ of the environment”, as described by Cain (2002: 12). See Boni (2016: 141): “Comfort rests on a pervasive and efficient control of the surroundings.” Also see Maldonado (1991: 37) on how “close regulation of material things” impact comfort.

Lexical-Semantic Analysis of ‘Comfort’

can move my body as I want’ (line g. in [B.]), as in you can move your body wearing comfortable pants, or when sitting on a sofa. Contrary to the comfort offered by a place, the comfort that things provide does not seem to be seen as a value (therefore there is no line i. in explication [B.]). Yet another meaning of comfort is given in point 2. in LDOCE (2009): “if someone or something gives you comfort, they make you feel calmer, happier, or more hopeful after you have been worried or unhappy”. This meaning points to consolation and relief in times of distress. Among the most important collocations of this ‘emotional’ comfort2, we can find bring comfort, provide comfort, offer comfort, take comfort, source of comfort, and comfort food (Online Oxford Collocation Dictionary [OOCD]). As for the synonyms of comfort2, consolation, happiness, and relief can be mentioned. Its most salient antonyms are discomfort, distress, and pain (WordReference 2018). The following two examples from the British National Corpus show how comfort2 is related to bringing to an end a difficult situation one has experienced before, and to feeling relief. In NSM terms, we could phrase it as ‘I felt something bad before, I don’t feel it now, I feel something good because of this’: 3) He thought that he should touch her, offer her comfort. But he was trained in action rather than in comfort. He told himself that it wasn’t difficult – to lay a hand gently on her shoulder and draw her into the protection of his own body. (Gandolfi 1992) 4) I take comfort in the fact that you are safe, belayed to the clouds and high peaks, blowing with the snow […] everlasting peace […] I’ll see your face again, in snow, on the summit (Climber and Hill Walker 1991)

29

30

Zuzanna Bułat Silva

[C.] comfort2 (they sought comfort in each other, OOCD) a.

something

b.

people can say what this something is with the word comfort,

c.

someone can say something with this word when this someone thinks like this:

d. e.

it can be like this: when someone does something for someone else, this other someone can feel something good because of this, like someone can feel when they think like this:

f.

something bad happened to me some time before,

g.

I felt something bad because of this,

h.

after this, someone did something good for me,

i.

because of this I don’t feel anything bad now,

j.

I feel something good because of this,

k.

this is good

Comfort2, glossed as ‘kindness to somebody who is suffering’ in OOCD, refers to bringing solace to someone. In a prototypical scenario of comfort as ‘consolation’ there is a person in distress (see lines f. and g.), and there is another person who has done something to alleviate their suffering: e.g. helping them in need, listening to them, or telling them something nice (line h.). That puts an end to negative emotions (line i.) and makes the person in distress feel calmer and happier (line j.). Comfort as ‘solace’ is definitely seen as a value, with strong positive connotations in English (line k.). As Goddard and Wierzbicka (2014: 208) aptly note, “the meanings of abstract nouns don’t match across language boundaries”. Let me proceed then with the explication of two other words for ‘comfort’, Portuguese conforto and Polish comfort, to see how they differ both from English comfort and from each other.

5. Portuguese conforto As mentioned in the previous section, English borrowed its word comfort, meaning ‘relief’, from French, more or less in the thirteenth century, and the word conforto

Lexical-Semantic Analysis of ‘Comfort’

appears for the first time with similar meaning in Portuguese in the thirteenth century as well.8 In the Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa (2015) there are four different meanings of conforto: 1. 2. 3. 4.

ato ou efeito de confortar, ‘act or effect of comforting someone’; comodidade, ‘convenience’; bem-estar, ‘well-being’; auxílio, consolo nas aflições, ‘help, consolation in distress’.

To me, the first and fourth meanings of the above dictionary definition are coincident and should be united. Therefore, conforto would have three meanings: 1. ‘consolation’, 2. ‘convenience’, and 3. ‘well-being’. Actually, Dicionario Priberam da Lingua Portuguesa (DPLP 2008-2013) includes two more meanings of conforto: nova força, ‘new strength’ and novo vigor, ‘new energy’, but I think they are just different ‘hues’, connotations attached to the meanings mentioned above. Let me first look more carefully at conforto1, meaning ‘consolation’. Most frequent collocations with conforto1 include dar conforto, ‘give comfort’, ‘console’ and palavras de conforto, ‘soothing words’ (CRPC). Its synonyms are consolo, ‘solace’, alívio, ‘relief’, bálsamo, ‘relief’, auxílio, ‘help’, consolação, ‘consolation’, bem-estar, ‘well-being’ (Sacadura 2003). Among its antonyms we find desconforto, ‘discomfort’, desânimo, ‘dejection’, and desolação, ‘grief’ (Dicionário InFormal 2006). As the following examples from Corpus de Referência do Português Contemporâneo show, conforto1 in the first place refers to bringing relief to someone in pain. In NSM, we could phrase it as ‘I felt something bad some time before, I don’t feel anything bad now’. Now, this relief may be caused by someone’s action (5), or by something happening, as in (6), where moving to the city is supposed to bring comfort, to alleviate people’s pain and misery. 5) Sentíamo-nos abandonadas, apesar de aquela misteriosa mulher insistir em nos acompanhar e servir de guia. […] Foi para nós um grande conforto no meio de toda aquela solidão: todas as nossas belas imagens pareciam ter-nos abandonado. (Barreno 1989) [We felt abandoned, even though this mysterious woman insisted on accompanying us and being our guide. […] It was a great comfort in the middle of all this loneliness: all the beautiful images seemed to have left us.]

8

“Esto mi faz alegr’andar / e mi dá confort’e praz[er]”, [It makes me walk with joy, And it brings me relief and pleasure], Dom Dinis, “O gram viç’ e ogram sabor”, thirteenth century (Ferreiro 2014).

31

32

Zuzanna Bułat Silva 6) Durante o século XIX e primeiras décadas do actual uma corrente ininterrupta de gente dos campos fixou-se em cidades, como se nelas existissem conforto para suas mágoas e lenitivo para suas misérias. (A25209) [During the nineteenth century and the first decades of this century, there was an uninterrupted flow of people from the village who settled in the cities, as if there were a comfort for their sorrows and a cure for their miseries.]

It seems justified to say that ‘something good happening to someone’ who experienced some trouble before is the source of conforto1. Therefore, the definition in [D.] reads as follows: [D.] conforto1 (conforto para o coração, CRPC) a.

something

b.

people can say what this something is with the word conforto,

c.

someone can say something with this word when this someone thinks like this:

d. e.

it can be like this: when something good happens to someone, this someone can feel something good because of this, like someone can feel when they think like this:

f.

something bad happened to me some time before,

g.

I felt something bad because of this,

h.

after this something good happened,

i.

because of this I don’t feel anything bad now,

j.

I feel something good because of this,

k.

this is good

As one can see, this definition is quite similar to the definition of English comfort2 in [C.]. In both comfort2 and conforto1, there is a feeling of pain, or sorrow, caused by an unwanted experience (‘something bad happened to me’), and then a relief (‘I don’t feel anything bad now’). The only difference resides in the source of that relief. In [C.], it is a person who ‘does something good to me’, whereas in [D.], it is more a positive event that puts an end to the unpleasant emotion. I will now examine conforto2, ‘well-being’, with its synonyms of aconchego, ‘cosiness’, and comodidade, ‘convenience’ (Sacadura 2003), and antonyms such as desconforto, ‘discomfort’, or incômodo, ‘inconvenience’ (Dicionário de Antônimos 20112019). The collocations with conforto2 include: volto para o conforto do meu lar, ‘I am

Lexical-Semantic Analysis of ‘Comfort’

going back to the comfort of my home’,9 oferecer conforto, ‘offer comfort’, or conforto caseiro, ‘comfort of home’ (CRPC). Conforto2 seems to be a basic characteristic of the Portuguese home, as not only the above collocations, but also the lyrics of the famous Portuguese fado “Casa portuguesa” attest: No conforto pobrezinho do meu lar, há fartura de carinho. [In the poor comfort of my home, There is plenty of affection.]10 It is also interesting that Portuguese students, when asked about the most salient characteristic of casa and lar, two words that Portuguese has for ‘home’, answered that it is ‘comfort’, conforto (Bułat Silva 2014, 2016). Some answers, such as “comfortable sofa” and “access to wi-fi” (Bułat Silva 2014: 315), show that they meant physical, “technologically-propelled comfort” as described by Boni (2016). Other contexts, however, are not that clear. If the students answered with one word only, conforto, how do we know whether they meant ‘consolation’, ‘new strength’, ‘new force’ (as home is the place where we can ‘replenish’ our used energy), or a simple bodily pleasure of being isolated from unwanted light, noises and smells? There is an interesting explication of conforto in the Dicionário inFormal (2006) that can help to explain what this ‘homely comfort’ means. Conforto in its first meaning is explained as “atmosfera agradável que rodeia o ser humano; pode ser ambiente material como também ambiente emocional”, ‘nice atmosphere that surrounds a human being; it can be both a material and emotional environment’.11 I think that this definition neatly points to what is missing in many other lexicographical definitions – that conforto is an atmosphere that surrounds people (characteristic of home: the first example given in this dictionary is conforto do lar) and that it can be both material and emotional. What has been said before, namely that conforto is often used with reference to one’s home or shelter, is also corroborated by the examples (7, 8) from the Corpus de Referência do Português Contemporâneo:

9

10 11

This phrase, although I have not found it in the dictionaries, was given to me by some Portuguese native speakers as a frequent example of the use of the word lar, ‘home’, during SIEF 2015 in Zagreb. In the Portuguese original, a diminutive form is used to denote the scarcity of comfort: the comfort is not just ‘poor’ (pobre) but ‘poor in diminutive’ (pobrezinho). The second meaning of conforto given in the dictionary refers to what has been described above as conforto1, that is “sensação agradável que traz alívio para alguém em meio a momentos de angústia e dor”, ‘something nice that brings relief to someone during moments of anguish and pain’ (Dicionário inFormal 2006).

33

34

Zuzanna Bułat Silva 7) A fase da vida que medeia entre o 25 de Abril e o regresso a Moçambique, em 1992, será o prato forte do livro em que, dentro de um ano, tenciona contar a vida acidentada, no conforto tranquilo da casa de Inhambane, entre os coqueiros que invadem as areias da baía. (Público, 15 Feb 2004) [This period of life between April 25th and the return to Mozambique in 1992 will be the centrepiece of the book in which, next year, he will try to tell the story of his eventful life, in the peaceful comfort of his house in Inhambane, among coconut palms that invade the sands of the bay.] 8) Estamos uns sete ou oito à volta de uma mesa, abrigados numa das ‘fale’ mais próximas da berma da estrada. É inacreditável como os telhados de colmo destes caramanchões de madeira, sem paredes, resistem à violência da bátega. Os que, além do já adormecido Anesone, partilham comigo o conforto deste abrigo estão encharcados até aos ossos. (Público, 2 Sept 2000) [There are seven or eight of us, sitting around the table, in a ‘fale’ close to the edge of the highway. It is incredible how the thatched roofs of these wooden gazebos, without walls, resist the violence of the heavy rain. Those of us (except for Anesone, who has already fallen asleep), who share with me the comfort of this shelter, are soaked to the bone.]

Based on the above analysis, the meaning of conforto2 can be paraphrased in NSM terms as follows: [E.] conforto2 (volto para o conforto do meu lar) a.

something

b.

people can say what this something is with the word conforto,

c.

someone can say something with this word when this someone thinks like this:

d.

it can be like this:

e.

when someone is in a place, they can feel something good because of this, like someone can feel when they think like this:

f.

when I am in this place, I don’t feel anything bad in my body because of this,

g.

I can do many things as I want,

h.

I feel something good because of this

i.

I want to do many other things because of this

j.

this is good

k.

(often someone’s lar is such a place)

Lexical-Semantic Analysis of ‘Comfort’

One can see that Portuguese conforto2 is really close to English comfort1a (see [A.]). It is about being in a place where one doesn’t experience discomfort (see line f. in [E.]) and has freedom to do what one likes (line g.). These two factors cause some kind of happiness or well-being (line h.).12 Both comfort and conforto are considered a value (see line i. in [A.] and line j. in [E.]). There is one important difference, though, between English comfort of home and Portuguese conforto caseiro. I think Portuguese conforto2 retained some of its old meaning of being something ‘strengthening’ (for conforto as ‘new strength’, ‘new energy’, see DPLP 2008-2013). In NSM terms, this component can be phrased as ‘I want to do many other things because of this’ (see line i. in [E.]). Portuguese home, lar, is conceptualised as a place where you can ‘recharge your batteries’ and regain your energy. I therefore added, albeit only tentatively, line k. (in brackets).

6. Polish komfort It is an interesting fact that the first time the word komfort appeared in a Polish dictionary was only in 1861. It was imported from English, with a meaning of wygody, rozkoszne życie, ‘commodities, delightsome life’ (Zdańkowski 1861, see also Bańkowski 2000). In the biggest Polish language dictionary published in the twentieth century (Doroszewski 1961), only one meaning of komfort can be found, almost identical with the first meaning quoted in the SJP PWN (see below). There are not many derivatives of komfort – an adjective komfortowy and an adverb komfortowo, “w sposób łączący wygodę, dostatek i piękno”, ‘in a way that links convenience, wealth, and beauty’ (Doroszewski 1961).13 There is no verb like the English to comfort, or Portuguese confortar, and neither the lexeme komfort nor its derivatives have meanings related to ‘consolation’. According to Słownik języka polskiego PWN, Polish komfort has only got two meanings: 1. ogół warunków zewnętrznych zapewniających człowiekowi wygodę, odznaczających się dostatkiem i elegancją, ‘all the external conditions that make someone comfortable, and which exhibit wealth and elegance’; 2. stan zaspokojenia potrzeb fizycznych i psychicznych oraz braku kłopotów, ‘satisfaction of physical and psychological needs, lack of troubles’.

12 13

See also Freitas (2005: 726): “a maioria identifica o ‘conforto’ como sendo um estado de bemestar”, ‘most people identify ‘comfort’ with well-being’. Compare to English comfortably, “in a way that makes you feel physically relaxed, without any pain” (LDOCE 2009).

35

36

Zuzanna Bułat Silva

In its first, ‘material’, meaning, komfort1 can be referred to as wygoda, ‘convenience’, wystawność, ‘pomp’, and luksus, ‘luxury’.14 Its antonym is proste życie, ‘simple life’ (Narodowy Korpus Języka Polskiego). The important collocations are najwyższy komfort, ‘the highest comfort’, podnieść komfort, ‘increase comfort’, ‘upgrade’, w wersji komfort, ‘in the comfort (luxury) version’, żyć w komforcie, ‘live in comfort’ (Approval 2015). If we compare Polish komfort1 with English comfort, we can find similar connotations of ‘wealth’ and ‘luxury’ in comfort4 in LDOCE, that is “a way of living in which you have all the money and possessions that you need or want” (see section 4. of this paper), and in the expression creature comforts, “things that you need to feel comfortable in a place, for example good food and modern equipment” (Collins English Dictionary). In Polish komfort1, however, the connotations of wealth and excess are obligatory: you cannot say *biedny komfort in Polish, while its equivalents in both English, poor comfort, and Portuguese conforto pobrezinho, are perfectly acceptable.15 There is one more important difference between Polish komfort1 and English comfort4 – in English there is no reference to elegance, whereas Polish comfort, apart from connoting luxury and wealth, has strong associations with elegance and sophistication. In the examples from Narodowy Korpus Języka Polskiego, the relatedness of komfort with elegance and luxury can easily be seen: 9) Spakujesz do tego szczoteczkę do zębów i co ci tam jeszcze potrzeba, i pojedziesz na parę dni pod Konstancin. Nawet niedaleko mnie. Tutaj jest adres. Jakiś ośrodek szkolenia kadr. Podobno komfort, sprawdź, czy mają jacuzzi. (Siemion 2004) [You pack your toothbrush, and whatever else you need, and you go to Konstancin for a couple of days. It is not far from where I live. Here is the address. Some kind of human resources training centre. Comfort, they say, check if they have a jacuzzi.] 10) Zapytała szybko, czy jestem zadowolony z hotelu, w którym mieszkam, i dodała, że “Excelsior” jest wprawdzie nudny, jako modny hotel światowej socjety, ale zapewnia wszelkie wygody. Odparłem na to, że my, ludzie Wschodu, przyzwyczajeni jesteśmy do życia prostego, nie dbamy o komfort, […]. (Mrożek 1979) [She asked quickly if I liked the hotel where I was staying, and added that ‘Excelsior’, as boring as a fashionable hotel of the global high society can be, nonetheless provided all the commodities you needed. I answered that, we, Eastern people, were used to a simple life, and did not care about comfort (…).]

14 15

https://synonim.net/synonim/komfort In Polish, you can speak about niski komfort, ‘low comfort’.

Lexical-Semantic Analysis of ‘Comfort’

The above examples, especially (10), point to one crucial characteristic of Polish komfort: it is not always perceived as a value, as in Portuguese or English. It is something special, maybe even sophisticated, but at the same time it is not something people seek. And it may take on rather negative connotations of ‘something too easy’, or ‘lack of effort’. Let us have a look at the NSM definition of komfort in its first meaning: [F.] komfort1 (żyć w komforcie, ‘live in comfort’) a.

something

b.

people can say what this something is with the word komfort,

c.

someone can say something with this word when this someone thinks like this:

d. e.

it can be like this: when someone lives in a place, they can think like this:

f.

this place is not like many other places,

g.

there are very many good things in this place,

h.

I can do many things here as I want,

i.

(this is good)

The above definition clearly demonstrates that there is a difference between English and Portuguese comfort on the one hand, and Polish komfort1 on the other. In line e., there is no reference to ‘feeling’ because komfort in its first meaning is not about ‘feeling’ but about some kind of evaluation (‘thinking’) of a place, or a thing (a luxury car is a good example of that kind of komfort). And, most importantly, Polish komfort1 does not refer to ‘not feeling anything bad in one’s body’, contrary to all ‘comforts’ described before (see definitions [A.] to [E.]). This is because this material comfort is not about ‘feeling’ but rather thinking about something – a place – as being better, ‘not like many other places’ (see line f. in [F.]), and full of many luxury objects, ‘good things’ (see line g.). There is one component, however, common to all the different meanings of ‘comfort’ in the three languages – it is some kind of ease, in NSM, ‘I can do many things as I want’ (line i.). And, as mentioned before, as Polish komfort1 – although sounding very positive – cannot always be seen as a value, I put line i., ‘this is good’, in brackets. Turning now to the second meaning of komfort, ‘satisfaction of physical and psychological needs, lack of troubles’ (SJP PWN), the following synonyms may be identified: beztroska, ‘levity’, spokój, ‘peace’, and swoboda, ‘ease’ (Wielki Słownik Języka Polskiego PWN 2018). Its antonyms comprise dyskomfort, ‘discomfort’, niewygoda,

37

38

Zuzanna Bułat Silva

‘inconvenience’, ‘trouble’, and uciążliwość, ‘nuisance’.16 The important collocations are komfort życia, ‘comfort of life’, komfort pracy, ‘komfort of work’, komfort jazdy, ‘driving comfort’, and zapewniać komfort, ‘provide comfort’ (NKJP). It is worth noting here that in Polish there is a very frequent phraseme, komfort psychiczny, ‘psychological comfort’, that serves to differentiate komfort without an adjective, which refers mainly to satisfaction of physical needs, from the emotional komfort that stems from satisfying one’s psychological needs. (In the NSM definition of komfort psychiczny there will be no reference to one’s body, just to ‘feeling something good’ and ‘not feeling anything bad’.) In NKJP there are numerous examples referring to komfort jazdy, ‘driving comfort’ (113/1986, i.e. ca. 5,7% of all tokens) and komfort pracy, ‘comfort of work’ (117/1986, ca. 5,9%): 11) Szereg udogodnień i komfort jazdy na najwyższym poziomie sprawia, że nawet po przejechaniu kilkuset kilometrów żadna część ciała nie wyje z bólu. (Szozda 2006) [A number of facilities and the highest level of driving comfort forestall the body from screaming in pain, even after a few hundred kilometres’ drive.] 12) Zdecydowanie większy komfort pracy zapewnia mysz. (Nowakowski 1995) [A much higher comfort of work is assured through using a [computer] mouse.]

Based on these examples, komfort2 may be best defined as: [G.] komfort2 (komfort pracy, komfort jazdy) a.

something

b.

people can say what this something is with the word komfort,

c.

someone can say something with this word when this someone thinks like this:

d.

16

it can be like this:

e.

when someone does something, they can feel something good because of this, like someone can feel when they think like this:

f.

when I am doing this, I don’t feel anything bad in my body because of this,

g.

I can do many things as I want,

h.

I feel something good because of this

http://antonimy.net/antonim/komfort

Lexical-Semantic Analysis of ‘Comfort’

As we can see, the definition in [G.] is much more similar to the definitions of English and Portuguese ‘comforts’. Just as in the definitions [A.] to [E.], there is a reference to ‘feeling something good’ in line e., but the prototypical situation refers, in my opinion, to ‘doing something’: working, driving, or even watching, as in the expression komfort widzenia, ‘comfort of seeing’ (provided by matching lenses). So the person who is driving a car, for example, ‘does not feel anything bad in her body’, as the example (11) nicely shows. She can speed up, slow down, she can go far with no effort (line g. in [G.]) and because of this she feels at ease (line h.).

7. Final Remarks John Locke in his “Essay Concerning Human Understanding” describes the difference between the names of simple ideas, which are about things that exist in the real world, such as statue or rainbow, and the names of abstract ideas, or “mixed modes”, such as parricide or resurrection, which are created arbitrarily by the mind, “independent from any original patterns in nature” (Locke 1843: 328). Then he draws the reader’s attention to the fact that the abstract ideas do not match across languages: A moderate skill in different languages will easily satisfy one of the truth of this; it being so obvious to observe great store of words in one language which have not any that answer them in another. Which plainly shows that those of one country, by their customs and manners of life, have found occasion to make several complex ideas, and given names to them, which others never collected into specific ideas. (ibid.: 329) ‘Comfort’ is evidently an abstract idea, a “mixed mode” in Locke’s terms, which was unknown to Polish people until the mid-nineteenth century, when the name for it was borrowed from English (600 years after it was introduced into both English and Portuguese). This could explain why the Polish word komfort differs so much from both comfort and conforto. Locke continues his considerations, not only insisting that there are words that have no equivalents in other languages, but also that even the words that have equivalents do not mean exactly the same: Nay, if we look a little more nearly into this matter, and exactly compare different languages, we shall find, that, though they have words which in translations and dictionaries are supposed to answer one another, yet there is scarce one of ten amongst the names of complex ideas, especially of mixed modes, that stands for the same precise idea, which the word does that in dictionaries it is rendered by. (ibid.: 330)

39

40

Zuzanna Bułat Silva

I hope to have shown that the different names for ‘comfort’ examined above do not “stand for the same precise idea”. I also believe that the very basic semantic analysis of the notion of ‘comfort’, as portrayed in the three words analysed here, English comfort, Portuguese conforto, and Polish komfort, will open new vistas for looking at ‘comfort’ in a more critical, yet open way. When one examines the subtle differences between the three linguistic equivalents, comfort, conforto, and komfort, which so deceptively (they even look alike) point to the ‘same’ thing, we find that actually the Polish view on ‘comfort’ is much more rigid and less emotional than the way it is seen through English and Portuguese. Polish komfort, opposed to good, simple life, with its negative connotations of łatwizna, ‘easy way out’, and zbytek, ‘excess’, is actually quite prone to becoming an anti-value. It is very different from English comfort, whose moral and spiritual meanings still prompt many to strive for comfort as the purpose of their life. It is much easier to see English comfort and Portuguese conforto as guiding values, given their moral and spiritual connotations of ‘strength’, ‘relief from pain’, and ‘consolation’. As Boni (2014: 9) rightly notices, “la comoditá è un tratto negletto ma cruciale per comprendere l’umanitá degli ultimi secoli, e in particolare degli ultimi decenni” (‘comfort is a neglected, but crucial trait to understand humanity in recent centuries, especially in the recent decades’). Yet, as Cain (2002: 20) puts it, “despite its relevance to everyday welfare and functioning, [human comfort] receives proportionally little research attention compared, for example, to diseases”. The problem that there is little research on comfort, despite the importance of this concept, is compounded by the fact that researchers use the word comfort in widely differing senses. Kolcaba (1994), who develops a concept of comfort as a guide to improving the care of patients, alludes to comfort’s old meaning of ‘giving strength’ and ‘consolation’; Boni (2016) warns against dangers of making comfort, understood as “sensuous appeasement” (138), the ultimate goal of human life. Yet another meaning of comfort is present in interior design and architecture (Rybczyński 1986). This article teaches us to pay more attention to these important differences in meaning, and, together with all the articles included in this volume, helps to address this research gap.

Lexical-Semantic Analysis of ‘Comfort’

Works Cited Bańkowski, Andrzej. 2000. Etymologiczny słownik języka polskiego. Warszawa: PWN. Boni, Stefano. 2014. Homo Comfort: Il superamento tecnologico dela fatica e le sue conseguenze. Milano: Elèuthera. —. 2016. “Technologically-Propelled Comfort. Some Theoretical Implications of the Contemporary Overcoming of Fatigue.” Antropologia 3.1: 133-151. British National Corpus. https://www.english-corpora.org/bnc/(accessed: June 12, 2019). Bułat Silva, Zuzanna. 2014. “Jaki obraz DOMU mają młodzi Portugalczycy? Badanie ankietowe.” In: Iwona Bielińska-Gardziel et al., eds. Wartości w językowo-kulturowym obrazie świata Słowian i ich sąsiadów 3. Lublin: Wydawnictwo UMCS, 309322. —. 2016. “Descrever o lar português.” In: Barbara Hlibowicka-Węglarz et al., eds. Língua portuguesa: Unidade na Diversidade 1. Lublin: Wydawnictwo UMCS, 201213. Cain, W.S. 2002. “The Construct of Comfort: A Framework for Research.” Proceedings: Indoor Air 2002: 12-20. (Ebook) “C omfort.” Oxford English Dictionary. 1961. Oxford: Oxford UP. Corpus de Referência do Português Contemporâneo 2.3 (2012). https://clul.ulisboa.pt/ (accessed: May 15, 2019). Dicionário de Antônimos On-line. 2011-2019. https://www.antonimos.com.br/ conforto/ (accessed June 12, 2019). Dicionário inFormal. 2006-2019. https://www.dicionarioinformal.com.br/conforto/ (accessed: June 5, 2019). Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa. 2015. Porto: Porto Editora. Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa. 2008-2013. https://dicionario.priberam. org/ (accessed: June 5, 2019). Doroszewski, Witold (ed.). 1961. Słownik języka polskiego, vol. 3. Warszawa: Wiedza Powszechna. Ferreiro, Manuel (ed.). 2014. Glosario da poesía medieval profana galego-portuguesa. Universidade da Coruña. http://glossa.gal (accessed: June 5, 2019). Freitas, Ruskin. 2005. “O que é conforto.” In: Anais do VIII Encontro Nacional e IV Encontro Latino Americano Sobre Conforto no Ambiente Construído. Maceió: ENCAC, 726-735. Goddard, Cliff & Anna Wierzbicka. 2014. Words and Meanings: Lexical Semantics Across Domains, Languages, and Cultures. Oxford: Oxford UP. Kolcaba, Katharine. 1994. “A Theory of Holistic Comfort for Nursing.” Journal of Advanced Nursing 19.6: 1178-1184. “Komfort.” APPROVAL. http://portal.uw.edu.pl/web/approval/komfort (accessed: June 12, 2019).

41

42

Zuzanna Bułat Silva

Locke, John. 1843. “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.” In: J.A. St John, ed. The Philosophical Works of John Locke. London: George Virtue, 67-550. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. 2009. Harlow: Pearson. Maldonado, Tomás. 1991. “The Idea of Comfort.” Design Issues 8.1: 35-43. Narodowy Korpus Języka Polskiego. 2008-2010. http://www.nkjp.uni.lodz.pl/ (accessed: June 12, 2019). Online Oxford Collocation Dictionary. http://www.freecollocation.com/ (accessed: June 7, 2019). Plezia, Marian. 1959. Słownik łacińsko-polski. Warszawa: PWN. Rybczyński, Witold. 1986. Home: A Short History of an Idea. New York: Penguin. Sacadura, Silvia. 2003. Dicionário de sinónimos e antónimos da língua portuguesa. Lisboa: Texto Editores. Słownik Języka Polskiego PWN. https://sjp.pwn.pl/ (accessed: June 14, 2019). Van der Linden, Júlio Carlos de Souza, et al. 2005. “Conforto e desconforto: são construtos opostos?” In: Anais do 3º Congresso Internacional de Pesquisa em Design, Rio de Janeiro. Wielki Słownik Języka Polskiego PWN. 2018. Warszawa: PWN. Wierzbicka, Anna. 1972. Semantic Primitives. Frankfurt a.M.: Athenäum. —. 1985. Lexicography and Conceptual Analysis. Ann Arbor: Karoma. —. 1996. Semantics: Primes and Universals. Oxford: Oxford UP. —. 2013. Imprisoned in English: The Hazards of English as a Default Language. Oxford: Oxford UP. Wordnet Dictionary. 2013. http://wordnet-online.freedicts.com/ (accessed: June 11, 2019). WordReference. 2018. https://www.wordreference.com/ (accessed: June 11, 2019). Zdanowicz, Aleksander et al. 1861. Słownik języka polskiego, vol. 1. Wilno: Maurycy Orgelbrand.

On the Temptations of Comfort The Poetics of Slothfulness in Pynchon Burak Sezer All this the world well knows, yet none knows well To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell. —William Shakespeare, Sonnet 129

In a zoo, we quite often gravitate towards slow-moving animals called sloths. Although they are, phenomenologically speaking, not particularly interesting animals to observe (they just comfortably ‘hang around’ and chew on leaves the whole time), their slothful demeanour is nonetheless alluring in hectic times of full schedules, permanent alertness, and hyperconnectedness. That is why it is not uncommon to hear visitors mourn: ‘I am swamped by all these deadlines and obligations – sometimes I wish I were a sloth’ – which is amusing, considering that the act of watching sloths is an act of sloth itself. The wish seems to be strangely out of place. I claim that this paradox can only occur due to a limited understanding of sloth in the first place. Sloth is a far more complex and ambivalent concept than its reputation suggests, as it is often overestimated in its nihilistic and disruptive potential and underestimated in its fulfilment of important individual and societal functions. This ambivalence will be elucidated in the following by calling attention to the instructive conceptual entanglement between sloth and comfort. Are we comfortable in moments of sloth? Should we yearn for sloth if we yearn for comfort? If not, what constitutes this stealthy and enigmatic transition from ‘feeling comfortable’ to being outright slothful, lazy, inert? Is sloth an exacerbated, pathological extreme of comfort or is it rather its opposite, a form of discomfort in disguise? Questions such as these intrigue the well-known writer Thomas Pynchon, who is an important exponent of postmodernist American literature. Not only did he write a New York Times article on sloth entitled “Nearer, My Couch, to Thee” (1993), but his fiction is also engaged with the cardinal question of sloth and its cultural ramifications. Already the third sentence of Pynchon’s first-ever published short story, “The Small Rain” (2000 [1959]), reads: “There was no one inside except an or-

44

Burak Sezer

derly leaning drowsy against the wall, smoking, and an inert figure in fatigues, lying on a bunk, reading a paperback” (ibid.: 27). Tellingly, the protagonist of this story is called Nathan ‘Lardass’ Levine, who, as regards the explicitness of sloth showcased in the name, is only surpassed by Tyrone Slothrop, the protagonist of Pynchon’s arguably most famous novel, Gravity’s Rainbow (2000 [1973]). His next novel, Vineland, published in 1990, then deals with television’s lulling anaesthetisation; at this point, the trope of the slothful individual (like Slothrop or Lardass) is extended into a slothful society. In short: sloth is ubiquitous in Pynchon’s work. In both his theoretical and fictional writings, Pynchon unfolds a plethora of perspectives on sloth, which cover religious, socio-political, and medial aspects. This makes his work especially productive for charting how (un)comfortable sloth resonates with ever-changing living environments. For Pynchon, it is neither justifiable to denigrate sloth as simply unproductive or unpolitical, nor to glorify sloth as a panacea to diverse human plights. Instead, the assessment of sloth always depends on the specific situation in which one is slothful. Engaging with sloth requires a calibration device, and it is precisely such a device that can be derived from Pynchon’s writings. Pynchon draws attention to the varying degrees of dis/comfort that may be experienced in the moment of sloth. There is both comfortable and uncomfortable sloth, which makes a crucial difference as regards its efficacy. In order to develop such a typology of sloth, I will discuss five different variants of sloth in Pynchon’s writings: (1) Sloth as Capital Sin / Terminology; (2) Writerly Sloth / Economy; (3) Readerly Sloth / Politics; (4) Watcherly Sloth / Media; and (5) Laugherly Sloth / Technology. I will show how these constructions of sloth in Pynchon’s œuvre draw on, modulate, and critically invigorate broader historical discourses on sloth. It is precisely by becoming attuned to the tensions between the different evaluative codings and manifestations of sloth that one can appreciate the full complexity of the relationship between sloth and dis/comfort.

1. Sloth as Capital Sin | Terminology Tracing the historical genesis of sloth in “Nearer”, Pynchon identifies Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica (1265-1274) as the founding document that officially declares sloth – the translation of Latin acedia – to be one of the capital sins. According to the Oxford Concise Dictionary of the Christian Church (2006), ‘acedia’ means “a state of restlessness and inability to either work or pray”, and Pynchon adds “sorrow, deliberately self-directed, turned away from God, a loss of spiritual determination” (1993: 1). It is already evident that it is difficult to provide an unequivocal definition of sloth; hence, Pynchon eschews a clear-cut definition by offering a list of concomitant phenomena that are usually considered when talking about sloth. One such aspect is that sloth is a “progenitor of a whole family of

The Poetics of Slothfulness in Pynchon

lesser, or venial, sins, among them Idleness, Drowsiness, Restlessness of the Body, Instability and Loquacity” (ibid.).1 One common denominator of Pynchon’s descriptions is that sloth contains a religious connotation because it is most prominently a godless and unspiritual state, whose indecorous perpetuation has momentous consequences. According to Pynchon, slothful languishing will “soon enough produc[e] what are currently known as guilt and depression, eventually pushing us where we will do anything, in the way of venial sin and bad judgment, to avoid the discomfort” (1993: 1; emphasis added). Pynchon’s assertion that sloth leads to discomfort rather than comfort is a remarkably common claim. One finds a similar prognosis in “Accidie”, where Huxley calls sloth the “disastrous vice of the spirit” (1923: 19; emphasis added) because the integrity of the spirit, not the comfort of the body, is most severely afflicted by sloth. Philosopher Jacques Pezeu-Massabuau also highlights the interconnectedness of physical and spiritual discomfort: “If discomfort deprives us of a spacious and pleasant physical environment, sooner or later it also affects the spirit” (2012: 32). Any physical or spiritual discomfort tends to impinge on the other faculty so that only a comprehensive comfort is truly comfortable. Such a holistic conceptualisation of comfort can even be found in nursing theory; Katharine Kolcaba writes in Comfort Theory and Practice (2003) that it is only when “a patient experiences comfort in every […] aspect of comfort [i.e. physical and psychospiritual]” that we can “say that he or she is comfortable” (16).

2. Writerly Sloth | Economy If Aquinas’ medieval theology Summa Theologica seeks to deter from ever indulging in sloth, the Romantic movement unexpectedly introduces a reappraisal of the capital sin of sloth. According to a poetic programme that has been pervasive since the nineteenth century, sloth is regarded as a prerequisite for any creative production. Although Pynchon touches upon this transition as well, Huxley provides a more detailed analysis, which is why it is worthwhile to consult his essay “Accidie” once more. Romanticism, characterised by the mal du siècle, marks a turning point in sloth discourse as it does not reject but embrace the “triumph of the meridian demon [a personification of acedia]” (Huxley 1923: 20). Harking back to the poetry of Charles Baudelaire, Huxley writes: “It is a curious phenomenon, this progress of accidie from the position of being a deadly sin, deserving of damnation, to the

1

Similar observations on the cultural perception of sloth during the Middle Ages can be found in Aldous Huxley’s typology of acedia in “Accidie” (1923). Drawing on the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer, he arrives at almost equivalent effects: “Accidie [acedia] produces a whole crop of minor sins, such as idleness, tardiness, lâchesse [negligence], coldness, undevotion” (ibid.:20).

45

46

Burak Sezer

point first of a disease and finally of an essentially lyrical emotion, fruitful in the inspiration of much of the most characteristic modern literature” (ibid.).2 A short passage of Baudelaire’s “Spleen II” from his poem collection Flowers of Evil (1857), translated by Edna St. Vincent Millay, illustrates this transition: Time has gone lame, and limps; and under a thick pall Of snow the endless years efface and muffle all; Till boredom, fruit of the mind’s inert, incurious tree, Assumes the shape and size of immortality. (Baudelaire 2008) Poetry is born under the asphyxiating weight of weltschmerz, ennui, melancholy, and depression, whose symptoms include torpor and plaintiveness. The Romantic movement celebrates poets, who are openly slothful and highly uncomfortable with their position in the world, which proves to be not an obstacle, but rather a source of their inspiration. Pynchon’s essay concentrates on the relationship between Romantic sloth and writing as well, but his conclusion goes even further: it lays bare the modernist entanglement of writing and economy. First, he speaks about “Sloth’s offspring” (1993: 2), demonstrating the paradoxical productivity of sloth: “for example, what Aquinas terms Uneasiness of the Mind, or ‘rushing after various things without rhyme or reason,’ which, ‘if it pertains to the imaginative power […] is called curiosity’” (ibid.). The ‘Uneasiness of the Mind’ again emphasises the restlessness born from the discordance between mind and world; the discomfort associated with sloth. Strikingly, Pynchon’s description of the ‘writerly sloth’, the sloth of the poet, describes a restoration of the spiritual axis, which was initially lost by being slothful in the first place: “It is of course precisely in such episodes of mental travelling that writers are known to do good work, sometimes even their best, solving formal problems, getting advice from Beyond, having hypnagogic adventures that with luck can be recovered later on. Idle dreaming is often of the essence of what we do” (ibid.). Here, Pynchon paints a lower grade of an ancient Platonic ideal: the poet is enthusiastic,3 which literally translates into ‘possessed by a God’, but in Pynchon’s depiction not so much possessed but visited, thereby receiving ‘advice from Beyond’. Although writerly sloth means bodily laziness, it simultaneously hints at a readiness for mental recipience from a numinous realm. Pynchon classifies sloth as an unspiritual state, but the slothful and dreamy poet arrives at spirituality again through a detour of bodily idleness.

2 3

In the Renaissance, sloth was regarded as a disease that could be “healed by a temperate diet” (Huxley 1923: 19). Consult Plato’s Ion (533d-535a), where Socrates says: “[T]hey are inspired, possessed, and that is how they utter all those beautiful poems” (1997: 941).

The Poetics of Slothfulness in Pynchon

At this point, Pynchon posits that writerly slothful dreaming is in peril because of the increasing secularisation of the United States, which begins to swing the focus onto economic growth and productivity. To provide a context to Pynchon’s assertion, it is worthwhile to consult Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905). Weber (2018 [1905]: 38) regards the writings of Benjamin Franklin as the primary catalyst for the incipience of such a paradigm shift, which he sees most saliently articulated in a quote from Franklin’s “Advice to a Young Tradesman” (1748): “Remember that Time is Money. He that can earn Ten Shillings a Day by his Labour, and goes abroad, or sits idle one half of that Day, tho’ he spends but Sixpence during his Diversion or Idleness, ought not to reckon That the only Expence; he has really spent or rather thrown away Five Shillings besides” (Franklin 1748: 1). In order to eliminate the danger of relenting to sloth, Franklin devised a strict schedule in his Autobiography (1793), in which “every part of my business should have its allotted time” (2015 [1793]: 58). It obliges him to rise, plan the day, and have breakfast from 5 to 8 a.m., work from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and sleep from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. Only from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. does he allow himself to “[p]ut things in their places, supper, music or diversion” (ibid.: 59), which Pynchon considers to be “the schedule’s only occasion for drifting into reverie – there would seem to have been no other room for speculations, dreams, fantasies, fiction” (1993: 2). It remains doubtful, I would add, whether this time slot is an approval for sloth for the sake of ‘drifting into reverie’ after a long day of intense work. It is more probable that it is designed for dreamless recreation to enhance productivity because the workday’s monotony is slightly reduced and hence more bearable in the long term. In other words, this time slot does not inspire fiction, but rather the tenacity of the worker. Regardless of the work performed, a schedule like Benjamin Franklin’s provides the comfort of certitude and impeccability, of reassuring oneself of discharging duties for one’s own and the public well-being – in short, the comfort of an unquestioned routine. Pynchon then connects Franklin’s schedule with Herman Melville’s short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street” (1853) that takes place during the heyday of “robber-baron capitalism” (Pynchon 1993: 3). By then, “acedia had lost the last of its religious reverberations and now was an offense against the economy” (ibid.). This epoch’s panegyric on industriousness poses a great threat against the writer and his writerly sloth because, as Hanjo Berressem puts it, “artists are, as regards the gross domestic product, not ‘industrious’ [Künstler sind, vom Bruttosozialprodukt her gedacht, nicht ‘industrious’]” (2015: 308, my translation). The depressing situation of the writer is allegorised through the figure of Bartleby, who is hired by a law-copying firm on Wall Street. The first-person narrator owns the firm and is astonished by Bartleby’s speed and stamina: “At first, Bartleby did an extraordinary quantity of writing. […] He ran a day and night line, copying by sunlight and by candle-light” (Melville 1986 [1853]: 12). However, he notices a peculiar-

47

48

Burak Sezer

ity: “I should have been quite delighted with his application, had he been cheerfully industrious. But he wrote on silently, palely, mechanically” (ibid.). Contrary to the narrator’s initial assumption, Bartleby does in fact not seem to enjoy his work. This puzzles the narrator because he cannot explain why Bartleby is not ‘cheerfully industrious’, although he, in a moment of unparalleled Melvillian irony, confesses a little later that a scrivener’s business is a very dull, wearisome, and lethargic affair. I can readily imagine that, to some sanguine temperaments, it would be altogether intolerable. For example, I cannot credit that the mettlesome poet, Byron, would have contentedly sat down with Bartleby to examine a law document of, say five hundred pages, closely written in a crimpy hand. (Ibid.) This passage evocatively emphasises the replacement of the spirit of the poet with the spirit of capitalism, analogous to Max Weber’s terminology. Erected upon the principle of exploiting the worker for maximum profit, the capitalist structure, which Pynchon calls the “orthogonal machine” (1993: 2), is both the writer’s and the poet’s bane. In such a system, then, sloth transmogrifies into a positively connoted political instrument of resistance. Bartleby soon refuses to follow the demands of his employer by repeatedly saying “I would prefer not to”, and the narrator is visibly helpless how to resolve such an act of explicit disobedience. Bartleby is henceforth so rigorous with his rejection of any command that he dies after a hunger strike. His “terminal acedia” (ibid.: 3), as Pynchon calls it, proves to be remarkably effective in making the narrator question the legitimacy of giving unconscionable orders to Bartleby. Plus, as Bartleby turns out to live in abject poverty, the narrator begins to feel empathy for his predicament: “For the first time in my life a feeling of over-powering stinging melancholy seized me. Before, I had never experienced aught but a not unpleasing sadness. The bond of common humanity now drew me irresistibly to gloom. A fraternal melancholy! For both I and Bartleby were sons of Adam” (Melville 1986 [1853]: 23). If only for a fleeting moment, the secularised Wall Street, possessed by the Weberian spirit of capitalism as opposed to the spirit of God, invokes the religious ideal of togetherness, love, and care – induced by Bartleby’s willingness to sloth. Against this background, Pynchon asks the cardinal question: “[W]ho is more guilty of Sloth, a person who collaborates with the root of all evil, accepting thingsas-they-are in return for a paycheck and a hassle-free life, or one who does nothing, finally, but persist in sorrow”? (1993: 3) The formulation of this question is counterintuitive. What Pynchon suggests is that a person sticking to Benjamin Franklin’s daily routine might be guiltier of sloth than a person who altogether rejects this submission to a strict timetable. Thus, Pynchon introduces two versions of sloth: the sinful and oxymoronic ‘industrious sloth’ that is characterised by an undisputed

The Poetics of Slothfulness in Pynchon

compliance with the ‘root of all evil’, working for unethical corporations, and the more virtuous “modern Sloth” (ibid.), the outright refusal to work and write for the ‘root of all evil’, of which Bartleby is the perfect specimen. The comfort of a ‘hasslefree life’ is a product of industrious sloth, whereas modern sloth – writerly sloth, as Bartleby prefers not to sell his writings to Wall Street anymore – is a state of perpetual and ultimately fatal discomfort. Pynchon lists a few authors who have produced similar characters to the one of Bartleby, among which are “Kafka […] and Musil” (ibid.). Melville’s Bartleby, Kafka’s Josef K. (Der Prozess), and Musil’s Ulrich (Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften) manifest autobiographical influences which parallel the writerly sloth of the authors with the modern sloth of the characters. For instance, Kafka worked in the Generali Prague offices, and it is reported that “[t]his work schedule [from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.] left little time for writing, and within a few weeks, Kafka was already tired of the demanding schedule and office politics” (Glen 2007: 30). He resigned a year later to retrieve the leisure time needed to write fiction. Robert Musil also decided not to work as an engineer in a regulated employment contract, for which he was trained initially, but instead chose to write fiction, like Pynchon himself, who also started out as an engineering student at Cornell only to become a novelist. In all of these cases, the regulated work in the ‘orthogonal machine’ epitomised by Ben Franklin’s timetable is directly contrasted with the slothful artist, who refuses the comfort of dreaming and writing for the capitalist system and instead chooses the discomfort of dreaming and writing against it, even in light of the economic disadvantage of the latter. Pynchon’s theorisation of sloth as resistance against capitalistic exploitation revitalises an underappreciated thread in political philosophy. A prominent exponent is Paul Lafargue: his 1883 preface to his pamphlet “The Right to be Lazy” already reads “[c]apitalist ethics” (4) as “a pitiful parody on Christian ethics” (ibid.) – strikingly, twenty-two years prior to the publication of Max Weber’s sociological analysis, which echoes this statement. Lafargue refutes the famous Marxian mantra of ‘right to work’; to him, it is inexplicable why many labourers advocate for their ‘right to work’ so adamantly because the slavish commitment to wage labour means the eventual deterioration of their financial standing. Thus he proclaims everyone’s ‘right to be lazy’, the right to reject the subjugation under the dogma of work, devising the true obverse of Benjamin Franklin’s work-schedule: “It must accustom itself to working but three hours a day, reserving the rest of the day and night for leisure and feasting” (ibid.: 19). Strikingly, the three-hours-a-day that Ben Franklin allots to leisure map onto the three-hours-a-day that Lafargue allots to work: they constitute perfect opposites. In 1932, presumably independent from Lafargue (as he is not referenced in the text), Bertrand Russell wrote an essay titled “In Praise of Idleness”, affirming that “I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organised diminution of work”

49

50

Burak Sezer

(2004 [1932]: 3). Russell similarly diagnoses that the “whole gospel of work” (ibid.: 4) is invoked by idle landowners and real estate moguls because of their “desire for comfortable idleness” (ibid.): if they can make people work for them, they do not have to work themselves. Plus, the stimulus to work is galvanised by the Christian virtue of ‘honest toil’, which promises that “the poor are much more likely to go to heaven than the rich” (ibid.: 9). Russell concludes, almost in accordance with Lafargue’s musings, that “four hours’ work a day should entitle a man to the necessities and elementary comforts of life, and that the rest of his time should be his to use as he might see fit” (ibid.: 12). A minor difference is that Russell’s schedule devotes one more hour to work. A major one is that Lafargue speaks about ‘feasting’ and ‘drinking’ in the remainder of the day, whereas Russell’s utopian vision is more in line with Pynchon’s, since leisure promotes what Russell calls in his essay “‘Useless’ Knowledge” “the contemplative habit of mind” (2004 [1935]: 24), which is the precursor to artistic experimentation, and a prerequisite to writerly sloth.

3. Readerly Sloth | Politics Pynchon is aware that slothfulness is hardly a practical solution for modern socio-political problems. Bartleby’s boss was far from being so callous a person as to fire him on grounds of his laziness and refusal to work. Such sloth is more likely to fail in modern times, from the twentieth century onwards, since the slothful worker can be easily and instantly replaced by a more assiduous and obedient one. Therefore, his forlorn resistance in utter isolation is likely to be harmless to the structure of the ‘orthogonal machine’. It is precisely at the beginning of the twentieth century that, as Pynchon writes, “we have come to think of Sloth as primarily political, a failure of public will allowing the introduction of evil policies and the rise of evil regimes, the worldwide fascist ascendancy of the 1920’s and 30’s being perhaps Sloth’s finest hour” (1993: 3). The pivotal connotations of sloth shift from economic to political ones. This shift can be recognised in Pynchon’s depiction of Tyrone Slothrop’s sloth in Gravity’s Rainbow (GR), as the novel is set in Europe during the Second World War, right at the apex of fascism. At the beginning of the novel, Slothrop is deployed in London in 1944, when “the rockets came. Them fucking rockets” (GR: 24) – a revealing description, as the dumbfounding punchline is that the rockets strike in a “mean lag [of] about 4 12 days” (GR: 101) after Slothrop has had sexual intercourse, suggesting that the rockets’ ground zero is determined by Slothrop’s erection. Slothrop is one of those characters whom Pynchon initially criticises severely in “Nearer” because of his anachronistic and ultimately dysfunctional continuation of Bartleby’s method. As Pynchon writes: “Fiction and nonfiction alike are full of characters who fail to do what they should because of the effort involved. How

The Poetics of Slothfulness in Pynchon

can we not recognize our world? Occasions for choosing good present themselves in public and private for us every day, and we pass them by” (1993: 3). Slothrop either does not recognise that a termination of his sexual frenzy might lead to the cessation of the rocket barrage, or he chooses to cleave to his destructive habits with intent. The latter interpretation is more likely to hold true because Slothrop is introduced as being “a faithful reader” (GR: 21) – and the very next sentence reads: “Tacked to the wall next to Slothrop’s desk is a map of London” (GR: 21), on which he keeps track of his movements and numerous liaisons. Thus, Slothrop should be able to ‘read the map’ but is seduced by the comfort of sexual exuberance as opposed to an effortful political intervention. “Acedia is the vernacular of everyday modern life”, writes Pynchon (1993: 3), and the reader finds Slothrop reiterate “Fuck you” and statements such as “Fuck the war” (GR: 49), which are, in view of the gravity of the circumstances, patently feckless obscenities. The rocket strikes continue not despite but because of Slothrop’s sloth, the moral vengeance of his overindulgence in lust, another cardinal sin, and apathy. This can be paralleled with a section in “Nearer”, where Pynchon writes: Though it [acedia] has never lost its deepest notes of mortal anxiety, it never gets as painful as outright despair, or as real, for it is despair bought at a discount price, a deliberate turning against faith in anything because of the inconvenience faith presents to the pursuit of quotidian lusts, angers and the rest. (1993: 3; emphasis added) Pynchon again deploys a poetics of discomfort and inconvenience that arises because of a ‘deliberate turning against faith’ – the definition of Aquinas’ acedia, which he opposes to the comfort of insisting on the ‘pursuit of quotidian lusts, angers’. It is quite likely that Pynchon thinks of the early Slothrop whilst penning these phrases, since they most aptly describe the impetus behind his sheer inexhaustible libido and wrathful repetition of “Fuck you” – quotidian lusts and angers in the guise of sloth. In their discussions on Pynchonian sloth, many critics almost exclusively concentrate on Slothrop’s sloth (Leise 2009; Herman/Weisenburger 2013; Engelhardt 2014). There is unanimous agreement that Slothrop is, nomen est omen, a slothful person, but a general disagreement whether in the novel’s unfolding Slothrop’s sloth becomes cathartic or deplorable. Luc Herman and Steven Weisenburger compare Bartleby’s “I would prefer not to” with Slothrop’s reiterated “Fuck you”, claiming that Slothrop, at first, indeed “exemplifies the acedia-defined, soulless modern who impassively watched the ‘world-wide fascist ascendancy’” (2013: 211), but in the course of the novel gradually achieves “a kind of stability, and grace, after all” (ibid.). Christopher Leise, on the other hand, champions a more positive reading of Slothrop’s sloth, which he calls “salvific sloth” (2009: 136). Pointing to the historical background of American Puritanism, he claims that “the narrative refigures the

51

52

Burak Sezer

capital sin of Sloth into a context wherein its characteristic ambivalence becomes a productive stance of resistance against dogmatism” (ibid.: 128) – the ‘dogmatism’ he refers to is one of a “ruling elite” who have “suppressed [a] strain of Puritanism” (ibid.) which Gravity’s Rainbow revitalises through Slothrop. Nina Engelhardt argues from a more scientific vantage point, claiming that “the term ‘sloth’ in ‘slothrop’ points to the physical concept of inertia” (2014: 12). She regards Slothrop’s laziness as a cross-product of being “emotionally and physically inert” (ibid.), concluding that Leise’s notion of a ‘salvific sloth’ proves untenable: While Slothropian sloth does entail resistance to productivity, Leise does not take into consideration Slothrop’s growing emotional passivity and carelessness that casts him in the ethical terms of the original Puritan understanding rather than in the terms of modern sloth that Leise derives primarily from Pynchon’s newspaper article. (Ibid.: 16) She reconsiders the Bartleby-Slothrop confrontation introduced by Herman/Weisenburger, arguing that “Bartleby’s reiteration ‘I would prefer not to’ marks a decision, however tentative the formulation, whereas Slothrop does not even decide not to act” (ibid.). I would like to challenge Engelhardt’s assessment. The maximum of Slothrop’s sloth and his repudiation of any political obligation is in London, right at the outset of the plot. If anything, his ‘emotional passivity and carelessness’ is not growing but declining. His embarkation into the Zone, the ungoverned legal vacuum in the wake of the war, marks his departure from a state of pathological sloth, even though, concededly, he never redeems himself entirely. A short scene in the Zone attests Slothrop’s growing sensitivity towards political and meaningful action: ‘I’m sorry,’ he [Slothrop] tells them. ‘I can’t do anything about those people, they’re all out of my reach. What can I do?’ A medium-size pine nearby nods its top and suggests, ‘Next time you come across a logging operation out here, find one of their tractors that isn’t being guarded, and take its oil filter with you. That’s what you can do.’ (GR: 655) What is being discussed here is that Slothrop’s family “made its money killing trees, amputating them from their roots, chopping them up, grinding them to pulp, bleaching that to paper and getting paid for this with more paper” (GR: 654f.), which Slothrop finds “really insane” (GR: 655). His confession that he cannot do anything about the deforestation at least testifies to his volition, emotional activity, and care, which stands in stark contrast to Engelhardt’s evaluation. His grievance is understandable in light of the asymmetrical power relation: Slothrop as a lone agent does not stand a chance against a massive syndicate. The pine, however, assures him that there are still small, meaningful acts of resistance, which must go

The Poetics of Slothfulness in Pynchon

beyond a Bartleby-esque terminal acedia as in “I would prefer not to”, even if it is only stealing the tractors’ oil filters. As readers of the novel, we are invited to reflect on our own sloth. The finale of Gravity’s Rainbow exposes everyone appalled by Slothrop’s slothful conduct as not a whit morally superior to him. Before his odyssey in the Zone, we criticise him for being a ‘faithful reader’ while not doing anything against the rocket barrage, but are we readier for action? Idly, we find ourselves as readers of the novel Gravity’s Rainbow sitting in a theatre in Los Angeles in 1973, where a V-2 rocket fired by the novel’s great antagonist Blicero is about to crash. Will we remain in this theatre, slothful, disregarding the pending danger of fascist assault, hypnotised by the pornographies of fiction, or will we be ‘faithful readers’ of the novel and undertake the effort necessary and leave the theatre and its illusions? Is the novel discomforting enough to mobilise the readership? These questions are prevalent in Pynchon’s writings, as he is always fearful that modern capitalism makes both reader and writer too comfortable. As a character named Vanya says: look at the forms of capitalist expression. Pornographies: pornography of love, erotic love, Christian love, boy-and-his-dog, pornographies of deduction – ahh, that sigh when we guess the murderer – all these novels, these films and songs they lull us with, they’re approaches, more comfortable and less so, to that Absolute Comfort. (GR: 184) The state of ‘Absolute Comfort’ describes a utopian, quasi-mythical state of consummate fictional saturation, reminiscent of the embryo’s ‘Absolute Comfort’ in the mother’s womb. Gravity’s Rainbow, with all its obscene depictions of coprophilia and sadomasochistic child rape, is a novel as disconcerting as it can be, and its sublime finale constitutes a litmus test for how far we are willing to move out of our comfort zone and its temptations when the theatre of fiction is confronted with the atrocities of the real. Just like Bartleby refuses to be exploited by capitalism, Pynchon urges the reader to reject the stultifying and somniferous pornography machine and to combat fascism directly. Thirty years later, he becomes explicit in his appeal. In his 2003 “Foreword” to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four he writes that “[i]t may be an affliction peculiar to writers more than others, this fear of getting too comfortable, of being bought off” (xix) because “[t]he ability of the ruling element to co-opt dissent was ever present as a danger” (ibid.). For Pynchon, comfortable fiction is tightly connected to co-opted fiction, and the ability to withstand reading and writing comfortable fiction is a crucial aspect of uncomfortable sloth, or, as Pynchon calls it, “modern Sloth” (1993: 3).

53

54

Burak Sezer

4. Watcherly Sloth | Media Salman Rushdie points out in his 1990 Vineland review titled “Still Crazy After All These Years”4 that Tyrone Slothrop is an anagram for “Sloth or Entropy” (1990: 3). Taking my cue from Pynchon’s claim that “[a]ny discussion of Sloth in the present day is of course incomplete without considering television, with its gifts of paralysis” (1993: 3), I want to investigate the meaning behind ‘sloth or Entropy’ from a media-theoretical perspective, thereby drawing on Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media (1964) and Robert Pfaller’s Interpassivity: The Aesthetics of Delegated Enjoyment (2017). Pynchon’s depiction of the televiewer is, throughout his œuvre, unvaryingly slothful. Already in his first novel V. (2000 [1963]) does he give the reader a glimpse into the pastime of Fergus Mixolydian, who laid claim to being the laziest living being in Nueva York. […] Fergus got so lazy that his only activity (short of those necessary to sustain life) was once a week to fiddle around at the kitchen sink with dry cells, retorts, alembics, salt solutions. What he was doing, he was generating hydrogen; this went to fill the sturdy green balloon with a great Z printed on it. He would tie the balloon by a string to the post of the bed whenever he planned to sleep, this being the only way for visitors to tell which side of consciousness Fergus was on. His other amusement was watching TV. He’d devised an ingenious sleep-switch, receiving its signal from two electrodes placed on the inner skin of his forearm. When Fergus dropped below a certain level of awareness, the skin resistance increased over a preset value to operate the switch. Fergus thus became an extension of the TV set. (56) Especially the last sentence is remarkable because Pynchon wrote it at least one year prior to McLuhan’s dissemination of his famous conception of media as ‘extensions of men’ and ‘extensions of the nervous system’ in 1964. The fundamental difference to McLuhan’s model, however, is the inversion of the relationship: in Pynchon’s novel, it is Fergus who is an extension of the TV set. With this shift of perspective, Pynchon makes two statements: first, the existence of Fergus is wholly subordinated to the TV set, and second, his knowledge, perspective, information, worldview, and humour is wholly conditioned and governed by it. In “Nearer”, Pynchon refers to the television’s “creature and symbiont, the notorious Couch Potato” (1993: 3), again emphasising that the ‘Couch Potato’ is a by-product of the Tube. Note, however, how the young Pynchon (by the publication of V. in his late twenties) complexifies sloth: Fergus might be a victim of TV, but one cannot downplay

4

This is seventeen ‘slothful’ years after the publication of Gravity’s Rainbow, as Hanjo Berressem (2015: 304) emphasises.

The Poetics of Slothfulness in Pynchon

his immense creativity and artistic prowess as an inventor. It is his sloth that invites him to concoct chemicals in a kitchen laboratory and invent a “sleep-switch” in the first place. This is not a fluke, as [t]he rest of [his] Crew partook in the same lethargy. Raoul wrote for television, keeping carefully in mind, and complaining bitterly about, all the sponsor-fetishes of that industry. Slab painted in sporadic bursts, referring to himself as a Catatonic Expressionist and his work as ‘the ultimate non-communication.’ Melvin played the guitar and sang liberal folk songs. The pattern would have been familiar – bohemian, creative, arty – except that it was even further removed from reality, Romanticism in its furthest decadence; being only an exhausted impersonation of poverty, rebellion and artistic ‘soul’. (V.: 56; emphases added) Pynchon’s 1993 article on sloth consolidates the imagination he had forty years before as he claims that sloth is necessary for artistic production; thus, the reader learns that Fergus becomes an inventor, Raoul a writer, Slab a painter, and Melvin a musician, albeit lethargic ones. Fergus Mixolydian is also an early precursor to the final stage of the pathological TV-addict, namely the ‘thanatoid’, most prominently depicted in Vineland (VL) as someone in a state “like death, only different” (VL: 170). Thanatoids are incarnations of sloth because they fully succumb to the allurement of the Tube, which usually entails a consumerist and unreflective lifestyle. They do not share the creativity of Fergus Mixolydian. Vineland depicts television as a stupefying state apparatus; the dark projections of the repercussions of an ‘Absolute Comfort’ are imminent. In such times, it appears that the 1984 TV sloth is an even more aggravated form of sloth since it not only produces ‘venial sins’ as discussed earlier, but rather the entire gamut of the deadly sins. Pynchon writes in “Nearer”: Tales spun in idleness find us Tubeside, supine, chiropractic fodder, sucking it all in, re-enacting in reverse the transaction between dream and revenue that brought these colored shadows here to begin with so that we might feed, uncritically, committing the six other deadly sins in parallel, eating too much, envying the celebrated, coveting merchandise, lusting after images, angry at the news, perversely proud of whatever distance we may enjoy between our couches and what appears on screen. (1993: 3) Although Vineland was published three years earlier, many of these side effects of TV sloth are discussed within the narrative. For instance, the first Thanatoid is introduced chewing “a big mouthful of Takeshi’s food” (VL: 170) (gluttony), another one is constantly “craving for more” TV-screens “to bathe in rays, lap and suck at the flow of image” (VL: 335) (avarice, lust). Once the reader is introduced to a Thanatoid named Ortho Bob Dulang, however, another deadly sin is highlighted: wrath. The Thanatoids are wrathful because

55

56

Burak Sezer

they understand their situation. The name Ortho Bob suggests that he is a representative of a large group of people caught in what Pynchon calls the ‘orthogonal machine’, but it is striking to see that he is perfectly conscious of it. He is highly uncomfortable with his situation but clueless as to an effective mode of resistance, just like the older Slothrop was when he conversed with the pine. Ortho Bob therefore delegates his responsibility to two agents of the ‘Karmic Adjustment’, who are committed to restoring justice in a state predicated upon consumerism, exploitation, and televisual brainwashing: “Ortho Bob came lurching over, looking as awful as the night he must have spent. […] ‘Fuck the money, rilly,’ Ortho Bob had stipulated, ‘just get me some revenge, OK?’” (VL: 174). A short episode of Pynchon’s short story “Entropy” (1960) explains how the intellectual sloth of the prototypical ‘Ortho Bob’ comes about.5 A term derived from physics, entropy is a “measure of disorganization for a closed system” (Pynchon 2000 [1960]: 88). A closed system perfectly ordered in, for instance, hot and cold has low entropy; one that is lukewarm has high entropy. The ‘second Law of Thermodynamics’ states that every closed system tends to become more disorganised in the course of time until it reaches a point of maximum entropy, the ‘heat-death’. Strikingly, if sloth were an acronym, ‘second Law of Thermodynamics’ would be its appropriate full form, as it requires activity to make a new order out of the given. Pynchon visualises this catastrophic scenario. He regards entropy as “an adequate metaphor to apply to certain phenomena in his own world” (ibid.: 88) because he sees in American ‘consumerism’ […] a similar tendency from the least to the most probable, from differentiation to sameness, from ordered individuality to a kind of chaos. He […] envisioned a heat-death for his culture in which ideas, like heat-energy, would no longer be transferred, since each point in it would ultimately have the same quantity of energy; and intellectual motion would, accordingly cease. (Ibid.: 88f.) In Vineland, one can find an instance where this specific intellectual heat-death is visualised, namely the Thanatoid sitcom, in which “all they could show’d be scenes of Thanatoids watchin’ the Tube!” (VL: 171). The sameness of the world inside and outside TV predicts the termination of any exchange of information and the obsolescence of the medium itself. In order to pursue this idea of hot/cold and media even further, it is worthwhile consulting Marshall McLuhan’s media theory. In Understanding Media, he offers an evocative metaphorics of hot and cold media: “Hot media do not leave much to be

5

Entropy has become a prominent trope in literary studies, especially Pynchon studies (see Ickstadt 1981; Vanderbeke 2001).

The Poetics of Slothfulness in Pynchon

filled in or completed by the audience. Hot media are, therefore, low in participation, and cool media are high in participation or completion by the audience” (2001 [1964]: 25). For example, radio is a hot medium because it requires minimal participation, whereas the telephone, a cold medium, requires maximal participation to be effective. One could expect, too, that, when exposed to a hot medium, the energy and information of the content would dissipate to the audience. Then again, it arguably does not happen too often that the audience is enkindled by high-performance sport; only a few feel the urge to ride a bike when watching the Tour de France. Similarly, McLuhan asks “[w]hether the hot film medium using hot content would cool off the hot drivers is a moot point” (ibid.: 33; emphasis added). In terms of thermodynamics, this would be a case of media-negentropy: the hot medium does not dissipate its energy but rather absorbs it. The hotter the medium becomes, the more slothful the audience, the more unlikely that a new and meaningful order is generated; sloth and entropy appear to be negatively correlated, as the anagram ‘Tyrone Slothrop’ – ‘Sloth or Entropy’ suggests. To understand this, it is worthwhile consulting Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation (1994 [1981]), especially his analysis of the film The China Syndrome (1979), where he states that TV and the nuclear are of the same nature: behind the ‘hot’ and negentropic [=antientropic, creating order out of chaos] concepts of energy and information, they have the same power of deterrence as cold systems do. TV itself is also a nuclear process of chain reaction, but implosive: it cools and neutralizes the meaning and the energy of events. (1994: 53) Thus, Baudrillard predicts the cooling off of a hot culture via TV because the TV event does not incite to action but rather inhibits it. As an example, one could imagine that Quentin Tarantino’s films are pedagogic because the explicit depiction of violence in his movies reduces the use of violence outside the movie theatre. This is media-negentropy: there is a tendency that the violence of the movie does not disperse into the world, but rather absorbs all violence and locks it away, restoring an orderly state. After the film, only the film knows violence, whereas the audience becomes tranquil, an idea which finds its ancient roots in Aristotle’s concept of catharsis.6 Baudrillard gives a more pessimistic example: “At the end of the film [The China Syndrome] again comes the second massive intrusion of the press and of TV that instigates the drama – the murder of the technical director by the Special Forces, a drama that substitutes for the nuclear catastrophe that will not occur” (ibid.:

6

This is a controversial point and is not intended to sound apodictic. A prominent counterexample would be the Werther effect, where the suicide in the novel is not tranquillising or pacifying, but rather inciting. In other words, the hot suicide does not remain orderly in the novel but dissipates into the real world in a disorderly manner.

57

58

Burak Sezer

53; emphasis added). Because films show the assassinations of technocrats, they are de facto immortalised, since a potentially actual assassination is overwritten by the film itself. The concept of an ‘assassination of a technocrat’ is thus eternally an item of fiction and of fiction only. Vineland depicts a similar situation. A character named Frenesi, revolutionary filmmaker and ex-wife of protagonist Zoyd Wheeler, “made movies for the Revolution you guys tried to have” (VL: 101), as her daughter Prairie puts it. She alludes to the 1960’s counterculture revolution. Henceforth, the novel provides a critical examination of why the revolution never occurred. Indeed, the Reagan era of the 1980s is described as an extremely oppressive, even fascist epoch. At first, Frenesi’s enterprise is promising, as she and her crew “live out the metaphor of movie camera as weapon. […] ‘A camera is a gun. An image taken is death performed. Images put together are the substructure of an afterlife and a Judgment. We will be architects of a just Hell for the fascist pig’” (VL: 197). Here, the goal is to film the fascists to overthrow them, relying on the trustworthiness of film to be the most adequate mediator of reality and convince the people of the authenticity of the footage. However, Frenesi betrays the revolution by having a sexual relationship with federal prosecutor Brock Vond, the revolutionaries’ enemy. She then promises to film the revolution’s leader Weed Atman: “We’re going to be filming it. Once we have him [Weed Atman] on film, whether he lies or confesses, he’s done for, it doesn’t matter” (VL: 240). As predicted, Weed Atman, being framed by Frenesi, is assassinated by a faithful revolutionist, who was convinced by Frenesi’s deceptive film that Atman was working for the government, leaving the revolution bereft of a leader. In short: filming the hot content of the hot revolution cooled it off so that the revolution could never occur. Frenesi’s hot film functions as a deterrent to the real revolution. The inactive and watcherly slothful TV culture is perpetuated and ‘Absolute Comfort’ is attained at the price of allowing fascism to exist.

5. Laugherly Sloth | Technology According to the Oxford Dictionary of Media and Communication, “[a]rguably, in McLuhan’s terms, television has grown hotter since the 1960s” (Chandler/Munday 2011: 191). Some adjunct technologies to TV have contributed to this heating up, which means that the medium itself requires even less participation or completion by an audience than before. A prominent example is the technology of ‘canned laughter’, i.e. “the artificial laughter which accompanies comical moments in TV-series” (Žižek 2003). The philosopher Slavoj Žižek comments on the effects of this kind of laughter:

The Poetics of Slothfulness in Pynchon

when, in the evening, I come home, too exhausted to engage in a meaningful activity, I just press the TV button and watch Cheers, Friends, or another series; even if I do not laugh, but simply stare at the screen, tired after a hard day’s work, I nonetheless feel relieved after the show – it is as if the TV-screen was literally laughing at my place […]. (Ibid.) TV has become self-sufficient because it can now laugh on its own. Žižek’s point ties in smoothly with the previous discussion of watcherly sloth: when TV portrays acts of civil disobedience (such as the murder of the technocrat or the satirical comedian’s lambasting of the political elite), they are almost performed in the service of the audience, which gives the audience the strange comfort of not being obligated to imitate them in the real world. TV is criticising, rebelling, and laughing instead of the audience itself, and it thus functions as an even hotter medium. Canned laughter, however, is qualitatively different because it constitutes an instance of what Robert Pfaller (2017: 38) calls ‘interpassivity’ or interpassive “prostheses of enjoyment”. Interpassivity does not mean a delegation of work, like a revolution or criticism of the political elite, but rather a delegation of consumption, almost as if one is too slothful to enjoy. Pfaller’s theory is motivated by what seems to be an unshakeable modern preference of activity of any kind – interactive media, cultural interactions, etc. “The more interactivity we have, the fewer real observers, interested in something apart from themselves, can be found” (ibid.: 28). The glorification of (inter)activity frequently occurs with a certain capriciousness of the activity itself: it is expected of live performers to include the audience in their act, although the quality of the performance would not necessarily benefit from it; schools need to be fundamentally interactive; or new media need to involve the otherwise passive watcher in a way that might prove irksome to the whole experience. This “march of participation” (ibid.: 95) is predicated on a premise “that it is more desirable for spectators to participate than to spectate: it gives them more pleasure and thus makes them happier, or it gives them less comfort and thus makes them freer” (ibid.). The reduction of comfort is almost regarded as an ideal: the less comfortable the medium, the more worthwhile and substantial the experience. The greatest danger, however, is to think that a future defined by an increasing percentage of media interactivity will be the utopia to strive for in times of slothfulness. Insistence on interactivity is more pernicious than sloth itself. Žižek (2003) writes: One should therefore turn around one of the commonplaces of the conservative cultural criticism: in contrast to the notion that the new media turn us into passive consumers who just stare blindly at the screen, one should claim that the so-called threat of the new media resides in the fact that they deprive us of our passivity, of our authentic passive experience, and thus prepare us for the mindless frenetic activity.

59

60

Burak Sezer

Hence, interactivity should not be confounded with real activity. In his essay “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction” (1997 [1993]), David Foster Wallace analyses the cultural transformation in the age of television. He mentions George Gilder’s invention of the telecomputer (TC), which enriches the viewing experience by offering a gamut of pictures to choose from. With the TC, “any experience will be transferrable to image and marketable, manipulable, consumable.” People will be able to “go comfortably sight-seeing from their living room through high resolution screens, visiting Third-World countries […]. We will, in short, be able to engineer our own dreams” (ibid.: 73). Wallace views the marketing of such a gadget as an emancipatory movement against eternal passivity as highly ironic. He argues that “it’s worth questioning Gilder’s definition of televisual ‘passivity,’ though. His new tech would indeed end ’the passivity of mere reception’. But the passivity of the Audience, the acquiescence inherent in a whole culture of and about watching, looks unaffected by TCs.” (Ibid.: 74) Pynchon also predicts the future to be one that suggests putative activity through interactive media only to incarcerate the consumer in a comfortable prison of passivity. In McLuhan’s terminology, this is the message of the interactive medium itself. Interactivity with a medium means action directed only to the medium, instructed only by the medium, and is more aptly characterised as a blatant form of passivity. Pynchon (1993: 4) offers a possible solution to this technological comfort, which is sloth itself: Perhaps the future of Sloth will lie in sinning against what now seems increasingly to define us – technology. Persisting in Luddite sorrow, despite technology’s good intentions, there we'll sit with our heads in virtual reality, glumly refusing to be absorbed in its idle, disposable fantasies, even those about superheroes of Sloth back in Sloth’s good old days [Bartleby], full of leisurely but lethal misadventures with the ruthless villains of the Acedia Squad. Again, one can admire Pynchon’s foresight: he mentions ‘virtual reality’ in 1993, a concept of simulated immersion that has been virulent since the advent of highspeed internet and sophisticated computer games in the late 2000s. The more sophisticated these technologies become, the more demanding they are. Being slothful, that is refusing the technology’s command, is discomforting because it is a resuscitation of Bartleby’s formula “I would prefer not to” in the face of technology’s offering to mould our own utopias. We are nowadays confronted with YouTube’s suggestions as to which video to watch next and YouTubers’ insistence to ‘like and subscribe’ and comment on every video not only to generate outreach and revenue but also to improve the algorithm that predicts our taste so that we become shackled to the comforts of YouTube. In conclusion, I would like to challenge the claim that “Pynchon does not present a unified stance on sloth” (119), as Pynchon scholar Martin Paul Eve main-

The Poetics of Slothfulness in Pynchon

tains in Pynchon and Philosophy (2014). Although the previous chapters may give the impression that Pynchon’s conceptualisation of sloth is ever-changing, his stance on sloth is remarkably consistent. Comfortable sloth is regrettable – it occurs when media and technology expunge the sense of what needs to be done, like a revolution against fascism; uncomfortable sloth is welcome as a form of resistance as displayed by Bartleby or Tyrone Slothrop (specifically in the Zone). For Pynchon, comfortable sloth is often connoted with being ‘bought off’, when both readers and writers expose themselves only to those pornographies that do not disturb the comfort of the ‘womb of fiction’. In contrast, uncomfortable sloth is strongly connoted with saying ‘No’ in the face of the temptations of maximum comfort. Hence, Pynchon’s œuvre can help gauge the necessary degree of sloth; it teaches us to be alert when we are too comfortable in our sloth and points us to what needs to be done when we are uncomfortable. Sloth is therefore always political; if deployed consciously and responsibly, it is even in some sense virtuous.

61

62

Burak Sezer

Works Cited “Accidie.” 2006. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Edited by E. A. Livingstone. Oxford: Oxford UP. Baudelaire, Charles. 2008. “Spleen II [1857].” The Victorian Web, 16 March. http:// www.victorianweb.org/decadence/baudelaire/7.html (accessed: February 21, 2020). Baudrillard, Jean. 1994 [1981]. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Berressem, Hanjo. 2015. “‘The Acedia Squad.’ Thomas Pynchon, die Trägheit und die Medien.” In: Ingo Breuer et al., eds. Die Sieben Todsünden. Paderborn: Fink, 303-318. Chandler, Daniel & Rod Munday. 2011. A Dictionary of Media and Communication. Oxford: OUP. Engelhardt, Nina. 2014. “Gravity in Gravity’s Rainbow. Force, Fictitious Force, and Frame of Reference; or: The Science and Poetry of Sloth.” Orbit: A Journal About American Literature 2.2: 1-26. Eve, Martin Paul. 2014. Pynchon and Philosophy: Wittgenstein, Foucault and Adorno. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Franklin, Benjamin. 2015 [1793]. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. South Kingstown: Millennium Publications. —. 1748. “Advice to a Young Tradesman.” https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/coretexts/_ files/resources/texts/1748%20Franklin%20Advice.pdf (accessed: June 2, 2019). Glen, Patrick J. 2007. “The Deconstruction and Reification of Law in Franz Kafka’s ‘Before the Law’ and ‘The Trial’.” Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal 17.1: 23-66. Herman, Luc & Steven Weisenburger. 2013. Gravity’s Rainbow, Domination, and Freedom. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Huxley, Aldous. 1923. “Accidie.” In: On the Margin: Notes & Essays. London: Chatto and Windus, 18-25. Ickstadt, Heinz (ed.). 1981. Ordnung und Entropie: Zum Romanwerk von Thomas Pynchon. Reinbek: Rowohlt. Kolcaba, Katharine. 2003. Comfort Theory and Practice: A Vision for Holistic Health Care and Research. New York: Springer. Lafargue, Paul. 1883. “The Right To Be Lazy.” https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ paul-lafargue-the-right-to-be-lazy (accessed: June 2, 2019). Leise, Christopher. 2009. “‘Presto Change-o! Tyrone Slothrop’s English Again!’: Puritan Conversion, Imperfect Assurance, and Salvific Sloth in Gravity’s Rainbow.” Pynchon Notes 56-57: 127-143. McLuhan, Marshall. 2001 [1964]. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Men. Oxon: Routledge Classics.

The Poetics of Slothfulness in Pynchon

Melville, Herman. 1986 [1853]. “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street.” In: Frederick Busch, ed. Herman Melville: Billy Budd and Other Stories. New York: Penguin, 1-46. Pfaller, Robert. 2017. Interpassivity: The Aesthetics of Delegated Enjoyment. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP. Pezeu-Massabuau, Jacques. 2012. A Philosophy of Discomfort. London: Reaktion Books. Plato. 1997. “Ion.” In: John M. Cooper, ed. Plato: Complete Works. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett, 937-949. Pynchon, Thomas. 1993. “Nearer, my Couch, to Thee.” The New York Times Book Review. June 6, 1-4. —. 2000 [1959]. “The Small Rain.” In: Slow Learner: Early Stories. London: Vintage, 27-51. —. 2000 [1960]. “Entropy.” In: Slow Learner: Early Stories. London: Vintage, 81-137. —. 2000 [1963]. V. London: Vintage. —. 2000 [1973]. Gravity’s Rainbow. London: Vintage. —. 2000 [1990]. Vineland. London: Vintage. —. 2003. “Foreword.” In: George Orwell. Nineteen Eighty-Four. New York: Penguin, vii-xxvi. Rushdie, Salman. 1990. “Still Crazy After All These Years.” The New York Times, January 14. https://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/14/books/still-crazy-after-all-theseyears.html (accessed: February 21, 2020). Russell, Bertrand. 2004 [1932]. “In Praise of Idleness.” In: In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays. London: Routledge Classics, 1-15. —. 2004 [1935]. “‘Useless’ Knowledge.” In: In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays. London: Routledge Classics, 16-27. Vanderbeke, Dirk. 2001. “N Tropes for Entropy in Pynchon’s Early Works.” Pynchon Notes 46-49: 35-59. Wallace, David Foster. 1997. “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction.” In: A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2182. Weber, Max. 2018 [1905]. Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus. Köln: Anaconda. Žižek, Slavoj. “Will You Laugh for Me, Please.” https://www.lacan.com/zizeklaugh. htm (accessed: June 2, 2019).

63

“A sort of strange beginning out of time” Comfort as an Involuntary Cultural Memory Elisa Carandina “Pain made her conservative. Where the matches touched her flesh, she wears a scar.” Adrienne Rich, The Blue Ghazals “Perhaps we have adopted the belief because there is some comfort in it. If we are to die ourselves, and first to lose in death those who are dearest to us, it is easier to submit to a remorseless law of nature, to the sublime Ἀvάγχη [necessity], rather than to a chance event that might well have proved avoidable.” Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle

1. Comfort, Comfort Zone, and Sweating When reflecting on what comfort means and how it may be achieved, older scientific definitions of comfort and comfort zones may provide a helpful point of departure. For the purposes of this chapter, the definition of comfort zone introduced in 1920 in engineering is especially illuminating. Quoting this definition, David Ellison and Andrew Leach stress how the heat-balance model of what was then defined as the “conditions under which a person can maintain a normal balance between production and loss of heat at normal body temperatures and without sweating” (2016: 1) also helped understand other forms of comfort. These experiences of comfort were understood as a process of “achieving equilibrium” (ibid.: 1). I find the heat-balance model a fitting image for comfort as a condition that seems static but that is in fact the result of an active process constantly in the making: a mediation between the collective and the individual, culture and nature, norms and their violations, memory and action, conservative and progressive tendencies. First of all, the notion of comfort as balance endows it with a performative

66

Elisa Carandina

dimension. What can be seen as a condition or as an achievement is also a constant mediation between two opposite forces. Attaining and maintaining this condition is thus a process, giving a dynamic twist to what has already been described as the double ‘nature’ of comfort, namely material well-being and the psychologicalemotional well-being enabled by these material comforts.1 To put it in other words, comfort has been described as a state of mind, as an attribute, and as an achievement, as Elizabeth Shove (2003: 21-40) clarifies. However, if we consider comfort as the process of achieving or keeping balance, comfort needs to be described with regard to this particular dynamic dimension. Moreover, the notion of balance between two elements allows one to contextualise the elements involved in this process with respect to conformism or normativity. The latter looms large in literature on the subject of comfort. A case in point is Olivier Le Goff’s (1994) definition of comfort as the result of cultural and discursive practices that set a specific series of norms, which are programmatically presented and perceived as natural. The tension between what can be constructed as a dichotomy between the individual and the norm, the cultural and the natural – even if this static opposition does not describe how these elements are intertwined – is so crucial in the debate regarding comfort that it has been considered its very raison d’être: “Notre capacité à produire un certain être-ensemble, à maintenir une certaine cohésion sociale est, si l’on y réfléchit bien, toute entière engagée par cette question du confort.” (Ibid.: 20) The prescriptive dimension of a norm that is supposed to define what is ‘normal’ is clear also in the above-mentioned description of comfort as equilibrium, as a sociocultural construction that “is primarily the object of an artificially controlled, thermally stable construction” (Ellison/Leach 2016: 11). In my view, the normativity of comfort under the cover of its alleged ‘naturality’ shapes its specificity as something that is prescriptive to the point that we keep repeating the same actions, both with respect to our past and to our peers, without precisely knowing why. On top of that, we keep repeating the same pattern even when it is not ‘good’ for us, as, for example, when the old and comfortable armchair is hurting our back. Comfort may not be good for us, but this does not stop us from reaching for it. In order to account for this key feature of comfort, I will explore a new notion of comfort with respect to repetition and memory.

2. Comfort as Repetition Compulsion If comfort is the process of maintaining balance, it necessarily involves our relationship with what we have known as our previous states or conditions. In this 1

See: Côme/Pollet (2016), Crowley (2001), Ellison/Leach (2016), Goubert (1988), Le Goff (1994), Pezeu-Massabuau (2002), and Shove (2003).

Comfort as an Involuntary Cultural Memory

respect, it can be compared to inertia as the drive par excellence, according to Sigmund Freud’s definition in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1914): A drive might accordingly be seen as a powerful tendency inherent in every living organism to restore a prior state, which prior state the organism was compelled to relinquish due to the disruptive influence of external forces; we can see it as a kind of organic elasticity, or, if we prefer, as a manifestation of inertia in organic life. (Freud 2003) Comfort can be compared with inertia due to its highly dynamic drive stemming from a conservative approach to life, namely the instinct to restore an earlier state of things. Building upon the expectation that we have the necessity as well as the ability to reproduce in the present the very same situation we were in in the past, comfort becomes a reassuring habit, a convention, a pattern of repetition. Following this logic, the dynamic of repetition as comfort is not to be mistaken with comfort as a condition: comfort does not come from but is the repetition of a past that we feel we have lost and that we want to have back. Thus, a performative approach to comfort defines it not as the condition in itself, but as the process of going back to an earlier state of things in order to maintain this state. The difference between these two definitions of comfort becomes clearer when we take into consideration that this instinct of inertia is at work even when the result is the return to an uncomfortable condition: comfort as a dynamic pushes us back to a known situation, no matter how uncomfortable it is, was, or has become. Our need for comfort makes us repetitive and conservative, as well as unaware of how much we tend to put ourselves in precisely those situations or conditions that are known to us, no matter how unpleasant or unhealthy they may be. An uncomfortable comfort zone gives us pleasure because we feel that we may control it due to its familiarity. This conservative drive thus manifests as a compulsive dynamic:2 “we may say that the patient does not remember anything at all of what he has forgotten and repressed, but rather acts it out. He reproduces it not as a memory, but as an action; he repeats it, without of course, being aware of the fact that he is repeating it.” (Freud 2003) Comfort as repetition compulsion pushes us back to an earlier state of things every time we feel some kind of change is affecting our condition, and it is then that the inertia drive tells us that the best way is the way back. Such a way back involves memory, and it is through memory that I will develop the difference between comfort as a dynamic and comfort as a condition in more detail. Comfort as a dynamic seeks to recover a past state, and it can thus 2

Regarding the repetition compulsion, see: Bibring (1943), Bowins (2010), Gifford (1964), Horowitz (1976), Inderbitzin/Levy (1998), Janet (1925), Levy (2000), Loewald (1971), and Schur (1966).

67

68

Elisa Carandina

be defined as a way to remember without remembering because it reproduces an action instead of a memory. On the other hand, the condition of comfort is haunted by memories. As C. Morland aptly stated in a letter to Rebecca Solnit: “Memories are the real handicaps in the world of physical comfort. Any boy would be just as good as any other to sleep with (barring annoying physical habits) if we didn’t have memories. The level of warmth is probably the same.” (Solnit 2001: 198) If one were to define comfort as a condition in its purest form, then it would be a condition resulting from the repetition compulsion and its successful denial of memory. The different role that memories play in the dynamic of comfort as opposed to the condition of comfort gives rise to a paradox. Not remembering becomes a vicious circle of repetition compulsion. The condition of comfort and its obsession with memories keep us looking for the same lost comfort, preventing us from reaching comfort as a condition in the present. The dynamic of blindly restoring a previous state is then doomed to have uncomfortable results. More precisely, memories are the obstacle to other forms of comfort because we consciously keep looking for familiar patterns so that we deny ourselves the opportunity of discovering a new condition. According to Jacques Pezeu-Massabuau, “le degré zéro” (2002: 21) of comfort is precisely the physical one, and our feelings arise from a confrontation between the present situation and our memories: Les messages des sens permettent ainsi de nous localiser dans l’étendue et le temps dans la mesure où tous ces espaces spécifiques convergent inévitablement dans des ‘confrontations’ que l'habitude (la mémoire) et la volonté contribuent à définir mais que la perception seule nous laissera appréhender. Notre sens du confort naît précisément de ces confrontations. (Ibid.) But memories are also the reason why the process is biased, preventing us from experiencing the present while looking for the past. If comfort is tied to a conservative drive that pushes us back to where we came from, then we cannot but always be deceived. We are looking for the very same ‘level of warmth’, no matter where we are or with whom we are, as Morland pointed out. More importantly for my argument, we tend to forget ‘when’ we are because, somehow, we want to be deceived in the present so we can go back to an earlier, supposedly comfortable state of things. However, as some approaches to the repetition compulsion have shown, the return of the same is actually an illusion because it is instead a way to move on, ‘to work through’, in Freud’s terms.

2.1 Comfort, Memory, and Repetition Comfort as repetition compulsion paradoxically satisfies our constant desire to fail in the achievement of comfort as a condition by reproducing the past in the present.

Comfort as an Involuntary Cultural Memory

The repetition pattern that I see as the core of comfort, both as a dynamic and as a condition, can be further explored in order to account not only for the tension between past and present, but also between consciousness and the unconscious. In an essay on Guy Debord, Giorgio Agamben asks the question “What is repetition?” and replies as follows: There are four great thinkers of repetition in modernity: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Gilles Deleuze. All four have shown us that repetition is not the return of the identical; it is not the same as such that returns. The force and the grace of repetition, the novelty it brings us, is the return as the possibility of what was. Repetition restores the possibility of what was, renders it possible anew; it’s almost a paradox. To repeat something is to make it possible anew. Here lies the proximity of repetition and memory. Memory cannot give us back what was, as such: that would be hell. Instead memory restores possibility to the past. (2004: 315f.; emphasis added) The possibility of the past is precisely what comfort makes us look for, but there is another side to the frustration of a comfort always eluding us in the present because we are enslaved by memories. Comfort as a dynamic is based on the idea that what we are looking for existed in another time or space, and we are longing for the possibility of its return. However, this idea is contradictory because the relationship with the past is seen as a condition instead of a dynamic, just like the dream described by Agamben in The Idea of Prose, in the section titled “The Idea of the Immemorable” (1995 [1985]). When we wake up and feel as if the dream that was so clear to us is already eluding us, even while we can recall all the details of it, we are simply making a mistake based on the idea that the dream is lost when we wake up because it belongs to another time or space. Against this notion, Agamben stresses the fact that the dream exists for us “in its entirety at the moment it flashes into mind on awakening” (ibid.: 67), and not before or elsewhere, because memory gives us the dream as well as its absence. The same is true for involuntary memory because, in Agamben’s words, “the memory that brings back to us the thing forgotten is itself forgetful of it and this forgetfulness is its light” (ibid.). Far from seeing in this aporia of the dream and of memory a limit or weakness, we should instead recognize it for what it is: a prophecy regarding the very structure of consciousness itself. It is not that what we have experienced and then forgotten now returns imperfectly to consciousness, but rather that we enter at that point into what has never been, into forgetfulness as the home of consciousness. This is why our happiness is steeped in longing: consciousness contains within itself the intimation of the unconscious and that intimation is precisely what makes for its perfection. (Ibid.: 68)

69

70

Elisa Carandina

It would then be a mistake simply to consider comfort as a way to bring back the past. Comfort is, on the contrary, a repetition compulsion dynamic oblivious of what it is trying to bring back besides its possibility. Agamben’s elegiac note also characterises comfort as the paradox of something made present and absent at the same time, reminding us of our human condition.

2.2 Comfort as an Involuntary Cultural Memory If comfort acts as a repetition compulsion oblivious of itself, then there is another peculiarity that needs to be discussed. The involuntary aspect of comfort entailed by the reproduction of an action instead of a memory also comprises a cultural dimension. After all, comfort is presented as a natural condition while in fact imposing a cultural norm. Therefore, comfort should be looked at as a cultural practice.3 In her introduction to Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present, Mieke Bal deals with the notion of cultural memory as the “interaction between present and past [… that] is, however, the product of collective agency rather than the result of psychic or historical accident.” (Bal 1999: vii) According to this approach, “cultural recall is not merely something of which you happen to be a bearer but something that you actually perform, even if, in many instances, such acts are not consciously and wilfully contrived.” (Ibid.) The example given by Bal is the following: To be sure, memory can be so habitual that it appears to be automatic, just as it can be manipulated by others. When walking in a wet street, for example, one avoids stepping into a puddle, not because of a conscious decision but because ‘somehow’ one knows that not avoiding the puddle results in wet feet. This knowledge comes from memory. Such background memories help the subject survive in a community where the behaviors they inform are part of ‘normal’ life. They are so strongly routine-based – so like conditioned reflexes – that it seems a bit silly to consider them in terms of memory at all. But the underlying ‘rule’ that determines such unreflective acts can surely be reconstructed as an Ur-narrative, learned in childhood, enforced by discipline, and carried along later in life. (Ibid.: vii-viii) I will use the term involuntary cultural memory to describe the repetition pattern, its unconscious dynamic, and the impossibility of separating the individual from the collective that characterises comfort. In Bal’s example, the boundaries set by comfort assume the form of what you gain in avoiding stepping into a puddle. If you step into the puddle, Bal continues, you have been told that this would be the beginning of a “chain of little miseries” (ibid.: viii). “If you don’t avoid the puddle, your feet get wet, you catch a cold (or so we were all told), you can’t go to school, 3

For an introduction to several approaches to the notion of cultural memory, see Erll/Nünning (2010).

Comfort as an Involuntary Cultural Memory

you fall behind, and so on” (ibid.). This kind of unreflective memory can be not only compared to but equated with comfort as a cultural standard. The puddles we avoid might be seen as a way of accessing a socially constructed comfort as a condition that is supposed to bring us a reward, maybe even as a compensation for the sacrifice of the forbidden fun. Moreover, the moment we link the notion of comfort to collective as well as individual memories, the prescriptive quality of comfort becomes evident and also its function as a social control tool. These norms induce us to consider comfort as a reward because we are repetitively following an underlying ‘rule’ anchored in our individual and collective memories. We can thus define comfort according to what we get as well as what we have to avoid in order to get it, like in the abovementioned image of maintaining the balance between producing and losing heat. However, if comfort is a cultural norm proclaimed as a natural one, then we unconsciously keep repeating what we have been told to do, no matter by whom, in a comfortable dynamic that can – or maybe cannot but – have uncomfortable results. We don’t sweat, we stand still, even when it hurts. The goal, however, is clear: bringing back the possibility of a past that is lost.

2.3 Comfort and Narrativisation of the Self Conceptualising comfort as involuntary cultural memory allows me also to approach its literary dimension. In Bal’s example of the puddle, the importance of the narrative is considered by the author as quite limited: “such minimal protonarratives remain buried in routine; they contain no events that stand out. They arouse no suspense and fail to flesh out a clear and distinctive vision. All that remains is a behavioral tic, whose narrative basis is implied but neither brought to consciousness nor very relevant.” (ibid.: viii) Bal distinguishes these “minimal protonarratives” from “narrative memories” not according to their content but based on the fact that only the latter are “affectively colored, surrounded by an emotional aura that, precisely, makes them memorable” (ibid.); it is precisely this process that makes “the gray, unnoticed memories” (ibid.) the object of the narrator’s response. When it comes to comfort, an awareness of its narrativisation can offer a new perspective for gauging literary forms or modalities that have been approached from the point of view of memory in particular, namely with what has been defined as life writing. According to Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson (2010: 4), life writing is “a general term for writing that takes a life, one’s own or another, as its subject”. More precisely, comfort as an analytic prism allows one to explore the narrativisation of the self from a different angle. With respect to “the individual experience of selfhood”, Paul John Eakin observes that “testimony is necessarily mediated by available cultural models of identity and the discourses in which they are expressed” (1999: 4). Comfort could be considered as one of the elements to take

71

72

Elisa Carandina

into account when addressing the cultural models that affect the narrativisation of the self. However, it should also be taken into consideration that life-writing is not only shaped by cultural models but also produces these. Regarding comfort, this type of writing is not only constructed upon comfort but also conveys it. Moreover, if comfort can be considered one of the triggers to recreate in the present the possibility of a lost past, this new definition of comfort can also enrich the debate regarding the representation of memory dynamics in life-writing.

3. Comfort in Leah Goldberg’s Diary In this section, I will illustrate the applicability of the developed model of comfort to literary texts. As a case study, I will discuss a passage from Leah Goldberg’s diary as well as the poems she wrote during the very same days. In Hebrew, ‘comfort’, with an emphasis on the notion of feeling at ease, is expressed by the word noḥut. The same root is used for noḥiyyut, which refers to someone being in this condition. The term is also used in ḥadar noḥiyyut, which means ‘restroom’. The word noḥut can be found in Hebrew literature since the beginning of the twentieth century, in particular in Dvora Baron’s and Yosef Hayyim Brenner’s works. In the very same years when the two words started to be in use, the term qomforṭ appears in Brenner’s works.4 The word qomforṭ not only expresses the notion of being at ease but also has the connotation of a Western lifestyle that is desirable due to its prestige.5 The idea of being at ease combined with the ideal of an international living standard can be seen at work in an entry of Leah Goldberg’s diary. If a diary can be considered as a literary form that allows the narrativisation of the self (according to what has been defined as the tension between the real I, the writing I, and the written I), then this perspective is especially relevant with respect to female diary writers in general, and in particular those who are also professional authors.6 As Meg Jensen (2012) emphasised with regard to Virginia Woolf’s, Katherine Mansfield’s, and Louisa May Alcott’s diaries, this literary form functions as a borderland for mediating public and private identities.

4

5 6

The Historical Dictionary of Hebrew Language mentions three occurrences for noḥut, two from Y. Hayyim Brenner and one from Bialik; one for noḥiyyut, again in Brenner, in the 1920s and 1930s, and three more occurrences for qomforṭ again in Brenner’s works in the 1920s. I am grateful to Professor Geoffrey Khan for his remarks concerning this connotation of the word. See, for example, Bunkers/Huff (1996), Fleig (2019), Heyden-Rynsch (1997), Jensen (2012), Millim (2010), and Schahadat (2019).

Comfort as an Involuntary Cultural Memory

These observations on the diary as a literary form need to be related to the context of Hebrew and Jewish life writing.7 Even though I do not discuss Leah Goldberg’s diary in its relation to the rich significance of this genre in Hebrew and Jewish literature, it is at least necessary to mention that the tension between public and private in several forms of life writing assumes a specific connotation in the history of Hebrew literature. As stated by Tamar Hess, “Israeli selves are not only inseparably amalgamated in national selves – they are first and foremost national selves” (2016: 12). In this context, several forms of life writing by female authors show a complex dynamic: articulated from what Hess defines as gendered margins, they offer counter or alternative narratives (ibid.: 103-52). It is precisely the position, reception, and self-perception of Goldberg as a woman and as a writer that has been largely assessed in the light of hegemonic literary and cultural narratives. Special emphasis has been put by literary scholars not only on the role of her works in going beyond a dichotomic approach to places and times but also on her personal position with respect to literary, cultural, and gender models.8 On the 17th of April 1957, after several months of silence, Leah Goldberg (19111970), a writer, translator, literary scholar, and critic, resumes writing her diary. She started writing it in Hebrew when she was ten years old and living in Kovno, and she kept writing it, with the exception of some years, until the end of July 1966 in Israel.9 In the entry from 1957, she gives a little summary of what happened during the months she didn’t write: her hearing worsened, and she finished a play. More generally, she doesn’t have much money, all her friends are sick or depressed, she doesn’t feel like working; so, instead, she is reading a biography of Oscar Wilde or her own diary. She observes that reading her own diary calms her down, on the one hand, but, on the other, makes her realise that she keeps repeating the very same things, giving her the impression of living in a sort of infinite circle. Then, after another long break, she resumes taking notes on the 18th of September, while she is staying for a short holiday at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.10 “Attempt to flee ‘towards myself’” (Goldberg 2005: 378), she writes.11 However, confronted with what seems to her like a failure of this attempt, she observes that maybe she 7

8

9

10 11

For life-writing in the Hebrew/Jewish context, see Adelman (2004), Amihay (2015), Feldman (2010), Hess (2016, 2017), Lightman (2014), Mintz (1989, 2008), Moseley (2006), Pelli (1990), Royal (2016), Shem-Tov (2018), Stanislawski (2004), Zakai (2011), and Zierler (2012). See Gordinsky (2005, 2017), Gluzman (1991, 2002: 55-64), Pinsker (2015), Hess (2013), Mann (2014), Jacobs (2014), Rotenberg (2015), Schachter (2011, chapter IV), Ticotsky (2014, 2018) Weisman (2013), and Weiss (2009a). For a general introduction to Leah Goldberg’s life and works, see Bar-Yosef (2012), Barzel (2001), Gordinsky (2016), Kartun-Blum/Weisman (2000), Lieblich (2003), Ruebner (1980), Shacham (2017), Shamir (2014), Ticotsky (2011), Weiss (2010), Yeglin (2002, 2009), Yoffe (1980, 1994) and their bibliographies. For another perspective on this stay in Jerusalem, see Gordinsky (2017: 28). Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine.

73

74

Elisa Carandina

will try just to relax as much as she can and to avoid thinking, rushing, talking to herself as well as to other people. The day after, she notes that she is reading another biography, André Maurois’ A la recherche de Marcel Proust, enjoying her loneliness and the silence. While she is reading about other lives and her own, she keeps recording in her diary the sensation that there is no sign in her of maturation, that she could just as well be a young woman imagining a brilliant future for herself. At the age of 46, Leah Goldberg writes that if she could afford it economically, she would turn her back on everything and make a fresh start. If she then still had 20 or 25 years ahead, she writes, “I could realise something significant – I mean, towards myself not the others.” (Ibid.: 379) This remark is specifically linked to her own opinion about her literary works, about whose real value she has doubts. She is not sure either if writing the diary is appropriate or not: on the one hand, she would rather stop because she fears that when she will read those lines she will think that they have been written out of desperation; on the other hand, she continues, maybe “I am just trying to see myself clearly, and, probably, like every person attempting to do such a thing, I succeed only with respect to some elements, and it’s impossible to know if they are the relevant ones” (ibid.). In this context and mood, Goldberg writes on 20th September 1957 about the contrast between her usually simple and spartan lifestyle and the experience she is having at the King David Hotel: I am really enjoying the life here. It seems to me that I could live like this for a very very long time. The environment doesn’t bother me at all. Only sometimes, actually at mealtimes, towards the waiters more than towards the other people around me, I am a little bit self-conscious [in English in the text]: a repercussion of the modest life I have been used to since my childhood and youth. As a consequence of this very same thing, I am also never sure of what I am entitled to. I know that in my books about my travels abroad I always emphasise, with a little bit of self-complacency, that I have never had money, that I have always lived low budget – the worst rooms, the lowest floor of the hotels, etc... and really, in general I am sure that it is how it should be. Nevertheless, I feel so good in a place of absolute comfort [qomforṭ]. I gladly change my clothes for the meals. I perceive the beauty surrounding me and it makes me happy; I love it when the waiters smile at me while serving the food etc. I even somehow feel ‘fit’ for this kind of life, at least for some time. Nevertheless, I have very precise ideas concerning the young bourgeoisie or the intellectual proletariat, more precisely the combination of the two. In this kind of hotel, I don’t stand the parvenus (how beautiful is the Italian word pescecane!); nevertheless, I look favourably at the elegant tourists or at ‘known faces’ (but not the American Jews). Somehow this jet set seems close to me. Snobbery? I don’t think that this is the right word. On the contrary, sometimes I think that, like when I was a child, there is something in what I am and

Comfort as an Involuntary Cultural Memory

in my lifestyle that is not how it should be. When I was eight years old, it was extremely preposterous of me to fabricate for myself a world taken from books and to consider it as my real life, while viewing my true life as a bad dream. At school they used to call me ‘aristocratic’ with both disdain and envy; I suffered because of that, but apparently, I wasn’t willing to let them see me in a different way. And later, with all my idealism, I didn’t really distance myself from these ideas. Sometimes, when I look at my mom and her noble aspect, I know exactly why. And nevertheless – yes – always ‘nevertheless’ – es reimt sich nicht [in German in the text], everything that I am writing here is very much like the kitsch dreams of a fifteen-year-old girl, or, more precisely, it has to be recorded under the same section of notes that I started once – I am still where I was in Bonn.12 In a sort of strange beginning out of time. (Goldberg 2005: 380; emphasis added). The starting point of this passage from Goldberg’s Diaries is an unfamiliar feeling in an unconventional situation: the writer feels extremely at ease in a context that is unusual for her. The feeling and the context are both unusual to the point that this temporary situation, a stay in a hotel offering her perfect comfort, is taken out of context and defined as a time-space where she could stay indefinitely, echoing the feeling mentioned in the previous diary pages: when the writing I tries to observe her life from what she has written in her notes, she cannot see any form of progress or change. With respect to the distinction between comfort as a condition and comfort as a dynamic, the writing I is experiencing the condition of comfort, but this makes her uncomfortable. The writing I is feeling somehow stuck, and this pushes her towards her past. On the one hand, the above-mentioned tension between the writing I and the written I is expressed by the (declared) feeling of intellectual discomfort due to her ideological and cultural position and self-representation. The conflict seems to be between the public image she has chosen for herself, and/or what was chosen for her to be – ‘how it should be’ and another ‘version’ of herself. With respect to the cultural construction of comfort and its normativity (both as imposed and conveyed), Goldberg’s diary shows her position as a writer apparently torn between “the possibility of surrendering to the sweetness of ennui and resisting it as a barren cultural model” (Weisman 2013: 229). Goldberg’s dialogical notion of the ‘courage of the mundane’ helps understand the precise nature of this conflict. As Anat Weisman notes, the ‘courage for the mundane’ is a seminal expression in a much broader context. It is a useful concept, if not a necessary one, to anyone aware of the excess of mythical presence – in faith, in love, in creation – and the exhausting nature of translating it into the everyday; for anyone who yearns for the whole and runs into the insulting and at the same time 12

Goldberg moved to Bonn at the end of April 1932, where she wrote her PhD thesis under the supervision of Paul Kahle; see Weiss (2010, chapters II and III).

75

76

Elisa Carandina

comforting limits of reality; and for anyone addicted to the exalted, the singular, the sublime, and the beautiful, but is repelled by the indulgence of decadence or the self-righteousness of ideology. Courage to embrace the mundane is what sustains those who fear nullification and negation yet draw from the ‘great Yes’ to all things. (Ibid.: 223)13 Even if all the implications of the ‘courage for the mundane’ in Leah Goldberg’s personal, intellectual, and ideological choices cannot be fully developed here, addressing the narrativisation of the self from the point of view of comfort as involuntary cultural memory allows reading the writer’s conflict between a supramundane model of perfection and the mundane as inextricably connected with the dynamic of performing the self. Moreover, the cultural normativity of comfort can be used to contextualise Goldberg’s remarks with respect to both the national role of the artist in the Israeli context and the public image of the writer, thus offering a whole picture of this ongoing reflection at the core of her thought since the publication in 1938 of her essay “The Courage for the Mundane”, as clearly shown by Weisman. Focusing on the narrativisation of the self, the ‘other’ version of herself, allows Goldberg to give voice to something that has always been part of her and that is not how it should be. Or, maybe, it is precisely the contrary. This is how it should be and it should have been. For once, for a brief moment, the writing I can think of herself as fit for this kind of life, more precisely, as ready and about to start this kind of life. This dream life is the one in which she would be able to ‘realise something real’. The feeling is perfectly consistent with something that has always been part of her because, in a retrospective gaze that defines and justifies her in the present, the writing I ‘remembers’ that her classmates used to call her ‘aristocratic’. In his introduction to Goldberg’s diary, the editor Arieh Aharoni defines the writer precisely as such, as “aristocratic” (Goldberg 2005: 16). According to Hamutal Bar Yosef’s description, Goldberg’s approach to life is a combination of attitude, lifestyle, and character based upon a cultural background as well as a personal moral stand that leads to a graceful way of living and being that is diametrically opposed to vulgarity and provincialism (Bar Yosef 2012: 54-58). The ‘retrospective’ gaze allows the narrative of the self to be consistent: it is her aristocratic side that finds the situation pleasant, allowing her to connect again with a past. Moreover, this past that is present and absent at the same time is, more precisely, the above-mentioned possibility of the past. Comfort makes the writing I nostalgic, makes her wonder about what could have been and never has been, arousing feelings of betrayal and loss, of disappointment and resignation for the promises that never became reality – an element that should be put in the context of

13

See Gordinsky (2016: 105-22), Tsal (2018), Weiss (2009b; 2010, chapter III), and Yoffe (1994: 122-8).

Comfort as an Involuntary Cultural Memory

what numerous scholars already stated about Goldberg’s complex relationship with her personal and cultural past. However, from this point of view ‘loss’ is not only to be understood as what no longer is but, as I have already discussed elsewhere, as what will not be.14 It is the above-mentioned possibility of the past that is developed in terms of loss and betrayal of time; a time that is accused both of not moving on and of keeping to move on. The ‘sort of strange beginning out of time’ that describes the writer’s experience can thus be understood as a time out of time where everything is possible again, where the promises can still be kept, where everything can still be accomplished. She is frozen in this possibility of the past as the promise of a future that will never be. At the same time, this condition is also associated with a conflicted detachment from everyday life, defined as the fundamental decision taken when the writer was a girl: the ‘real’ life is the unreal life because reality is just a bad dream and only the dream is real. This choice is not only depicted as a personal and ideological one, but, as fully explored by Weisman with respect to the ‘courage for the mundane’, it is also a choice in terms of ars poetica. It is from this ‘sort of strange beginning out of time’ that Goldberg will write sections of what will become – with some small changes – the poem “Three dreamy days”,15 published in the collection Last Words, and the four-part poem “Conclusion”,16 published in From My Old House, as mentioned in Rachel and Arieh Aharoni’s edition of Goldberg’s Diaries and discussed under the title “Ending” by Gordinsky (2017). I will not develop a detailed analysis of these poems but instead limit myself to some remarks regarding the first section of the four-part poem “Three dreamy days”.17 The final poetic version of these three days defines them as a dream. In its final version, it will be composed of the three sections recorded in the diary with the addition of a first poem. It is in this first poem (Goldberg 1989, vol. II: 252) that these three days made of dream will be described as   ]...[

‫ ֵמעֵ בֶ ר‬,‫ִמחּוץ לַ ְּתחּום‬ ‫ב ְּקצֵ ה גְּ בּולֹות ַה ַדעַ ת‬, ִ ‫לַ ֶה ְּרג ִֵלים‬ ‫ְּבפַ ְּרבָ ִרים יָ ִפים ֶשלַ ְּמ ִציאּות‬

[...] out of bounds, beyond habits, at the extreme edges of consciousness in the nice suburbs of reality. 14 15 16 17

See Carandina (2018). See Goldberg (1989, vol. II: 253-5), Goldberg (2005: 380; 382; 385), and Goldberg (1959: 255-7). See Goldberg (1989, vol. I: 245-7), Goldberg (2005: 382-4), and Goldberg (1959: 66-8). In the diary, one can find the sections 2, 3 and 4 of the poem “Conclusion” published in Goldberg’s Early and Later, see notes 246-7 in Goldberg (1989, vol. I).

77

78

Elisa Carandina

As stressed by the enjambment, this is an attempt to jump outside everything that is known, habits as well as consciousness. The space that will allow making everything possible anew is then defined as a dream, as the parallel dimension of memory, both (memory and dream) allowing us to enter “forgetfulness as the home of consciousness”. As the second stanza makes clear, these days were not subject and – I add – cannot be read according to the old law made by the dichotomies of “dream and waking, apologue and the moral”. This unique time and space should be protected from the ordinary and mundane life. The possibility of the past needs a space out of time, outside rules and habits, beyond the ‘how it should be’, but also further away than the present and its bitter confirmation of what has not been. Thus, the lyrical I throws away, deep into the water, the key that opens the gate to everyday life. However, “obstinate like Polycrates’ ring”, the key keeps coming back and the lyrical I is then stuck not in the possibility of the past but in the grey present made of loss and betrayal of promises. The ephemeral dimension ‘out of time’ represented by the three dreamy days at the hotel comes to an end, thereby opening the door to time and to another form of loss.

4. Conclusion In a diary entry on the 21st of September 1957, Goldberg wrote the last two stanzas of the poem “Conclusion” – a poem that begins with the lyrical I imagining and wishing that time could stop from moving on: 18

‫ ַהכֹּל אֲ ֶשר ָא ַה ְב ִּתי פַ עַ ם‬,‫ַהכֹּל‬ ,‫חֹולֵ ף ְבתֹוְך עֵ ינֶיָך ַהלַ חֹות‬ ‫ כִּ י ֵאין ׁשּום ַטעַ ם‬.‫ַאל ִּת ְס ַתכֵ ל ִּבי כָ ְך‬ ."‫"הנִּ ְׁשכָ חֹות‬ ַ ‫ּקֹור ִּאים‬ ְ ‫ִּלזְ כֹר ַמה ֶׁש‬ ,‫ַהנִּ ְׁשכָ חֹות ֶׁש ִּאי ֶא ְפ ָׁשר ִּל ְׁשכ ַֹּח‬ .‫ָהאֲ בֵ דֹות ֶׁש ֵאין ֵמ ֶהן ִּמ ְפלָ ט‬

18

See Goldberg (2005: 383); (Goldberg 1989, vol II: 246). These two stanzas are almost the same in the diary version and in the published version. Gordinsky translates: “forgotten memories that cannot be forgotten/the loss that has no remedy” (2017: 30). The beginning of the poem has been translated under the title Ending in the English translation of Lieblich’s works on Leah Goldberg (2003: 18).

Comfort as an Involuntary Cultural Memory

Everything, everything that I once loved   gone in your teary eyes, it's don't look at me like that. Because it is pointless to remember what is called "immemorable" The immemorable that cannot be forgotten the losses from whom we cannot escape. The attempt to stop time was part of the attempt to protect a past from a double loss: Agamben’s dimension of loss and the traumatic dimension of loss. The first one is the presence-absence that gives access to consciousness. Beyond consciousness there is a time out of time that makes everything possible anew, the past and also the future that has never been. However, this attempt to keep time at bay is doomed to fail; time starts anew, making the loss present not only as what can be remembered but also as what cannot be: “The immemorable, which skips from memory to memory without itself coming to mind, is properly speaking, the unforgettable. This unforgettable oblivion is language, the human word.” (Agamben 1995 [1985]: 68) Paradoxically, only reaching this point would make it possible to escape the losses that cannot be avoided. Comfort, as involuntary cultural memory, describes then a personal and literary attempt to escape time, to bring back the possibility of a past and of a future that are both lost, to flee reality and time. However, like Polycrates’ ring, loss, reality and time keep coming back, and the only achieved flight is the one towards the self.

79

80

Elisa Carandina

Works Cited Adelman, Tzvi H. 2004. “Self, Other, and Community: Jewish Women’s Autobiography.” Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies and Gender Issues 7.1: 116-127. Agamben, Giorgio. 1995 [1985]. The Idea of Prose. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. —. 2004. “Difference and Repetition: On Guy Debord’s Films.” In: Tom McDonough, ed. Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents. Cambridge, MA/London: MIT Press, 313-319. Amihay, Ofra. 2015. “Red Diapers, Pink Stories: Color Photography and Self-Outing in Jewish Women’s Comics.” Image & Narrative 16.2: 42-64. Bal, Mieke. 1999. “Introduction.” In: Mieke Bal, Jonathan V. Crewe & Leo Spitzer, eds. Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present. Hanover, NH: UP of New England, vii-xvii. Bar-Yosef, Hamutal. 2012. Leah Goldberg. Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center. [Hebrew]. Barzel, Hillel. 2001. Israeli Poetry: Avraham Shlonski, Natan Alterman, Leah Goldberg. Tel Aviv: Sifriyat poalim. [Hebrew]. Bibring, Edward. 1943. “The Conception of the Repetition Compulsion.” The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 12.4: 486-519. Bowins, Brad. 2010. “Repetitive Maladaptive Behavior: Beyond Repetition Compulsion.” The American Journal of Psychoanalysis 70.3: 282-298. Bunkers, Suzanne L. & Cynthia A. Huff (eds.). 1996. Inscribing the Daily: Critical Essays on Women’s Diaries. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press. Carandina, Elisa. 2018. “‘These Aren’t the Right Pictures’: Framing Strategies in Rutu Modan’s Ha-nekes.” Cosmo 13: 389-401. Côme, Tony & Juliette Pollet (eds.). 2016. L’idée de confort, une anthologie: Du zazen au tourisme spatial. Paris: Editions B42. Crowley, John E. 2001. The Invention of Comfort: Sensibilities and Design in Early Modern Britain and Early America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP. Eakin, Paul John. 1999. How Our Lives Become Stories: Making Selves. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP. Ellison, David & Andrew Leach (eds.). 2016. On Discomfort: Moments in a Modern History of Architectural Culture. Abingdon, Oxon/New York: Routledge. Erll, Astrid & Ansgar Nünning (eds.). 2010. A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. Feldman, Yael S. 2010. “Gender In/Difference in Contemporary Hebrew Fictional Autobiographies.” Biography 11.3: 189-209. Fleig, Anne. 2019. “Gender Studies.” In: Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf, ed. Handbook Autobiography/Autofiction. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 54-63.

Comfort as an Involuntary Cultural Memory

Freud, Sigmund. 2003. Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings. London: Penguin. [Ebook] Gifford, Sanford. 1964. “Repetition Compulsion.” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 12.3: 632-649. Goldberg, Leah. 1959. Early and Later. Tel Aviv: Sifriyat poalim. [Hebrew]. —. 1989. Poems. 3 volumes. Edited by Tuvia Ruebner. Tel Aviv: Sifriyat poalim. [Hebrew]. —. 2005. Leah Goldberg’s Diaries. Edited by Arieh Aharoni & Rachel Aharoni. Tel Aviv: Sifriyat poalim. [Hebrew]. Gordinsky, Natasha. 2005. “‘Homeland I Will Name the Language of Poetry in a Foreign Country’: Modes of Challenging the Home/Exile Binary in Leah Goldberg’s Poetry.” In: Dan Diner, ed. Leipziger Beiträge zur jüdischen Geschichte und Kultur, vol. 3. Munich: Saur, 239-253. —. 2016. In Three Landscapes: Leah Goldberg’s Early Writings. Jerusalem: Magnes. [Hebrew]. —. 2017. “‘Memory of a Vague Longing’: Reflective Nostalgia in Lea Goldberg’s Wartime Poetry.” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 16.1: 17-33. Goubert, Jean-Pierre (ed.). 1988. Du luxe au confort. Paris: Éditions Belin. Gluzman, Michael. 1991. “The Exclusion of Women from Hebrew Literary History.” Prooftexts 11.3: 259-278. —. 2002. The Politics of Canonicity: Lines of Resistance in Modernist Hebrew Poetry. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford UP. Hess, Tamar S. 2013. “Leah Goldberg Meets Brenner.” Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature 25: 583-600. [Hebrew]. —. 2016. Self as Nation: Contemporary Hebrew Autobiography. Waltham, MA: Brandeis UP. —. 2017. “The Confessions of a Bad Reader: Embodied Selves, Narrative Strategies and Subversion in Israeli Women’s Autobiography.” Prooftexts 27.1: 151-187. Heyden-Rynsch, Verena von der. 1997. Belauschtes Leben: Frauentagebücher aus drei Jahrhunderten. Düsseldorf/Zürich: Artemis & Winkler. Horowitz, Mardi J. 1976. Stress Response Syndromes. New York: Aronson. Inderbitzin, Lawrence B. & Stephen T. Levy. 1998. “Repetition Compulsion Revisited: Implications for Technique.” The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 67.1: 32-53. Jacobs, Adriana X. 2014. “The Go-Betweens: Leah Goldberg, Yehuda Amichai, and the Figure of the Poet-Translator.” In: Sandra Bermann & Catherine Porter, eds. A Companion to Translation Studies. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell, 479-491. Janet, Pierre. 1925. Psychological Healing: A Historical and Clinical Study. New York: The Macmillan Company.

81

82

Elisa Carandina

Jensen, Meg. 2012. “The Writer’s Diary as Borderland: The Public and Private Selves of Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, and Louisa May Alcott.” Life Writing 9.3: 315-325. Kartun-Blum, Ruth & Anat Weisman (eds.). 2000. Encounters with a Poet: Essays and Studies on Leah Goldberg’s Works. Jerusalem/Tel Aviv: Institute of Jewish Studies, Hebrew University; Sifriyat poalim. [Hebrew]. Le Goff, Olivier. 1994. L’invention du confort: naissance d’une forme sociale. Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon. Levy, Michael S. 2000. “A Conceptualization of the Repetition Compulsion.” Psychiatry 63.1: 45-53. Lieblich, Amia. 2003. Learning about Lea. London: Athena Press. Lightman, Sarah (ed.). 2014. Graphic Details: Jewish Women’s Confessional Comics in Essays and Interviews. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Loewald, Hans W. 1971. “Some Considerations on Repetition and Repetition Compulsion.” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 52.1: 59-66. Mann, Barbara. 2014. “Material Visions: The Poetry and Collage of Leah Goldberg’s Native Landscapes.” Journal of Jewish Identities 7.1: 163-186. Millim, Anne-Marie. 2010. “The Victorian Diary: Between the Public and the Private.” Literature Compass 7.10: 977-988. Mintz, Alan. 1989. ‘Banished from Their Father’s Table’: Loss of Faith and Hebrew Autobiography. Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana UP. —. 2008. “Writing About Ourselves: Jewish Autobiography, Modern and Premodern.” Jewish Quarterly Review 98.2: 272-285. Moseley, Marcus. 2006. Being for Myself Alone: Origins of Jewish Autobiography. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford UP. Pelli, Moshe. 1990. “The Literary Genre of Autobiography in Hebrew Enlightenment Literature: Mordechai Ginzburg’s Aviezer.” Modern Judaism 10.2: 159-169. Pezeu-Massabuau, Jacques. 2002. Du confort au bien-être: la dimension intérieure. Paris: Editions L’Harmattan. Pinsker, Shachar. 2015. “A Modern (Jewish) Woman in a Café: Leah Goldberg and the Poetic Space of the Coffeehouse.” Jewish Social Studies: History, Culture, Society 21.1: 1-48. Royal, Derek P. (ed.). 2016. Visualizing Jewish Narrative: Jewish Comics and Graphic Novels. London: Bloomsbury. Rotenberg, Yael. 2015. ‘My time is engraved in my poems’: Time, Place and Gender in the Poetry of Leah Goldberg and Hava Pinhas-Cohen. Tel Aviv: Resling. [Hebrew]. Ruebner, Tuvia. 1980. Leah Goldberg: Monograph. Tel Aviv: Sifriyat poalim. [Hebrew]. Schachter, Allison. 2011. Diasporic Modernisms: Hebrew and Yiddish Literature in the Twentieth Century. New York: Oxford UP. Schahadat, Schamma. 2019. “Diary.” In: Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf, ed. Handbook Autobiography/Autofiction. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 547-556.

Comfort as an Involuntary Cultural Memory

Schur, Max. 1966. The Id and the Regulatory Principles of Mental Functioning. New York: International Universities Press. Shacham, Chaya. 2017. On the Verge of Light: Readings in Leah Goldberg’s Literary Works. Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press. [Hebrew]. Shamir, Ziva. 2014. Celestial Melodies: Seven Essays on the Poetry and Poetics of Leah Goldberg. Tel Aviv: Safra – Hakibbutz Hameuchad. [Hebrew]. Shem-Tov, Naphtaly. 2018. “Displaying the Mizrahi Identity in Autobiographical Performances: Body, Food, and Documents.” New Theatre Quarterly 34.2: 160-175. Shove, Elizabeth. 2003. Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience: The Social Organization of Normality. Oxford/New York: Berg. Solnit, Rebecca. 2001. As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender, and Art. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Stanislawski, Michael. 2004. Autobiographical Jews: Essays in Jewish Self-Fashioning. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press. The Historical Dictionary of Hebrew Language. https://maagarim.hebrew-academy. org.il/Pages/Pmain.aspx (accessed: April 15, 2020). Ticotsky, Giddon. 2011. ‘Light Along the Edge of a Cloud’: Introduction to Leah Goldberg’s Oeuvre. Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hamuechad – Sifriyat poalim. [Hebrew]. —. 2014. “Ekphrasis as Encryption: Lea Goldberg in Berlin.” Prooftexts 34.1: 1-52. —. 2018. “Vera Europa vs Verus Israel: Modern Jews’ Encounter with Europe in Light of Lea Goldberg’s Encounter with a Poet.” In: Amir Eshel & Rachel Seelig, eds. The German-Hebrew Dialogue: Studies of Encounter and Exchange. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 105-120. Tsal, Naama. 2018. “‘It’s All in Vain. I Have No Reality’: Leah Goldberg’s Notion of ‘the Real’ and the Language of Her Realistic Fiction.” Hebrew Studies 59: 301-314. Weisman, Anat. 2013. “After All of This, I Will Have to Muster All of My ‘Courage for the Mundane’: On Leah Goldberg’s Paradigmatic Temperament.” Prooftexts 33.2: 222250. Weiss, Yfaat. 2009a. “‘Nothing in My Life Has Been Lost.’ Lea Goldberg Revisits Her German Experience.” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 54.1: 357-377. —. 2009b. “‘A Man with His Life at Both Ends of Time’: Leah Goldberg, Paul Ernst Kahle, and Appreciating the Mundane.” Yad Vashem Studies 37.1: 137-178. —. 2010. Lea Goldberg: Lehrjahre in Deutschland 1930-1933. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Yeglin, Ofra. 2002. Perhaps with Different Eyes: Modern Classicism and Classical Modernism in Leah Goldberg’s Poetry. Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad – Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics. [Hebrew]. —. 2009. “The Sonnets of Leah Goldberg.” Hebrew Studies 50: 265-276. Yoffe, A. B. 1980. Leah Goldberg: A Selection of Critical Essays on Her Writings. Tel Aviv: Am Oved. [Hebrew].

83

84

Elisa Carandina

—. 1994. Leah Goldberg: An Appreciation of the Poet and Her Work. Tel Aviv: Rešafim. [Hebrew]. Zakai, Orian. 2011. “Entering the Records: Difference, Suffrage and the Autobiography of the New Hebrew Woman.” Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies and Gender Issues 22.1: 136-161. Zierler, Wendy. 2012. “‘My Own Special Corner, Sacred, Beloved’: The Hebrew Diary of Hava Shapiro (1878-1943).” Hebrew Studies 53.1: 231-255.

Comfort in Contemporary Art Shadow Works Against the Background of Blumenberg’s Notion of ‘Comfort in the Cave’ Angela Breidbach

One of the key dimensions of comfort is ‘consolation’. It is through the sharing of stories that we console each other. The art of comforting hence is the art of storytelling. As an art historian, I am interested in how consoling narratives unfold in visual art, or, more specifically, in what I call ‘shadow works’ in contemporary art. This genre evolved from analogue shadow theatres with their long tradition in China, India, Greece, and Turkey, including modern versions like Henri Rivière’s shadow plays for the Cabaret Chat Noir or similar contemporary installations. Ever since Lotte Reiniger’s early shadow films, the tradition can also be found in filmic or digital animations – all of which conjure up the play of light and shadow within a cave (Reiniger 1970, 1979). The shadow is a complex figure, which, as I will show, not only serves as a model for metaphor but also as a source of comfort on the creative side and on the receiving side. This can be seen especially well in the works by the contemporary artists Hans-Peter Feldmann and William Kentridge, who locate their most crucial images in the cave. Movable, agile images dance on the wall, darker than the half-darkness of the cave in which they appear. In the following, I will first discuss the manifold meanings and elusiveness of the shadow in their œuvre. This lays the ground for explicating the comforting quality of the shadow in the light of Hans Blumenberg’s philosophical anthropology. Blumenberg’s interest in the human need for consolation and his theory about the birth of metaphor in the cave will be instrumental for teasing out what makes for comfort in art.

1. Shadow Art The Düsseldorf artist Hans-Peter Feldmann exhibited his Shadow Play from 2002 as the German contribution to the Venice Biennale in 2009. It consists of nine small toy figures – found objects made from inferior materials – per spinning display. These, in turn, consist of six to twelve (depending on the concrete installation)

86

Angela Breidbach

turning plates, which are each lit by simple spotlights on the observers’ side (see appendix, fig. 1). The cheap, serially fabricated souvenirs and small toys first attract attention with their inconsequential coloured surfaces. Illuminated from the front, the figures reappear – beyond a considerable gap – as enlarged shadows on the wall. As each small toy figure is focussed on by more than one spotlight, the large shadows emerge as cross-faded and fragmented in different degrees of grey. They do not appear as discrete black silhouettes but rather as sublime grisailles, blending into each other in endless variations (see appendix, fig. 2). On the side of the shadows the small spinning displays thus turn into swimming, swirling rafts in grey tones. They contain their figures as if keeping them from drowning, and thereby strangely create a metaphor of rescue. Some of the puppets strike attitudes that resemble the dramatic gestures of the protagonists in Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa. The floating panels with figures are also reminiscent of another rescuing vehicle: Charon’s ferry carrying the parting shadows over the river to the other shore; an allegory, as we will see, that bears a resemblance to the form of metaphor itself. The site of death as a place of rescue seems paradoxical. A possible explanation could be that the symbolic existence of the sublime shadows overcomes the empty projections caught by the little toys’ cheap surfaces. The shadows claim their position in the half-light of the cave and thus invert the impact of vain projection. Conversely, they refer not to the surface but to the body itself on the side of life. Ever since Dürer’s Draftsman in Front of the Velum, projection – through the grid – has served as the very model of scientific observation. This model connects the projected picture space to the topos of light as the medium of evidence and as an instrument of measuring. Yet, as we know from Courbet and Duchamp, it also bears qualities of psychological projection and voyeurism. This is a discourse of which Feldmann is well aware: his untitled painting depicting a female torso with tan lines is a modified copy of Gustave Courbet’s L’Origine du monde (1866) and pays a winking homage to it as well as to Marcel Duchamp’s Étant donnés (1944-64). All three works are parodies of Dürer’s gaze through the grid. In an arrangement at the site of his Hamburg retrospective in 2013, Feldmann pointed to the consequence of projection: a checked blue and white kitchen towel, simple and displayed on the wall without a frame, signifies the clean, pragmatic gaze through the grid in an unconventional way. It is brought into direct conjunction with an oil painting depicting a standing nude, probably an original or its copy from the Romantic era since Feldmann as a concept artist doesn’t paint. The female model depicted here was probably encouraged by the male painter to assume the classic position with one supporting leg, one free leg, her head leaning lasciviously against the crook of her bent right arm. Anatomical annotations hint at her body in straight lines, which can be interpreted as arrows or needles when thinking of Mantegna’s St. Sebastian from 1506 as a foil. The violence of the measuring eye is thus foregrounded. Up close to the grid (of the kitchen towel), the woman, like

Comfort in Contemporary Art

in Dürer’s work, performs the precarious double role of both the desired and the classified female body. Feldmann’s nude has a dark blue velvet drapery on her rear, a kind of material shadow. While the near side of her body represents the carnal and vain, the shadow on the rear invites reflection and association instead. While – as in Dürer’s view – the depicted realm of non-shadow suggests the presence of nagging desire, perversely connected to critical rejection, the vague shadow invites the observer’s active flow of imagination; it is this flow of imagination that provides a comforting quality due to its potential for multiple, ambivalent figures that refuse a fixed or determined meaning (Blumenberg 1998: 11-17). The woman’s shadow represents both material cosiness (made of a kind of sofa fabric) and the immaterial comfort of the potential, ever changing, ever flexible image in its chain of associations. Feldmann’s Shadow Play with its rotating large animated shadows is located in a cave-like setting. The indistinct shadows circle on and on, without direction. They are not laid open to measuring and are not exhibited for a voluptuous gaze. All this applies to the surface of the figurines. The observer finds the figurines’ materiality and factitiousness ferried across into their parallel world of imagination. Inversely, the material objects are explored from their far and dark side, from their sublime shadows. The shadow is the metaphorical agent by which the beholder is guided backwards to imagine the object. The South African artist William Kentridge created his 5-channel film installation The Refusal of Time for dOCUMENTA 13 in 2012. The five films come together with a polyphone sound installation by Philip Miller, which consists of five megaphones, as well as with a pneumatic, breathing machine called The Elephant. The work opens the same discourse between measuring in the tradition of Enlightenment on the one hand, and, on the other, an abundance of erratic, ambiguous imaginations, which generate themselves inside the darkness of the cave (see appendix, fig. 3). The ten metronomes at the beginning signify the world of measuring. Yet, they all tick in different rhythms and thus counteract their own control over time. Miller describes polyrhythm as an element of African music (Herzogenrath et al. 2016: 126-142). In Kentridge’s installation, it also refers to the complex time and space parameters in Einstein’s theory of relativity. The so-called Elephant at the centre of the installation alludes to Charles Dickens’ novel Hard Times (1854), in which Dickens describes a factory as a place “where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness” (Dickens 2001 [1854]: 20f.).The metaphor of the elephant on the one hand represents the machine of the technical era. On the other hand, it embodies the victim of the aftermath of destruction in the industrial and colonial age: a maddened animal in captivity. Its role is to be both the originator and the victim of progress. In addition to being a decently embodied image itself, the central piece of furniture in Kentridge’s installation appears as an

87

88

Angela Breidbach

image-making body. With its bellows, it seems to infinitely pump out shadowy images towards the walls of the cave. A short sequence of the film installation shows the artist in profile, walking over a row of chairs. The loop of twelve fixed images per second, which make up the film, references Muybridge’s chrono-photographical moving pictures in his atlas of Animal Locomotion. Again, the sequence refers to both the image of industrial progress and a captive body damned always to repeat the same movement. Metaphors, Kentridge shows his audience, do not aim at a clear meaning. They are double, displaced images, often caught between two contradictory messages. They are staged in the artwork in such a way that they assert its ambivalence. That is why the artist connects metaphor to Double Vision, as in the title of a recent Berlin exhibition (Werner/Schalhorn 2015). Here Kentridge associates metaphor with the synoptic, slightly differing images of the two eyes, which is also the theme of his film titled Stereoscope from 1999, whose protagonist experiences two realities at the same time. In a short film sequence that is part of The Refusal of Time, a woman tears up large dictionary volumes and tosses them away (see appendix, fig. 3). The ambiguities of metaphor explode the notion of encyclopaedic knowledge that follows the tradition of the Enlightenment. In the cave, Kentridge illustrates, there is neither sender nor receiver of explicit messages. Rather, there is a many-voiced murmur opposite to, and feeding on, a vivid imagination. The work ends with a shadow procession along the three walls of the filmic installation. The energetic shadow figures are anything but the poor copies of life Plato claimed they were. With the instruments and movable pieces of equipment they bear, they are rather vociferous enunciators of the other side, who resist oblivion and remind us of the bodies they once were. A drawing in preparation of the film Weighing …and Wanting from 1997 shows the protagonist ‘sleeping on a stone’ (see appendix, fig. 4). It was drawn on and counteracts a double book page from a treatise by Cecil Mace, whose left page sports the heading “The Principles of Logic”. Handwritten in red capital letters, as part of the drawing, is an ambiguous metaphorical message, which reads “The Comfort” on the left and “Of a Stone” on the right page. The book’s fold both separates and connects the two phrases. It thus forms a sentence which refers to a stone as a place of comfort, and at the same time makes it obvious that a stone can hardly be an object of comfort. The stone as pillow was either willingly chosen in order to avoid comfort or taken as rescue in hardship when comfort was searched for …and [found] Wanting, as suggested by the film title alluding to Daniel 5:27. Both cases deal with resistance, against comfort, against discomfort, the stone being an object to bang one’s head against rather than to sleep on. In any case, ‘sleeping on a stone’ counteracts ‘the Principles of Logic’. The cave is the true site for this kind of counter-sleep.

Comfort in Contemporary Art

Leora Maltz-Leca addresses The Politics of Metaphor in Kentridge’s work and comments on the drawing’s resistance against the primacy of reason: Mace’s humorless system reveals itself as unable to entertain, let alone accept, the contradictory relations that for Kentridge define knowledge. By pointing to the inadequacy of framing truth as a simple binary, the artist gestures to the failure of methods of logical deduction to suture the ambiguity of the world. (Maltz-Leca 2018: 34) In another dialectical twist, comfort might be found precisely in the metaphorical disaccord, i.e. by absence of the rigid argument, of measuring, of dogmatism. Thus, the comfort of the stone might be a real one. When the film continues, the protagonist will also sleep on a ringing telephone and on a cat. Later in the film, the layering structure of magnetic resonance imaging captures the head and the stone and explores them. Thus made transparent, head and stone become screens for the film story, which now replaces the MRI scan and unfolds as an inner drama, giving the onlookers the impression of being able to immerse themselves in the protagonist’s thoughts and hidden images. Three connected films from 2008 entitled Breathe, Dissolve, Return deal with the kind of comfort that comes from the ambiguous image held in the shadow. In Breathe, snippets of black carton paper spin through the air before they collect as shadow images on a flat surface: a breath and a puff of air seem to be sufficient to metamorphose a singer into a megaphone and then further into a typewriter. If not magic, there must be more to the technique of these transformations – the procedure entails the simple trick of showing images in reverse order. While reason tells the observer that, through a blow of air, loose paper snippets can only move towards entropy, the eye cannot but avidly follow the game of images falling into place as if they were ideas. In the reversed operation, the black snippets seem to resist the decline of random distribution. The seemingly autopoetic performance thus becomes an aesthetic complement to the process of imagination, with the aesthetic quality of a puzzle, both in the sense of a game of patience and of a riddle. The triptych was created for a Venice exhibition. Possibly, as a tribute to the city’s location in the lagoon, in the second work called Dissolve water appears as another indeterminate medium of the journey in search of the image. The protagonist is a conductor, with his baton in one hand. He bows quietly, respectfully, maybe in front of his audience, maybe rather in front of some person to be remembered. Now, while balancing on one leg, he performs the gesture of diving. A moving water surface is put above this image as another layer of film. It carries the figure along, distorting it gently in a wavelike motion. Here, ambiguity and vagueness take place in a fluid medium but with the same goal: to appear, to come back as a long-missed image.

89

90

Angela Breidbach

The game of the lost and returning image is more literally staged in the third work, entitled Return. This time, the protagonists are small, loosely assembled artefacts, figures, and word snippets on spinning discs. Their meaning remains disguised as long as the disc is turned, up to the moment when they suddenly, miraculously, fall in place: a conductor/turn: a singer’s head/turn: the word ‘RETURN’. In only one angle of incidence out of 360°, the seemingly random fragments of the mounted object align and become figural. Like in Breathe, the artistic process affords a reversed calculation. Only in this reversal does the painstakingly constructed sculpture offer a game of contingency and enable the observers’ pleasure in finding the image by surprise. All three of Kentridge’s films – Breathe, Dissolve, Return – deal with the lost and found image. Something that was lost or someone who was lost comes back, returns in one’s memory. The act of seeing that brings back the lost image can be called a comforting one. The reason for this becomes clear when taking Hans Blumenberg’s philosophical anthropology into account, as I explain in the next section.

2. Hans Blumenberg’s ‘Comfort of the Cave’ Beyond its bodily dimension of convenience, ‘comfort’ holds a social meaning of consolation. Does the modern encouragement to leave one’s comfort zone in search for self-fulfilment amount to denying precisely this dimension of comfort: human compassion? At a time when social aid is more or less institutionalised, comfort occupies a niche even beyond practical care. The blessings of welfare cannot fulfil the deep human need for consolation. When someone who suffers cannot be helped in any practical way, the need to be comforted is augmented. The German philosopher Hans Blumenberg addressed this issue. As a descendant, on his father’s side, of a family that had produced Catholic priests for several generations, Blumenberg connects his philosophical interests with the topic of pastoral care. He studied philosophy at Catholic faculties, amongst others at St. Georgen, the Theological University of Frankfurt, from which he was barred after 1941 because he was Jewish on his mother’s side. After being enrolled in the workforce in Lübeck, his birth town, he was detained in a concentration camp in 1944. He was released after the intervention of his former ‘employer’ of Dräger Werke, the workcamp where he had been compelled to forced labour and subsequently hidden by his future wife’s family until the war was over. He later withdrew more and more from public attention, concentrating on reading and writing. After 1970, he no longer attended conferences. He only slept six times a week, in the afternoons following his morning lectures, in order to be able to work at night; the loss of sleep was to make up, he told his students, for the loss of time for studies, stolen from him by the Nazis. The philosopher’s biography and personal example probably

Comfort in Contemporary Art

explain his approach to ‘consolation and comfort’ and his interest in both pastoral care and dark cave-like spaces. In his anthropological study entitled Beschreibung des Menschen (‘Description of Man’), Blumenberg defines the need for comfort as a general human condition. In a chapter entitled “Kontingenz und Sichtbarkeit” (‘Contingency and Visibility’), he describes the human being as genuinely trostbedürftig, i.e. in need of comfort in the sense of consolation (Blumenberg 2014: 623-655). Comfort, Blumenberg writes, operates in irrevocable situations. An example of an irrevocable situation is the death of a beloved person. Paradoxically, he states, comfort is needed on an existential level although it cannot change a thing. He considers this irrational and further inquires how much comfort a person can afford, given that one’s existence depends fundamentally on one’s sense of realism: “Gerade insofern der Mensch ein zum Realismus genötigtes Wesen ist, ist er insoweit zwar trostbedürftig, reell jedoch untröstlich.” [“Precisely because man is a being forced to realism, he is in need of consolation, but in reality inconsolable.”] (Ibid.: 630)1 Blumenberg associates the inability of being comforted (Untröstlichkeit) less with an excessive amount of sorrow than with the primacy of reason. According to Blumenberg, it is an erroneous heroism to be rigidly realistic and refuse consolation. He calls it a great shame when people believe that they are able to face every truth or insist upon constantly being aware of extreme dimensions of human existence (ibid.). Particularly in the face of death, comfort operates as “die anthropologische Institution zur Vermeidung von Bewusstsein” [“the anthropologic institution for avoiding consciousness”] (ibid.: 631). At first glance, it seems highly unusual that a philosopher, a seeker of truth, should encourage closing one’s eyes to truth and consciousness. Blumenberg does so because he takes our anthropological disposition into consideration. Comfort is a purely rhetorical form and as such cannot cure or offer remedy for physical human hardship (ibid.). However, this does not mean that comfort is “only an art of demagogic seduction” (ibid.: 655). Instead, sympathetic words, the use of narration instead of argument, can soothe suffering souls. As Blumenberg persuasively points out: Es ist einer der grundlegenden Irrtümer aller Kritik an der Rhetorik, die von ihr verhinderte nackte Wahrheit würde allein schon genügen, um mit dem derart Enthüllten auch fertig zu werden. [It is one of the fundamental errors of all criticism of rhetoric that the naked truth avoided by it would in itself suffice to cope with that which it unveils.] (Ibid.: 655) In his famous book Höhlenausgänge (‘Cave Exits’), Blumenberg discusses the role that space plays in comforting storytelling. Reflecting on the beginnings of mankind, Höhlenausgänge places the weak in the cave – such as women, children, 1

Translations are mine, unless stated otherwise.

91

92

Angela Breidbach

the wounded, the old – those who are unable to leave it in order to hunt or fight. A different strength will have developed among these underdogs. Weakness becomes an ability of another kind. The art of narration, of image-making by telling stories, begins in the darkness of the cave: Der vom Jagdtrieb Ausgeschlossene wird zum Träumer, Erzähler, Narren, Bildermacher, Possenreißer, zur Bereicherung der für den Lebenshunger zunächst toten Zeiten, der Dunkelzeiten. [The person excluded from the drive for hunting becomes a dreamer, narrator, clown, image-maker, buffoon, in order to enrich those times that were originally dead to the zest of life, the dark times.](Blumenberg 1996 [1989]: 33) Thus the cave is described as a place of shelter. There is no quest for heroism. Struggle for life and the ensuing fight and stress are luckily excluded; they happen and stay outside. The lack of action inside the cave makes place and gives time for aesthetic impulses, i.e. memories and reflections, projections and expectations, associative thinking, painting, storytelling, and listening. While gathering around the fireplace, bodies project large shadows against the half-darkened walls behind them. Theatrical situations may have resulted when people rose and performed gestures that were enlarged as dark schemes on the walls behind them. In short, in Blumenberg’s description the cave features not just as a physical shelter but, more importantly, as an aesthetic comfort zone. Building on these observations, I would like to propose that the shadow visually fulfils the aesthetic figure of narration in the cave. Just like the cave invited the comforting storytelling activities of its dwellers, their memories and reflections, so does the observation of the shadow trigger imagination, association, and reflection. This is because the shadow negotiates remoteness – a remoteness that may be filled. A shadow outlines nothing but a mere void. It is a distant, negative image. It needs the presence of the body close to a wall, and there it loiters as a significant dark patch on the body’s rear side. Its image is dark, only significant through its contour. The shadow remotely reminds one of someone, of something… It points back at this figure or thing from behind. Like a narrative, its observation triggers forms of thinking such as imagination, memory, association, and reflection. In my discussion of shadows, I have referred to their appearance as images, i.e. partly but not only connected to the silhouette. While the silhouette gestures towards physiognomy and measuring, the shadow-image involves distortion, vagueness, augmentation. And yet it remains recognisable as an image: its figures are given head up, feet down, mostly in profile. Shadows can be (and have been) located inside the cave with its relative darkness. As stated above, the cave’s narrow walls can function as screens, the fireplace as their light source. Connected to the cave’s comfort, the luminous source is at the same time the source of warmth. The connection between shadows and the cave can also apply to cave painting created in

Comfort in Contemporary Art

the form of dark outlines, which transmits memory and allegorical enhancement. Shadows and cave paintings constitute a narrative and thereby fit in with Blumenberg’s topos of sharing stories inside the cave: listeners here become observers of shadows, i.e. outlined, flickering dark patches in the visual landscape, filled with stories, in need of animation.

3. Comfort in the Shadow The most famous account of shadows in the cave comes from Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”, with the procession, the fire, and the shadow figures on an opposite wall. Plato’s cave is not a place of comfort, for its observers lie in chains before they are dragged out into the sunlight, where they must realise the aesthetic deception of their former reality in the shadow-image. According to Blumenberg, Plato is wrong to remove knowledge from the cave. Blumenberg’s position, crucially, can be opposed to Plato’s critique of the image: “Darin sollte Plato gründlich Unrecht bekommen, dass er die wahre Theorie aus der Höhle verbannte und ans Oberlicht verlegte.” [“Herein Plato should be proved utterly wrong, that he banned true theory from the cave and placed it in the light above.”] (Blumenberg 1996 [1989]: 37) Thus Blumenberg contradicts a European philosophical tradition that promotes a primacy of reason, from Plato to Renaissance science to Enlightenment theory and politics. As a retreat from a brightness outside that enables hunting, or in modern society knowledge and measuring, Blumenberg’s cave features a dark, shadowy, comfortable place with its own aesthetic forms of knowledge transfer: Der Triumph der Wissenschaft – von der Neuzeit unter Vorspiegelung eines erneuerten Platonismus errungen – wird gerade darin bestehen, Verzicht auf das Seiendseiende zu leisten und sich mit der Exaktheit zu begnügen, die der Schattenerscheinungsprognose eigentümlich ist. [The triumph of science – which was achieved in the modern age by pretending a renewed Platonism – will consist most of all in relinquishing the Seiendseiende (the existing being) and in being satisfied with the exactness of an outlook generated by shadow phenomena.] (Blumenberg 1996 [1989]: 37) The circling greyish shadows of Feldmann’s Shadow Play resonate with this argument that Blumenberg holds against Plato. The cave, being populated – beyond the sphere of the toys – by metaphorical images in these shadows, becomes a retreat, a good homely place, also in the sense of consolation, of narration instead of the adventure itself. Looking at the shadow places the onlooker is positioned inside the cave with the weak, who avoid consciousness and instead assume, as Blumenberg states, the roles of ‘dreamer and image-maker’. In almost the same manner William Kentridge refuses the ideology of light in Enlightenment thinking. He reminds us

93

94

Angela Breidbach

of the ideology of Robespierre, in which the quest for Enlightenment becomes a justification of violence (Breidbach 2010). Like Blumenberg, Kentridge ‘praises the shadows’ (Kentridge 2014, Tanizaki 1977 [1933]).2 In his argument, polemically, light is nothing in the philosophical realm and least of all on the level of the image: “At the end of the opera, we are in the temple of the sun, the theatre is filled with a pure light. In projection terms, we are at the end of the film, when the last image has passed through the gate of the projector and all we have is the light of the projector lamp, i.e. nothing.” (Law-Viljoen 2007: 58) The moving shadow is an ideal medium for storytelling. Where the narrative form is described as comforting for both storyteller and listener, the narrative topic does not necessarily have to be. That certainly applies to storytelling through shadow images, even though the shadow may be unsettling and may give rise to feelings of uncertainty. Shadows do not equip narratives with visual information in the way in which colourful visual realities would fill gaps of all kind for their observers when they replace the imperfect real with a perfect illusory world. The shadow does not do this. It rather functions as a gap. Thereby it demands – as stated above – a kind of surrender, in this case of visual curiosity. While only adumbrating its figures and staying blind in its centre, the shadow forces its active observers to fill the gaps of information with their own imagination. There lies comfort in this imaginative activity. Recognition takes place by inferring from the shadow which body it belongs to or rather by remembering the body. Precisely because comfort results from this procedure of backtracking, comfort itself may be characterised as a reverse figure.

4. The Other Side: Shadow and Metaphor The image that our mind finds in the shadow is considered comforting. Why is it so consoling when the mind comes across something that is not much more than a dark patch, whose outlines suggest rather than clearly present something significant? Instead of fixating on mere superficial projections, perfect as they may seem, the shadow’s observer encounters his or her own darkness, which, however, is a darkness that holds a constructive potential. What appears to be the observer’s ‘image’ is partly the seen shadow with its meagre information and partly his or her own reaction to it via an internal image-making, with certain degrees of creative freedom. Like dreams, self-constructed ideas and imaginations relegated to the shadow can be deeply refreshing. Partly perception and partly reflex of stored memories, the observer’s image represents a reality other than the forms of pragmatic realism Blumenberg criticises. Following his explanations, we can conclude 2

“In Praise of the Shadows” was the title of the first of a cycle of six lectures (Kentridge 2014).

Comfort in Contemporary Art

that our mind is in need of such phenomena which are half transient perceptions, half self-constructions, as they are represented by and take place vis-à-vis the shadow and in the shelter of the cave. At the same time that shadows fill themselves with their audience’s active imagery, metaphors arise. Etymologically ‘metaphor’ goes back to the Greek μεταφέρω (metapherō), with the apposition meta, for ‘to, with, across’ and the verb pherō, meaning ‘to carry, to bear’ or ‘ferrying something across the river’, or more abstractly, ‘to transfer’, ‘to translate’. In our context of the shadow, facticity is ferried across to the parallel world of imagination in the shadow, which is, according to Blumenberg, unrealistic but consoling. What results from this is an inverted figure in which material objects are explored from their rear, their dark, dead side. Thus, a metaphysical darkness is not necessarily an ultimate abyss. The ancient myth of Charon’s ferry, carrying the parting souls across the river, again connects metaphor to the zone of death – just as metaphors ferry two images across towards each other, mutually enlivening their dark, secluded sides. Blumenberg made the connection himself: he places the beginnings of metaphor in the cave, which he calls, as quoted before, ‘the place of the dead and dark times’ (Blumenberg 1996 [1989]: 33). As we have seen, compared to Plato’s cave with the fire, where images are unreliable, Blumenberg’s cave is rather an unquestioned place of the image; his favourite rhetorical form is the metaphor. When images for the world outside were replicated in the narratives told inside the cave, metaphor found its beginning. As the outside world becomes transferred into a parallel narrative world including the shadow image, these very shadow images generate a wealth of metaphors. Paul Ricœur’s (1986) concept of metaphor’s ‘double ontology’ foregrounds how the parallel narrative represents another thing, even is and is at the same time not this other reality. Hovering in the gap between the two different but connected spheres is the whole potential of the observer’s imagination that permits a plethora of ideas, dwelling in ambiguous imaginative spaces. Blumenberg argues that metaphor, though not logical and opposed to the clear light of reason, can be considered a most profound medium of comfort. These qualities of the metaphor allow for its effect of consolation: ambiguity adds degrees of freedom and potentiality to the sphere of the image and to its perception. Therein, other than in a fixity of meanings, it invites the observers’ creative activity so that they experience themselves as effective agents of the image. Their emotional and psychic share in the image becomes a vehicle of personal experience and expression. In short, the shadow creates images in the onlookers that make them find themselves. This is a deeply consoling experience. According to Blumenberg, the metaphorical image thus contributes its own form of knowledge or self-knowledge. It is a form of knowledge much different from a distanced analytic approach. Following his own postulation that a certain quality of insight does not have to leave the protected sphere of the cave, Blumenberg in his thinking does not leave the cave himself; he

95

96

Angela Breidbach

himself writes in form of narratives instead of arguments and about metaphors by way of metaphorical constructions (Blumenberg 2012).

5. Inverted Seeing The engagement with the works of contemporary artists like Feldmann and Kentridge showed that the images embodied in shadows can be traced from their rear side. Embodiment in this case includes – beyond the reconstructed image – the observer’s cognitive and somatic self. Thus, the inverted figure of revelation can be experienced as consoling. When engaging with Feldmann’s Shadow Play and Kentridge’s animated films, observers follow the emergence of their own dream, i.e. the materialisation of powerful images that seem to speak to their own experience. Understanding the shadow in this way aligns with Blumenberg’s description of man finding much-needed consolation in metaphorical narrative, a form that in the history of humanity began in the cave. This understanding is thus opposed to Plato’s cave allegory in two points: in contrast to the true observers who are dragged out of the cave and into the bright daylight by Plato’s strong-minded philosopher king, in Blumenberg narrators and listeners in the cave – respectively shadow artists and their images’ onlookers – are described as the weak ones, their times as dead times. The inverted figure of looking that they create, from the umbral image back to its corpus, takes another, more material happy turn: allegorically and deeply comforting, it leads all awareness from a sphere of death back into life and the body.3

3

I would like to thank Nourit Melcer-Padon from Jerusalem and the two editors for their careful language corrections of my essay.

Comfort in Contemporary Art

Appendix

Fig. 1: Hans-Peter Feldmann. Shadow Play (1 March – 2nd June 2013, Deichtorhallen Hamburg). Detail.

© Angela Breidbach. Courtesy H.-P. Feldmann.

Fig. 2: Hans-Peter Feldmann. Shadow Play (1 March – 2nd June 2013, Deichtorhallen Hamburg). Detail.

© Angela Breidbach. Courtesy H.-P. Feldmann.

97

98

Angela Breidbach

Fig. 3: William Kentridge. REFUSAL OF TIME (2012). 5-Channel video projection, colour, sound, 4 megaphones, breathing machine, 30 minutes. Made in collaboration with Philip Miller, Catherine Meyburgh, Dada Masilo & Peter Galison.

© Courtesy William Kentridge.

Comfort in Contemporary Art

Fig. 4: William Kentridge. Logic Drawing: The Comfort of a Stone (1999). Charcoal and watercolour on pages of Cecil Mace. The Principles of Logic: An Introductory Survey (1933). 21 x 28 cm. Motif previously used in the film WEIGHING…and WANTING (1997).

© Courtesy William Kentridge.

99

100

Angela Breidbach

Works Cited Blumenberg, Hans. 1996 [1989]. Höhlenausgänge. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. —. Paradigmen zu einer Metaphorologie. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. —. 2012. Quellen, Ströme, Eisberge: Beobachtungen an Metaphern. Ed. by Ulrich von Bülow & Dorit Krusche. Berlin: Suhrkamp. —. 2014. Beschreibung des Menschen. Ed. by Manfred Sommer. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Breidbach, Angela. 2010. “Thinking Aloud: Two Suites by William Kentridge.” Print Quarterly London 27.2: 131-143. Dickens, Charles. 2001 [1854]. Hard Times: An Authoritative Text. Ed. by Fred Kaplan & Sylvère Monod. New York: Norton. Herzogenrath, Wulf et al. (eds). 2016. William Kentridge: No. It Is. (Martin-GropiusBau, Berlin). Köln: Verlag Walter König. Kentridge, William. 2014. Six Drawing Lessons. (Charles Eliot Norton Lectures) Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. Live recording. http://media.fas.harvard.edu/FAS/ humanities_center/norton/kentridge/praise-of-shadows.m4v (accessed: May 6, 2019). Law-Viljoen, Bronwyn (ed.). 2007. William Kentridge: Flute. Johannesburg: David Krut. Maltz-Leca, Leora. 2018. William Kentridge: Process as Metaphor and Other Doubtful Enterprises. Oakland: University of California Press. Reiniger, Lotte. 1970. Shadow Theatres and Shadow Films. London/New York: Badsford & Watson-Guptill. —. 1979. Lotte Reiniger: Silhouettenfilm und Schattentheater. (Catalogue Puppentheatermuseum im Münchner Stadtmuseum. 2.7.-17.8.1979) Ed. by Wolfgang Till. München: Lipp. Ricœur, Paul. 1986. Die lebendige Metapher. München: Fink. Tanizaki, Jun’ichirō. 1977 [1933]. In Praise of Shadows. London: Vintage. Werner, Elke A. & Andreas Schalhorn (eds.). 2015. Double Vision: Albrecht Dürer/William Kentridge. München: Sieveking Verlag.

Writing Dis/Comfort A Novelist’s Approach to Ageing Bodies and Un/Comfortable Places Sarah Butler

It was the walk from the library to the shopping centre that was the most difficult, passing along the edge of their old estate. It had almost gone; just sky and a distant view where there used to be blocks of flats. Now the Shard stabbed up from the horizon. Sometimes it caught the sun, turning silver or copper or gold; sometimes it was half hidden by clouds. He didn’t like it, but it was easier to look at than piles of rubble behind metal fences. Like a bombsite – all those walls and windows and roofs broken into pieces, and the bulldozers still going at it, scraping away at what was left with their sharp teeth. Jack’s hearing was not what it used to be, but even for him the sound was too much. Easier to look at the Shard than the stretches of hoardings with their pictures of trees and promises of a brighter future. He was too old to be getting angry about such things – that’s what his son Tommy said – and there was nothing people like them could do in the face of all that money. Things changed. Moved on. He should know that by now. There were other routes he could take: down Penton Place and along Newington Butts, past the French restaurant where the party would be the following night, past St Mary’s churchyard and the old leisure centre. And yet this was the way he walked. He wouldn’t stop visiting a friend because he was ill, he told himself. Someone had to pay attention.   Sarah Butler, Jack and Bet (2020: 2f.)

* Bet just wanted Jack to come home. It had been over a week and she wasn’t coping. She’d told Tommy that she was fine – insisted on it – but he was no more convinced than she was. The flat felt as though it had turned against her – furniture jabbed at her shins and elbows. Cups and plates slipped from her grasp and broke themselves into pieces on the floor. The boiler woke her in the night with

102

Sarah Butler

its groaning. Taps wouldn’t turn on, and then wouldn’t turn off again. She couldn’t find the things she needed. (Ibid.: 164) * In 2014 I started writing Jack and Bet (JB), a novel that tells the story of an elderly couple living in Elephant and Castle, a rapidly changing part of South London. As I started to sketch out characters and storylines, the Heygate estate, a social housing estate in Elephant and Castle, was being demolished, having stood empty for many years. I remember walking past the Heygate demolition site and being moved by the brutality of broken concrete and smashed glass, and the brutality of the language that accompanied it. On the hoardings were benign promises of a new green heart for Elephant and Castle, a place where ‘everyone’ would ‘belong’. A newsletter trapped behind a plastic casing talked with pride about how many ‘units’ had been demolished, how much concrete had been removed from the site. These ‘units’ were people’s homes, commodified into real estate, valued for their square meterage and location over any homely or comfortable qualities. As Porteous and Smith note: “encouraged by bureaucratic thinking, dwellings are regarded as ‘shelter’ or ‘housing’. Encouraged by capitalist thinking, dwellings become commodities to be traded” (2001: 107). This estate and the surrounding area have a deeply uncomfortable history. Promises made to residents – about moving into new homes on the footprint of their old estate – were not kept, and there have been years of bitter exchanges between locals, developers and politicians. I used to live in Elephant and Castle, and I have spent the last decade engaging with the area and its residents through participatory arts projects.1 Jack and Bet, like my previous two novels, Ten Things I’ve Learnt About Love (2013) and Before The Fire (2015), considers the theme of home in all its richness and contradiction. Setting the novel in Elephant and Castle, and having Jack and Bet as former residents of the Heygate estate, which is being demolished throughout the novel, allowed me to explore the comforts and discomforts of home within a deeply problematic context. The novel also has a third narrator, a young Romanian student, Marinela, whose unlikely friendship with Jack and Bet unearths difficult truths from their past. She is a character who has left her homeland and is trying to find a new sense of home and connection in an unknown city. Jack and Bet is also about ageing, about the dis/comforts of the ageing body and its interactions with private and public spaces within the city. Jack and Bet’s ageing bodies present a threat to their sense of home. Bet’s eyesight and mobility are

1

See http://homefromhome-online.com; https://collectinghome.wordpress.com; https://vimeo.com/222385394.

Writing Dis/Comfort

failing. Their son wants his parents to move into residential care. Jack walks to the shopping centre every day in an attempt to both assert his place within this rapidly changing urban environment and to maintain his health. However, his body and/or the environment fails him and he falls, is taken to hospital, and Bet is pressured into letting agency workers into her home space. I want to begin by thinking through the idea of the novel itself as an un/comfortable home and the act of writing as an un/comfortable process of home-making, before moving on to think more deeply about the un/comfortable bodies and spaces of Jack and Bet.

1. The Novel as an Un/Comfortable Home I am interested in the novel as a space and a process, which can generate both comfort and discomfort. Mezei and Briganti (2002: 838) have written very interestingly about the relationship between the house and the novel, an idea also explored by Akiko Busch, who writes about the essential connection between arranging words and designing places. Both of these are about finding the logical order of things, about assembling these aggregates of experience in a way that makes sense. A room, like a page, offers us the space to do this. Sometimes that sense of order comes with the way words are arranged on the page. Other times it may come with the way objects have been assembled in a room. Both are ways of finding those arrangements with which we can live. […] I am certain that the process of design, very much like the process of writing, is about finding this sense of order to things. (Busch 1999: 25) To achieve comfort, we look for order in our homes, and perhaps also in our novels. We seek a sense of stability, a knowledge that things are in their proper place, the words are in the correct order, all is right in the world. And yet might this sense of order and stasis be uninspiring and unproductive? Don’t we also seek movement and change? Janis Stout, writing about Anne Tyler’s narratives of home and leaving home, discusses Tyler’s “fixation on plots that develop what John Updike refers to as the ‘fundamental American tension […] between stasis and movement, between home and escape’” (Stout 1998: 106). Though, as Ahmed et al. argue, we should be keen to challenge “presumptions that movement involves freedom from grounds, or that grounded homes are not sites of change” (Ahmed et al. 2003: 1). Tyler is a huge influence on my own work, and I find myself writing about the same tension between a desire to stay and a desire to leave. Stout mentions Tyler’s own desire for travel and movement and cites an interview where Tyler states: “Probably I would be schizophrenic – and six times divorced – if I weren’t writing. I would decide that

103

104

Sarah Butler

I want to run off and join the circus and I would do. I hate to travel, but writing a novel is like taking a long trip” (1998: 144). Tyler’s characters often find themselves compelled to leave home and make some kind of journey – physical and emotional – in order to re-find their sense of home. I am fascinated by how this connects with her description of writing as “taking a long trip” – a journey towards some kind of home space, or indeed a journey that is itself a home space. Many of the writers who have discussed the relationship between the house and the novel as a form (e.g. James 1962 [1908]: 46; Busch 1999: 25) focus on the formal, spatial qualities of the novel – the page is a room, the words are arranged as furniture and objects are, there are ways of entering and exiting. It is a dynamic and productive metaphor and I am fascinated by these ideas about the spatial nature of the novel, but I am also keen to push the idea of the novel as house towards the idea of the novel as home: not simply a physical site but a continual process of making (or ‘finding’) by both writer and reader. Many writers have talked about the relationship between writing and home/homesickness. Eva Hoffman cites Joyce Carol Oates: “for most novelists, the art of writing might be defined as the use to which we put our homesickness” (1999: 51). Mary Morris writes: “Goethe once wrote that all writers are homesick, that all writers are really searching for home. Being a writer is being on a constant search for where you belong” (1997: 29). And Kathryn Harrison says: “I make the page my home” (1997: 57). Are writer and reader both seeking a home in the novel? A place of comfort and reassurance, a place of discomfort and challenge? Laura Tanner (2013) writes about Marilynne Robinson’s novel Home and how the slow and often difficult narrative mimics the discomfort of the novel’s protagonist, who is stuck in a very traditional, gendered domestic situation. Considering my own novel, Jack and Bet, I realise that it is not a particularly uncomfortable text. The destruction of Jack and Bet’s home, the uncomfortable truths of Bet’s affair, the difficult relationship between Bet and her son, and the illness and eventual death of Jack are not easy reading, but as a novel it does offer comfort: the (at least partial) resolution of conflict, a sense of hope for the future. In this I follow the traditional tropes of the novel: creating discomfort for my characters in order to push them through the narrative and generate change, but ultimately ‘satisfying’ readers’ expectations by offering a sense of resolution to the characters’ problems as the novel draws to a close. The process of writing the novel, however, was much less comfortable. In this novel, as in my previous two, I chose to write about characters far away from myself in terms of age, gender, class, ethnicity. I forced myself to step outside of my knowledge, experience and comfort zone to create believable engaging characters. In addition, I find the writing process one filled with discomfort, a long and laborious process of creation and destruction, writing and rewriting, deleting and restructuring and starting from the beginning over and again (I am not alone in

Writing Dis/Comfort

this – George Orwell once wrote: “Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness” [Orwell 2004 (1946): 10]). Writing is a continual process – a ‘long trip’, aiming always at a final, still product: a book printed and sold, finished. Except it is never finished, for when the reader picks it up and opens the first page, they create their own worlds, their own interpretations, their own routes through the text. As Eric Bulson argues, readers don’t simply consume the space made by the novel, they also “produce space” (2010: 20) through the act of reading. And de Certeau compares the walker walking the city to the reader navigating the text: “the street geometrically defined by urban planning is transformed into a space by walkers. In the same way, an act of reading is the space produced by the practice of a particular place: a written text” (de Certeau 1988: 117). Maybe it is in this aspect that I find the novel most like a home, in that it is something we have to make, and make again, and make again; it is something that shifts and changes according to the people who come into its space, it is something in which we (both writer and reader) seek order, stasis and comfort, and it both satisfies and eludes those desires.

2. Un/Making Spaces of Dis/Comfort In his book, Home: A Short History of an Idea, Witold Rybczynski charts the concept of comfort in relation to the home. He writes that comfort is “more than a simple search for physical well-being; it begins in the appreciation of the house as a setting for an emerging interior life” (1988: 36). While Rybczynski is concerned with the relationship between this awareness of human interiority and the house as a site of comfort and homeliness, Mezei and Briganti (2002: 838) take the idea into the realm of the literary in discussing the relationship between the rise of the novel, which Philippa Tristram has called “invincibly domestic” (qtd. ibid.), and the age of the English house: “The comparatively recent notion of privacy resonates in this new literary form that explores intimate, private spaces of the mind and society often set within a middle-class household and home.” We might think of the home, then, not just as a place imbued with physical comforts but as a stage for our interior lives, a place where we might seek psychological comfort. And we might also consider the novel as a unique form in which to explore our intimate relationship with the idea of home, a form which is able to connect the lived experience of home with the macro-politics of urban regeneration and globalisation. We must, however, also recognise what many feminist scholars have argued, namely that the home is often the site of oppression and exclusion, of extreme discomfort both physically and psychologically (e.g. Varley 2008: 49; McDowell 2003: 15).

105

106

Sarah Butler

While the house is undeniably a key element in our experience and understanding of home, scholars have done much to explore how the idea of home encompasses much more than the four walls of a house or apartment. As Blunt and Dowling write: “Home is both a place/physical location and a set of feelings” (2006: 22), whilst Judith Flanders describes home as “both a place and an attitude” (2015: 3), and Steiner and Veel challenge the way that “home is often approached through a trite private/public dichotomy, emphasizing the walls of the dwelling as a dividing line” (2017: 1). While I am interested in the house/apartment as a site of home, my focus in this discussion is on the wider concept of home as a “spatial imaginary” (Blunt/Dowling 2006: 2). The relationship between our sense and understanding of self, home, and the act of narration is one that fascinates me. Anat Hecht writes that “[a]utobiographical narration is [...] perceived as a core means of constructing, developing and maintaining a sense of identity, woven out of memories and experience” (2001: 129). Iris Young describes home as “the materialisation of identity” (1997: 151) and talks about the objects within a home as “characters and props in stories” (ibid.: 151). We can think about home, then, as a narrative process, a place – or idea – where we seek a continuity of story and therefore identity, performed through our telling and retelling of our spaces and the objects within them. These stories, as Bammer indicates, have “the power to create the ‘we’ who are engaged in telling them” (1992: ix), and through the telling we create “the discursive right to a space” (ibid.: x). This narrative is not static but takes place over time, a continual making and remaking of place and self. So home is both a site and a process, created through story, ritual, belief, relationships. It is a place of potential comfort and discomfort (and indeed danger). It is complex and multi-faceted: “one of the most loaded words in the English language” (McDowell 1999: 71). Yet for all this scholarly unpicking of home, for all this nuance, it is still a place that we as humans idealise as secure, stable, safe. In Jack and Bet, Bet recalls working in a nightclub in Soho – a place far from being a home but which utilises the seductive nature of our abiding, unrealistic and romantic idea of what home might be: We made the men feel at home – that was our job, Bert used to say. Bertie’s was comfortable, safe, somewhere to hide away from your troubles. Bertie’s was what a home should be like, without the wife and the kids and the things that were broken, and the smells of cooking, and the bills and the neighbours fighting next door. It was our job to pretend, and to help everyone else pretend too. (JB: 151) Jack and Bet hinges on a central dilemma: will Jack and Bet be able to stay in their own home, or will they – as their son, Tommy, wants – move into residential care; a home rather than their home? While Tommy uses arguments rooted in ideas of comfort to persuade his parents to move – “You should be taking it easy, getting

Writing Dis/Comfort

looked after”; “You don’t need to just manage. You deserve more than to just manage” (JB: 38) –, Jack and Bet insist on maintaining their independence. However, as Tommy points out, their flat is hardly a model of home: ‘You don’t even like this flat, Mum. You never have. You've never even unpacked properly.’ Piles of boxes stacked up in the living room, and more next to the wardrobe in the bedroom. They'd been too old to move. And it felt as though the whole process – the bidding for flats and waiting for phone calls and having to decide what to take with them and what to get rid of – had put another handful of years onto each of them. ‘This is our home.’ Bet folded her arms. ‘We got chucked off the estate. We’re not getting chucked out of here’. (JB: 39f.) Jack and Bet maintain a level of discomfort in their own home, through inaction, and perhaps in protest at having been forced to leave their flat on the estate. And yet at the same time, they fight to stay there. They create their home through their small, everyday rituals. Jack making Bet a pot of tea every morning before he goes on his daily walk; watching home improvement programmes on TV; having their son over for Sunday lunch. Later in the novel, motivated by Bet’s friendship with Marinela – which acts as a catalyst for the novel’s revelations about Bet’s past – Bet starts to unpack properly, choosing what to keep and what to throw away: “the truth was that with every pile of things they threw away Bet could feel herself getting lighter, happier, younger even” (JB: 77). This re-making of home gives Bet a new sense of comfort. * We invest homes and places with our stories, memories, and dreams, and so their destruction or loss can have a huge impact on our sense of self. Porteous and Smith coined the term domicide in 2001, meaning “the murder of home” (Porteous/Smith 2001: 3) – the deliberate planned destruction of homes, often done in the name of the ‘common good’, which involves the suffering of those who lose their homes. They write: “The wilful destruction of a loved home can thus be one of the deepest wounds to one’s identity and self-esteem, for both of these props to sanity reside in part in objects and structures that we cherish” (2001: 5). Porteous and Smith have been criticised for their insistence on both the physicality and the stability and sanctity of home. Nowicki suggests we consider domicide “beyond the physical homespace”: “The home does not consist solely of bricks and mortar and can be dismantled and destroyed in a variety of forms” (2014: 789). And Baxter and Brickell (2014: 134) talk about home “unmaking” – a “more varied and expansive” idea than domicide, which encompasses burglary, leaving home, death, and so on. Jack and Bet have experienced domicide in the destruction of their home on the estate. They now face “home unmaking” in the potential loss of their current

107

108

Sarah Butler

home through a move into residential care. Such a double loss makes them cling more firmly to a home that in many ways is uncomfortable and unsuited to their needs. They invest their identity in the space and more importantly in their ability to live there independently. The idea of a residential home is anathema to Jack and Bet. Visiting a home with Tommy while Jack is in hospital, Bet wonders: “Maybe she could get Tommy to take her and Jack both somewhere high – a hilltop or a tall building – and they could hold hands and step off the edge and that would be it. Over” (JB: 196). Whilst Kearns and Andrews criticise the over-representation of negative spaces of ageing, particularly the old people’s home, they do describe how these homes can come to represent “concealment and disengagement of the body from society” (2005: 16) and argue that older people’s control over their domestic space is “particularly important for the establishment and maintenance of personal identity, control, and, ultimately, well-being” (ibid. 17). Bet sees the homes she visits with Tommy as places where she will lose agency over her own life, and with that her sense of self. She will be in a home without being at home. But homes are not just what we make them – buildings impact on our behaviour at the same time as we influence their meaning. As Rowan Moore articulates: “the space we occupy is not neutral to us. We cannot look at it with detachment. We are in it, we make it, and it makes us” (2012: 70). Jack and Bet had moved from the estate into a one bedroom, ground floor flat, just off the Walworth Road. […] It was Victorian, with high ceilings and draughty, single-glazed windows. Jack wasn’t complaining, but there was damp in the kitchen, and the hallway was so narrow it was hard for two people to get past each other. Whenever Tommy came round there was an awkward shuffle, Jack having to open the door and then back away so that Tommy could get inside. (JB: 33) The discomfort of Jack and Bet’s flat is encapsulated in its hallway, which forces an awkward interaction between host and guest and makes entering and leaving a difficult process. It is a place with an uncomfortable relationship to the outside. The city bleeds in uninvited, the sounds of the estate’s demolition haunting this domestic space with conjured images of destruction: The sound of a far-off crash made both women tense. It would be a wall, Bet thought, a wall and its windows tumbling to the ground. When the wind blew from that direction it brought the noise with it and the image of the machines ripping the flats apart, exposing wallpaper and bathroom furniture, kitchen fittings and carpets. (JB: 43f.) Strangers’ voices on the street can be heard from the living room, and when Jack falls and has to go into hospital, Tommy persuades Bet to accept meals-on-wheels. “She even agreed to him putting the keys in a safe outside the front door so the

Writing Dis/Comfort

meal people could let themselves in. You’re the one who thinks we’ll be murdered in our beds living here, she’d said and shrugged” (JB: 164). In her study of inner-city domestic space, Kathy Burrell writes about “one of the fundamental contradictions of place; the inherent openness of localities versus the desire to keep them closed and stable” (2014: 162). Her study highlights her interviewees’ (usually unsuccessful) attempts at “physically keeping outside forces out of the home” (ibid.: 152). She argues, along with Blunt and Dowling, that the home is inherently porous, implicated in and affected by larger political and geopolitical forces (ibid.: 146). Bet and Jack’s current living space is uncomfortably permeable, unlike like their old flat on the estate, with its sense of physical safety and containment as well as its view across the city: “bright and light, up on the eighth floor with views all the way across London. Hot running water. The gardens in between the blocks filled with new trees. They felt like they were living in the future” (JB: 7). This remembered flat is a space that offered emotional comfort, space and a sense of control, in direct contrast to Jack and Bet’s current living conditions. The third significant flat in the novel (given to Bet by her American lover in his will) is a space of profound discomfort for Bet. But as the novel progresses it becomes a space of comfort for Marinela; Bet invites her to live there and she is more than happy to leave her noisy and uncomfortable house-share. Bet’s lover bought the flat in the 1950s as a place to conduct their affair. “It was his idea”, Bet tells Marinela: ‘I was furious at first. I liked the hotels – they felt less, I don’t know, less real.’ She put the fingertips of one hand against her forehead. ‘It’s worth an awful lot of money. You wouldn’t believe how much money. It’s quite terrible. And the council write to me about it being empty and I just burn the letters’ (JB: 57f.). The flat is a deeply uncomfortable reminder of Bet’s betrayal; a practical and logistical burden, and when its existence is discovered by Tommy, a source of great discomfort and upheaval in Bet’s family relationships. It also serves as a symbol of London’s housing boom, in which homes have been commodified into real estate, valued for their square meterage and location over any homely or comfortable qualities. The final space I want to consider is the city itself. Jack grew up in Elephant and Castle, South London; Bet has lived there since her early twenties. It is home to them, and yet it is changing rapidly and beyond recognition. As Porteous and Smith write: we believe (or at least we want to believe) that “our dwellings, neighbourhoods, landscapes and valleys have inherent permanence. They are bigger than us; they are centres of stability in a rapidly changing world” (2001: 192). And yet, as André Aciman, an exile living in New York, writes about a changing park in the city: “even if I don’t disappear from a place, places disappear from me” (1999: 21). He

109

110

Sarah Butler

goes on to say: “If part of the city goes, part of us dies as well” (ibid.: 31). Peter Read would agree: “Let us not underestimate the effect which the loss of dead and dying places has on our own self-identity, mental well-being and sense of belonging” (1996: xii). It is Jack who engages with the city in the most sustained way in the novel, walking the same route every day from the flat to the shopping centre, to have coffee in the same café. As the quote that opens this essay highlights, he chooses a route which takes him past their old estate in order to bear witness to its destruction. He acknowledges the impact of the estate’s destruction on his sense of home whilst also continuing with his rituals of walking, sitting and drinking, which continue to re-inscribe his sense of home in this often hostile urban environment. Jack’s practices of homemaking align with Rowan Moore’s discussion of city dwellers. Drawing on John Berger, Moore emphasises that to “find a new centre and preserve their identity, city dwellers have to resort to actions rather than physical form” (2012: 54). Citing Berger: “The displaced preserve their identity and improvise a shelter. Built of what? Of habits, I think, of the raw material of repetition, turned into a shelter” (Moore 2012: 54). The city is changing around Jack and he has no power or agency to stop that. What he can do is walk and look and visit the café and through these actions make and re-make this urban fabric as his home. Through his daily interaction with the city, Jack also becomes part of it. Bet contemplates how his continued presence might offer comfort to others: “The shopkeepers must know him. Maybe they looked out for him every morning. There’s Jack, they’d say to their colleagues, or just to themselves. Or if they didn’t know his name – there’s the old bloke. A black coat in winter, navy blue jacket in summer. Maybe it comforted them to see him” (JB: 41).

3. Un/Comfortable Bodies The connection between home and body is one commonly made by those writing about home (e.g. Carsten/Hugh-Jones 1995: 2; Kearns/Andrews 2005: 15f.; Mezei/Briganti 2002: 841). The body is an extension of the home; the home is an extension of the body: these analogies testify to the close intertwining of our personal identity and our concept of home. Who we are (our mind, our ego) is influenced by our relationship, through our bodies, to the outside world, as Easthope foregrounds in her discussion of Heidegger. Indeed, “the vehicle of being-in-place is the body” (Casey cited in Easthope 2004: 132). A novel is made of bodies – albeit textual ones – bodies which move through space, which act, speak, experience, reflect. These bodies can both assist and betray. They can enable a character to feel at home – in place – or alienated from the world.

Writing Dis/Comfort

Whilst Jack’s journeys through Elephant and Castle reveal an attempt to make a home and find a place in the city, we can’t help but feel that he is pitting his ageing body against a city that has little space or time for him: It seemed to him that every day he got a little bit slower, a little bit less stable. He would stop, often, leaning his weight onto his stick, breathing carefully. There were people who brushed past, their shoulders or bags knocking against him, tutting or swearing under their breath. London was such a rush-about city – everyone would be happier if he stayed at home. (JB: 2) And it is on one of his walks that he falls – something which Phillips et al. (2005: 156) describe as “a loss of balance, a displacement of the body beyond its base of support” –, precipitating a rapid decline in his health which eventually leads to his death. He fell on the street, at the bus stop by the museum, just past the estate and before the sexual health clinic. It might have been the lip of a raised paving slab, catching at the sole of his shoe. It might have been ice – it was cold enough, a few flecks of snow in the air, melting as soon as they met the ground. Or it might have been nothing. (JB: 142) Jack and Bet are in their late eighties. Whilst Jack walks, Bet is more sedentary, restricted by painful legs and gradually failing eyesight. Yet they are both intellectually sharp and emotionally astute. As Bet reflects during an early meeting with Marinela: “She had been young once, she wanted to tell this girl. She had been just like her – smooth skinned and agile. She used to step out onto the street with perfect hair, perfect stockings, perfect face. […] And it wasn’t as though she felt much different now – not inside. Inside, she was still twenty years old.” (JB: 45f.) Bet constantly negotiates this split between the often uncomfortable present and the past, finding comfort in her memories. She was wearing heels. They were not high, but she could hardly walk in them. Damn it, it was her party – she would dance in her stockings if she wanted to. She slipped off her shoes and got slowly to her feet. […] As Jack and Bet approached the dance floor, people started to cheer. Bet felt it move through the room and rise in volume. Everyone was looking at them. It was like stepping into a greenhouse, the warmth seeping straight into her blood. Her stockings caught on the rough floor. Her legs felt heavy and old. But now Jack’s hand was on her shoulder, his other on her waist, and for a moment it didn’t matter that he thought the peach-coloured dress was too young for her; it didn’t matter that when she looked up a dark smudge sat in the centre of his face. Because she was nineteen years old again, dancing at the village fair with a beautiful stranger, and the world was crystal clear. (JB: 21f.)

111

112

Sarah Butler

Jack and Bet’s ageing bodies threaten their ability to define their own comfort within the space of their home. They must move because of Bet’s eyesight, Tommy insists, because they are old and increasingly frail and their current home is full of potential hazards. They lost their previous home because of the politics of London’s regeneration. They are at risk of losing their current one because of their bodies and the conventions around ageing and home. Marinela’s young body stands in stark contrast to the older couple’s. As Bet reflects: “The girl was young, twenty maybe, or a touch older, her skin smooth as new butter, her back straight. She looked so easy in her body Bet couldn’t decide if she was delighted by her or horribly jealous” (JB: 16f.). Marinela works in a strip club to help pay her rent. “It was just skin, she told herself, it was just a body. Who cared? It got easier each time she did it” (JB: 116). Marinela deals with removing her clothes for strangers by detaching herself from her own body. But this deliberate act is taken to an extreme – and uncontrolled – degree several times in the novel when she experiences a condition called depersonalisation, where it feels as though her mind and body separate from each other. We first see her experience it whilst dancing at the club: “For a moment, she was simply lost. A sudden gap opened up between her body and her mind so that the one could not reach the other. It was like watching herself in a bad film” (JB: 26). This experience of being separated within herself, of being out of place in her own body, speaks to Marinela’s position as a person away from her home country, who has not yet found a place that feels like home in London.

4. Un/Comfortable Writing Writing Jack and Bet has offered me a space to explore dis/comfort through the physical (textual) bodies of my characters and the spaces they inhabit. The often uncomfortable process of writing has in many ways mirrored the characters’ (and perhaps my own) processes of home-making – processes which encompass ease and discomfort, excitement and trepidation, satisfaction and frustration, stasis and movement. I see home as a narrative project, something that happens over time as well as space, a process that looks to hold past, present and future together, and through doing so generate meaning and connection. Throughout Jack and Bet, the characters make and re-make their relationship with home by bringing together the (often uncomfortable) past and future into the present of the narrative. One of my motivations in writing Jack and Bet has been to reclaim the Heygate estate, and more particularly, the sense of home and community it facilitated, through the act of writing. Setting the novel in the uncomfortable context of Elephant and Castle and exploring the relationship of Jack and Bet and their ageing bodies within this rapidly changing urban space has enabled me to think through

Writing Dis/Comfort

the concept of home and dis/comfort in more complex and nuanced ways. I have expanded my understanding of home from something commensurate with the safe, secure abode to something that can be made, found and experienced in multiple complex ways within urban space, inside our heads, in individuals and communities, and on the page.

113

114

Sarah Butler

Works Cited Ahmed, Sara et al. 2003. “Introduction: Uprootings/Regroundings: Questions of Home and Migration.” In: Sara Ahmed et al., eds. Uprootings/Regroundings: Questions of Home and Migration. Oxford: Berg, 1-19. Aciman, André. 1999. “Shadow Cities.” In: Aciman, André, ed. Letters of Transit: Reflections on Exile, Identity, Language and Loss. New York: The New Press, 15-34. Bammer, Angelika. 1992. “Editorial: Question of Home.” New Formations 17: vii-xi. Baxter, Richard & Katherine Brickell. 2014. “For Home UnMaking.” Home Cultures 11.2: 133-143. Blunt, Alison & Robin Dowling. 2006. Home. London/New York: Routledge. Bulson, Eric. 2010 [2007]. Novels, Maps, Modernity: The Spatial Imagination 1850-2000. London: Routledge. Burrell, Kathy. 2014. “Spilling Over from the Street: Contextualising Domestic Space in an Inner-City Neighbourhood.” Home Cultures 11.2: 145-166. Busch, Akiko. 1999. Geography of Home: Writings on Where We Live. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Butler, Sarah. 2020. Jack and Bet. London: Picador. Carsten, Janet & Stephen Hugh-Jones. 1995. “Introduction: About the House: LeviStrauss and Beyond.” In: Janet Carsten & Stephen Hugh-Jones, eds. About the House: Levi-Strauss and Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1-46. de Certeau, Michel. 1988. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Easthope, Hazel. 2004. “A Place Called Home.” Housing, Theory and Society 21.3: 128138. Flanders, Judith. 2015. The Making of Home. London: Atlantic Books. Harrison, Kathryn. 1997. “Outside In.” In: Mickey Pearlman, ed. A Place Called Home: Twenty Writing Women Remember. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 40-58. Hecht, Anat. 2001. “Home Sweet Home: Tangible Memories of an Uprooted Childhood.” In: Daniel Miller, ed. Home Possessions: Material Culture Behind Closed Doors. Oxford: Berg, 123-145. Hoffman, Eva. 1999. “The New Nomads.” In: André Aciman, ed. Letters of Transit: Reflections on Exile, Identity, Language and Loss. New York: The New Press, 35-63. James, Henry. 1962 [1908]. “Preface to The Portrait of a Lady.” In: Henry James. The Art of the Novel: Critical Prefaces. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 40-58. Kearns, Robin A. & Gavin J. Andrews. 2005. “Placing Ageing: Positionings in the Study of Older People.” In: Gavin J. Andrews & David R. Phillips, eds. Ageing and Place: Perspectives, Policy, Practice. London: Routledge, 13-23. McDowell, Linda. 1999. Gender, Identity and Place: Understanding Feminist Geographies. Polity Press.

Writing Dis/Comfort

—. 2003. “Place and Space.” In: Mary Eagleton, ed. A Concise Companion to Feminist Theory. Hoboken: Blackwell Publishing, 11-31. Mezei, Kathy & Chiara Briganti. 2002. “Reading the House: A Literary Perspective.” Signs 27.3: 837-846. Moore, Rowan. 2012. Why We Build. London: Picador. Morris, Mary. 1997. “Looking for Home.” In: Mickey Pearlman, ed. A Place Called Home: Twenty Writing Women Remember. New York, St. Martin’s Griffin, 25-39. Nowicki, Mel. 2014. “Rethinking Domicide: Towards an Expanded Critical Geography of Home.” Geography Compass 8.11: 785-795. Orwell, George. 2004 [1946]. “Why I Write.” In: George Orwell. Why I Write. London, Penguin, 1-10. Phillips, David R. et al. 2005. “Ageing and the Urban Environment.” In: Gavin J. Andrews & David R. Philips, eds. Ageing and Place. London: Routledge, 147-163. Porteous, J. Douglas & Sandra E. Smith. 2001. Domicide: The Global Destruction of Home. Montreal et al.: McGill-Queen’s UP. Read, Peter. 1996. Returning to Nothing: The Meaning of Lost Places. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Rybczynski, Witold. 1988. Home: A Short History of an Idea. London: Heinemann. Steiner, Henriette & Kristin Veel. 2017. “Negotiating the Boundaries of the Home: The Making and Breaking of Lived and Imagined Walls.” Home Cultures 14.1: 1-5. Stout, Janis P. 1998. Through the Window, Out the Door: Women’s Narratives of Departure, from Austin and Cather to Tyler, Morrison, and Didion. Tuscaloosa/London: The University of Alabama Press. Tanner, Laura. 2013. “Uncomfortable Furniture: Inhabiting Domestic and Narrative Space in Marilynne Robinson’s Home.” Contemporary Women’s Writing 7.1: 35-53. Varley, Ann. 2008. “A Place Like This? Stories of Dementia, Home, and the Self.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26.1: 47-67. Young, Iris Marion. 1997. “House and Home: Feminist Variations on a Theme.” In: Intersecting Voices: Dilemmas of Gender, Political Philosophy and Policy. Princeton: Princeton UP, 134-164.

115

Are You Dwelling Comfortably? Heidegger’s Home Comforts in The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt Andrew Liston

Donna Tartt’s 2013 novel The Goldfinch (TG) has at its heart the concept of home. It recounts the tale of a New York teenager called Theo Decker, who at the age of 13 loses his mother in a terrorist bomb attack on the Metropolitan Art Museum in New York. He survives the blast and, before leaving the art gallery, steals a painting called The Goldfinch by a Dutch master. From this moment on, Theo moves (or is moved) from home to home across the continent and back again, and finally to Europe. The different homes he inhabits all offer the protagonist varying levels of physical as well as spiritual comfort. Both what goes into making a home and how a home can provide comfort are discussed at length in the work. Thus far, the reception of Tartt’s bestseller has focused on the central themes of loss, grief, and value, which are undoubtedly prominent in the work, but ignore home and comfort. As should become clear over the course of this essay, this omission is surprising given the attention paid to the topics in the novel. This essay analyses the notion of comfort within the framework of the wider discourse surrounding the concept of home and in particular, Martin Heidegger’s essay “Building Dwelling Thinking” (1971),1 which is central to both the discussion and to understanding Donna Tartt’s novel. Comfort in The Goldfinch relies on an understanding of home which posits our existence as defined by both the physical and social environment: Tartt’s protagonist makes a journey from home to home, and each home enables him to ‘dwell’, in Heidegger’s sense of the word, to a greater or lesser degree. Furthermore, Tartt draws attention to the contingencies of time and place in combination with chance: she places emphasis on the where and the when, and their impact on the fates of her characters, once again echoing Heidegger, whose primary concern was asserting the embeddedness of being. Comfort in Tartt’s work, it transpires, is reliant on rootedness in a given place, at a given time within a given social network. 1

The first version of this text was delivered as a lecture, “Bauen Wohnen Denken”, in 1951. The English translation by Albert Hofstadter appears in the collected volume Poetry, Language, Thought (1971).

118

Andrew Liston

1. Heidegger Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of dwelling, with its focus on what goes into making a home, puts the emphasis on the interplay of life with its environment, thus shifting the focus from individuals seen in isolation to an understanding of life as the interplay of individuals and their physical environment. Heidegger’s major impact in this respect is his challenge to the ways in which we think about being, how we perceive our existence. One of the major philosophical issues Heidegger faces is the divide between the thinking mind and the rest of the world, a divide which has been lodged in our way of thinking for a very long time. In terms of the discussion of the concept of home, this divide becomes problematic if, as Heidegger contends, our being is dependent on our social and physical surroundings, that is to say our home, in his extended understanding of the word. Why do we think like this? Why do we see ourselves as separate from our surroundings? There are lots of possible reasons. The line of thinking is so prevalent that we might be tempted to say we simply do; however, ancient Greek philosophy contains evidence that alternative approaches have existed (Gottlieb 2018). We could look to the Bible, which has dominated Western thinking for two millennia: Christian culture has followed a course of thinking that has largely separated humans from their environment in order that they might exploit it. The blame is often (and sometimes rather simplistically) laid on Cartesian Dualism at the start of the Enlightenment. Just how prominent the role played by Descartes is perceived as being can be measured by the fact that the early modern philosopher gets a good wodge of blame in Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth (2007), a film watched by millions and credited with making ecological concern mainstream. Descartes’ philosophy reduces being to an individual scale. Cogito ergo sum places reflection at the centre of existence – we exist within ourselves, according to Descartes. [L]a première est que je n’ai jamais rien cru sentir étant éveillé que je ne puisse quelquefois croire aussi sentir quand je dors; et comme je ne crois pas que les choses qu’il me semble que je sense en dormant procèdent de quelques objets hors de moi, je ne voyais pas pourquoi je devais plutôt avoir cette créance touchant celles qu'il me semble que je sens étant éveillé. (1835: 163)2 What Descartes is saying here is that we can never be sure about reality: our subjective experience is not necessarily connected to the external world, and the only

2

“Every sensory experience I have ever thought I was having while awake I can also think of myself as sometimes having while asleep; and since I do not believe that what I seem to perceive in sleep comes from things located outside me, I did not see why I should be any more inclined to believe this of what I think I perceive while awake.” (Descartes 2013 [1835]: 107)

Are You Dwelling Comfortably?

thing we can be sure of is that we are thinking. This crucial thought (which had, in fact, been posited by the Greek Sceptics before him) puts humankind at one remove from the world, reflecting on it, separate from that which surrounds us and suggests that we are a unique species in this respect. According to Descartes, this is the proof that we are the only species with souls, which he equated with mind. As Keith Thomas (1984: 34f.) suggests, the Cartesian dualistic approach probably became so popular out of expedience: it gave a neat rationalisation for the harsh treatment of animals, which otherwise had given people pause for thought. How could God be at the same time beneficent and create a world in which animals were to suffer? If, as the Cartesian school suggested, animals were merely automata, then their howls of pain were not born out of sensation, but were instead merely a reflex. This became, as Keith Thomas puts it, “a central preoccupation of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European intellectuals” (ibid.), who generated a huge amount of literature on the subject. Recent ecological discourse is one field in which this divide has been given considerable thought. Central to this discourse is again the concept of home: the etymology of the word ecology contains the Greek word oikos, meaning home, and the discipline places the emphasis on the study of the interconnections between organisms and environments rather than the study of them as discrete. Home is therefore meant very broadly. Getting past the Cartesian conceptual impasse is what William Cronon sees as the major task facing environmentalism. “Our challenge,” he says, “is to stop thinking according to a set of bipolar moral scales in which the human and the non-human, the unnatural and the natural, the fallen and the unfallen, serve as our conceptual map for understanding and valuing the world.” (1995: 89) Cronon is interested here in the impulse that lies behind the notion of ‘pristine nature’, the notion of an untouched natural environment, a perception of nature existing at one remove from humankind, something which is in fact the bedrock of conservation. The title of Edward O. Wilson’s recent book Half Earth is a pithy summary of its argument: according to Wilson, in order to save ourselves from ecological doom we must designate half of the globe to nature. He could not have summarised the dichotomy humans vs nature any better – half the world for us, half the world for them (Wilson 2016: 5). Wilson reckons this is how we think, so this is the only solution, but Cronon (and lots of others, of course) believe we need to change our way of thinking. In Cronon’s words, “We need to discover a middle ground in which all of these things from city to wilderness can somehow be encompassed in the word ‘home’” (1995: 89). The centrality of the word home in arguments about the division between humans and their surroundings brings us back to Heidegger. Heidegger was preoccupied from an early age with the possibility of there being different ways of being. His major bone of contention with Western philosophy was the lack of context existence has traditionally been allowed. The title of his magnum opus, Being and Time,

119

120

Andrew Liston

reflects this: how we exist is contingent on time, he says, and in the work he makes a radical challenge to the split between knower and known. This emphasis on a context is what makes his philosophy so relevant for the discussion of home: Heidegger seems to offer a bridging of the divide between the knower (humans) and the known (the rest). Jeff Malpas describes the core of Heidegger’s thinking in the following way: Whatever conclusions we may finally arrive at, and wherever we may suppose we end up, the place in which we begin our philosophy, the place in which philosophical questioning first arises, is the place in which we first find ourselves – that place is not an abstract world of ideas, not a world of sense-data or ‘impressions,’ not a world of theoretical ‘objects’ nor of mere causal relata. In finding ourselves ‘in’ the world, we find ourselves already ‘in’ a place, already given over to and involved with things, with persons, with our lives. On this basis the central questions of philosophy, questions of being and existence, as well as of ethics and virtue, must themselves take their determination and their starting point from this same place. (2006: 39) Heidegger’s relevance for the discussion of home lies in his critique of the Western philosophical tradition, which is based on his notion of dwelling. In his essay “Building Dwelling Thinking”, he begins an argument which will culminate in a definition of dwelling by looking at the etymology of the German word bauen. The word which today means ‘to build’ is derived from the Old High German buan, which contains both of the concepts contained in the word dwelling – namely living and staying in one place. He also traces the connections between the word and the forms of the verb to be (sein) in German for the first and second person singular: ich bin and du bist. Bin and bist have no etymological connection with sein but are derived from the same root as bauen. As Heidegger puts it, “The old word ‘buan’ also means at the same time to cherish and protect and care for, specifically to till the soil, to cultivate the vine.” (1993: 349) This etymological investigation serves to support an understanding of being as defined by surroundings and a critique of the understanding of what we might generally understand by the word building: he asks, “does a place of dwelling ensure that dwelling occurs?” and suggests that the activity of building and the physicality of building are in fact united with dwelling (ibid.). In what has become one of the best-known passages from the same essay, we find a quotation which sums up very well what Heidegger means when it comes to the concept of dwelling: Let us think for a while of a farmhouse in the Black Forest, which was built some 200 years ago by the dwelling of peasants. Here the self-sufficiency of the power to let earth and sky, divinities and mortals enter in simple oneness into things or-

Are You Dwelling Comfortably?

dered the house. It placed the farm on the wind-sheltered mountain slope, looking south, among the meadows close to the spring. It gave it the wide overhanging shingle roof whose proper slope bears up under the burden of snow, and that, reaching deep down, shields the chambers against the storms of the long winter nights. It did not forget the altar corner behind the community table. (1993: 361f.) Dwell is usually defined as a synonym for inhabit; in this key passage, Heidegger rather unusually uses dwell almost as if it were an action verb: inhabiting causes the building of a house in its particular style. It is the combination of certain elements that defines the house; Heidegger places emphasis on the connection between the house, the geography, and the weather, but also on a spiritual element. It would appear that home is more of a practice for Heidegger rather than merely a physical place. This ties in with recent theorizing about home. In their seminal monograph Home, Alison Blunt and Robyn Dowling define home as a “spatial imaginary” (2006: 2). For them, the term contains not only the commonly associated notions of a physical entity but also the feelings – be they positive or negative – attached to that physical entity. They say that “[t]hese feelings, ideas and imaginaries are intrinsically spatial” (ibid.), and thus the authors make a connection between a mental reality and a physical one, crossing the divide discussed earlier in a thoroughly Heideggerian manner. Home is more than physical in their reading too: “A house is not necessarily nor automatically a home, and personal relations that constitute home extend beyond those of the household.” (Ibid.: 3) The somewhat esoteric tone that can be found in Heidegger’s essay when we encounter his theory of ‘the oneness of the four’ has prompted many to call his ideas on dwelling “mystic” (Malpas 2006: 4). The four are the earth, the sky, the gods and mortals. Heidegger argues that when we think of one of these things we always also think of the others. This interconnection is what constitutes dwelling in Heideggerian terms. Mark Wrathall sums it up as follows: “In dwelling, we develop practices and tastes peculiarly suited to our ‘fourfold’ or locale: our earth, sky, divinities and the mortals with whom we live. We then ‘preserve the fourfold in its essence’ by building things peculiarly suited to our local world.” (2005: 111) Wrathall’s explication of what Heidegger means by dwelling is also illuminating. He gives the habits of many inhabitants of American desert cities as an example of living without dwelling: they try to imprint their version of nature on their surrounding natural environment. He talks about Las Vegas where many people try to re-create the suburban idylls of the East Coast with irrigation systems and soil transplants in order to create lush green lawns and golf courses (Wrathall 2005: 114). Other salient examples of this kind of living include the indoor skiing ‘Alps’ in Dubai, where everything pertaining to an Alpine skiing holiday – except, of course, for the Glühwein – has been stuffed into a giant refrigerated hall. We might also think of the British gardener’s prizing of the Paulownia tree, which, being unsuited

121

122

Andrew Liston

to a maritime climate, hardly grows at all in Britain, but the classic gardener’s reference work Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles nevertheless states that “few more beautiful flowering trees than this exist” (2000: 102) in the country. The cover of the tome is even adorned with a picture of a Paulownia. Martin Heidegger would not be happy with any of this. Given the connections between dwelling and being in Heidegger, it would appear that different modes of dwelling offer differing levels of comfort: a mode of dwelling in tune with the surroundings will offer a more authentic existence (or being for Heidegger) than one that instead tries to some extent to neutralise the environment, or overlay a different environment on the existing one. The authenticity of the existence is essential to the spiritual comfort possibly drawn from one’s home: a home may offer physical comfort in all its possible forms, but without authentic being, there will be little chance of a feeling of being at home and the result will be discomfort. It is important at this point to understand what is meant here by comfort. Some definitions of comfort, such as that of Stefano Boni, focus solely on the physical when dealing with comfort: Boni talks about “sensory ease” (2016: 149) and “liberation from fatigue” (ibid.) and addresses the physical aspect of comfort, but ignores any other component. This is surprising, since even in concise dictionaries, while a definition focusing on the physical will indeed be given, somewhere amongst the other definitions the mention of mental well-being will also be found. This kind of understanding of comfort reiterates the division between mind and body discussed above. The fact that there is not necessarily a direct correlation between what is physically comfortable and comfort itself is something Jacques Pezeu-Massabuau highlights in his Philosophy of Discomfort (2012), in which he says that some houses “simply refus[e] to become a home” (39), no matter how physically comfortable they may be. Pezeu-Massabuau also points out the importance of perspective: what some see as comfortable, others may not. This of course restricts any attempts at quantifying comfort absolutely: in his words, “[c]omfort cannot be conceived as an absolute because it is simply an awareness of well-being that has ceaselessly varied across eras and civilisations.” (Ibid.: 9) The importance of perspective also informs the more rounded understanding of comfort that can be found in the work of Katharine Kolcaba, in the field of nursing. Kolcaba (1994: 1179) summarises the elements that inform comfort in that field as follows: physical, psycho-spiritual, socio-cultural, and environmental. In the drawing up of these categories, we can see a certain similarity to the thinking of Heidegger. Indeed, Kolcaba calls her version of comfort “holistic” (ibid.: 1178): the greatest comfort may be afforded a patient if they are treated in their entirety, as a whole, rather than when they are reduced to the illness they have. The emphasis placed on the surroundings of the patient is clear: three of her categories consider the patient’s context. The psycho-spiritual well-being of a patient relies in part on their family and friends – so, it relies on things beyond the boundaries of the self; socio-

Are You Dwelling Comfortably?

cultural factors are an extension of the same; and by environmental elements, Kolcaba refers to the physical environment in which a patient finds themselves. This is a well-rounded and persuasive understanding of comfort, which has gained wide acceptance within the field of nursing, a field in which comfort is of paramount importance. Kolcaba’s listing of various ingredients that pertain to comfort is particularly useful for this investigation of The Goldfinch, since the novel presents a range of different homes that all have more or fewer of the above-mentioned ingredients.

2. Tartt In light of this introduction to the notion of comfort based on dwelling, let us turn our attention to The Goldfinch. Donna Tartt’s third novel has met with the usual vociferous response that any commercially successful serious work of art receives: lambasted on the one hand and praised to the heavens on the other.3 Generally, it is seen as a work about loss and about value – what happens to us when we are faced with loss and what our notions of value are based upon (King 2013). As yet, there has been no discussion of the theme of home in it, although the work is as thorough a discussion of the theme and the comfort derived from a good home as anyone might wish for. As mentioned above, the novel recounts the trials and tribulations of a teenage boy made homeless after the death of his mother and his attempts along his journey to keep hold of a precious seventeenth-century Dutch painting and keep it safe. Without going into too much detail at this stage, we can identify that the novel depicts five different homes, all of which entail different levels of comfort. After surviving the terrorist attack at the museum, Theo returns to the home he has shared with his mother in the hope that his mother will also have somehow miraculously survived the attack and will reappear there. This move allows Tartt to dwell on what the apartment means to Theo, and as the narrative dwells on the things that define a home (certain artefacts, memories associated with them, shared habits of the cohabitants), and the narrative clock tick-tocks, the reader’s suspicions that Theo’s hope is in vain become ever more certain until the tragedy is confirmed. In need of a new home, Theo moves first to a very well-to-do family whose younger son, Andy, is a school friend of his; while there, he strikes up a relationship

3

For example, James Wood (2013) says in the New Yorker, “Its tone, language and story belong in children’s literature”, while Stephen King (2013) in the New York Times calls it “a rarity that only comes along a dozen times a decade, a smartly written literary novel that connects with the heart as well as the mind”. The debate is concisely summarised by Evgenia Peretz in Vanity Fair (2014).

123

124

Andrew Liston

with a furniture restorer called Hobie, whose business partner also died in the direct aftermath of the bomb attack, but not before entrusting Theo with a ring to return to this furniture restorer. Hobie is looking after his partner’s niece, who has also survived the bomb attack but has suffered more serious physical damage. Theo credits his survival of the blast to this girl (Pippa), his logic being that he was drawn to her before the bomb went off and therefore lingered in a room of the gallery that was not so directly affected by the explosion. After regaining some sort of normality in his life with the help of the rich family and Hobie, Theo is moved once again, this time by his estranged father and his new wife, who move him to their newly built house in a half-finished suburb of Las Vegas. The suburb stretches into the desert and is half covered in sand; the other half of the houses in the suburb have futile lawns that require enormous amounts of watering. After a few years in the desert in which Theo shows plenty of signs of psychological instability, he is orphaned when his father dies suddenly, also in tragic manner. Theo ups and leaves for New York where he chances his luck with Hobie, the furniture restorer, who takes him in and acts as guardian until his coming of age. Almost as a direct opposite of the happy home Theo finds with Hobie, Tartt subsequently supplies the reader with another home which is almost as false as the home in Las Vegas. Towards the end of the novel, Theo decorates a flat to share with his fiancée. The fact that both Theo and his betrothed are in fact in love with other people does not augur well for the success of the home and this is perhaps best reflected in the story by Theo’s lacklustre engagement in the process of feathering their conjugal nest: his heart is not in it (TG: 678). From an early point in the novel, Tartt thematises home quite overtly. Considering what action to take in the direct aftermath of the explosion and how to find his mother, Theo reiterates the word home: “I’ll just see her at home, I thought. Home was where we were supposed to meet; home was the emergency arrangement” (TG: 57; emphasis added). By this stage, the reader suspects strongly that Theo’s mother has not survived the blast and therefore will not be at home, which in turn will thus not provide a solution to the emergency: the home will no longer provide comfort. Already, then, we see Tartt putting emphasis on the fact that a home is not only a physical reality but a psychological reality too, reliant not just on the physical location but on the social dimension – here the familial environment. This notion is reinforced later once Theo is installed at his school friend’s house, where his desire to return home is acute: “I had fallen off the map. The disorientation of being in the wrong apartment, with the wrong family, […] groggy and punch-drunk, weepy almost. […] I kept thinking I’ve got to go home and then, for the millionth time, I can’t.” (TG: 98) He is trying to find his feet with the new family and at school again, and central to his attempts is home – without it he cannot regain his balance. What

Are You Dwelling Comfortably?

goes into home is clearly listed here: it is both physical (the wrong apartment) and psychological/social (the wrong family), and clearly the lack of home gives him both physical and psychological discomfort (groggy, punch-drunk, weepy). He experiences discomfort in the form of loneliness, despite the bustle of the large family and the whirl of social engagements pertaining to the world of the upper class Barbour family: “Back at the Barbours’, amidst the clamour and plenitude of a family that wasn’t mine, I now felt even more alone than usual.” (TG: 177) Thus Tartt points out that, despite the physical presence of other, kind people, another family’s home cannot replace one’s own. Later, when his father comes to take him to Las Vegas and Theo’s mother’s flat is finally packed up, we see how the physical reality of his former home is still strongly connected to his sense of well-being. As he watches the removal men pack, he is reminded of a cartoon he had seen where property is rubbed out bit by bit. He describes his dismay when faced with the scene as follows: “Tormented by what was happening, yet unable to stop it, I hovered around and watched the apartment vanishing piece by piece, like a bee watching its hive being destroyed.” (TG: 225) Tartt’s choice of simile underscores the importance of Theo’s home for him: as archetypal colony animals, hive bees epitomise the notion of being as part of a greater whole; they rely on their home – including the other bees as well as the hive itself – for their existence. In Theo’s case, of course, it is the end of the physical reality of the home that causes distress, and this after months of distress following the death of his mother. Tartt is drawing attention to the fact that Theo’s distress is not just caused by the loss of emotional bonds to his mother alone but that it is also the bonds to the actual physical space and the things he and his mother shared that are important. If Theo feels lost at the Barbours’, he is about to experience a new level of housed homelessness. Uprooted by his father, Theo is transplanted to the desert in Las Vegas, where he does admittedly grow, but it would be hard to say that he flourishes. The Las Vegas station could be summarised as Tartt’s attempt at a depiction of an anti-home. When reading about Theo’s father’s home in Las Vegas, you could be forgiven for thinking that Donna Tartt has borrowed the idea for it directly from Mark Wrathall, the Heidegger critic mentioned earlier who charts contemporary Las Vegans’ anti-dwelling in his exploration of Heidegger. Here is an example of a home that is not in the least bit attuned to the surrounding natural environment: the cul-de-sac is suitably named “Desert End Road”, where the buildings are at odds with the natural environment, where sand is gradually covering up the gardens and the pavement, where the grass in the gardens is desiccated and where swimming pools are dirty, stagnant and filled with detritus. Most of the houses in this newly fashioned neighbourhood are uninhabited and some are unfinished. It could hardly be further from the depiction of dwelling summed up in Heidegger’s Black Forest farmhouse: the farmhouse seems to be an organic part of its surround-

125

126

Andrew Liston

ings, whereas Desert End Road seems to be an artificial intrusion and imposition in a harsh environment unsuitable for human habitation. The interior of the house matches this bleak picture. It is presented like a stage set from a soap opera (TG: 249), and Theo’s room is described as follows: “It seemed like the kind of room where a call girl or stewardess would be murdered on television.” (TG: 252) The repetition of the idea of a television show gives the sense here of an artificial life based on an artificial life, a hyperreal simulacrum in Jean Baudrillard’s terms and therefore an example of utterly inauthentic being. Unsurprisingly, the interpersonal relationships match this sense of hollowness. Indeed, Theo says living with his father and Xandra, his father’s girlfriend, is “like living with room-mates I didn’t particularly get along with” (TG: 258). Interestingly, in terms of physical comfort, Theo has everything he needs: the house may be bare, but it has all the mod cons. He is also well fed by Xandra with what is sometimes known as ‘comfort food’, with her bringing back a steady supply of fried left-overs from her workplace and keeping the freezer well-stocked with ice-cream. Indeed, superficially, it might appear that Theo’s life takes on a semblance of normality: he attends school, he makes a good friend, called Boris, his relationship to Xandra is satisfactory, especially given that she is his stepmother, and he seems to be developing a better bond with his father. However, this appearance is once again only skin deep. His school is full of a motley collection of drop-outs and, more pertinently, pupils who have moved around the country or the world a lot and have no rootedness; the friendship with Boris is genuine enough, but it is fueled by drinking binges and experimentation with drugs; and while Theo’s father claims to be interested in Theo and does treat him to the occasional lavish meal out, his parenting is so lax that he is not even slightly aware of the alcohol and drug abuse in which his son is indulging. Nevertheless, Theo sees the situation as having improved compared with the past when his father lived together with Theo and his mother. Shortly before his father’s death, the true purpose behind his ostensible bond to his son emerges, however. He believes he can access money via Theo. When Theo, through ignorance, does not comply, his father beats him. Aside from Boris, there is one other genuine bond that is established in Las Vegas, namely to Xandra’s lap-dog, Popper. When Theo decides to leave Las Vegas following his father’s death in a car crash, he takes the dog with him back to New York. This decision allows Tartt to discourse on the haphazard nature of emotional bonds: “How had I become attached to such a ridiculous animal?” (TG: 401) Theo asks himself when he runs into difficulties trying to smuggle his four-legged friend across America on a bus. Juxtaposed to the relationship with his father, which has just been proven a sham, this bond to the dog underscores the fact that agency is not necessarily involved in establishing emotional ties. Tartt’s characters do not choose their loved ones, and where one might expect a natural bond (father and son) there is none. Regarding comfort, we may discern an interesting contradiction:

Are You Dwelling Comfortably?

clearly, the dog gives Theo some comfort, otherwise he would not take him with him on his chancy adventure. Taking the dog, however, entails discomfort, and attention is drawn to this discomfort through its reiteration: dogs are not allowed on the bus, so he smuggles him on, only to be discovered by an angry bus driver, who threatens to eject him should anyone complain. The threat causes him anguish for almost the entire journey; furthermore, he has to brave the cold when the bus stops in order for the dog to urinate. This theme of chance and how it influences our lives and who we are is central to the novel: it has a prominent place at the start of the novel, with Theo’s chance survival in stark contrast to his mother’s demise. Attention is drawn to it shortly before Theo’s father’s tragic car accident (which in itself is of course another repetition of the theme). He has a discussion with his son on his source of income, which is gambling. “It’s how you track it. The flow of chance” (TG: 341), his dad explains, as if there were a reliable science behind it. This proves dramatically ironic when his father’s bets go wrong and he is hunted down by the debt collector. There is a suggestion that he is avoiding the debt collector when he crashes his car, and a connection is thus established between his chance death and his means of earning a living. The relevance of the topic of chance for our discussion is that it emphasises the involvement of individuals in their environment: what happens in the environment affects the individuals, be it a bomb explosion, a car crash, or an implausible friendship with a small dog. Where you are and who you are with makes a difference to your life. Another strand of the web in which Tartt’s characters are trapped is time. She places clear emphasis on the contingencies of time. This is most obvious at the start of the novel in the explosion scene, where, directly prior to the bomb detonating, she goes into elaborate detail about where the characters are and where they could be and why they are elsewhere. Attention is drawn to time in a number of ways, not least the mention of a clock ticking (TG: 33). Time and chance are also highlighted by the fact that the characters only enter the museum because they are early for a meeting elsewhere, so they have time to kill and it is raining; they get so distracted in the museum that they are then in a rush to get out in time for their meeting; and finally, they survive or die depending on how long they take to move from one room to the next. For example, if Theo had kept up with his mother, he would also be dead. If these hints towards Being and Time are not obvious enough, Tartt makes explicit reference to Heidegger’s work, having her protagonist discover a copy of Being and Time when visiting one of the many strange dwelling places described in the novel. To round off this discussion of what has so far proven to be uncomfortable homes, we must turn our attention to Hobie, the furniture restorer, whose home proves the most comfortable of all the homes investigated in the novel and provides Theo with a sense of belonging that he has not encountered elsewhere. The success

127

128

Andrew Liston

of Hobie’s home is due to his authentic Heideggerian dwelling. The connection to Hobie is established by his business partner, whom Theo happens to meet dying in the immediate aftermath of the explosion. Theo is given an enigmatic ring by the dying man and told to return it to Hobie. Thus once again chance is given a key role in the plot, establishing the connection to what turns out to be the most sympathetic figure in the novel. Theo pays his first visit to Hobie some time after he has been taken in by the Barbours, but Hobie’s home quickly becomes a haven for him. He sums it up as follows: “This place is good, this person is safe, I can trust him, nobody will hurt me here.” (TG: 176) Food is again a focus. While he has no appetite and is losing weight at the Barbours’, he devours whatever Hobie puts in front of him – the reader is provided with the details on several occasions, drawing our attention to the point. Some of the food directly reminds him of his mother’s food (TG: 149) and seems to be Tartt’s version of comfort food, the notion of which, as we have seen, is parodied by his stepmother’s leftovers later on in the desert. Through the emphasis on the food, Tartt draws our attention to the interplay between mind and body. Thus, the Barbours cannot provide him with the psychological comfort to enable him to eat properly; Hobie, however, cooks simple meals carefully and in a way that is familiar to Theo and thus he can eat. Further evidence for the authentic nature of Hobie’s dwelling (as according to Heidegger) can be found in his occupation. He restores antique furniture. Without his business partner, who had looked after the sales until his death in the explosion, this occupation is no longer primarily economic: Hobie does not sell many of the pieces that he restores. Instead, he is engaged in the art of restoring the furniture to its best possible state as faithfully as possible. The echoes here of “aletheia”, or “revelation”, as described by Heidegger in his essay “The Question Concerning Technology” (1973: 11f.) are unmistakable; this is not mass-produced furniture, but rather the production of practical pieces that at the same time reveal their maker as well as a certain essence. Heidegger’s example is the hand-made potter’s jug which is a “revelation” in that it demonstrates a connection to the world around it in the earth needed to craft it, the potter who threw it, and the various purposes the jug has. As such, the jug, in Heidegger’s opinion, has a Dinghaftigkeit or ‘thingly character’. This somewhat vague idea is represented in the novel through Tartt’s use of animate metaphors for the furniture to reveal a bond between the restorer and the furniture. Furthermore, the pieces are given more essence than mere instruments. This allows the pieces of furniture to exist in their own right: the shop is described variously as a “Noah’s Ark of furniture” (TG: 184) and a great stable (TG: 188), the workshop is called a “menagerie” (TG: 187), Hobie’s chair “seemed less like a piece of furniture than a creature under enchantment” (TG: 183), Theo describes the pieces’ “personalities” (TG: 184), and Hobie talks about their “flanks”, using “he” or “she” to refer to them (TG: 188). By employing this kind of metaphor for the furniture, Tartt creates an environment for Hobie and Theo that, being alive, is capable

Are You Dwelling Comfortably?

of interaction with them; indeed, Hobie calls the workshop “the hospital” (TG: 187) on one occasion. This is the space where Theo feels most at home and thus finds comfort. As we have seen, his appetite returns here, he enjoys the company here, he finds Hobie’s work fascinating and he finds it hard to pull himself away from it all and return to the Barbours’ – he wishes to dwell here, in the usual understanding of the word as well as the Heideggerian one. When he returns to New York after his father’s death, he knocks on Hobie’s door again and is welcomed in. Hobie becomes his legal guardian, and Theo starts to learn the furniture trade, eventually replacing the deceased partner. As mentioned above, his existence at this happy dwelling place is punctuated first by the sojourn in the desert and then later when he makes plans to get married, decorating a flat together with his fiancée. This oscillation allows a comparison of the levels of comfort afforded by the different homes; a hierarchy of comfort is thus established with a clear preference for comfort entailing a spiritual element over the bare material comfort afforded in the desert and later in the prenuptial flat. The oscillation also means that Tartt can foreground choice: while chance is clearly an important feature in The Goldfinch, the choices made by Theo are also emphasised. Here Tartt seems to be harking back to the French existentialists. Indeed, her epigraph is drawn from Camus and the novel begins and ends in a hotel room in Amsterdam, echoing Camus’ existentialist classic La Chute about choice and action (or inaction). For our discussion of dwelling, the relevance of the room in the Amsterdam hotel is its bareness. As with all places Theo stays, the environment is described in detail: it is almost completely white and has very little décor. The furniture is bland and anonymous. He is provided with Dutch newspapers which he cannot decipher. It is in this sterile environment, which he is unable to leave for several days, that Theo reaches his lowest point both psychologically (contemplating suicide) and physically (he is running a high fever). His state is of course generated by other factors in the plot; nevertheless, given the context of the novel, in which so much emphasis has been put on environments, the setting can be seen as taking on added profundity. Here we have an environment that precludes the interaction of the human with his surroundings – it could even be described as a reduction to the Cartesian self, a contemplating mind. Theo’s sense of alienation in his anonymous hotel room will be familiar to many who have spent a few days or more in bare hotel rooms that are often described as ‘soulless’. With the starting point and culmination of the novel set in a hotel room in a foreign country, where the barrenness of the room and the rootlessness Theo feels in the room are heavily emphasised, Tartt seems to be driving at the fact that we are most comfortable in places where we belong: where the people and things are familiar and have a relationship to us that has been established over time and where we are occupied with a task that engages us fully. Here we can identify once again

129

130

Andrew Liston

echoes of Heidegger and the notion of bauen at the heart of his reading of dwelling: it is an active process, not a passive one, requiring input from the dweller. The recipe for establishing a comfortable home is not complicated, but as Tartt shows us with her persuasive depiction of a series of dysfunctional homes, it is one that is not necessarily easy to pull off.

3. Conclusion This essay has examined comfort in Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch via the notion of home. Insight into Tartt’s take on the topic can be gained through the lens of Martin Heidegger. Key to understanding her argument is, in particular, Heidegger’s understanding of self as extended beyond the limits of the individual and as being defined by the environment. Authentic being for Heidegger takes place when we dwell; in his use of this word, to dwell is not merely to inhabit, but instead implies establishing a deep connection to that which surrounds us, something akin to symbiosis. Home here is not simply a shelter from the elements where we might obtain the nourishment to survive, and this is what Tartt taps into with her survey of a range of homes that provide varying levels of comfort. Early in the novel, when Theo’s future is being debated subsequent to his mother’s death, the rather implausible solution of housing him in a hotel near to his grandparents’ home is raised. Theo’s response is naïve: “room service hamburgers, pay-per-view, a pool in summer, how bad could it be?” (TG: 106f.) The remainder of the narrative amounts to a resounding refutation of the suggestion of this rhetorical question. According to Tartt, the comfort of home is a knotty thing entailing physical and mental wellbeing, both of which rely on authentic existence.

Are You Dwelling Comfortably?

Works Cited Bean, W.J. 2000. Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles, vol. 3. 8th edition. Edited by Sir George Taylor. London: John Murray. Blunt, Alison & Robyn Dowling. 2006. Home. London: Routledge. Boni, Stefano. 2016. “Technologically-Propelled Comfort. Some Theoretical Implications of the Contemporary Overcoming of Fatigue.” Antropologia 3.1: 133-151. Cronon, William. 1995. “The Trouble with Wilderness.” In: William Cronon, ed. Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature. New York/London: Norton, 69-90. Descartes, René. 1835. Oeuvres philosophiques de Descartes. Edited by Adolphe Garnier. Paris: Hachette. —. 2013. Meditations on First Philosophy. John Cottingham, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Gottlieb, Anthony. 2018. “The Ghost and the Princess.” States of Mind: Lapham’s Quarterly 11.1. https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/states-mind/ghost-and-princess (accessed March 12, 2019). Heidegger, Martin. 1971. Poetry, Language, Thought. New York: Harper Collins. —. 1977. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. William Lovitt, ed. New York/London: Garland Publishing. —. 1993. Basic Writings. Edited by D.F. Krell. London: Routledge. King, Stephen. 2013. “Flights of Fancy.” The New York Times. October 10. http://www. nytimes.com/2013/10/13/books/review/donna-tartts-goldfinch.html (accessed: August 25, 2017). Kolcaba, Katharine. 1994. “A Theory of Holistic Comfort for Nursing.” Journal of Advanced Nursing 19: 1178-1184. Malpas, Jeff. 2006. Heidegger’s Topology: Being, Place, World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Peretz, Evgenia. 2014. “It’s Tartt – But Is It Art?” Vanity Fair, June 2. https:// www.vanityfair.com/culture/2014/07/goldfinch-donna-tartt-literary-criticism (accessed: August 25, 2017). Pezeu-Massabuau, Jacques. 2012. A Philosophy of Discomfort. London: Reaktion Books. Tartt, Donna. 2014. The Goldfinch. London: Abacus. Thomas, Keith. 1984. Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 15001800. London: Penguin. Wilson, Edward O. 2016. Half Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life. New York: Liveright. Wood, James. 2013. “The New Curiosity Shop.” The New Yorker. October 21. https:// www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/10/21/the-new-curiosity-shop (accessed: June 4, 2020). Wrathall, Mark. 2005. How to Read Heidegger. London: Granta.

131

Subverting Late Capitalist Comfort Affective Connections in Deepak Unnikrishnan’s Temporary People Juliane Strätz

Comfort as a key affect has been instrumentalised as a means of social reproduction in late capitalism. As many scholars have argued, “the worker is expected to expend emotional and psychological resources, both by producing emotions (care, comfort, reassurance) and by managing them in others” (Reddy 2017: 219). Affect is hence strategically used in capitalism as “a form of invisible labour” (ibid.), creating a comforting affective routine which at the same time functions to reinforce power structures. As I will argue in this essay, however, affects and bodily responsiveness can also open up spaces in which critique can be raised. By disrupting the fabric of comfort Western consumers are wrapped in, Deepak Unnikrishnan’s Temporary People (2017) subverts the prevailing capitalist use of affect and functions as a form of resistance. Temporary People draws critical attention to migrant labourers in the Arab Gulf States who sacrifice their bodies, psyche, and social relations to create the comfort many people in the West and the oil-rich Arab Gulf States enjoy. His portrayal of ‘temporary people’, mostly male migrant workers coming from Southeast Asia to work for a limited period of time in order to earn money, is vivid, deeply concerning, discomforting, and haunting. Written for an anglophone audience, the stories transport, as Elizabeth Jaeger writes, “readers to another place, insert them into a unique world, a world that is drastically different than the one in which they reside”. The Kafkaesque stories in Temporary People explore the dehumanising existence to which labourers from Southeast Asia are condemned in the Arab Gulf States. The depicted magical metamorphoses that happen during and after employment in the generally hostile environment critically question the working conditions of migrant labourers by disrupting established narrative and aesthetic patterns. I will argue that confronting the reader with frequently abject, sexual, violent, and grotesque descriptions of the human labouring body is an effective strategy to break with the Western conception of late capitalist cultures of work and to invoke affective

134

Juliane Strätz

responses in the reader. Furthermore, I will analyse how the disruptive effects resonate in the experimental form of the novel. By challenging the anglophone, mostly Western audience with depictions of labourers that do not conform to a dominant, Western narrative, the novel requires readers to negotiate the unforeseen and unpredictable affective connections that arise. Throughout the book, readers encounter estranging transformations, violent confrontations, desperation, exaggerated moments of hope, love, and companionship, as well as generic hybridity, and discomforting narrative styles. In this way, the text engages the readers, affects them, creates intimacy, and thereby functions as a form of critique. In this web of global interconnectedness where, as (among others) Arjun Appadurai has argued, we move towards ever more abstraction and where individuals are increasingly swept aside, texts like Temporary People are able to create relations and bring the world closer together. By emphasising the embodied experience of working as a migrant labourer and by engaging in textual experimentation, Unnikrishnan’s stories not only denounce practices of outsourcing and the appointment of Southeast Asian migrant labourers to undesirable work in the Gulf States, but they also effectively unsettle Western conceptions of contemporary labour as being clean, secure, digitalised, ethical, and physically comfortable.

1. Visceral Responsiveness in Late Capitalism The past decades have seen a renewed interest in the mechanisms, subversive potentials, and biopolitical implications of affect and emotions. While the definitions of affect vary tremendously, they all share that affect is considered to be essential to a human sense of self. Melissa Gregg and Gregory Seigworth argue in the introduction to their Affect Theory Reader that this is mainly due to its characteristic of generating relations: Affect arises in the midst of in-between-ness: in the capacities to act and be acted upon. Affect is an impingement or extrusion of a momentary or sometimes more sustained state of relation as well as the passage […] of forces or intensities. That is, affect is found in those intensities that pass body to body […], in those resonances that circulate about, between and sometimes stick to bodies and worlds, and in the very passages or variations between these intensities and resonances themselves. (2010: 1) They continue to argue that affect is synonymous with forces of encounter. Thus, affects create, influence, and cut the relations within the world in which subjects are constantly being created. While most theorists can agree on these basic assumptions, other conjectures are contested. Some scholars, among them Gregg and Seigworth, Gilles Deleuze, Brian Massumi, Lawrence Grossberg, and William Connolly,

Subverting Late Capitalist Comfort

argue that affect needs to be clearly distinguished from emotion. Affect, as a bodily intensity, is characterised as autonomous, precognitive, and asocial, whereas “emotion stands as an attempt to narrativize and contain affect into an individuated, communicable state of being – […] affect lies beyond language” (Palmer 2017: 34). As affect describes an unmediated, embodied experience in their definition, they argue that “affect allows us to re-theorize the workings of power outside of ideology, shifting focus to the nonconscious, unnameable intensities that drive the political” (ibid.). Such an approach is, however, highly problematic because it not only reinforces the Cartesian dualism (Leys 2011), but because it, as Palmer (2017: 34) clarifies, often assumes a universal humanist subject and body, and as such ‘depoliticiz(es) biology (and) physiology.’1 Theorizing affect as an ontological bodily capacity, this work often elides the epistemological contingency of capacity (i.e., the ways in which ‘capacity’ is written onto certain bodies differently within a given order of knowledge) and the fact that not all bodies are imbued with the same capacities of feeling, movement, or sensation. Affect theory which universalises human experiences and which does not account for the cultural embeddedness of affect cannot bring the world closer together but rather reinforces persisting ideologies and consolidates structures of power. In the light of this, a clear-cut distinction between affect (‘precognitive and asocial bodily intensities’) and emotion (‘narrativised affect’) cannot hold. Sara Ahmed, who rejects the affect/emotion distinction in favour of using just the term emotion, underlines that emotions do not simply originate from the individual but that they “create the very effect of the surfaces and boundaries that allow us to distinguish an inside and an outside in the first place” (Ahmed 2004b: 10).2 Emerging from 1

2

Here, Palmer references Alexander G. Weheliye, whose work Habeas Viscus (2014) similarly criticises the majority of posthumanist criticism for masking the role of race by universalising humanity. Sara Ahmed comes to the conclusion that the term affect rather denotes bodily responsiveness, opening up questions of “how is a body affecting and being affected” (Ahmed/Schmitz 2014: 97). The questions she raises concerning emotion, by contrast, rather revolve around the topic of the attribution of value in a historical moment (ibid.). As Ahmed’s inquiry follows up on this latter question, it makes sense that she uses the term emotion in her discussion. She further argues that by using the term emotion, she tried to connect her discussion to the everyday resonance of the term, while at the same time distancing herself from the scholarly debates on affect in the 1990s (ibid.). She explains that she was interested in thinking about “emotions in terms of ideas and values” (ibid.: 99), which set her apart from the majority of the discussions at the time. Nevertheless, she acknowledges that “thinking about what emotions do, cannot be done without thinking about sweating and the sense of being in a body” (ibid.). Hence, ‘visceral responsiveness’, which is the primary characteristic of affect, is still part of her study on The Cultural Politics of Emotion (2004b).

135

136

Juliane Strätz

the movement between bodies, emotions enable the delineations that shape individuals and society. Far from being asocial, affects or what Ahmed calls emotions are highly indebted to “the histories that come before the subject” (Ahmed 2004b: 6). Hence, according to Ahmed’s approach, which I will follow here, it is not about what emotions are but about what emotions can do; more specifically, how experiences of comfort or discomfort function to “align individuals with communities” (Ahmed 2004a: 119) and how they “shape what bodies can do” (Ahmed 2004b: 4). While Ahmed prefers the term emotion, I will be using the term affect in my ensuing analysis to foreground the notion of bodily responsiveness. Ahmed’s theory poses an important intervention, as it acknowledges the close connection between affects and structures of power, and it opens up the possibility to understand how affect might also be used and abused within ideologies such as capitalism. Many scholars observe that affect has not only never fully worked external to capitalist production, but that it has become deeply embedded in late capitalism. As an efficient biopolitical instrument of social reproduction and management, affect is onto-epistemologically connected to structures of power. Yet, as I will argue in the following, there are liminal spaces where anticapitalist critique through the invocation of affect is possible;3 one of those spaces can be found in literature. The ability of affect to create relations and to mobilise bodies has been strategically deployed in capitalism. Because affect as a biopolitical instrument invasively effects the creation of subjectivities as well as of collectives, Massumi remarks that “[t]he ability of affect to produce an economic effect more swiftly and surely than economics itself means that affect is itself a real condition, an intrinsic variable of the late-capitalist system, as infrastructural as a factory” (2002: 45). Hence, the directed use of affect to manage bodies represents a valuable asset in late capitalism, and it does so on various levels. Firstly, affect has become a characteristic of many labouring practices. There are numerous studies on the commercial use of affect, such as Arlie Russell Hochschild’s accounts in The Managed Heart. Hochschild’s study of flight attendants highlights how the display of emotions has become a requirement in many jobs, especially those in the service sector. The display of these emotions, mostly positive ones since service workers have to emanate comfort, and the “outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others” (Russell Hochschild 1983: 7) can have devastating effects on the individual worker, as it can alienate the individual. Just as the worker can be alienated from the product of labour, “capitalism alienates the worker from their material affective capacity” and consequently, it “directly enervates and destroys the very bodies from which this

3

Michael Hardt also argues that affective labor, even though it has increasingly been colonised by capitalism and turned into an instrument, can still offer the biopolitical potential for “autonomous circuits of valorization, and perhaps liberation” (1999: 100). Hardt and Negri provide a similar line of argumentation in Empire (2000: 411ff.).

Subverting Late Capitalist Comfort

affective capacity was extracted and realized for profit and further growth” (McMahon 2018: n.p.). By using the example of the flight attendant, Russell Hochschild reveals how workers in the service sector need to detach themselves from their own feelings in order to handle their job. Her example, however, further showcases the creation of affective routines. By aligning individuals to affective patterns and by increasing the predictability of affective social relations, the example illustrates how affect can also be used to emanate comfort. Hence, under capitalism, emotion management becomes a public communicative action, and individuals are requested to adhere to certain rules. Eva Illouz ties in with this when she argues that emotion is a form of cultural capital. Drawing on Freud, she emphasises that members of different social classes also have different access to emotional resources and emotional capital (Illouz 2016: 109f.). While the ability to purposefully deploy affect has become a decisive competence at work, affect further needs to be seen as a main biopolitical instrument and, as such, as a normative means of social reproduction. While participating in affective routines creates soothing comfort in late capitalism, breaching these patterns and creating discomfort can open up an effective way to critique late capitalist practices and lifestyles. As the above example of the service industry illustrates, affect creates an environment in which individuals act. Affect is hence “less an object that circulates than a medium through which subjects act on others and are acted upon” (Richard/Rudnyckyj 2009: 62); “it suggests relations practised between individuals rather than experiences borne by sole individuals” (ibid.: 61). While environments of affect do not predetermine patterns of behaviour, they do restrict the amount of possibilities for action by shaping subjectivity. This subjectivity is closely aligned to a market logic: “a model of the subject emerges that reconciles the contradictory commitments of democratic citizenship and capitalist competition by jettisoning the political demands of liberalism and retaining the economic imperatives of the liberal market” (Greenwald Smith 2015: 5). Affective transactions are used to create this environment at the same time as they are also considered “yet another material foundation for market-oriented behavior: emotions are acquired, invested, traded, and speculated upon” (ibid.: 6).

2. The Value of Uncomfortable Readings The observation that affects are connected to structures of power and embedded in cultural and social codes is also significant for the analysis of the relation between affect and literature. What affects ‘can do’ (Ahmed 2004b), how they can operate through literature, is always shaped by the histories in which they circulate. While affects can thus open up thresholds of potentiality, scholars in the area

137

138

Juliane Strätz

of critical race studies argue that it is in turn also possible that “[m]an’s culture specific mode of identity, and the self-referentiality of its code […] leads to cognitive […][,] affective (and epistemological) closures” (Zakiyyah Jackson qtd. in Palmer 2017: 33). Hence, as Tyrone S. Palmer uncovers in his analysis of the ‘unthinkability’ of Black affect, certain groups and minorities get affectively misrepresented and misconstructed in order to perpetuate white power. He observes that “[t]he Black body comes to stand as the site of excess affect and hyperemotionality while at the same time the actual feelings of the Black person in question go unrecognized, […] erased, invisible […]” (Palmer 2017: 43).4 Furthermore, the Black individual cannot take a role as a full affective agent and equally participate in the reciprocal relationship that affect constitutes. Palmer (2017: 51) concludes that “[b]lackness represents the unthought horizon of affect theory, and in order to understand the persistence of the anti-Black paradigm, we must begin to theorize affect from the perspective of blackness – to think the unthinkable”. This also entails that, in order to communicate Black affect, one needs to find a grammar, a language, that is outside of the dominant ideology. Broadly speaking, Palmer objects that inside of the dominant rhetoric and structures, expressions of affect of marginalised groups do not circulate freely between all agents. Palmer’s intervention is significant because it reveals the problems inherent in affective criticism: the relations it creates and the changes it triggers might only be possible within certain cultural codes. While this must certainly be kept in mind for the analysis of affect concerning marginalised groups, I would argue that Temporary People (TP) highlights the lack of historical knowledge and understanding regarding the particular people who are at the centre of the stories. Just as migrant labourers in the Arab Gulf States are mainly invisible to Western people, being only “ghosts, haunting the facades they helped build” (TP: 3), a Western audience cannot come to an adequate evaluation of their situation by referring back to established categories. Invisibility is a crucial theme in Temporary People, addressed right from the first page on. The book opens with a poem that invokes the image of skyscrapers that are haunted by its former construction workers. These ghosts, however, are invisible to the audience that frequents the building after it is completed. The novel’s beginning thus serves as to caution the anglophone audience that they should pay attention to the workers that make Western luxury possible and that have gone unnoticed so far. Temporary People’s subversive potential unfolds as the text estranges

4

Palmer’s claims tie in with Sianne Ngai’s discussion. By introducing the term animatedness, she describes how affect is turned into a racialising technology in mass media. Turned into a spectacle, the racialised body becomes a body that is charged with affect, being depicted as overly emotional, overly sexed, etc., but which is at the same time stripped of individual agency (Ngai 2005: 89f.).

Subverting Late Capitalist Comfort

the audience from preconceived knowledge and places them in an area of affective tension. Literature plays a decisive role in the perpetuation of affect. It does so especially through its representation of emotions on the level of characters as well as through the emotional impressions left on the reader, which may be analysed by employing historicist methodologies. Pursuing an affective reading of a literary text, however, entails going a step further by considering how affects “index the possibility of change itself” (Greenwald Smith 2015: 16). Rachel Greenwald Smith stresses that we also have to consider a text’s aesthetics, its tone (see Ngai 2005), as well as its aptitude to fit or disturb pre-existing categories in order to analyse its affective potential (Greenwald Smith 2015: 17f.).5 Her remarks on texts as evoking impersonal feelings will further my analysis of Temporary People because they back my thesis that the novel introduces migrant labourers into a global affective community by approaching an affective grammar that is outside of the dominant order. In her introduction to Affect and American Literature in the Age of Neoliberalism, Greenwald Smith observes that the relation between late capitalism and affect complicates the relationship between affective criticism and literature. In her monograph, she argues against the popular “belief [in literary studies] that literature is at its most meaningful when it represents and transmits the emotional specificity of personal experience” (2015: 1). She attributes this trend to the penetration of a neoliberalist market logic into every aspect of life, specifically arguing that affect becomes a late capitalist instrument of social reproduction. It is, thus, not surprising that literature often also mirrors the commercialisation of affect: “feelings frequently become yet another material foundation for market-oriented behavior: emotions are acquired, invested, traded, and speculated upon” (ibid.: 6). While she doesn’t want to deny the importance of affect in literature, she introduces two categories that can be used to categorise contemporary literature and to examine their critical potential. Texts evoking personal or ‘privatised’ feelings appeal to affective patterns that are familiar to the individual. Such texts conform to expectations or even a market model and comfort the individual in that they reinforce already existing epistemological structures. While these texts might emanate affect, they barely have any critical potential.

5

Greenwald Smith’s argument aligns with an objection brought forward by Sianne Ngai in Ugly Feelings, where she advocates a paradigmatic shift away from analysing subjective emotional imprints towards an idea of objectified emotion in literature: “But what gets left out in this emphasis on a reader’s sympathetic identification with the feelings of characters in a text is the simple but powerful question of ‘objectified emotion,’ or unfelt but perceived feeling, that presents itself most forcefully in the aesthetic concept of tone” (Ngai 2005: 28f.).

139

140

Juliane Strätz

Literature invoking ‘impersonal’ feelings, on the other hand, can very well open up spaces of critical thinking: [Impersonal] feelings affect readers in ways not entirely recognizable as individually owned emotions. […] [A]t their most provocative, impersonal feelings point towards alternative paths of circulation and heighten the presence of nonmarket-oriented forms of collectivity, signaling the potential for non-human objects to lead humans in unpredictable directions, catalyzing attitudinal states that suggest alternatives to the apparent permanence of the neoliberal status quo. (Greenwald Smith 2015: 29) These texts challenge readers because they do not fit a familiar aesthetic and because readers cannot make sense of them through accustomed conventions. She even argues that the reader’s engagement and interaction with the text causes “attitudinal and orientational changes that are catalyzed in the body by exposure to a work of literature causing […] ‘permanent modifications in the structure of the mind’” (ibid.: 13). Affect here functions similar to an estrangement effect because readers are kept from “feeling [their] way into characters” (Brecht qtd. in Greenwald Smith 2015: 19). As readers cannot fit the text into familiar affective scripts, empathetic readings of the characters are unsettled or fully blocked. The affective experience of this unfamiliarity can be perceived as uncomfortable because the reader is no longer confronted with the emotional comfort most texts emanate. By comfort I do not mean pleasure here, but rather the comfortable and as such often dulling routine that permeates our thinking and practice. Temporary People provides an interesting example of a text emanating discomfort by invoking impersonal feelings. By confronting readers with a challenging aesthetics, the text breaks with the comfort of conventions. As I will argue below, it is precisely through the involvement with this uncomfortable text that a subversive potential is unfolded: readers are induced to rethink structures of power, social systems, established logics, and predetermined affective relations.

3. Temporary People Temporary People: A Novel consists of 28 vignettes. While they tell different stories and feature different text types, such as parables, poems, formal reports, dramas, and monologues, they all recur to the overall topic of migrant labour in the Arab Gulf States. Even though they are not directly tied to each other, this arrangement indicates their individual importance in creating a bigger picture. Being so diverse in style and plot, but yet putting forward a main theme, the book takes the reader on a tour de force through the emotions of what being a migrant labourer in the Gulf States entails. The portrayal of the physical body resides at the centre of the

Subverting Late Capitalist Comfort

vignettes. While Temporary People explores the whole range of human emotions, the following analysis will focus on one selected affect which is employed most effectively through the depiction of bodies in the book: the experience of intense discomfort caused by a feeling of powerlessness and impotence. It is not surprising that the portrayal of various experiences of powerlessness takes up large parts of the book. Numerous studies of the formation of capitalism in the Arab Gulf States argue that establishing and upholding class structures was integral to the development of these states.6 Not only is the polarisation between wealth and poverty extreme, but it is especially a narrow definition of citizenship, the widespread social stigmatisation of people from Southeast Asia as well as a spatial marginalisation that contribute to the devastating circumstances that migrant labourers encounter. In contrast to other texts which deal with mass-exploitation or humanitarian crises and which try to educate the audience on these matters, Temporary People does not employ a sentimentalist approach, but instead it creates an affective relation between the reader and the fictional labourer, mainly through its use of images of the body and its experimental form.7 The chapter “Birds” in particular underlines the labourers’ experiences of invisibility, loneliness, meaninglessness, non-belonging, and ultimately powerlessness. According to the story, labourers cannot die at the construction sites even if they fall off a building. However, as soon as they are removed from the site, they will inevitably die. Probably for reasons of profit maximisation and public image, this needs to be prevented. To take care of the ruptured bodies of the fallen, so-called ‘stick people’ are appointed to stitch up their labouring bodies. In the story, Anna, a stick person, encounters the fallen labourer Iqbal, who is so severely injured that she is not able to fix him – a great rarity in her professional career. While she accompanies him in his final hours, he tells her about his life and work, why he came to the Gulf states, his family history, and the reasons for his accident. While “he 6 7

For introductions see Kamrava/Baber (2012), Gardner (2010), and Hanieh (2016). By setting Temporary People apart from a sentimentalist reading here, I want to underline that the text does not display the essential characteristics of US-American sentimentalist fiction that have been evaluated very critically. While supposedly promising the “alleviation of suffering […] through compassionate recognition by, sentimental representation within, and affective inclusion into the national body” (Strick 2014: 4), this literature has frequently served the perpetuation of white hegemony. Lauren Berlant argues that sentimentalism “has been deployed mainly among the culturally privileged to humanize those subjects who have been excluded […]. But […] the humanization strategies of sentimentality always traffic in cliché” (2008: 35), reproducing the deformed images of the marginalised body. Hence, sentimentalism has mostly been employed from top to bottom, not allowing marginalised groups to find their own vocabulary. Also, as sentimentalist fiction is aligned to moral codes, this form of literature can be subsumed under what Greenwald Smith describes as texts invoking personal feelings. Since Temporary People distorts established categories, as I explain above, I want to clearly delineate it from sentimentalist fiction.

141

142

Juliane Strätz

seemed embarrassed to share” the cause of his fall (TP: 13), he admits that he fell because he was masturbating on the roof and was startled when a pigeon landed on his penis. While this detail seems absurd on further reflection, it marks a very sincere moment in the story. Here, the character opens up about himself and provides an intimate insight into his self. His explanation quickly loses its embarrassed inhibition and is marked by a colloquial and plain style underlining the protagonist’s sincerity. When he “giggled” (ibid.), describes masturbation as “fun” (ibid.) and “like impregnating the sky” (TP: 14), his narrative displays feelings of happiness and content. Iqbal’s sharing is not a form of overexposure but instead creates a compassionate, intimate atmosphere in the story, which allows for the reader to recognise the possibility for pleasure in this inhumane situation. This break with the equation of migrant labour and suffering adds an unexpected affective dimension. Iqbal goes on to talk about his experience as a construction worker and outlines what is in his control and what is not. But what he couldn’t control, he told Anna, were the reactions of people he passed in the street […]. ‘In the summer,’ Iqbal continued, ‘You burn, the clothes burn. You smell like an old stove.’ […] On building tops, he insisted, most men shrivel into raisins. ‘Men don’t burn up there; they decay. […] I once saw a man shrink to the size of a child. At lunchtime he drank a tub of water and grew back to his original size.’ (TP: 14f.) In this description, it becomes obvious that the circumstances of their work leave the workers exposed to exploitation, social marginalisation, and natural forces. Not being allowed to drink while working, workers dry up, shrivel to the size of a raisin. It is only during breaks that they are allowed to refuel in order to get back to their old selves. While this description is already repelling, Iqbal’s description of the conditions in the labour camps is even worse: Indoors, in the camps, in closed quarters, packed into bunk beds, not enough ACs, bodies baked, sweat burned eyes, salt escaped, fever and dehydration built. Bodies reeled from simply that. […] Even though they were all immune to death by free fall, there was nothing they could do about the heat. (TP: 15) While the descriptions of the workers who, for example, shrivel like raisins are hyperbolic and graphic, the account in this latter quote is much more mundane in a way that the reader can easily relate to the hardships. Most people have experienced burning eyes, salty sweat, and exhausting heat. By taking up something familiar and combining it with the graphic hyperbole, the affect of discomfort the text emanates is increased. The chapter continues to emphasise the experience of powerlessness by invoking a terrifying prospect of immortality, of being eternally undead, because labour-

Subverting Late Capitalist Comfort

ers are not even able to decide about their own life and death. The reference to the living undead is actually quite common in literature of globalised, exploitative, capitalist societies. The zombie represents a “mythic symbol of alienation: of a spiritual as well as physical alienation; of the dispossession of the self to a mere source of labour” (Laroche qtd. in McNally 2011: 213). While the zombie is condemned to work eternally under these ineffable circumstances, this figure is at the same time always read as a signifier of revolt (McNally 2011: 254). The subversive potential of the zombie labourer is illustrated in “Birds” when Iqbal tells Anna the story of a friend who was so desperate to be finally able to end his life, and in doing so to regain some power, that he asked for a remarkable favour: He’d realized pretty early it was hard to die in the workplace or in the camps. He wasn’t unhappy. He just wanted to die. […] He'd figured the best way to do that would be to die performing some work-related task. […] [E]very couple of months he would give himself an accident. […] [B]efore anyone found out I'd go to him, remove one piece of him – […] a finger or something – then throw that in the trash bin. Stick people would fix him up […], but there would be a part missing. […] [I]n three years, he’d be properly broken, just not fixable, and the company would be bound to inform his family. (TP: 16f.) Unable to find any other way to escape the company, workers are compelled to take these drastic steps just to be free. The body is disassembled: “a few fingers, toes, a kidney, his penis” (TP: 17), and half his legs removed. Only then, when the body is too mutilated to continue working, are labourers allowed to die. This description of mutilation and physical violence is just one among many in the book. Told in a sober, factual tone, it lacks any signs of horror effect. Drawing on established conventions, the unthinkability and shock of the narrated does not fit the tone of the narration. This creates the effect of a dissonance between content and form, which, in turn, contributes to the trouble of categorising the text. In this sense, the impersonal feelings in the book, the seeming dissonance, do not allow to draw ready-made conclusions and they do not allow for “strategic emotional associations” (Greenwald Smith 2015: 2) but engage the reader through their unpredictability. Resembling a factual report in its recounting, the graphic, physical description also has grotesque and abject features. As the Oxford English Dictionary observes, grotesque bodies are characterised by distortion or unnatural combinations; they are fantastically extravagant, bizarre, absurd, and ludicrous. They are all about their materiality and can be seen as deformations. As such, grotesque bodies are perceived as distressing because they do not respect alleged borders. Bodies such as the ones in Temporary People affect the reader because they are seen as “violating both classical aesthetic norms and the laws of nature” (Hurley 2007: 140).

143

144

Juliane Strätz

Furthermore, these graphic descriptions of the physical body also invoke the process of abjection. Temporary People’s labouring bodies, which sweat, bleed, and ejaculate, are abject insofar as they “breach […] the boundaries between the [seemingly self-contained] body and the external world” (Hurley 2007: 138). As Hurley writes in his discussion of abject bodies, these bodies take up a “place where meaning collapses” (ibid.: 139) because, being perceived as primal and animalistic, they disrupt cultural categories. Usually, humans consciously try to repress these unwanted things because they remind us of “our origin and fate – birth and death, the wet bloody suchness of material existence” (ibid.: 144). They not only bring us back to a point where we are animals, but in doing so they also reveal vulnerability, are deeply humane, and, as I would argue, create a common intimate space between the reader and the grotesque or abject bodies in the book – an imaginative space that evokes a tension between horror and fascination. Obviously, this aspect needs to be considered quite carefully. While one can argue, as I did before, that the physical portrayal of labouring bodies is harnessed to create subversive affective relations, depictions like this as well as the likening of migrant labourers to animals and objects can also reinforce existing historical power structures. Displaying the animality of migrant labourers could also be read as invoking the dichotomy between human and animal and hence as positioning these ‘exotic’ bodies outside of the realm of humanity. While remaining aware of this, I would still argue that the experimental form of Temporary People can work to counterbalance these historical narratives, shift the discussion, and establish new critical spaces in which to engage with the issue at hand. Unfortunately, I cannot elaborate on the text’s formal experimentation in detail. Yet, I want to note that this unpredictability not only happens on the level of the story, but it also characterises the entire setup of the book. Since Temporary People experiments with different text types, the reading experience might generally be described as a tour de force because, on all levels, the book remains unpredictable. Just as the book uses the depictions of grotesque bodies to subvert stereotypical images often employed to enforce white hegemony, Temporary People also introduces depictions of sexual encounters to disrupt clichéd narratives and to increase the discomforting effect. These range from rather normative versions of matrimonial sex to stigmatised versions like homosexual sex but also to clearly illegal and immoral encounters like prostitution, rape, and child molestation. Some of them further illustrate the migrant worker’s experience of powerlessness. In the chapter “Kloon”, a migrant labourer is employed as a clown to advertise detergent in a shopping mall. While he already feels ridiculous and undervalued by this line of work (he is a college student after all), he is further debased when he is pushed into prostitution. An older, wealthy Arab woman hires him to watch him masturbate while dressed as a clown. In the beginning, he is, however, not able to comply:

Subverting Late Capitalist Comfort

‘Stay on. Pull your briefs down. Down to your ankles. Leave them, let’s see.’ [He]8 looked at his prick. Dark as ash. Soft. ‘I don’t think this is gonna work.’ Abaya motioned for him to stop talking. ‘Touch it.’ [He] placed his palms on his thighs. Silent. […] [He] blushed. Palms now shielded privates. ‘Sorry, let me out, change mind –’. (TP: 172) The passage emphasises that the character feels exposed, ashamed, and emasculated by this demand, especially since it is a woman who makes it. He is also afraid to object because his superior ordered him to take this ‘job’. In this culminating moment of shame, however, power dynamics change for a brief moment. Disappointed and angry, the woman starts to curse in Arabic and he physically reacts to that: Abaya noticed: ‘You like Arabic?’ […] [He] nodded as he began to jack off. Abaya watched, still talking, never stopping. When he came, it was a guttural cry. As though something had been pulled from inside him for the first time, brought forth into the world, screaming like a newborn. (TP: 172) While most grotesque and abject depictions in the book are used to translate powerlessness and impotence to the readers, there are also examples like this one, where the physical breach of boundaries, like masturbating to the sound of the Arabic language, illustrate moments of struggle in which the established power structure is troubled. Unable to enter a mutual sexual relationship, the protagonists form a connection through the inability to form a connection. In this brief moment, no individual holds the control over the other, but they reciprocally stimulate and affect each other. Moments like this, where unexpected connections occur, are, however, brief in Temporary People and possible hope is in all cases shattered – also in “Kloon”, when the two meet again. During this second meeting, the worker initially thinks that he is in control when he ejaculates on the woman. This, however, does not last when she tells him bluntly that she considers him her bitch, owning him and laughs hysterically. In this moment, he is again emasculated, powerless, and can only flee the scene. In Temporary People, migrant labourers are not freed from the devastating conditions in which they work and live and the stories do not provide positive endings. 8

In the citations here I have replaced the ‘name’ of the protagonist who is referred to as ‘Chainsmoke’ by the personal pronoun for reasons of readability. Yet, the use of the impersonal characterisation as a name is in itself telling. The protagonist is fully depersonalised and reduced to a mere insignificant habit. Similarly, the woman is called ‘Abaya’, which names a traditional Islamic piece of clothing: a form of long, covering top dress. The contrast between the invoked traditional, orthodox Islam and the woman’s action once again result in a dissonance.

145

146

Juliane Strätz

Furthermore, as the text’s affective operations largely unfold outside of the reader’s established grammar, the book does not offer the purifying emotional effect of catharsis. This is again a complication that the readers find themselves confronted with. Yet, it also underlines the fatal circumstances of migrant labourers in the Arab Gulf States. Just as these will not experience any relief, the readers will be stuck with the discomfort that they are confronted with. I have argued that Temporary People develops its critical potential to initiate social change on the levels of content as well as form. On the content level, the novel mainly confronts the reader with physical depictions of labourers that are in itself discomforting. These are complicated by the non-traditional storylines and the narrative techniques that are experienced as unconventional. The experimental form of the book engages the readers because they will not be able to align the text with familiar categories. While this constitutes the critical potential of the book, it can also be read as an attempt to construct migrant labourers as affective agents. As Palmer argues, one must first find a grammar outside of the dominant order when seeking to establish Black people as equal affective agents. I suggest that Temporary People can be read precisely in this vein: as an experiment to give migrant labourers and their emotions a voice. While Black people are, according to Palmer, struggling to reclaim their emotions against white biases, migrant labourers have up until now remained mostly invisible. Hence, they are not struggling against a superimposed voice, but they are fighting to come into existence in the first place. By taking readers out of their comfort zones of familiar codes and practices, Temporary People does not only have the potential to render migrant labourers and their tragic circumstances visible, but it also introduces them to a global community and might thus enable them to participate in the reciprocal relationship sparked by affect.

Subverting Late Capitalist Comfort

Works Cited Ahmed, Sara. 2004a. “Affective Economies.” Social Text 22.2: 117-139. —. 2004b. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP. Ahmed, Sara & Sigrid Schmitz. 2014. “Affect/Emotion: Orientation Matters. A Conversation Between Sigrid Schmitz and Sara Ahmed.” Freiburger Zeitschrift für GeschlechterStudien 20.2: 97-108. https://www.budrich-journals.de/index.php/ fgs/article/viewFile/17137/14913 (accessed: March 20, 2019). Berlant, Lauren. 2008. The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture. Durham: Duke UP. Gardner, Andrew M. 2010. City of Strangers. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Greenwald Smith, Rachel. 2015. Affect and American Literature in the Age of Neoliberalism. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Gregg, Melissa & Gregory J. Seigworth. 2010. “An Inventory of Shimmers.” In: Melissa Gregg & Gregory J. Seigworth, eds. The Affect Theory Reader. Durham: Duke UP, 1-25. Hanieh, Adam. 2016. Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Hardt, Michael. 1999. “Affective Labor.” Boundary 2 26.2: 89-100. Hardt, Michael & Antonio Negri. 2000. Empire. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Hurley, Kelly. 2007. “Abject and Grotesque.” In: Catherine Spooner & Emma McEvoy, eds. The Routledge Companion to Gothic. London: Routledge Chapman & Hall, 137-146. Illouz, Eva. 2016. Gefühle in Zeiten des Kapitalismus. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Jaeger, Elizabeth. n.d. “A Review of Temporary People by Deepak Unnikrishnan.” The Literary Review. http://www.theliteraryreview.org/book-review/a-review-oftemporary-people-by-deepak-unnikrishnan/ (accessed December 2, 2018). Kamrava, Mehran & Zahra Baber (eds.). 2012. Migrant Labor in the Persian Gulf. New York: Columbia UP. Leys, Ruth. 2011. “The Turn to Affect: A Critique.” Critical Inquiry 37.3: 434-472. Massumi, Brian. 2002. Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham: Duke UP. McMahon, John. 2018. “Vital Forces: Marx and the Tension of Capitalist Affect.” Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association 7.1. https://doi.org/10.25158/L7.1.4 (accessed: April 24, 2019). McNally, David. 2011. Monsters of the Market: Zombies and Vampires and Global Capitalism. Chicago: Haymarket Books. Ngai, Sianne. 2005. Ugly Feelings. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Palmer, Tyrone S. 2017. “‘What Feels More than Feeling?’: Theorizing the Unthinkability of Black Affect.” Critical Ethnic Studies 3.2: 31-56.

147

148

Juliane Strätz

Reddy, Sheshalatha. 2017. British Empire and the Literature of Rebellion: Revolting Bodies, Laboring Subjects. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Richard, Analiese & Daromir Rudnickyj. 2009. “Economies of Affect.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15.1: 57-77. Russell Hochschild, Arlie. 1983. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press. Strick, Simon. 2014. American Dolorologies: Pain, Sentimentalism, Biopolitics. Albany: State University of New York Press. Unnikrishnan, Deepak. 2017. Temporary People: A Novel. Brooklyn: Restless Books. Weheliye, Alexander G. 2014. Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theories of the Human. Durham: Duke UP.

The Politics of Comfort in J.M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year Didymus Tsangue Douanla

Stefano Boni describes comfort as “the contemporary technology of the self” (2016: 136). In these last decades of massive consumerism, he asserts, the care of the self has radically changed due to its association with comfort. It has shifted from “elitist practice to mass accessibility, from culturally-specific procedures to world-wide convergences, from moral and intellectual preoccupations to worldly consumerism with a largely implicit and banal episteme”, such that the “new self” is no longer being told: “know thyself”, but rather: “let thyself be comfortable” (ibid: 137). This, he asserts, entails the centrality of comfort in notions of selfhood. Citing Tomás Maldonado, he further claims that comfort ranges from a private issue which is rooted in individual sensations to a collective project, which defines “models, canons and values of what is bodily attractive, shaping material culture, establishing social distinctions” (ibid.: 135). This implies that the idea(l) of comfort transcends the personal and the private dimensions to include the political and the public. In other words, while comfort might start with the self and from the home, it inevitably extends to how the self relates and interacts with others in the larger community. Moreover, with recourse to myriad technologies of control and surveillance, the modern state has become so pervasive in our private lives that it is impossible to envisage any form of comfort outside of the public domain. J.M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year (2007) offers a fascinating exploration of precisely this complex intersection between the private and the public that underpins experiences of dis/comfort. Coetzee brings different meanings of comfort into play. On a socio-political level, he introduces an ethics of discomfort. The price for the comfort of social privilege or the comforts of democracy one enjoys is high so that feelings of discomfort arise, such as unease or even shame. In this view, intense discomfort appears as a source of ethical value because it goes hand in hand with paying critical attention to the state of global politics and the subject’s implication in regimes of violence, exploitation, and injustice. On the level of intimate relations, however, comfort appears as ethically valuable. The reason for this is that comfort here means providing consolation and care. Indeed, Diary of a Bad Year raises serious concerns “about the meaning of comforting care in the face of age,

150

Didymus Tsangue Douanla

illness and death, and the consequence of treating others as if they were things” (Zimbler 2014: 200). Last but not least, Coetzee introduces a metafictional perspective on comfort. The split-page technique or triadic structure of the novel invites reflections on the dis/comforts of being a reader or a writer, living in a particular place at a particular time and age. The novel comprises three sections: the top section contains essays which the ageing protagonist, JC (Juan C or Señor C)1 claims have been commissioned by a German publisher as a contribution to a book called Strong Opinions. The middle section contains a first-person narrative by JC of the encounter between him and his secretary, Anya, whom he recruits to transcribe the opinions. The third section is the story of the same encounter narrated by Anya. This immediately raises questions about what genre the text really is: is it a novel or anti-novel or a novel against the novel (Murphet 2011, Drąg 2015); is it fiction or non-fiction; fictional autobiography, autobiographical fiction, or simply pseudo-biographical? How are we supposed to read it – vertically or horizontally? The similarities between the author Coetzee and the ageing protagonist JC could point to a classification of the novel as autobiographical fiction. The fictional character, JC, shares the same initials with J.M. Coetzee; both are Nobel Prize authors and have written a novel called Waiting for the Barbarians; both are elderly and have fled South Africa and resettled in Australia. However, JC was born in 1934, is unmarried and has no kids, while Coetzee was born in 1940, was once married and had two kids, Nicolas and Gisele, though Nicolas died in 1989. While Coetzee uses JC as a fictional alter ego to reflect on his own socio-political status and position as a writer, his simultaneous self-distancing from JC and his inclusion of a third voice – a younger, female perspective – complicates the categorisation of this text as autobiographical fiction. Here, Coetzee does not only make “a career out of ambivalence” (David Marcus 2009: 115), but he makes ambivalence a carrier of a certain understanding of the notion of comfort. In the light of the above question, I begin by discussing the nexus between comfort and the political order, then proceed to show how it lends itself (or not) to ordinary self/other relations and then end with exploring how Coetzee attends to the above issues via narration and form.

1

The old man identifies himself only by his initials JC (see his letter to Anya (DBY: 121-123). Anya declines to call him by his first name and would rather refer to him as Señor C or Mister C, but her Australian boyfriend refers to him as Juan. This could be explained by the fact that in Filipino culture it is considered impolite to refer to elders and/or seniors by their first names as is the case in most Western cultures.

The Politics of Comfort in J.M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year

1. Comfort and the Political Order In his essay titled “On fan mail”, the writer-protagonist JC describes his reception of a letter from an anonymous lady reader – a fan of sorts. In this 60-page hand-written letter, the lady begins by praising the author and then switches to JC’s lack of understanding, particularly as regards women’s sexual psychology. After recounting her own personal abuse at the hands of her father and the seed of vengefulness that it planted in her, the woman then moves on to depict her own struggle with the attainment of comfort: The woman from Lausanne complains above all of loneliness. She has created a protective ritual for herself in which she retires to bed at night with music playing in the background and lies cosily reading a book, immersed in what she tells herself is bliss. Then, as she begins to reflect on her situation, bliss turns to disquiet. Is this truly the best that life affords, she asks herself – lying in bed alone with a book? Is it such a good thing to be a comfortable, prosperous citizen of a model democracy, secure in her home in the heart of Europe? Despite herself, she grows more and more agitated. She rises, dons dressing gown and slippers, and takes up her pen. As you sow, so shall you reap. I write about restless souls, and souls in turmoil answer my call. (DBY: 163; emphasis added) Her idea of comfort involves cocooning herself off from the world with recourse to certain creature comforts such as a book, a comfortable bed, and soft music. This invokes the ideal comfortable home, which offers sensory ease and relaxation. For a brief moment, she enjoys bliss. But as she begins to reflect on her comforts, bliss turns into disquiet. At first glance, her unease simply seems to arise from her sense of loneliness, but this loneliness is quickly turned into a shorthand for a social and political problem. Loneliness means perceiving oneself as disconnected from others. However, the woman comes to reflect on the very opposite: it is her privileged position in a prosperous Western democratic state that affords her these home comforts. The passage thus implies that one is never merely a private person unrelated to others. Instead, one carries responsibility for the manifold ways one is connected with others. The woman’s unease points to the human and political costs of enjoying Western democratic citizenship and social privilege. The precise nature of this price is spelt out in JC’s political essays. This passage, then, is notable for the way it establishes ‘comfort’ as a prism to gauge the complexities and contradictions that inform the interplay between the private and public spheres. Indeed, the characters comment on precisely this uncomfortable interplay throughout the book. Alan (Anya’s live-in boyfriend) thinks that it is disingenuous for JC as a professional writer to operate in both dimensions at the same time despite his alleged repulsion at the state of global politics. Anya

151

152

Didymus Tsangue Douanla

contends that it is impossible to live outside the public, economic dimension, no matter how hard one tries. The preoccupation with the problem of responsibility is one of the larger themes in the novel. Particular attention is thereby paid to the ambivalent position and responsibilities of the writer. On his part, JC expresses the above concern as the difficulty or impossibility of negotiating the boundary between the private and the public. This is evident in his identification of himself as one of the “six éminences grises who have clawed our way up the highest peak, and now that that we have reached the summit what do we find? We find that we are too old and infirm to enjoy the proper fruits of triumph” (DBY: 22). The use of the term éminences grises denotes an ambivalent and perhaps futile attempt to engage with the public in a non-public way.2 JC’s desire to experience comfort as a private citizen is undercut by his role as a public servant or adviser to the political order. Moreover, he is a subject of the Australian political system. He is a naturalised citizen of Australia, who fled the crime and insecurity in South Africa as well the communal way of life which is the norm there. He actually finds in Australia a home that is safe and private but soon realises that despite the malaise in his native South Africa, he had led a sheltered life there. Because as a citizen and a world-renowned writer, he has to engage with the public willy-nilly, and in one of the rare occasions where he is forced to engage with the public, he is hard-hit by the racism and homophobia in Australian public life. It first happens right inside his home, when he invites Alan to join him and Anya to celebrate the completion of the book project. During the party, Alan drinks a bit too much and unleashes a stream of racist and anti-immigrant invectives on him. He calls JC stupid, immoral, lecherous, scheming, and oldfashioned. Then it happens again, as JC reports in the essay “On the hurly-burly of politics”, when journalists (mis)reported some damning comments he made about the pending security legislation in Australia. He was quoted as having likened the Australian legislation to the so-called terror laws in Apartheid South Africa. Two days later, a letter to the editor states that if he did not like Australia, he should return to Zimbabwe (not even South Africa). Referring to the letter, JC laments, “what a sheltered life I have led! In the rough and tumble world of politics, a letter like this counts as no more than a pinprick, yet me it numbed like a blow from a lead cosh” (DBY: 172). The image of a sheltered life denotes an imaginary of home as a hiding place, a comforting place of refuge from the incursions or invasions of the public, which unfortunately is absent in Australia. JC’s, as well the woman from Lausanne’s, frustration stems from their realisation that any attempt to cut oneself off from the public or to only selectively engage with the public is riddled with contradictions. In the case of the Lausanne woman, 2

The Oxford English Dictionary definition of the term reads: “A person who exercises power or influence in a certain sphere without holding an official position”. (“Éminences grises”, 2010)

The Politics of Comfort in J.M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year

her physical cocooning paradoxically increases her awareness of participating in the public sphere. The contradictory behaviour displayed by JC also highlights the difficulties of navigating the relationship between the private and the public. For example, while he leaves his blinds open to the gaze of his neighbours, Anya tells us he has secret things – empty beer bottles and dolls. While he visits the laundry room, a kind of public place, he decides to see and befriend Anya, whose magnetic beauty immediately inflicts a “metaphysical ache” (DBY: 7) on him. In fact, his invitation and accommodation of the tetchy Anya as secretary, or “segretaria”, “secret aria”, “scary fairy”, as Anya refers to her role in the old man’s life (DBY: 28), and even as nurse, critic, guardian, death angel, betrays a particular type of engagement with the public sphere which seems unrealistically selective. Here a double bind emerges: how does one attend to certain private (inter-personal, professional, health, intellectual) needs from behind a protective shield? And how does one engage with the political without being soiled or contaminated by its wrongs or injustices? Diary of a Bad Year drives home the point that the comforts of democracy always come at an uncomfortable price. JC expresses the above double bind in terms of what Richard Sennett (1993: 7f.) calls the bonds of rejection, whereby we admit the need for authorities who are not safe to accept, and the dilemma of authority, whereby we are attached to figures of authority and strength despite the fact that we do not believe they are legitimate. This stems from the fact that subjects need the protection and service of the state but are often repulsed by the dearth of integrity in the exercise of state authority by these “figures who will use their hold over the people to perform the most destructive acts” (ibid.: 3). Sennett cites Freud, who described what he was seeing in Europe in the 1930s as the masses being “ravenous for the comforts of a strong person” and at the same time being “in rage against the strength they so desired” (ibid.: 5). This is because state authority is about prevailing over the will of the people. This implies that since we have a psychological need for the comfort and psychological satisfaction which a resolute state can provide, we tend to embrace or support firm authorities we do not find legitimate, due to our fear of regressing to earlier phases of psycho-social development. In “On the origins of the state”, JC writes that according to Thomas Hobbes, humans voluntarily handed over the power to the state in order to escape “the violence of internecine warfare without end”, thereby entering into the protection of the state, which also involved giving the state the right to use physical force against them (DBY: 3). The problem, however, as JC adds to the Hobbesian myth of origins, is that the power cannot be taken back from the state; humans are condemned to live and die as subjects. In order to deal with these opposing feelings, Sennett says, individuals construct two versions of the self, viz an outer self and an inner self, in order to play their public role well and earn a living, respect, and acceptance from the larger so-

153

154

Didymus Tsangue Douanla

ciety without resistance. The inner self, where the innermost thoughts and feelings reside, rejects the doings of the outer self, thus rendering “the individual indifferent and passive as if it was not really me that is obeying the authority; my actions do not really matter because I do not really believe in them” (Sennett 1993: 32). In his essay “On anarchism”, JC codes this split self as some sort of indeterminate third position between placid servitude and revolt. He describes it as “the way of quietism, of willed obscurity, of inner emigration chosen by millions of people every day” (DBY: 12). He also says in his essay “On having thoughts” that if he were pressed on naming his political stance, he would call it “pessimistic anarchistic quietism, or anarchist quietistic pessimism, or pessimistic quietistic anarchism” (DBY: 203). This suggests an unwilling acceptance of a negative force. In fact, the political order seems so pervasive that JC speaks of his contamination as a private citizen with “the ethical disease” of the state (Lopez 2011: 291). Just like Mrs Curren in Age of Iron and John in Summertime (both novels by Coetzee), JC desires respite from the unwilling entanglement, the contamination of the citizens by the (wrong or violent) actions of the state and their helpless inability to either extricate themselves or to right the wrongs. What he struggles with is the problem of indirectly participating in and benefiting from, or even of being complicit with, the crimes of the state – crimes committed in his name, with his complicitous silence, and with his tax money. Michael Rothberg (2019:1) terms this the problem of the implicated subject as one who occupies a complex position between victim and perpetrator, being responsible for acts one has not oneself committed: “the manifold indirect, structural, and collective forms of agency that enable injury, exploitation, and domination”. Implication entails precisely those discomfiting forms of belonging to a context of injustice that cannot be grasped immediately or directly because they involve spatial, temporal, or social distances, or complex causal mechanisms (ibid.: 8). JC’s discomfort with implication stems from a sense that as a citizen he is powerless in relation to the state. In his essay “On the origin of the state”, he avers that it is difficult to change the form of the state, and even impossible to abolish it due to our powerlessness in relation to the state. We are born subject to the state and are both protected and oppressed by it (DBY: 3f.). Not even democracy, he argues in a different essay, gives us the option of opting out of the corrupting influence of the state (DBY: 15). It does not shield us from state intrusion into personal liberties because, even though democracy presents citizens with the fact of choice, the form of the choice is not negotiable. We have to choose between the candidates presented to us in an election and if we decide to abstain, we are simply ignored. There is no way of living outside of politics or speaking “about politics out of politics” because, according to Aristotle, “politics is built into human nature, it is part of our fate, as monarchy is the fate of bees” (DBY: 8f.). JC argues further in his essay “On democracy” that although in “comfortable times” (DBY: 13) democracy helps us

The Politics of Comfort in J.M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year

to forget about the horrors of civil war, democracy itself is totalitarian because it does not allow politics outside the political system. He observes that Australia is by most standards an advanced democracy. It is also a land where cynicism about politics and contempt for politicians abound. But such cynicism and contempt are quite comfortably accommodated within the system. If you have reservations about the system and want to change it, the democratic argument goes, do so within the system: put yourself forward as a candidate for political office, subject yourself to the scrutiny and the vote of fellow citizens. Democracy does not allow for politics outside the democratic system. In this sense, democracy is totalitarian. (DBY: 15) The oxymoronic description of democracy as totalitarian captures the ambiguity that characterises the citizen-state relationship. It betrays ex negativo JC’s utopian vision of disidentification or dissociation with the oppressive actions of the state; his resistance against being “comfortably accommodated within the system” (DBY: 15). Alan uses JC’s own mathematical logic to illustrate the unwitting entanglement of the private citizen in the political order. According to him, “in a probabilistic universe there is no way to stand outside probability” (DBY: 111). His logic here is that noone can operate outside of the system or structure in which they are constituted. Why and how then is the subject implicated in the actions of the state despite their unease or outrage and attempts to distance themselves from its actions? It is because, as Rothberg argues, implication is both synchronic and diachronic and there is no separation of the two. Precisely such a view is voiced when JC, in one of his essays, discusses the example of Australians who did not take an active part in the injustices perpetrated by the United States, yet are implicated historically through their government’s “faithful collaboration in Iraq and elsewhere” (DBY: 42). Diachronically, JC argues, although “there is as yet no evidence that Australians have participated in actual atrocities, maybe because the Americans have not put pressure on them to do so or they have resisted such pressure, the truth is that they have been negotiating trade deals based on their support or alliance with America” (DBY: 42). Second, they have maintained a dutiful silence while America commits acts of violence. JC cites the case of David Hicks, a young Australian Muslim incarcerated by the Americans in Guantanamo bay and the new powers of policing that the Australian government is acquiring for itself (DBY: 42). The result of the above implication is shame. The feeling of shame may be understood as extreme discomfort on a psychological level. Diary of a Bad Year suggests that there is ethical value in this form of extreme psychological discomfort because it is tied to a political awareness of implicated subjectivity. JC describes it as the shame or dishonour that descends upon one’s shoulders as a punishment when one lives in shameful times (DBY: 92, 96). As Timothy Bewes (2011: 137) argues, “the works of few contemporary novelists can be said to be as consistently riven

155

156

Didymus Tsangue Douanla

by shame as those of J.M. Coetzee”. What makes Coetzee’s shame remarkable, he argues, is the way the shame of his experience and implication in the injustices of apartheid is enmeshed in his writing to a level that the one is indistinguishable from the other – “shame is so intimately bound up with his writing that it is impossible to separate them” (ibid.: 138). According to Bewes, Coetzee has two principal shames. First, there is shame of the experiential ethical kind, which Mrs Curren describes in Age of Iron as “the name for the way people live who should be dead” (qtd. in Bewes 2011: 143); a shame that is “rooted in ethical horror” (Bewes 2011: 143). This is the shame of implication in historical and structural violence, which, according to Bewes, transcends individual and collective agency and responsibility in the present. JC evokes this transcendent quality of implication (coded as shame or dishonour or infamia) with reference to John Donne’s famous lines: “No man is an island […] [w]e are all part of the main” (DBY: 107). This also implies that everyone (whether victim or perpetrator, man or woman, coloniser or colonised) is inextricably entangled in a ubiquitous, all-encompassing web of shame. Second, there is the shame that is inseparable from but also irreducible to the circumstances of a work’s composition and reception, its ‘form’ and ‘content’ (Bewes 2011: 143). It arises from the inability or impossibility to speak or write about the other with authenticity (ibid.: 140). This might explain Coetzee’s allocation of narrative agency to Anya, a female narrator. In Diary of a Bad Year, an experiential ethical kind of shame is attributed to those who are directly responsible for atrocities in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay (DBY: 42). This is pointed out by the scholar Dolors Collellmir (2009: 48f.), who refers to JC’s essays on the state, on democracy, on terrorism, and on politics as addressing the shame of complicity or perpetration. At one point in the story, JC argues with Anya that rapists must be shamed in their own way despite the police chief’s assertion that when a woman is raped, the shame sticks on her like a bubble gum. But the shame that seems to pervade the entire novel is the shame of complicity or implication felt by those who, like the magistrate in Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians, are either forced to perpetuate violence or to turn a deaf ear to its victims. This kind of shame, according to Bewes (2011: 147), has an indiscriminate character, tending to affect people who are not directly responsible for shameful deeds – lifting them out of individual responsibility and binding them into a sensuous awareness of the larger world of which they are a part. Kutz (2000: 43f.) refers to this as the feelings of taint and complicity that are generated by social membership and association whereby people can be disgraced by association depending on the society they inhabit. In his essay “On national shame”, JC expresses the problem of the private citizen as a moral problem: “how in the face of this shame to which I am subjected, do I behave? How do I save my honour?” (DBY: 39). The passive construction “to which I am subjected” and the rhetorical question indicate a forced or helpless im-

The Politics of Comfort in J.M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year

plication and a lack of agency. He goes on to explain the reason for his shame: “the generation of white South Africans to which I belong, and the next generation, and perhaps the generation after that too, will go bowed under the shame of the crimes that were committed in their name” (DBY: 44). He also explains that the individual cannot escape the experience of this mass emotion. If people as a group can feel national pride at cultural performances (he names the example of the significance a Sibelius symphony might carry for a Finnish audience), then there should also be concomitant feelings of group shame, e.g. that “we, our people, have made Guantanamo” (DBY: 45). The italicised we here is a generic one, not limited to a particular nation. The second shame stems from what Bewes (2011: 3) calls the crisis of representational adequacy – the inability to represent the other’s pain or atone for it via language. As Clarkson (2009) observes, Coetzee’s writings evince a serious dilemma with regard to the use of existing language to express something else, especially the Other. He cites Coetzee himself, who in Doubling the Point compares his struggle with language to Isaac Newton’s ‘real struggle’ or “wrestling to make thought fit into language, to make the language express the thought, signs perhaps even of an incapacity of language to express certain thoughts, or of thought unable to think itself out because of the limitations of its medium” (Coetzee qtd. in Clarkson 2010: 154f.). In his essay “On the mother tongue”, JC wonders whether a language can be a mother tongue simply because one commands it best. He complains that “at times when I listen to the words of English that emerge from my mouth, I have a disquieting sense that the one I hear is not really the one I call myself. Rather, it is as though some other person (but who?) were being imitated, followed, even mimicked” (DBY: 195). Also, when he writes, he wonders if the printed words are really what he wanted to say. He wonders if the feeling would have been different if he were using a native language. Then he concludes that English does not feel like home or a resting place to him; it just happens to be a language over whose resources he has achieved some mastery (DBY: 197). The metaphor of language as home points to the role that language plays in feeling comfortable: feeling at ease with oneself and one’s environment and experiencing a sense of belonging. By extension, this metaphor also throws a light on what it means to be deprived of the complete resources of language. The problem of how to save one’s honour in the event of the shame to which one is subjected is also a question of what or how to speak, write, or act. Ultimately, this is about the dilemmas of repentance: the difficult politics of apology and restitution, which seem to have animated Coetzee’s writing for a long time. When Anya apologises to JC for her boyfriend’s abuse of the latter, JC asks her if, as a matter of semantics, someone can properly apologise on behalf of someone who is not in an apologetic frame of mind? (DBY: 169). In Age of Iron (1990), Coetzee likens the question of land redistribution to a difficult mathematical sum: “It is like a sum,

157

158

Didymus Tsangue Douanla

a labyrinthine sum, pages long, subtraction upon subtraction, division upon division, till the head reels. Every day I attempt it anew, in my heart the flicker of a hope that in this one case, my case, there may have been a mistake. And every day I stop before the same blank wall” (26). The first question is how then do you apologise to people in the language closely knit to their oppression and why should you even apologise for crimes that were not committed by you? And the second is the significance of a verbal apology with or without restitution. To these questions, JC finds no answers but rather locates their roots in a particular positionality and subjective consciousness – an awareness of being a Western citizen residing in a ‘comfortable’ or safe and prosperous Western democracy in need of companionship and acceptance. Paradoxically, it is within the context of this particular subjective consciousness (in consonance with issues of dislocation, loss, ageing and the fear of death, gender, authorship, and so forth) that Diary of a Bad Year portrays an ethical comfort achieved through acts of caring and intimacy. The next section discusses how Coetzee counterbalances the above bleak diagnosis of comfort and the political with instances of ethical comfort in the realms of the intimate and the domestic.

2. Ethical Comfort: Caring Intimacy JC’s dire need for comfort can be attributed to a “profound post-imperial disembedding”,3 which is an effect of decolonisation (or dismantling of apartheid) and the resultant “failed or failing settlements which take people back to the metropoles or on to more successful colonizing cultures” (Attwell 2011: 11). JC experiences this disembedding as a trembling old white South African writer who has arrived in Australia after apartheid, shamed and shaken by memories of apartheid and his implication in its atrocities, and shaky from the developing Parkinson disease. He is what Atwell (ibid: 11f.) describes as post-historical, like Rayment in Slow Man: a “man not wholly a man [...] an after-man, like an after-image, the ghost of a man looking back in regret on time not well used” (Coetzee qtd. in Atwell 2011: 12). The result is a disembedding experience that affects his body, sense of self, and his writing as well. His late style of writing is one that is touched by the reality of death, as can be seen from his numerous references to his fatal illness and his need of someone to hold his hand to the gate (Murphet 2011: 87). He is so shaken that he cannot even write; he is losing motor control and needs someone to type for him. He desperately needs help, nursing, companionship, and comfort. This explains his need

3

For a discussion of JC’s ‘disembedding’, see Attwell (2011: 10f.). Attwell borrows this concept from Anthony Giddens.

The Politics of Comfort in J.M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year

for Anya, who plays all the above-mentioned roles. And at the end, he acknowledges this: “What a support and comfort your Anya was!” (DBY: 163) In fact, Anya’s visits to the old writer are motivated by an ethical act of guidance which stems from our moral responsibility to help the needy – the ill and the elderly (Lopez 2011: 307f.). Anya says she never undertook to be JC’s house help when she accepted the job, but “you can’t let a man live in such filth. It is an insult […]. To visitors. To the parents that brought him into this world. To common decency” (DBY: 48). Moreover, JC is depressed and needs a nurse. He is in dire need of some special comforting. The young lady even resorts to sweet-talking the old man. She points out his strengths, reminds him of his special abilities. In her letter to JC, as she prefers to call him, she writes: Whatever you do, don’t allow yourself to get depressed. I know you believe you are not what you used to be, but the fact is you are still a good-looking man and a real gentleman too, who knows how to make a woman feel like a woman. Women appreciate that in a man, whatever else may be lacking. As for your writing, you are without a doubt one of the best, class AA, and I say that not just as your friend. You know how to draw the reader in […]. (DBY: 221) As a comforter, she mixes genuine praise and some sweet talk to lift up his spirits. She also comforts him with a promise of genuine love, care, and companionship that only compares with the biblical Christ, who leaves his followers but promises never to forsake them and to send them another comforter. Long after Anya has broken up with her boyfriend Alan and she has left Townsville for Brisbane, she calls Mrs Saunders and makes her promise to call her “if something happens to JC, if he has to go to the hospital or worse” (DBY: 222). Then she imagines herself intimately caring for JC during his last moments on earth: I will fly to Sydney. I will do that. I will hold his hand. I can’t go with you, I will say to him, it is against the rules. I can’t go with you but what I will do is hold your hand as far as the gate. At the gate you can let go and give me a smile to show you are a brave boy and get on the boat or whatever it is you have to do. As far as the gate I will hold your hand, I would be proud to do that. And I will clean up afterwards. I will clean your flat and put everything in order. I will drop Russian Dolls and the other private stuff in the trash, so you don’t need to have sinking thoughts on the other side about what people on this side are saying about you. I will take your clothes to the charity shop. (DBY: 226) In the above passage, she also plays the role of a Buddhist death expert, whose job is to provide comfort for the dying. She does this expertly by using his memories to comfort him. Anya believes in the selective use of memory to ease the present. She herself says she is keeping images of her present self online so that she can turn to them for comfort in the future when her good looks have deserted her (DBY: 223).

159

160

Didymus Tsangue Douanla

So, she encourages her patient to do the same, to write about his past – perhaps his experiences with women –, and he will come across as more human (DBY: 222). This is a technique she hopes might bring respite to the old man. It can be argued that Anya also causes a great deal of discomfort to JC in her role as a critic. If Anya is, as JC acknowledges, a source of comfort to him, then what he experiences as comfort entails a challenging of his entrenched way of thinking so that he gains new inspiration. This, according to Pezeu-Massabuau (2012: 66), is anti-comfort, a deliberate subjection to discomfort in order to achieve certain long-term benefits. Seen in this light, a positive ‘version’ of comfort is one that does not entail shutting oneself off completely from others, but relating with genuine and loving people who criticise constructively in order to improve, help, and bring out the best in one. Anya tells JC that she is painfully aware that her criticism may sound brutal when she addresses the “know-it-all” tone and the unrealistic thoughts on terrorism she perceives in JC’s opinions (DBY: 70-73). However, her criticism ultimately does help JC in the way just described, just like she meant it to. Moreover, the fact that they meet in a laundry room in spring shows that she is like an agent or detergent washing away JC’s moral decadence or filth (from his implication in or being soiled by the misdeeds of the state) and also like the rejuvenating qualities of spring because she is able to revive his waning creative powers. In fact, she is like a co-creator of the novel. When asked if she is in the book, JC replies: “yes, you are in the book – how could you not be when you were part of the making of it? You are everywhere in it, everywhere and nowhere. Like God […]” (DBY: 181). JC is also a source of comfort to Anya. In her letter to the old man, after her split from Alan, she writes: “You opened my eyes somewhat […]. You showed me there was another way of living, having ideas and expressing them clearly and so forth” (DBY: 204). He helps Anya escape the boredom of sitting at home all day doing domestic work for Alan. Alan is presented as a middle-aged white man who symbolises a toxic masculinity from which Anya is grateful to have escaped. The above counterbalancing of the negative political view of comfort – comfortable integration into the political system when in fact we should feel uncomfortable because of our implication – and a positive one in the realm of intimate relations evinces a politics of comfort riddled with ambiguities and contradictions. What makes Coetzee’s text so compelling is that the negotiation of these contradictions is not just reflected in the characters’ behaviour and in the explicit musings found in the essays. As the next section will show, through its special use of structure and narrative perspective, Diary also implicates its author as well as its readership in the question to what extent the politics of comfort also beset the production and reception of literature itself.

The Politics of Comfort in J.M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year

3. Comfort, Narration, and Authority Coetzee’s narrative falls under the kind of transnational writing that Susan Strehle (2008: 51) says is constructed on a set of principles that “unsettles expectations and changes the reading experience. It frustrates the desire for closure, slows the pace and requires patience and memory”. By including essays within the frame of a novel, by splitting the page into three and by running two and later three narratives on the same page, Coetzee discomfits the reader, slows down the reading process and by so doing compels attention to the notion of comfort.4 Ana Falcato (2017: 258) considers this as an illustration of Jonathan Lear’s notion of ‘the spectacle of embeddedness’, achieved in Diary via a triadic structure that compels a vertical dialogic reading of the embeddedness of private opinions in the public domain. The two narratives that lie below the opinions, as Murray (2014: 324f.) and Ogden (2010: 447) point out, stand in dialogue with one another; and this dialogue betrays the limits of privacy and foregrounds the themes of transgression and sharing. Murray (2014: 325) further argues that the different parts stage a textual ambivalence that reflects the “subjective ambivalence of ethical life, to our relations with others as well as with the self”. The crisis of the self that is due to the absence of a binding ethical thought finds expression in the displaced, multiple, and radically indeterminate nature of the authorial voice. The impression of an absence of binding ethical thought arises from the use of what Clarkson (2009: 79f.) terms counter-voicing; a device in which ethical stances are posited only to be later undercut by the voice of the other. Ogden (2010: 479) concurs with the above view by arguing that although the separate sections all attest to the fact that “the soul endorses individual forms of humanity that are possible only through engagement with the souls of others”, the soul is also bound to an identity – the ‘I’ making a complete communion with the souls of others impossible. Each section, he further argues, therefore indicates the author’s attempt to make or keep in contact with other souls, “to enact the ‘nearing’ of souls […] while also ultimately ending in isolation” (ibid.: 480). This also raises the more general question about the possibility of experiencing comfort – how much contact and withdrawal are necessary to experience comfort, especially when certain contacts tend to taint or soil one’s subjecthood. Moreover, the multiple narrative perspectives in Diary allow for other subjects to freely add their opinions to the opinions of the writer. Though this undermines the writer’s authority, JC demonstrates the usefulness of such a sharing of authority with the reader and other characters. It allows him to escape the harsh criti4

Wilm (2016: 2f.) argues that Coetzee’s works provoke critical reflections through an aesthetic of slowness whereby he defers and tarries; his characters, like Beckett’s, are driven forward and slowed down at the same time, creating a sense of dynamic stillness.

161

162

Didymus Tsangue Douanla

cism that comes with political discourse. The polyvocality of the novel also places the reader in the somewhat discomforting position of making meaning for themselves and also reminds them of their own implication as a reader.5 Anya and Alan stage the role of the implicated reader in their attempts to change the content and plot of the old man’s story to suit their personal and cultural presumptions. She, for example, wants the old man to write about romance or sports despite the fact that he has been commissioned by a German publisher to give his take on what is wrong with the world, the more contentious the better. Anya later realises this and apologises to the old man in her letter: “Sometimes I blush when I think of the comments I made about your opinions – you were the world-famous author, after all, and I was just the little secretary” (DBY: 196). The above technique indicates ambivalence and ambiguity; it engenders what can be termed a polyphonic autobiography – a narrative that stems from an attempt at using an autobiography or a diary to write about the other; at engaging with the other while staying alone or engaging with the public in a private way. Coetzee, as Effe (2017: 104f.) argues, uses this kind of narration to show that any attempt at truth-telling must be censored or winnowed through the filter of the public opinion, no matter how discomfiting this might be. By inviting the reader to join in the dialogue through the device of metalepsis, she argues, authority is removed from a single position. The turn away from the self acknowledges how we come into being and understand ourselves through our relation to others. The personal cannot survive outside the political or public.

4. Conclusion In Diary of a Bad Year, the idea(l) of comfort is coded as central to notions of subjectivity, home, and self/other dynamics. The novel ends with characters who are still anxious and uncertain, despite the constitution of new identities, despite their liberation from abusive relationships and formations of new relationships in new homes, and despite the moral epiphanies achieved through their efforts to atone for crimes that were committed long before they were born. These characters are still unable to resolve the tension between the private and the political order, and to talk about and atone for the pain and suffering of the Other. The result is a deepseated feeling of shame or dishonour that not even the caring intimacy of others seems to stem.

5

The implicated reader, according to Fritz Breithaupt (2015: 440f.), is one guilty of empathic sadism, namely the happiness that readers can derive from the suffering of characters they empathize with.

The Politics of Comfort in J.M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year

Coetzee helps draw more attention to the ambivalence of comfort by splitting his pages into two or three sections, juxtaposing fiction and non-fiction on a single page, by presenting a personal diary that includes the entries of another person, and by telling a single story from different perspectives. By so doing, Coetzee not only stretches the definition or precepts of genre and transgresses novelistic conventions (which he had done before in other novels like Elizabeth Costello and Youth); he also clearly links content and style to the idea(l) of comfort, showing its centrality in the postmodern or postcolonial diasporic imaginary.

163

164

Didymus Tsangue Douanla

Works Cited Attwell, David. 2011. “Coetzee’s Postcolonial Diaspora.” Twentieth Century Literature 57.1: 9-19. Bewes, Timothy. 2011. The Event of Postcolonial Shame. Princeton: Princeton UP. Boni, Stefano. 2016. “Technologically-Propelled Comfort. Some Theoretical Implications of the Contemporary Overcoming of Fatigue.” Antropologia 3.1: 133-151. Clarkson, Carrol. 2009. J.M. Coetzee: Countervoices. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Coetzee, J.M. 1990. Age of Iron. London: Penguin. —. 2007. Diary of a Bad Year. London: Penguin. Collellmir, Dolors. 2009. “J.M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year: Ethical and Novelistic Awareness.” Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies 40.1: 43-52. Drąg, Wojciech. “‘A Novel Against the Novel’: David Markson’s Antinovelistic Tetralogy.” Polish Journal of English Studies 1.1: 11-25. Effe, Alexandra. 2017. J.M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Narrative Transgression: A Reconsideration of Metalepsis. Palgrave Macmillan. [Ebook] “Èminence grise.” 2010. Oxford Dictionary of English. Ed. by Angus Stevenson. Oxford: Oxford UP. Falcato, Ana. 2017. “The Ethics of Reading J.M. Coetzee.” Studies in the Novel 49.2: 250-275. Breithaupt, Fritz. 2015. “Empathic Sadism: How Readers Get Implicated.” In: Lisa Zunshine, ed. Oxford Handbook for Cognitive Literary Studies. Oxford: Oxford UP, 440-462. Kutz, Christopher. 2000. Complicity: Ethics and Law for a Collective Age. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. López, J. María. 2011. Acts of Visitation: The Narrative of J.M. Coetzee. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Marcus, David. 2009. “The Ambivalence Artist.” Dissent 56.1: 115-119. Murphet, Julian. 2011. “Coetzee and Late Style: Exile Within the Form.” Twentieth Century Literature 57.1: 86-104. Murray, J. Stuart. 2014. “Allegories of the Bioethical: Reading J.M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year.” Journal of Medical Humanities 35.3: 321-334. Ogden, H. Benjamin. 2010. “The Coming into Being of Literature: How J.M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year Thinks Through the Novel.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 43.3: 466-482. Pezeu-Massabuau, Jacques. 2012. A Philosophy of Discomfort. London: Reaction Books. Rothberg, Michael. 2019. The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators. Stanford: Stanford UP. Sennett, Richard. 1993. Authority. New York/London: Norton.

The Politics of Comfort in J.M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year

Strehle, Susan. 2008. Transnational Women’s Fiction: Unsettling Home and Homeland. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Wilm, Jan. 2016. The Slow Philosophy of J.M. Coetzee. London: Bloomsbury. Zimbler, Jarad. 2014. J.M. Coetzee and the Politics of Style. New York: Cambridge UP.

165

Gothic Hauntings Post-9/11 Home Spaces and the Dis/Comfort of American History in The Walking Dead Dorothee Marx

Being comfortable is a state that is often equated with being at home, for example in the expression ‘make yourself at home’ that the Oxford English Dictionary [OED] translates as “to make oneself comfortable”.1 Indeed, comfort is perhaps the most central attribute of the ‘homely’ home (Blunt/Dowling 2006: 102f.), as becomes apparent in the discursive history of home. The modern concept of ‘comfort’, which the historian John E. Crowley defines as the “self-conscious satisfaction with the relationship between one’s body and its immediate physical environment” (2001: 141f.), develops in Britain and early America from the eighteenth century onwards when the desire for material objects becomes a legitimate part of middle-class lifestyle (Odile-Bernez 2014: 3f.). Comfort is not only read as a marker of class, but even as an indicator for the “superiority of European civilization” (ibid.: 19). With this eighteenth-century shift from religious connotation to physical comfort and class politics, comfort, while pertaining to ideas about the private home, becomes linked to cultural advancement and the assertion of national power and expands into a political dimension that stretches beyond the private home to the nation state. In keeping with Mary Douglas’ frequently cited statement that “home starts by bringing some space under control” (1991: 289), comfort is crucially linked to the ability to manipulate and control a space. Not only does a comfortable (Western) home include the ability to regulate the indoor temperature and humidity (Shove 2003: 26), but inhabitants will also perform “boundary maintenance” (Morley 2000: 141), controlling who enters and exits the space. Ideally, the modern home provides a “comfortable”, “private”, and “safe” inside that is juxtaposed with a “public”, “uncomfortable”, “unsafe” outside (Mallett 2004: 71).

1

The complete OED definition reads: “to make oneself at home: to behave as if in one’s own home; to make oneself comfortable; to settle in. Frequently in the imperative as an injunction to guests” (“Home, n.1”).

168

Dorothee Marx

The conceptualisation of home as an idealised place of safety obscures the fact that home spaces frequently become sources of intense discomfort due to their implication in structures of repression, exploitation, and violence exercised over bodies (Weir 2008: 5). Experiences of violence or alienation can render the home distinctly unhomely, and, thus, uncanny (Blunt/Dowling 2006: 26; 121f.). Literature has long staged the home as a place of secrets or violence, especially in genres such as sensation or gothic fiction. For example, American gothic literature explores this discomfort with home in its haunted dwelling places, from Edgar Allan Poe’s House of Usher to 124 Bluestone Road in Toni Morrison’s Beloved. This double-edged quality of ‘homely spaces’ is aptly captured by Freud’s concept of the unheimlich or uncanny. The term is etymologically related to the comfortable home, since heimlich translates as “arousing a peaceful sense of pleasure and security as in one within the four walls of his house” (Freud 2004: 419). It is the return of the repressed, of “something familiar and old […] which ought to have been kept concealed but which has nevertheless come to light” (ibid.: 429), that transforms the Heim or home into an uncanny sphere. Recent years have witnessed an upsurge of gothic formats in popular culture, as exemplified by the critical and commercial success of TV series such as American Horror Story (2011-), True Blood (2008-2014), or Supernatural (2005-). This trend has been explained as a reaction to collective trauma, particularly the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Avril Horner (2014: 37) suggests that contemporary gothic narratives of the apocalypse correspond to a new vulnerability after 9/11 and subsequent terrorist attacks that created a climate of fear and paranoia. In a similar argument, Linnie Blake (2014: 37) reads the recent prominence of gothic television as a response to the “war on terror” and the “gothicization of political discourse” following 9/11. These examples of post-9/11 American culture illustrate how discomfort, both in the physical and psychological sense, is a feeling that does not only pertain to the home but also feeds into the construction of the homeland. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 unsettled the political comfort of “the post-Cold War security bubble” (Carter 2001: 5) and caused a profound feeling of insecurity, unease, and discomfort in the United States that inscribed itself into American cultural productions. Among the most popular of these is AMC’s blockbuster series The Walking Dead, recently renewed for a tenth season – a post-apocalyptic gothic narrative that “feature[s] scenes of urban devastation as Gothic horror scenarios and […] imaginatively map[s] various experiences of trauma” (Horner 2014: 57). The series taps into several features of the post-9/11 United States, in particular the return to a Cold War climate (May 2003: 42f.; Hantke 2011: 182), the reactivation of a national mythology of innocence (Pease 2009: 159), and America’s political reconfiguring as a Homeland Security State.

Gothic Hauntings

In keeping with Horner’s argument, I suggest that The Walking Dead can be read as a response to this political climate of perpetual anxiety. My article illustrates how dis/comfort as a political category can be used to capture the return of repressed cultural memories that became inscribed into post-9/11 gothic post-apocalyptic narratives. I apply the category of dis/comfort both on a diegetic level and in terms of possible viewer responses the series may evoke. On the storyworld level, I examine how The Walking Dead negotiates the troubling undercurrents of seemingly secure home spaces. Regarding viewers’ possible dis/comfort, I investigate how the characters’ search for a home mirrors the post-9/11 climate of paranoia and insecurity. Gothic TV, I suggest, provides a distant, fictional space in which these unsettling fears and cultural memories (Fluck 1997: 15) can be articulated, evoking pleasurable viewer discomfort. In a second step, I argue that the home spaces in the zombie-infested Southern wilderness setting of The Walking Dead are haunted by allusions to acts of violence against Native Americans. These symbolic manifestations of the return of the repressed surface as instances of historical discomfort in the gothic world of the series and echo the contemporary 9/11 scenario of a ‘homeland’ invasion. A close analysis of this uncanny return of repressed history in the series and the deconstruction of the comfort and nostalgia created in its home spaces can expose how histories of suppression are excluded from a seemingly coherent narrative of the American homeland.

1. Hauntings of the Home/land After 9/11 The term homeland was first used to refer to the American nation when President George W. Bush introduced the Office of Homeland Security on September 20, 2001 (Kaplan 2003: 58). Before 9/11, homeland was not part of the usual political vocabulary, and the term had in fact never been used by a president to designate the US in a time of crisis (ibid.). Thus, in its first usage, the term occurred in the compound of homeland security, paradoxically evoking a loss of security in the homeland that needed to be reinstated (Collins 2007: xi). The term homeland suggests a comfortable, safe place, a retreat from the troubles of the modern world, “a little house on the prairie, a time of quilts and comfort foods” (ibid.). Yet the terrorist attacks transformed the American homeland into a place of insecurity, fear, and political discomfort. Amy Kaplan explains how the introduction of Homeland Security uncannily transformed both the American ‘homeland’ and the American private home: [H]omeland is a fundamentally uncanny place, haunted by prior and future losses, invasions […]. [H]omeland security depends on a radical insecurity where the home itself is the battleground. If every facet of civilian life is subject to terrorist attack […], then every facet of domestic life – in the double sense of the

169

170

Dorothee Marx

word as private and national – must be protected and mobilized against these threats. Homeland security calls for vast new intrusions of government, military, and intelligence forces not just to secure the homeland from external threats but also to become an integral part of the workings of home, which is in a continual state of emergency. (2003: 63f.) The private home, correspondingly, becomes a site of defence against the threat of terrorism. According to Elaine Tyler May, the methods of the terrorist attacks resembled the Cold War fears of communist infiltration, and the government response likewise mirrored Cold War politics (2003: 42f.). Americans were expected to allow the government access to their private homes (virtually, by providing access to digital data, and physically, by allowing government agencies to search their homes without a warrant), while citizens should become “citizen-sentinels” and remain “vigilant in spotting terrorist threats” (ibid.: 50). The severity of the restrictions of civil rights in war-on-terror legislation came close to that of the “McCarthy era” (ibid.: 47). As Donald E. Pease (2009: 167) emphasises, the freedoms of Americans were not so much restricted by the terrorist attacks as such, but by the response of the government in the passing of legislation that created a permanent state of emergency which threatened the democratic foundations of the United States and expanded the feeling of discomfort many Americans experienced. In this climate of anxiety and new Cold War politics, popular culture turned back to the values of the 1950s, to more traditional gender roles, images of “reinvigorated manhood” and the search for security within the realms of the family and the home (May 2003: 50; also: Blake 2014: 46): “In the aftermath of the attacks, the cultural troika of media, entertainment and advertising declared the post-9/11 age an era of neo-fifties nuclear family ‘togetherness’, re-domesticated femininity and reconstituted Cold Warrior manhood” (Faludi 2008: 3f.). Since the attacks on the “urban workplace” turned into “a threat to the domestic circle” (ibid.: 7), the American home – and, by extension, the homeland – became paramount centres of anxiety (Bayley 2010: 9) and discomfort. In its attempts to project the comforts of security and control and to counter a perceived invasion of otherness in the form of suspected terrorists, the US government implemented measures that had profound effects on the private spheres of many of its citizens. Pease argues convincingly that the United States government invaded the privacy of the homes of its citizens and started invading other homelands abroad to reinstate security in the American home(land), and, I would argue further, to return Americans to a feeling of superiority and comfort by bringing foreign spaces under control: When it was figured within the Homeland Security Act, the Homeland engendered an imaginary scenario wherein the national people were encouraged to consider themselves dislocated from their country of origin by foreign aggressors

Gothic Hauntings

so that they might experience their return from exile in the displaced form of the spectacular unsettling of homelands elsewhere. (Pease 2009: 170) As several cultural scholars have emphasised in articles about the terrorist attacks, the deadly infiltration by what were described as foreign aggressors activated repressed cultural memories. Kaplan writes that the term Ground Zero “relies on a historical analogy [to the bombing of Hiroshima by the US] that cannot be acknowledged” and, thus, contains a “prior reference to historical amnesia” that renders it “uncanny” (2003: 57), similar to Guantánamo, which “can be seen as an uncanny site for the return of America’s repressed imperial history” (ibid.: 66; emphases added). Richard Gray, in his analysis of American literature since 9/11, describes the terrorist attacks as “this particular moment in American history when the dark, repressed fantasies of life after the fall suddenly made their return” (2011: 13; emphasis added). He argues that literature that responded to the events used cultural narratives to “[link] the national fate, at moments of crisis, with notions of innocence and the fall into a deeper self-conscious, a darker knowledge” (ibid.: 29; emphasis added). Pease also connects the trauma of 9/11 to the return of other, suppressed historical traumas that “could not be symbolized within the terms of the national narrative” (2009: 167). Like Christopher Collins (2007: xv), he claims that Americans who tried to make sense of their new post-post-Cold War reality reactivated familiar, national myths that could serve as frames of reference for their new situation (Pease 2009: 166). He stresses that the trauma of 9/11 destroyed the American founding myth of the “Virgin Land”, which “enabled Americans to disavow the resettlement and in some cases the extermination of entire populations” and that created “the belief in the radical innocence of the American people” (ibid.: 160). Thus, the terrorist attacks and the following invasion of other homelands brought the violence committed against Native Americans during the invasion of their homeland back from its suppression under the guise of the Virgin Land myth (ibid.: 159-161): [T]he unprecedented events that took place on 9/11 seemed familiar because they recalled the suppressed historical knowledge of the United States’ origins in the devastation of native peoples’ homelands. […] In Iraq and Afghanistan the emergency forces of the state openly reperformed the acts of violence that the myth of Virgin Land had formerly covered up. […] [T]he Homeland Security State restaged the colonial settlers’ conquest of Indians and the acquisition of their homelands. (Ibid.: 161; 172; emphasis added). One particularly productive narrative mode to explore the trauma of 9/11 has been that of the gothic (Horner 2014: 35f.) with its “discursive tropes [of the uncanny]: secrets, dark spaces, hauntings, and encryption” (ibid.). It is no coincidence, then, that the “traumatic memory of lawless violence” (Pease 2009: 173) and the “specter of the nation founding violence” (ibid.: 161f.; emphasis added), which resurfaced in

171

172

Dorothee Marx

the “quasi-apocalyptic visibility” (ibid.: 169) of the war in Iraq, found its way into popular culture, in the form of a renewed popularity of (post-)apocalyptic fictions (Horner 2014: 37). The popularity of these apocalypses, as Horner (2014: 36f.) writes, reflects not only the overlaps between the gothic and trauma narratives but is also indicative of a global state of collective trauma, beginning with the terrorist attacks of 9/11. As I will discuss in the next section, many cultural critics have claimed that the distinctly gothic figure of the zombie was best able to capture the political discomfort after 9/11 (Bishop 2009: 17; Körber 2014: 45; Muntean/Payne 2009: 239).

2. Gothic TV: The Zombie After 9/11 At a time when America took recourse to its national mythology, society turned to horror as part of the American gothic tradition to expose its repressed fears (Crow 2009: 2). Topics that cause discomfort and are therefore removed from the official discourse of American national identity can be explored through America’s “fiercely reactive Gothic imagination” (Edmundson 1999: 5), which was re-activated after 9/11. Just like the cultural consciousness of the Cold War had produced films about alien invaders to deal with the threat of nuclear weapons and the fear of communist invasion (Bishop 2009: 17), post-9/11 culture turned to the figure of the zombie to represent and explore its fears. As a ‘walking disease’ that threatens the inviolability of the homeland and the human body, the zombie became a fitting – and popular – cultural trope after 9/11. The equation of terrorism with a virus or an invisible disease could be represented through the zombie. These zombies resonated with the reactivated Cold War image of the sleeper: “As the monstrous commoner, zombies are the domestic terrorists within one’s own private and public borders […]. Like the ‘sleepercell’ terrorist, the zombie can potentially be anyone at any time” (Muntean/Payne 2009: 247). Thus, zombies offer an ideal “projection area for collective fears” (Körber 2014: 45; my translation) and can provide a “cinematic commentary” on social crises (Muntean/Payne 2009: 239). Linnie Blake demonstrates how gothic television, like The Walking Dead, can “expose the will to power in American foreign and domestic policy” (2014: 39) and can bring the hauntings of American (neo)imperialism to the surface, an argumentation that corresponds to the Freudian readings of 9/11 by Pease, Kaplan, and Gray. As a figure originating in the colonial context of Haiti (Boon 2007: 35; Keetley 2014: 3), the zombie also opens up discourses of imperialism and the will to power. Following John Rieder’s reading of science fiction’s colonial gaze, Gerry Canavan argues that “[z]ombies – lacking interior, lacking mind – cannot look; they are, for this reason, completely realized colonial objects” (2010: 437) and, thus, reflect the exclusion of otherness from spaces designated as homes and homelands. In The

Gothic Hauntings

Walking Dead, this becomes evident in the characters’ “purification rituals” (Morley 2000: 143) and “boundary maintenance” (ibid.: 141) of their home spaces as well as in the visual representation of these home spaces, which evoke a distinctly gothic discomfort both in the characters and the audience. As will become evident, by approaching The Walking Dead through the lens of gothic discomfort, the series’ connection to the suppressed attempts to exclude and expel “absolute others” (Canavan 2010: 439) throughout American history can be uncovered.

3. Uncomfortable Homes in The Walking Dead The Walking Dead incorporates elements of the Western and clearly operates within the American gothic tradition. As Blake (2014: 45f.) argues, this kind of “generic hybridization, particularly its incorporation of models and devices from film noir, science fiction and the Western to depict monsters and madmen” is a significant feature of gothic TV. It also reflects the political and cultural climate the 9/11 attacks created because they were often framed within the “Old West Revenge Tale” (Paul 2014: 283), for example in President Bush’s portrayal of the enemy as evil and uncivilised, which “mirror[ed] the Old West portrayal of the Indian as a faceless and savage enemy” (McVeigh 2007: 217). In the following, I analyse three central settings of the series. Examining the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, the Greene family farm, and the prison, I focus on the characters’ attempts to create comfortable secure homes, the way these attempts reflect the post-9/11 political discomfort, and the spaces’ subtle connection to historical acts of violence against Native Americans. The different home spaces in the series represent a movement from the metropolis to the wilderness as in the classical Western tale and suggest a movement into a pre-technological past (Hassler-Forest 2012: 341), which also links the series to the post-9/11 reactivation of Western mythology. The home spaces in question can all be read as “affect-inducing” gothic spaces that both create and reflect anxiety through an atmosphere of oppression and entrapment, which in turn also affects the audience (Birke 2019: 91f.). While the American gothic of the late eighteenth century had already translated the eerie castles of the European tradition into an American setting (Goddu 1997: 4), gothic television like The Walking Dead retains in its spaces a “fearful sense of inheritance […] [and a] claustrophobic sense of enclosure” that are “reinforcing one another to produce an impression of sickening descent into disintegration” (Baldick 1992: xix). Within our “post-Freudian culture” (ibid.) the settings of gothic television thus become legible as the spaces where the “cultural contradictions that undermine the nation’s claim to purity and equality” (Goddu 1997: 10) crystallise and reveal “the historical horrors

173

174

Dorothee Marx

that make [American] national identity possible yet must be repressed in order to sustain it” (ibid.). The Walking Dead narrates the repeated making, maintenance, and ultimate loss of secure home spaces, which function as sites of negotiation of different forms of governance. The survivors’ repeated attempts to restore the order of the pre-zombie world overtly connect the series to the post-9/11 American reality. The most central icon of the Western in The Walking Dead, sheriff Rick Grimes, defends his family against the threat of ‘others’ and attempts to restore the pre-apocalyptic order within the confines of a new home. Home, in the conception of “Western hero” (Rees 2012: 87) Rick, is his and his family’s dwelling place, a traditional conception that must be revised in the post-apocalyptic world, where security takes priority over comfort and familiarity. As Rick describes the perfect post-apocalyptic home: “There’s gotta be a place not just where we hole up, but that we fortify, hunker down, pull ourselves together, build a life for each other. I know it’s out there. We just have to find it.” (S02 E13, 31:18 min) This search for a safe space becomes the main motivation for the travelling survivors in season one, who turn to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, looking for refuge and a cure for the zombie outbreak. However, only one scientist, Dr Edwin Jenner, remains in the underground facilities of the CDC, and he only lets the characters enter after he has tested their blood for the zombie virus. It seems that science can offer a safe way of “boundary maintenance” (Morley 2000: 141) by testing whether or not someone is healthy, and, thus, still human. However, the checking of blood for ‘cleanliness’ as an entry requirement evidently echoes ideas of racial purity and fear of miscegenation. Through the setting in the CDC and the scenes that show Jenner in a biohazard suit in a lab, the series establishes an explicit link to the political discomfort of the post-9/11 era. These images point towards the fear of contagion of the bioterrorism scares and anthrax attacks in September 2001, the heightened US-border policing, and the ‘quarantining’ of terrorists in Guantánamo, creating distinctly uncomfortable associations for the audience. After the survivors have been deemed healthy, Jenner serves them dinner. The scene in which the laughing survivors enjoy wine and comfort food seems like a hopeful new beginning, even though the dimly-lit room does not invoke a welcoming atmosphere. This, however, is quickly forgotten when the characters stand under the hot showers, which is underlined by the calm music played in the scene. In the rec-room, they find books, board games, easy chairs, couches and carpets, and a beach bar. But even this space of physical comfort and security is soon shown to be endangered. While Lori is browsing the bookshelf, ironically picking a book titled Reasonable Doubt, Shane can be seen watching her through the open door. He then enters the room to aggressively confront Lori about their past relationship. When she refuses him, he sexually assaults her, confirming the earlier assessment

Gothic Hauntings

that even seemingly comfortable home spaces can also be used to exercise control over (female) bodies (Weir 2008: 5), rendering the space claustrophobic and uncanny. Visually, the cosy rec-room is contrasted with the huge control room of the CDC with its grey and white desks, computers, metal chairs, and rails, and the glowing red numbers of a huge digital clock that is running backwards. The room is only partly lit so that the characters appear against a black backdrop. Here, the group’s celebratory spirit dissipates when they learn that Jenner cannot answer their questions about a cure of the outbreak. The inexplicability of the disease and the helplessness of science illustrate the breakdown of Western epistemology in the series. Jenner, a “flawed biohero”, is used “to reflect the severely flawed world in which the drama takes place, as well as the impotence of the medical community and the government” (Larsen 2016: 63). Additionally, Jenner cannot offer the survivors a permanent home because the CDC is about to run out of power and will then destroy itself: Jenner: ‘You know what this place is?! We protected the public from very nasty stuff! Weaponised smallpox! Ebola strains that could wipe out half the country! Stuff you don’t want getting out! Ever! In the event of a catastrophic power failure [...] in a terrorist attack, for example, [...] H.I.T.s are deployed to prevent any organisms from getting out.’ (S01 E06, 30:34 min) Jenner’s remarks are the series’ most overt reference to biological weapons and the only instance in which the word “terrorist attack” is mentioned. This makes the scene one of the most central connections to the post-9/11 climate. It suggests that the world of The Walking Dead is an America that has recognised the threat of terrorism, perhaps experienced 9/11, and installed the system in case of the (re)occurrence of such an event. Significantly, in a world that is already overrun by very material, flesh-eating monsters, the (invisible) diseases that the CDC has in store still seem to pose the greater threat. At the same time that the series evokes the post-9/11 collective fear of bioterrorism, the US government (the CDC is a government agency) is shown to possess biological weapons as well, which provides an ironic commentary on US accusations that the Iraqi regime possessed weapons of mass destruction, which became the main justification for the Iraq war. However, Jenner’s mention of “weaponised smallpox” also resonates with a suppressed historical trauma, namely the introduction of smallpox to the Native American population, which, from the sixteenth century onwards, decimated whole tribes in both South and North America (Patterson/Runge 2002: 217f.). These infections occurred mostly accidentally, but “numerous sources” also report “colonists deliberately infecting Native Americans” (ibid.: 219). Through the character of Edwin Jenner, the series references the scientist who first discovered vaccination and, in 1807, sent a book to the Chief of the Five Nations explaining

175

176

Dorothee Marx

vaccination against smallpox: the Englishman Edward Jenner (ibid.: 221). Thus, the first potential home space that the survivors discover is already linked to the expulsion of Native Americans from their homeland as well as to a fear of contagion and invasion of others that reflects post-9/11 anxieties. At the end of the first season, the high-tech building of the CDC almost turns into a death trap when it runs out of fuel and is destroyed in a huge explosion. The failed attempt to find refuge and answers at the CDC confirms the loss of trust in science and the government. This is also stressed by the fact that Jenner, the last remaining scientist, does not leave the building but chooses suicide instead. The CDC’s fiery explosion also echoes the destruction of Atlanta during the Civil War and marks the turn of the survivors to a pre-technical, ante-bellum-like past (Keetley 2014: 12-14). After the destruction of the CDC, the remaining group members leave the metropolis and turn towards the wilderness. Here, their cars are central to their survival and serve as a fallback every time they must abandon a dwelling place. When they have to travel on foot in later seasons, this illustrates their detachment from a civilised world order, which goes hand in hand with their increasing brutalisation. The cars, which serve as the “twentieth-century expression of nineteenthcentury westward movement” (Heckman 2014: 95), help create a motif of wagontrain migration, as the survivors roam the country-side, constantly in search of a place of safety, always awaiting the attack of the hostile others (Rees 2012: 86). The cars here become not only means of transport but also temporary homes (Heckman 2014: 101). Additionally, they also connect the survivors to the history of the South, namely the displacement of Native Americans through the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which made room for the cotton industry and, subsequently, slavery (Carson 2006: 152): Significantly, the vehicles that figure prominently in The Walking Dead are named for nineteenth-century people and events tied to westward movement (primarily Native American tribes). Dale’s RV is a Winnebago Chieftain, Carol and Ed’s vehicle is a Jeep Cherokee, and Shane drives a Jeep Wrangler. […] Geography and history are crucially linked here, since the economy of the Southeast is rooted not only in the institution of slavery but also in the economic gain from moving Native Americans off of the land. (Heckman 2014: 99) Thus, the characters’ cars, like their home spaces, are linked to suppressed cultural memories. The notions of imperialism and displacement inherent here have the potential to cause viewers discomfort and to disrupt the Frontier myth the series evokes. When the survivors find refuge on a secluded farm, new uncanny links to the history of Native American displacement continue to surface. The farm is set in a pastoral, idyllic landscape and resembles both a Western ranch and a Southern

Gothic Hauntings

antebellum farmstead – two epitomes of American identity and nostalgia. This is well-illustrated at the beginning of episode four, which opens with images of a pale sunrise over a quiet, foggy landscape, populated with birds, grazing cows, an old land machine, and an old, nineteenth-century style barn (see appendix, fig. 1). This foregrounding of nature links the rural farm to the image of the West as an Edenic garden (see appendix, fig. 2). Surrounded by wooden fences, which form a kind of frontier line between the safe farm and the unsafe, unknown wilderness, and far enough from the next city, which is filled with zombified inhabitants, the Greene family farm provides an “idealized retreat to pre-zombie, pre-corporate, pre-industrial, and pre-apocalyptic alternatives” (Newbury 2012: 97). This is reflected by the interior of the farmhouse as well. Its white walls, lace curtains, black-and-white photographs, antique lamps and dark wooden furniture are reminiscent of the nineteenth century. The few technological items visible in the mise-en-scène are old-fashioned (like the TV in the living room) or only appear for the briefest of moments (such as the fridge). In contrast to the modern and sterile rooms of the CDC, the farmhouse appears as the epitome of cosiness and homeliness (see appendix, fig. 3). We see white candles, porcelain figurines on the mantelpiece of the open fireplace, and cosy antique-looking couches in the living room. The hardwood floors are covered with carpets and the beds with colourful quilts. Additionally, the farm offers fresh, home-cooked food, made from homegrown produce, as well as clean water, and the house can shelter the whole group once it gets colder. The interior of the farm creates a domestic idyll that caters to contemporary expectations of a comfortable environment. Comfort, as a multi-level concept, is invoked here on a physical level through the comfortable furniture and good food, and emotionally through the security and privacy the space offers. The farm provides the characters with a retreat from the wilderness of the zombie-infested rural Georgia. Rick and the group imagine the space as a borderline utopia where they can begin to rebuild their lives. The setting represents a move away from a lifestyle marked by technology and a return to a pastoral naturalness, or organic nature, as survivors engage in growing their own food, tending to livestock, drawing water from wells, and living and working communally (Kozma 2013: 153). For the viewer, as well as for the characters, the nostalgic, pastoral environment of the farm evokes the comforting myth of the American Frontier and nuclear family togetherness. Ergo, the farm provides the survivors with a temporary zone of safety that meets Rick’s description of an ideal post-apocalyptic home, offering not only security but also a place for their social and cultural survival. Even though safety must remain the main characteristic of their ideal home, the characters realise that in order to truly ‘survive’, they need to find a place where they can build a functioning group and family structure. Throughout the series, Rick’s group oscillates between forms of democracy, which are constantly undermined by the necessity to make

177

178

Dorothee Marx

fast, life-saving decisions, and the acceptance of Rick as an absolute leader. The comfort that the farm provides, both through providing safety from the zombie apocalypse and its creature comforts, allows the survivors to preserve those democratic forms of governance that are connected to their attempts to uphold their humanity (Simpson 2014: 33). On the run in the wilderness, by contrast, Rick has to declare: “This isn’t a democracy anymore.” (S02 E13, 39:51 min) This illustrates how comfort, as a political category, forms a prerequisite for democratic processes. In times of political anxiety, strong leadership by a masculine Western hero may take preference over humanism and civil rights. During their time on the farm, the survivors develop a traditional Frontier community. While the men roam the wilderness, the women mainly stay inside, prepare food, do the laundry, or tend the sick, which “configures the home as a stable haven of feminine counterbalance to the male activity of territorial conquest” (Kaplan 2002: 25). The characters look for security within nuclear family togetherness and a traditional domestic ideology. The home space of the farm is thus invested with traditional values and divided into a gendered civilisation/wilderness dichotomy. The conservative gender politics of the early seasons of The Walking Dead reflect the post-9/11 retreat to gender roles of the 1950s and creative industries’ “attempts to reaffirm traditional American masculinity” through “a massive resurgence of the historically ‘masculine’ genres of the past” (Blake 2014: 46), such as the Western. As Phillip L. Simpson (2014: 38) argues, Rick’s permanent search for a safe home for his family reflects a desire also present in the post-9/11 American reality, namely the wish “to create a post-apocalyptic domestic utopia where one can feel secure once again”. Hidden within the domestic idyll on the farm, however, is an undercurrent of references to the violence committed against Native Americans, most directly when Daryl refers to the Trail of Tears when he tries to comfort Carol, who is looking for her lost daughter Sophia: Daryl (to Carol): ‘It’s a Cherokee rose. The story is that when American soldiers were moving Indians off their land on the Trail of Tears the Cherokee mothers were grieving and crying so much ’cause they were losing their little ones along the way from exposure and disease and starvation. A lot of them just disappeared. So the elders, they said a prayer; asked for a sign to uplift the mothers’ spirits, give them strength and hope. The next day this rose started to grow right where the mothers’ tears fell. I'm not fool enough to think there’s any flowers blooming for my brother. But I believe this one bloomed for your little girl.’ (S02 E04, 35:12 min) The situation of the survivors, who have become displaced from their homes, mirrors the expulsion of the Cherokee from their native land, which caused them to lose ties to their future, both as a result of lands lost and children lost. Similarly, the forced exodus endured by the survivors of The Walking Dead costs them their

Gothic Hauntings

own futurity, symbolised by Sophia’s loss and subsequent death (Heckman 2014: 100). Just as the search for Sophia proves futile in the end, the “new pastoralism” (Newbury 2012: 97) that the farm offers cannot be upheld. Glenn discovers that Hershel and his family hide their zombified relatives in the barn, concealing a visceral horror behind the image of the idyllic farm. When Shane breaks open the gates, unleashing the walkers, the once-comfortable farm is rendered uncanny, and the image of the American Frontier becomes distinctly gothic in its failed attempts to conceal the violence that surrounds it. Even while trying to live peacefully at the farm, then, the survivors are confronted with violence, both through the zombies and through the setting’s links to Frontier history. At the end of the second season, the farm is overrun by walkers and the characters are forced to flee: The idyllic farm, the American homestead that resurrects an entire mythic apparatus of American genesis, character and values, cannot stand when illusions are void, and so walkers descend upon the land en masse. […] Ironically, perhaps the most recognizable symbol of the western homestead, the barn, is set afire by Rick himself. (Young 2014: 65) The farm episodes illustrate how the image of the safe American homestead, set close to the Frontier that separates wilderness from civilisation, cannot conceal the violence against Native Americans, creating a “fearful sense of inheritance” (Baldick 1992: xix) that leads to the disintegration of the nostalgic utopia of Virgin-Land mythology. Having fled the once safe homestead of the farm, the survivors retreat into a prison that resembles a Frontier fort (Canavan 2010: 442), making a new attempt to create a safe home. In season three, the “prison-industrial complex” is reversed: “Grimes, a white police officer, will make his desperate home inside a jail, while dangerous and hostile Others array themselves against him outside the walls.” (Ibid.: 436) However, before the survivors can start making a new home in the prison, they first have to purify and secure their new dwelling place. Constantly confronted with the other of the zombie, the survivors have to negotiate a new definition of what it means to be human. By killing the zombified guards and inmates and removing their bodies from the prison, Rick and his group claim the prison for themselves and confirm their human identity. The following home-making process at the prison, after their nomadic existence on the road, helps to highlight their humanity and is a deliberate attempt to return to a pre-apocalyptic order. However, they can only begin this process after having brought the “space under control” (Douglas 1991: 289). Upholding this control through “boundary maintenance” (Morley 2000: 141) becomes one of the central tasks of the survivors. They have to defend

179

180

Dorothee Marx

the prison against the Governor and his henchmen, but also against the sheer mass of zombies that cling to the fence and threaten to collapse it. During the following episodes, the survivors slowly start to turn the cellblock into a home by cleaning and decorating individual cells. In episode eleven Carol can state: “This is our home” (S03 E11, 11:57 min; emphasis added), discursively asserting their right to the space (Morley 2000: 16). The opening scene of the first episode of season four, “30 Days Without an Accident”, illustrates how the survivors have turned the prison into a comfortable living space. We hear birds singing as Rick steps out into a sunny yard. In the courtyard, a roofed area with benches and tables has been built. Outside of the inner fence, we see several vegetable patches, a shed for a horse and one which, as we later learn, contains pigs. The scene creates both physical and affective comfort through its mise-en-scène and the music that is contrasted with the walkers clinging to the fence, whose growling fades behind the intradiegetic country music that Rick is listening to. The audience learns that a ‘council’ has been established that makes decisions, and sees Maggie and Glenn, who have apparently spent the night together, in a bed with coloured, clean sheets. The prison offers comfort, not only through privacy and intimacy, but also by having become a social space for democracy, love, and friendship. A scene in which Carol reads The Adventures of Tom Sawyer to a group of children (S04 E01, 34:38 min) shows that ‘home’ becomes a space for socialisation and the transmission of cultural memory. However, the survivors cannot leave the prison without putting themselves in mortal danger, and even within the prison they become threatened by a deadly infection. Thus, the setting of the prison retains a gothic quality through its claustrophobic sense of “enclosure” (Baldick 1992: xix). Season three of The Walking Dead, then, suggests that one must give up one’s freedom to survive, not unlike Americans who had to exchange constitutional freedoms for a feeling of security after 9/11 and still felt uncomfortable in their own homes. The audience is given the possibility to explore these fears in the safe realm of gothic television, perhaps even receiving pleasure from their own discomfort.

4. Conclusion This essay has shown how the Southern-wilderness setting of The Walking Dead is haunted by traumatic acts of violence committed by the colonial settlers against Native Americans, acts that surface as instances of potential viewer discomfort in the gothic world of the series. The farm and the prison try to imagine this wilderness as a pastoral, Edenic garden and utopian retreats, but these home spaces do not prevail. The analysis of the repeated making of different home spaces in The Walking Dead uncovers the series’ connections to other, past acts of violence. The Walking Dead is both gothic television (Blake 2014) and an example of a gothic

Gothic Hauntings

apocalypse (Horner 2014) that mirrors the vulnerability of a repeatedly traumatised American population after the terror attacks of 9/11. Instead of affirming an American identity of power, inviolability, and Virgin-Land innocence, the Frontier setting of the series brings up uncomfortable references to the expulsion of Native Americans from their land. This is done through the farm and the prison, the metaphor of the Cherokee rose, the names of the survivors’ vehicles, and the reference to smallpox, but also through the figure of the zombie itself. With its origin on Haiti, a US-American colony, the zombie does not only figure as the ‘savage other’ that has to be eliminated at all costs, but it also brings the subjects of slavery and US imperialism to the forefront. Through its connection to the repressed imperial history of the United States, the series implicitly comments on American neo-imperialistic tendencies and the war on terror, creating room for viewers to reflect on the problematic heritage of their own ‘comfort zones’. The survivors’ struggle between the wish for security and the loss of freedom and democratic values mirrors the post-9/11 political discourse. The expulsion of the characters from their homes through the invasion of an ‘absolute other’ further underlines the discourses of extinction, flight, and displacement present in the series. The world of The Walking Dead is haunted by the suppressed history of violence of the United States that seeps into its never-lasting home spaces, which has the potential to make its (American) audience distinctly uncomfortable.

181

182

Dorothee Marx

Appendix: Images from The Walking Dead Fig. 1 Barn.

Fig. 2 Farmhouse.

Gothic Hauntings

Fig. 3 Dining Room.

183

184

Dorothee Marx

Works Cited Baldick, Chris. 1992. “Introduction.” In: Chris Baldick, ed. The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales. Oxford: UP, xi-xxiii. Bayley, Sally. 2010. Home on the Horizon: America’s Search for Space, from Emily Dickinson to Bob Dylan. Witney, Oxfordshire: Peter Lang. Birke, Dorothee. 2019. “(Play)Houses of Horror: Addressing the Anxieties of the Housing Crisis.” Journal of Contemporary Drama in English 7.1: 89-106. Bishop, Kyle. 2009. “Dead Man Still Walking: Explaining the Zombie Renaissance.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 1: 16-25. Blake, Linnie. 2014. “Vampires, Mad Scientists, and the Unquiet Dead. Gothic Ubiquity in Post-9/11 US Television.” In: Justin D. Edwards & Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet, eds. The Gothic in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture: Pop Goth. New York/London: Routledge, 37-56. Blunt, Alison & Robyn Dowling. 2006. Home. New York/London: Routledge. Boon, Kevin Alexander. 2007. “Ontological Anxiety Made Flesh: The Zombie in Literature, Film and Culture.” In: Niall Scott, ed. Monsters and the Monstrous: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 33-43. Canavan, Gerry. 2010. “‘We Are the Walking Dead’: Race, Time, and Survival in Zombie Narrative.” Extrapolation: A Science Fiction Newsletter 51.3: 431-453. Carson, James Taylor. 2006. “Indian Eras, Indian Removal, 1800-1840.” In: Charles Reagan Wilson, gen. ed./vol. ed. The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. Vol. 3: History. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 152-153. Carter, Ashton B. 2001. “The Architecture of Government in the Face of Terrorism.” International Security 26.3: 5-23. Collins, Christopher. 2007. Homeland Mythology: Biblical Narratives in American Culture. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP. Crow, Charles L. 2009. American Gothic. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Crowley, John E. 2001. The Invention of Comfort: Sensibilities and Design in Early Modern Britain and Early America. Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins UP. Douglas, Mary. 1991. “The Idea of a Home: A Kind of Space.” Social Research 58.1: 287-207. Edmundson, Mark. 1999. Nightmare on Main Street: Angels, Sadomasochism, and the Culture of Gothic. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. Faludi, Susan. 2008. The Terror Dream: What 9/11 Revealed About America. London: Atlantic Books. Fluck, Winfried. 1997. Das kulturelle Imaginäre: Eine Funktionsgeschichte des amerikanischen Romans 1790-1900. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Freud, Sigmund. 2004 [1919]. “The Uncanny.” In: Julie Rivkin & Michael Ryan, eds. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Malden et al.: Blackwell, 418-430.

Gothic Hauntings

Goddu, Teresa A. 1997. Gothic America: Narrative, History and Nation. New York: Columbia UP. Gray, Richard. 2011. After the Fall: American Literature Since 9/11. Chichester: WileyBlackwell. Hantke, Steffen. 2011. “Historicizing the Bush Years. Politics, Horror Film, and Francis Lawrence’s I am Legend.” In: Aviva Briefel & Sam J. Miller, eds. Horror After 9/11: World of Fear, Cinema of Terror. Austin: University of Texas Press, 165185. Hassler-Forest, Dan. 2012. “Cowboys and Zombies: Destabilizing Patriarchal Discourse in The Walking Dead.” Studies in Comics 2.2: 339-355. Heckman, Christine. 2014. “Roadside ‘Vigil’ for the Dead: Cannibalism, Fossil Fuels and the American Dream.” In: Dawn Keetley, ed. We’re All Infected: Essays on AMC’s The Walking Dead and the Fate of the Human. Jefferson: McFarland & Co., 95-109. “Home, n.1 and adj.” Oxford English Dictionary online. https://www.oed.com/ (accessed: February 22, 2019). Horner, Avril. 2014. “Apocalypses Now: Collective Trauma, Globalisation and the New Gothic Sublime.” In: Marita Nadal & Mónica Calvo, eds. Trauma in Contemporary Literature: Narrative and Representation. London: Routledge, 35-50. Kaplan, Amy. 2002. The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. —. 2003. “Homeland Insecurities: Transformations of Language and Space.” In: Mary L. Dudziak, ed. September 11 in History: A Watershed Moment? Durham: Duke UP, 55-69. Keetley, Dawn. 2014. “Introduction: ‘We’re all infected’.” In: Dawn Keetley, ed. We’re All Infected: Essays on AMC’s The Walking Dead and the Fate of the Human. Jefferson: McFarland & Co., 3-27. Körber, Joachim. 2014. Die Philosophie bei The Walking Dead. Hoboken: Wiley. Kozma, Alicia. 2013. “Leave It All Behind: The Post-Apocalyptic Renunciation of Technology in The Walking Dead.” In: Murali Balaji, ed. Thinking Dead: What the Zombie Apocalypse Means. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 141-158. Larsen, Kristine. 2016. “Feeble Gods and Flawed Bioheroes: The Walking Dead’s Fictional Dr. Edwin Jenner and the Real CDC.” The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association 49.2: 55-84. Mallett, Shelley. 2004. “Understanding Home: A Critical Review of the Literature.” The Sociological Review 52.1: 62-89. May, Elaine Tyler. 2003. “Echoes of the Cold War: The Aftermath of September 11 at Home.” In: Mary L. Dudziak, ed. September 11 in History: A Watershed Moment? Durham: Duke UP, 35-54. McVeigh, Stephen. 2007. The American Western. Edinburgh: UP.

185

186

Dorothee Marx

Morley, David. 2000. Home Territories: Media, Mobility and Identity. London: Routledge. Muntean, Nick & Matthew Thomas Payne. 2009. “Attack of the Livid Dead: Recalibrating Terror in the Post-September 11 Zombie Film.” In: Andrew Schopp & Matthew B. Hill, eds. The War on Terror and American Popular Culture: September 11 and Beyond. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 239-258. Newbury, Michael. 2012. “Fast Zombie/Slow Zombie: Food Writing, Horror Movies, and Agribusiness Apocalypse.” American Literary History 24.1: 87-114 Odile-Bernez, Marie. 2014. “Comfort, the Acceptable Face of Luxury. An EighteenthCentury Cultural Etymology.” The Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 14.2: 3-21. Patterson, Kristine B. & Thomas Runge. 2002. “Smallpox and the Native American.” American Journal of Medical Sciences 323.4: 216-222. Paul, Heike. 2014. The Myths That Made America: An Introduction to American Studies. Bielefeld: transcript. Pease, Donald E. 2009. The New American Exceptionalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Rees, Shelley S. 2012. “Frontier Values Meet Big-City Zombies: The Old West in AMC’s The Walking Dead.” In: Cynthia J. Miller & A. Bowdoin van Riper, eds. Undead in the West: Vampires, Zombies, Mummies, and Ghosts on the Cinematic Frontier. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 80-93. Shove, Elizabeth. 2003. Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience: The Social Organization of Normality. Oxford/New York: Berg. Simpson, Philip L. 2014. “The Zombie Apocalypse Is Upon Us! Homeland Insecurity.” In: Dawn Keetley, ed. We’re All Infected: Essays on AMC’s The Walking Dead and the Fate of the Human. Jefferson: McFarland & Co., 28-40. The Walking Dead. 2009-present. Created by Frank Darabont. AMC. Weir, Allison. 2008. “Home and Identity: In Memory of Iris Marion Young.” Hypatia 23.3: 4-21. Young, Ivan P. 2014. “Walking Tall or Walking Dead? The American Cowboy in the Zombie Apocalypse.” In: Dawn Keetley, ed. We’re All Infected: Essays on AMC’s The Walking Dead and the Fate of the Human. Jefferson: McFarland & Co., 56-67.

Embracing Mindful Discomfort Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird Nourit Melcer-Padon

There are few periods in one’s life that are less comfortable than those of adolescence and young adulthood. Changes of body shape, hormonal surges, and unforgiving acne are merely some of the physical aspects of a period of uncertainty, quick mood alterations, instability, and fears. These difficulties in turn lead to new investigations of one’s borders and limitations, frequently inciting reckless behaviour, wrapped up in rash language. One must somehow survive these tempestuous and often dangerous times to be able to fashion one’s identity and cope with the rest of one’s adult life. Erik Erikson’s theory comes to mind, according to which the psychological development along the course of one’s life comprises eight stages. Successfully tackling both inner and outer conflicts in each stage allows better ability to cope with the challenges of the next stage. Identity formation is the main task of the adolescent stage and depends upon the individual’s capacity to fashion a personal, coherent self on the one hand and find one’s comfortable place in the world on the other. Once attained, identity not only provides well-being in every sense, personal and social, but also constitutes a decisive stepping-stone to further development (Erikson 1968: 15-43, 91-3, 128-35). Yet in Greta Gerwig’s 2017 film Lady Bird, the protagonist seems to be doing her utmost to exacerbate her difficulties unnecessarily, giving the impression throughout the film that discomfort is her actual comfort zone. This is where she thrives: discomfort provides her with the power to fashion her own way of coping with the challenges in her life and forge the means for her advancement. An interesting example of discomfort as a key concept in the lives of young adults in our days can be found on the internet sites run by members of the ‘Yes Theory’ group. The founders claim that they initiated the group because they found that “the only way to grow was to do things that made them uncomfortable”.1 They also produce and sell clothes online, saying that they “ultimately […] hope that our clothing can inspire the world to live the Seek Discomfort philosophy”.2 Discomfort is thus iden1 2

https://www.seekdiscomfort.com/pages/about-us (accessed: June 8, 2020). Ibid.

188

Nourit Melcer-Padon

tified as an inevitable part of the adolescent state; it is required to determine one’s identity, and the members of the group not only acknowledge this but also bank on the universality of this notion to promote themselves and their products and gain both followers and customers.3 I would like to suggest, nonetheless, that in Lady Bird’s case the extent to which she goes in ‘cornering’ herself into the most uncomfortable situations is far greater and unique. Discomfort, for Lady Bird, is the key to her freedom, encourages a forward motion, and leads to revelation.4 She is actively creating friction with others and putting herself in uncomfortable positions, all for the sake of a different kind of coveted comfort, one she has decided upon as her goal, namely studying at an elite college on the East Coast. Adhering to stereotypes, she is convinced that only an East Coast college could provide her with a broad, humanistic education, whereas she has nothing to hope for from the local West coast colleges, only suitable in her mind for future farmers and technicians. Daniel Kahneman’s presentation of the concept of Hedonic psychology provides valuable insights for the interpretation of this protagonist and the motives and frame of mind that make her actively prefer a series of states of discomfort to the more ordinarily desirable states of comfort. Hedonic psychology pertains to both pleasant and unpleasant experiences, and the wide array of related feelings each state ignites, and is not only valid to states of consciousness but also to other psychological states. Kahneman (1999: x) stresses that subjective well-being involves “comparisons with ideals, aspirations, other people, and one’s own past” and that “the achievement of a subjective sense of well-being remain[s] at the center” of the discussion regarding what constitutes a good life, keeping in mind that “quality of life cannot be reduced to the balance of pleasure and pain”. The definition of a negative feeling or position must remain subjective, despite similar feelings and positions experienced by others. Nancy Cantor and Catherine Sanderson mention several approaches to Hedonic psychology and conclude that “individuals who see their current personal projects and goals as value-relevant are more likely to stay committed to them, even in the face of threat or challenge. […] Daily life situations that create adverse conditions may actually result in renewed commitment to participation in valued projects and goals” (1999: 231). This description certainly applies to a protagonist as driven by her goals as Lady Bird. Were it possible to ask Lady Bird for her opinion, she would probably admit that her choices are not necessarily wise, safe, or

3 4

“We want to serve as a badge of honor that connects you with like-minded Seekers around the world.” (Ibid.) As Jacques Pezeu-Massabuau (2012: 107) notes regarding “our appreciation of discomfort, it is time to show how it can sometimes be the smokescreen to happiness, a path towards it.” He goes as far claiming “it is time […] to praise discomfort” (ibid.).

Embracing Mindful Discomfort

to her advantage. Nonetheless, though she continuously takes the roughest path, her resolutions do not affect her negatively since she keeps what she considers the most important goal in mind, and all the choices on the way to achieve this goal are worthy means, even if momentarily to her disadvantage. She thus exemplifies the centrality of subjectivity Kahneman finds to be indicative of an individual’s wellbeing. In what follows, I will present the various states of discomfort Lady Bird experiences and suggest a comparison to states of being – specifically states of well-being – one may attain while practicing mindfulness. Considered from this angle, mindfulness, as well as yoga exercises as one of the means of practicing mindfulness, may shed light on Lady Bird’s mind set, motivation, and manner of acceptance of the outcome of her choices. Lady Bird, aka Christine McPherson, is in her senior year in high school, in Sacramento, towards the end of the school year of 2002. Her parents, Larry and Marion, are doing their best to keep the family above board in tough economic times. Larry is pleasant and supportive, although he has been on anti-depressants for a long time and has just been laid off. Marion is a nurse who works double shifts to make ends meet. The couple’s older child, an adopted Hispanic, is a Berkeley graduate, as is his girlfriend, yet both only found work in a supermarket and the couple lives in his parents’ living room. If comfort is understood as satisfaction and acceptance of one’s condition, Lady Bird is clearly uncomfortable with hers, starting with her Christian name. She declares that ‘Lady Bird’ is the name “given by myself to myself”, professedly detaching herself from her parents and singlehandedly ‘birthing’ her adult-self-to-be. Her self-fashioned identity is part of her effort to escape the clutches of her family as well as those of the lucrative and conservative Catholic school she attends, her community, and her native city. As is the case with many teenage girls, Lady Bird’s main battle is with her mother, in her endeavour to carve herself a place within her family and an identity as a budding woman that would be more adequate to a young adult. As the movie proceeds, it becomes clear that discomfort is a fundamental element in the relationship between Lady Bird and her mother, indeed indicating the possibility of acknowledging comfort/discomfort as a key concept in the coming-of-age genre. Herself the daughter of an alcoholic mother, Marion seems to top Donald Winnicott’s notion of a ‘good enough mom’ by being extremely and unnecessarily strict with Lady Bird, to the point that she intimidates her friends. Though Lady Bird acknowledges that her mother loves her, she does so while fending off accusations made by her friends regarding her mother’s aloofness, her cold and frightening behaviour. Marion is not only unsympathetic and severe but also seems incapable of showing softness towards her daughter. The common and reluctantly accepted discomforts that are prevalent in the awkward teenage years between parents and

189

190

Nourit Melcer-Padon

their offspring are exacerbated by Marion’s uptight and strict conduct. For all her rebelliousness, Lady Bird’s overall behaviour is not excessive, compared to more flamboyant examples such as the characters performed by James Dean. Marion’s demanding attitude thus seems disproportionate. While a mother’s role is to support her child, to warn against the world’s dangers, and reassure her when confronting difficulties, Marion could qualify as an honorary ‘Jewish mother’ since she does the opposite. She repeatedly clips her daughter’s wings: she reminds Lady Bird of every single danger out there and at the same time minimises any skill Lady Bird has, sarcastically ridiculing her every effort. She has all the answers at every turn and is as harsh with her daughter as she is understanding and compassionate towards her patients and acquaintances. Above all, she categorically refuses to consider her daughter’s dream to go to a good college of her choice on the East Coast, where Lady Bird is convinced she will get a better education than at the local state or community college. While Lady Bird is not unique in her aspirations, a study done in the years close to those depicted in the movie shows that most Americans high school graduates chose a college close to their hometown. As Krista Mattern and Jeff N. Wyatt (2009: 28) specify, “the median distance a student travels for college is relatively close to home (94 miles)”. They add: “students of higher achievement levels, as indexed by SAT scores and HSGPA, and students who come from families with higher levels of SES in terms of parental income and education, go farther away for college. Given that these students are more academically prepared, [they] have more options available.” (Ibid.) In this respect, Lady Bird differs from the norm. While her parents are well-educated and her SATs are good enough to surprise the school councillor, the family’s financial situation does not provide her with many options. Marion’s vehement resistance is evidently driven by her own fear and difficulty at the realisation that her daughter is on the verge of leaving home. Yet her official reasons are based on the family’s financial situation, peppered with disparaging comments about Lady Bird’s poor academic capacities and performance. Lady Bird’s reaction is violent and totally unexpected: in the middle of a heated argument between mother and daughter that takes place in the car on their way back from the community college orientation day, Lady Bird opens the car door and throws herself out, to her mother’s – and the viewers’ – utter shock. This scene, set three minutes into the movie, establishes the tone of its continuation. Lady Bird does not seem traumatised by the fall from the car, quite the contrary. She uses its result to brandish a protest against her mother, carving the words “fuck you mom” on the pink cast her arm is put into (see appendix, fig. 1). She thus underlines her preference for discomfort, in this instance a particularly painful physical discomfort, over caving in to her mother’s ideas regarding her future. What is doubtlessly the film’s best-orchestrated part, following immediately after Lady Bird’s dramatic fall from the car and the horrified scream it elicits from

Embracing Mindful Discomfort

her mother, is the film’s official opening. The title and credits appear over scenes from the first day of Lady Bird’s senior year at the ‘Immaculate Heart’ high school. Assembly, common prayer, and various classes are paraded to rhythmic music and to the students’ voices (including Lady Bird’s) that repeat first the prayers and then the allegiance to the American flag in unison. Lady Bird’s behaviour throughout is outwardly identical to her peers’, and she will continue to act conventionally and more or less obediently during the rest of the film, both at school and later on at home. Nonetheless, underneath a pattern of behaviour that is by-and-large socially accepted for her age, laced with fights with her parents, siblings and school friends, lie outbursts of less conventional rudeness, lying, and theft that erupt from time to time. Undeterred by her mother’s attitude or by any other hurdle, Lady Bird will use every means she can muster to achieve her goal, whatever the cost to others – but especially to herself. Her struggle to go to college on the East Coast is the main underlying issue throughout the movie, unveiling American society’s ills. Money is presented as the determining factor in this society, the tape measure for everyone and everything. One could consider this movie in light of its socio-economic criticism and its debunking of the myth of American society as classless. While this is a pertinent aspect of the movie, I consider it here as a framework for the role of discomfort in the life of its main protagonist. One recalls the original ‘Lady Bird’: Lady Bird Johnson, the wife of LBJ, as he was known to his friends, or Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 36th president of the United States (1963-9). Johnson entered the White House following the murder of John F. Kennedy. In his years as president, Johnson passed the Civil Rights’ Act, intent on minimising social gaps. Many other details throughout the film, such as songs and books alluded to, point to a similar social agenda on Gerwig’s part.5 Despite her chosen name, Lady Bird is no closer to social equality at the beginning of the twenty-first century than Johnson would have wished her to be half a century earlier, and she and her family experience many financial discomforts that impact emotional aspects of their lives. Living on the ‘wrong side of the tracks’, as she terms it, her main access to affluence is through the Sunday pastime mother and daughter occasionally indulge in: they join real estate visits to houses on sale in rich neighbourhoods to be able to see elaborate interiors and imagine themselves living in such houses. Money is not only Marion’s constant worry, but it also constitutes a perpetual obstacle in her relationship with Lady Bird. Though Lady Bird accepts her humble Christmas present with gratitude and does not complain when

5

An interview with Greta Gerwig focused on some of the cultural references in the film (Jacobs 2017; Brody 2017). For a detailed list of the songs and books used in the film that serve as its meaningful underlying background, see Locke (2017), Lack/Skidmore (2018), and Davidson (2018).

191

192

Nourit Melcer-Padon

her birthday cake is a symbolic cupcake, Marion is riddled with feelings of guilt. Importantly, she also uses the money issue to exercise her authority over Lady Bird, actively instilling guilt over the family’s financial situation in her too. This can be seen in small incidents, such as her refusing to buy Lady Bird a three-dollar magazine (since only rich people read in bed and she can read it in the library), to bigger ones, as when Lady Bird returns home ecstatic from her first kiss, only to stumble into her parents’ worried conversation following Larry’s loss of his job. In this scene, Marion takes her fear and frustration out on Lady Bird. She gets up from the table where she was sitting with Larry to discuss their financial situation and follows Lady Bird into her room, where she attacks her for not folding her clothes properly. Crumpled clothes, she suggests, will create the wrong image with the fathers of Lady Bird’s friends’, who may be in a position to offer her own father a new job but will obviously not do so if she does not keep her appearance “nice” and she and her family all “look like trash”. During another explosive argument between mother and daughter regarding the family’s financial situation, Marion brandishes the huge economic effort her parents are making to raise Lady Bird. In return, she claims, all they get is Lady Bird’s offensive behaviour, which proves she is ashamed of her parents, their financial condition, and even their car, since she makes Larry drop her off far from school. Lady Bird tries to withstand Marion’s attack and finally retorts, “give me a number […] for how much it costs to raise me, and I’m going to get older and make a lot of money and write you a cheque for what I owe you so I never have to speak to you again”. Though thrown off balance, Marion has the upper hand and is quick to belittle Lady Bird yet again when she coolly retorts, “I doubt that you’ll be able to get a job good enough for that”. Above all, this dual outburst proves how similar mother and daughter really are. Neither of them succumbs when faced with a challenge, an argument, or a hardship, but rather fights on, seemingly impervious to the emotional discomfort their belligerence and endurance produce. Lady Bird’s discomfort is not limited to her family and her home. Her imagination is hard at work and constitutes a particular source of misunderstanding, leading to many moments of social discomfort with her peers. Since her school is a private one, most of her peers are much better off than she is. She imagines what a rich kid’s life must be like and behaves accordingly. Yet she gets it wrong every single time: rich kids may not have to attain a scholarship to attend school nor do they have to work in the summer as she does, but they do have their share of troubles. Along with Lady Bird, the viewers become disenchanted with the American precepts, which dictate that social class and status can solely be determined by riches. Danny, Lady Bird’s first boyfriend, allows her to enter his grandmother’s house – one of the houses she fantasises about on her walks in the neighbourhood – yet he is concealing the fact that he is gay by dating her. Kyle, the guitarist Lady Bird sets her eyes on next, is indeed rich but has a father who is fast dying of cancer.

Embracing Mindful Discomfort

Gemma, the pampered class queen, may live in a big, fancy house, but her parents are constantly absent. She is also devoid of major ambitions and wishes to remain in Sacramento and send her future daughters to the same school she is going to. Gemma clearly has no incentive to contemplate a different life, yet the comparison between them underlines that Lady Bird’s dream to move away is determined, among other factors, by her family’s financial situation, underscoring that it is her only possible upward social motion. To be able to date Kyle, Lady Bird is willing to lie about her home address and sacrifice her long-standing relationship with Julie, her best (and not so rich) friend, in order to befriend Gemma, who in turn belongs to Kyle’s clique. She finally manages to become Kyle’s girlfriend and achieve the goal she set for herself on the way to adulthood: having sex for the first time. Yet this first sexual experience is another blatant instance of her acting upon the strength of her imagination, with little relation to reality. Just as she forms misconceptions of the lives of her rich friends, she also misunderstands her partner, which leads her to putting herself in the most uncomfortable situation possible. Lady Bird romantically imagined that Kyle was a virgin like her and that they would both experience sex together for the first time, a thought that makes her feel happy after they have sex – until she realises that she got it all wrong. This is the only instance in which she openly talks about her physical and emotional discomfort, provoked by Kyle’s callous words. “I had a whole experience that was wrong!” she exclaims, “I wanted it to be special […]. I was on top! Who the fuck is on top their first time?” Lady Bird realises she has put herself in an awkward position in every sense, even according to her own fantasies. Her resilience nonetheless allows her to hang on to the remnants of her imagined perfect relationship and ask Kyle whether they are still going to the Prom together.6 As her intense argument with Kyle demonstrates, Lady Bird seems to be fighting and kicking everyone on her way and does not stop to think before taking one risk after another. She puts herself on a collision course at school, where she is rude to her teachers, provocative at assembly and impolite towards the principal, whom she plays a prank on despite admiring her. Concerned that she cannot manage to raise her math grades, and afraid that a lower average will endanger her chances of being accepted to a good college, she steals the teacher’s record book. The teacher tries to restore the grades by relying on the students’ honour. He asks

6

I would like to stress that I am using the term resilience in its non-political context, as proof of the individual’s capacity to cope with adversity and indeed with uncomfortable situations. While I am aware that specifically in America, this concept has been used in contexts where an evocation of self-reliance is part of neoliberal ideologies, I am not using this term here and in what follows in the sense of ‘rugged individualism’. Regarding the political aspect of America’s ‘rugged individualistic’ ideals, see Davenport/Lloyd (2017).

193

194

Nourit Melcer-Padon

each of the students to tell him honestly what they recall their grade was, trusting their integrity. Yet Lady Bird lies straight-facedly to him too, without so much as a twitch on her face, impervious to the teacher’s obvious distrust. She is willing to be known as a liar if this is what it takes to improve her grade average and her chances of being accepted to the college she wants. The discomforts Lady Bird corners herself into experiencing are many and varied, encompassing every aspect of her life, be it physical, intellectual, emotional, social, or moral. The states of mental discomfort range from solitude to frustration, anger, and guilt, yet none seem to shake her. Lady Bird is entirely engulfed in the here and now, leaving the worry about the consequences of her actions to the alarmed viewer. The viewer is thus ‘yanked out’ of his or her comfortable seat and made to assume the role of the responsible adult, especially since those in Lady Bird’s life are sedated into a kind of second childhood – as her father is – or too busy (and also too scared) to notice all she is going through, as her mother is. One could argue that she merely exemplifies some of the characteristics intrinsic to her age, since teenagers typically behave thoughtlessly. Yet as the movie unfolds, it becomes clear this is not the case. Lady Bird constantly keeps an eye on her future and her main goal of getting out of the small town in which she feels stifled. Every one of her actions, whether reckless and stupid or thoughtful and reconciled, is part of her master plan. She is willing to take numerous risks, to lie and to steal to reach her goal, and only stops once matters are out of her hands and all she has left to do is wait for the answers to her college applications. Her actions thus clearly stem not so much from impulsiveness as from desperation. Her capacity to focus on the moment as though completely disregarding the future, all the while working towards the kind of future she chooses, is remarkable. Lady Bird demonstrates unexpected pragmatic maturity, and I would even venture to argue that it is possible to view Lady Bird’s ostensibly reckless behaviour as a kind of inborn mindfulness that enables her to concentrate on the present while simultaneously moving towards the future. This capacity becomes the strength propelling her on her course. The idea of mindfulness, so fashionable these days, is based on a Westernised cocktail of Far Eastern philosophies. It has become synonymous with a system of healing, a way of coping with the ills of modern-day pressures by taking the time to stop in order to experience the present moment, without interpreting or judging either oneself or one’s environment. The often incongruous Western adaptation of mindfulness is gaining many followers who can find countless apps for a quick fix through their portable phones, offering a short routine of a few minutes’ meditation and focusing techniques to reduce stress and get back on track in a demanding, noisy world. Mindfulness can be learned and practised, more thoroughly than by using five minutes’ apps, by practicing yoga. Common to both mindfulness and yoga is the

Embracing Mindful Discomfort

training of harnessing one’s complete concentration to the present moment, to the exclusion of any disturbances, such as tactile sensations, noises, sights as well as feelings or thoughts about past or future, indeed anything other than the position one is endeavouring to perfect right this moment. When performed correctly, yoga positions allow one to experience the moment without any interpretation, judgement, or expectation.7 Yet there is another reason that yoga exercises came to mind in relation to Lady Bird’s behaviour. Interestingly, all of Lady Bird’s rebellious actions are characterised by a double motion typical of yoga practice. Many yoga positions are based on a dual movement, each pulling in the opposite direction to the other, and the effort one must make centres on finding balance and peace within the position one is holding while continuing to pull one’s muscles in both directions at the same time. Yoga positions can be complicated and many are characteristically uncomfortable, especially at the beginning, until one reaches a certain degree of flexibility, once the muscles are more elongated. Yet at every degree of expertise, one can learn to relax within the position instead of fighting it, and in doing so find unexpected peace within oneself. After much practice, one can stay stable instead of wobble or fall and even reach a state of delightful discomfort, feeling perfectly comfortable in what may outwardly seem like an awkward position, as in previously mentioned instances in the film, epitomised by the pink cast on Lady Bird’s arm. Getting comfortable in such a position also depends on the capacity of the practitioner to disregard and even ignore the discomfort s/he is experiencing, doing the most with the present condition and striving to ameliorate it constantly by focusing on relaxing into the position despite the discomfort it entails.8 Reaching a degree of practice that allows one to maintain one’s balance for an extended period is based, among other things, on the capacity to give in, to surrender, and stop fighting the effort necessary to stay in a particular position. Abandoning the fight against one’s body as well as one’s ego and competitiveness, enables one to unite with a central axis in the self, thereby extracting the essence of the position and capping its inherent difficulty. Paradoxically, while continuing to strive harder, one ought to try to renounce making an effort altogether in order to reach a better understanding of the

7

8

An adequate and profound discussion of yoga is much beyond the scope of this paper. I am not referring here to yoga as a spiritual-religious practice nor do I pretend to encompass the various aspects of consciousness and being that different kinds of yoga allow one to reach. I am merely referring to a Westernised practice of yoga positions and one facet of some of the benefits they offer practitioners. Some researchers claim that yoga also causes physical harm, though their research does not include data regarding the accuracy of the practitioners’ performance of the exercises, and performing them inaccurately can be one cause for pain (Campo et al. 2017; Pappas/Campo 2018).

195

196

Nourit Melcer-Padon

movement and improve one’s competence, as well as reap the slowly but steadily accumulating benefits. Lady Bird’s overall progress is binary, in similar mode to the practice of yoga positions. She continuously engages in a double motion that pulls her in two opposite directions, all the while aggravating her own discomfort at the spot she is in at that specific moment. In this respect, her behaviour exemplifies that motions of comfort and discomfort are constantly executed in opposite directions, proving the relativity and temporality of each state. Her principal motion towards the kind of adulthood she has set as her goal is diametrically opposed to her safety zone at home, and each episode on the way is riddled with awkwardness for her. While discomfort is certainly relative, she gives the impression that any discomfort she experiences resides entirely in the eyes of the beholder, whereas she is singularly composed and at peace, as though enjoying the benefits of a particularly challenging position. Against all odds and against her mother particularly, she does reach the coveted status of a freshman at a college in New York. Careful to apply to an East Coast college behind her mother’s back, she used hard-earned summer-work money to pay for the application forms and rallied her father to sign all the necessary papers for a financial aid request. When her secret is disclosed, she tries to explain that she wished to avoid arguments over something that was still uncertain, but Marion is hurt and relentless. She refuses to talk to Lady Bird from the moment of discovery, a silence that persists all the way to the airport. Arriving in New York loaded with suitcases, Lady Bird settles into her dorm room and notices the surprise her father has stashed away in her suitcase. This consists of the many crumpled drafts of letters her mother tried writing to her but never finished – silent witnesses of her love towards Lady Bird and also of her anxiety and sorrow. Lady Bird is now physically as far east of her home in the west as the geography of the Unites States allows, and she is of course homesick. Yet it is within this very wide stretch, with one foot in New York and the other in Sacramento, that she will be able to reach recognition and perhaps inner peace. She will perfect her position, despite the pain and loneliness it involves, and ultimately be able to understand herself better. Avid to break away from her previous existence and become part of her new environment, she once again relies on her imagination – with as little success in the big city as when she tried to become part of her rich friends’ lives in high school. She follows what she imagines college life requires and sanctions. She promptly gets thoroughly drunk, nearly has sex with the first boy she meets and ends up in the ER (see appendix, fig. 2). She experiences a silent ‘reality check’ when the first person she sees upon waking up the next day is a sad young boy with a bandaged eye, who, unlike her, should clearly be treated in the ER. She discharges herself and walks into the streets again, wearing smudged makeup. Familiar music draws her into a church where Sunday mass is under

Embracing Mindful Discomfort

way. Through her tears, Lady Bird is finally capable of embracing who she is. Her rebellion against her family and background is also the motion that pulls her back to the west, to the same values she believes herself to be escaping. Quite typically, even her acceptance to college was achieved through a double motion in two opposite directions, since the essay that won Lady Bird’s acceptance relied on her attentive and affectionate description of her town, imbued with a feeling simply termed ‘love’ by her school principal. The end of the film manages to lyrically arbitrate between mother and daughter by means of a juxtaposed, double car ride showing each of them driving solo in the family car through the same routes of Sacramento. Sharing the private space of the family car, each in turn embraces the public space of their hometown, experiencing their common love for the community.9 It is this particular space where both feel at home that will allow for a reconnection between them, especially now that Lady Bird is willing to call herself Christine again.10 She has ventured outside her particularly uncomfortable comfort zone, largely made up of the discomfort that was almost the only possible middle ground between herself and her mother. Their relationship functioned thanks to their incessant bickering and outright fighting, yet it now seems headed towards a more comfortable future. Importantly, the state of discomfort she experienced in Sacramento had its advantages, especially so since although she lied to everyone else, she did not lie to herself, and she managed to safeguard her integrity. Discomfort forced Lady Bird to rely on her own resilience on the one hand while creating a high level of engagement with her surroundings, both at home and at school, on the other. Her involvement with other people, even when riddled with conflict, constituted the catalyst for her well-being and comfort. Actively being part of a community is precisely what she lacks when she arrives in New York and what she reconnects with at the church. The reconciliation with her parents and with her upbringing will perhaps enable her to benefit from another major aspect of mindfulness, namely the capacity of just

9

10

In an essay about the status of private space versus public space in today’s America, Jonathan Franzen claims that although there is a general notion that private space is constantly under threat, it is actually the opposite that is currently happening, since “the fully public place is a nearly extinct category” (Franzen 2003: 29). Gerwig seems to agree with Franzen, as the film plays with notions of private and public spaces, depicting a public space that only becomes meaningful and receives legitimacy when it discloses its attraction to individual characters within the framework of the specific individual’s state of mind, as the church does for Lady Bird in this scene. One notices the recurring Catholic symbolism used in the film: Christine lives in Sacramento and frequents the ‘Immaculate Heart of Mary’ high school. In a town that is repeatedly depicted as strangely empty of inhabitants on its streets, the sense of community exists at mass in school or at this point of the movie – in church.

197

198

Nourit Melcer-Padon

being in the moment, without making any further motion in any direction, thereby reaching a reconciled, peaceful kind of comfort within her new, adult position. Clearly, discomfort was a tool Lady Bird used for her advancement, a tool one could regard as part of a set of tools fit for a bricoleur. One recalls that Claude LeviStrauss stresses that, as opposed to scientific thought, bricolage is characteristic of mythological, savage thought. Bricolage, generated by imagination and based on personal experience, allows a bricoleur always to be able to rebound and cope with his difficulties, though the materials he uses are randomly collected, unexpected, and imperfect. The means a bricoleur uses are only defined by their instrumentality for the project at hand, since a bricoleur manages with whatever means he can find at every given moment, though these may seem oblique in comparison to those used by others (Levi-Strauss 1962: 26f.).11 “Bricolage favours a capacity of adaptation to destabilising situations.” (Duymedijan 2010: 79; my translation) Lady Bird’s determination and resilience relies on her pragmatic resourcefulness in finding a way not only to achieve her purpose but also to keep her balance despite her discomfort, and continue striving for what she has set as her more substantial, ultimate goal.12 Finally, getting back to Kahneman, one recalls the research he mentions, which proved that people’s satisfaction with their income levels did not change over a 15year period in which their mean income had nearly doubled. Kahneman explains this phenomenon by discussing the notion of adaptation, and he claims that the disappearance of the novelty component in pleasure constitutes a hedonic form of adaptation. As a new routine is established, once one achieves what one has striven for, the hedonic experience eventually disappears. In this context, Kahneman also mentions the ‘hedonic treadmill’ metaphor, developed by Brickman and Campbell in 1971, a relativistic notion according to which “if people adapt to improving circumstances to the point of affective neutrality, the improvements yield no real benefits” (Kahneman 1999: 13). With regard to Lady Bird, I must side with Kahneman as well as with Ed Diener, Richard Lucas, and Christie Scollon, who suggest adapting the idea of the ‘hedonic treadmill’ in order to account not only for divergences in people’s temperaments and reactions but also for changes that occur over one’s lifetime which may alter one’s initial notions of well-being. Their main contention is that “adaptation is inevitable, and no change in life circumstance should ever lead to lasting changes in happiness” (Diener et al. 2006: 5). Their conclusion is quite adequate and sheds light on the extensive changes Lady Bird made and their

11 12

Bricolage has been viewed by sociologists of religion “as the making of eclectic and personal religiosities within modern individualism” (Altglas 2014: 3). Thiede Call (2001) discusses adolescents’ resilience within the framework of notions of comfort/discomfort.

Embracing Mindful Discomfort

effect on her life. Lady Bird’s pleasure upon finally reaching New York yielded unexpected pain combined with a new realisation, and both of these feelings seem to indicate that the chances of the ‘novelty’ wearing out are slim. Even when the excitement over her life-changing move to New York becomes routine, it will still maintain the tension between her present life and her past, and any future move will necessarily be made in light of her point of departure. In this sense, the discomfort she felt throughout her adolescence will not wear out either, and chances are that her character will lead her to many new uncomfortable moments in which she will feel quite at home.

199

200

Nourit Melcer-Padon

Appendix

Fig. 1: Lady Bird, 03 17.

In this frame, Lady Bird is among her school friends, actively taking part in the Morning Prayer at the beginning of her senior year at high school. The words Lady Bird carved on her pink cast, “fuck you mom”, are in blatant and rude opposition to the ‘sweet’ colour of the cast. Underlying the use of this colour is also its commonly accepted stereotypically feminine connotation, which adds to the expected, sanctioned overall behaviour Lady Bird mostly adheres to at school, as can be seen in this scene. The pink cast also stands out against the colours of the students’ uniforms and thus typifies her kind of rebellion as one carried out within the rules and, at the same time, one that is singularly hers alone.

Embracing Mindful Discomfort

Fig. 2: Lady Bird, 01 24:56.

Lady Bird wakes up at the hospital after getting drunk at a party in New York. The hospital name tag she sees on her wrist reminds her that her “given name”, as her mother refers to it at the beginning of the film, is indeed Christine McPherson, a name she will be able to re-adopt only when far from her parents and after experiencing the night at the ER and her subsequent visit to Church. As pointed out in note 10, Christine is a symbolically laden name, pointing among other issues to the protagonist’s need to realise she belongs to her community before she can be at peace with herself. The name tag, which bears her blood type too, can be seen as a sign of a rebirth of sorts: she is re-birthing herself, similarly to giving herself the name Lady Bird at the beginning of the movie, but this time in acceptance of her original birth and name.

201

202

Nourit Melcer-Padon

Works Cited Altglas, Véronique. 2014. From Yoga to Kabbalah: Religious Exoticism and the Logics of Bricolage. Oxford: Oxford UP. Brody, Richard. 2017. “Greta Gerwig’s Exquisite, Flawed Lady Bird.” The New Yorker, November 2. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/gretagerwigs-exquisite-flawed-lady-bird (accessed: April 22, 2019). Campo, Marc et al. 2018. “Musculoskeletal Pain Associated with Recreational Yoga Participation: A Prospective Cohort Study with 1-Year Follow-Up.” Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies 22.2: 418-423. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbmt. 2017.05.022 (accessed: April 23, 2019). Cantor, Nancy & Catherine A. Sanderson. 1999. “Life Task Participation and WellBeing: The Importance of Taking Part in Daily Life.” In: Daniel Kahneman et al., eds. Well-Being: The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 230-243. Davenport, David & Gordon Lloyd. 2017. “Rugged Individualism: Dead or Alive?” Defining Ideas: A Hoover Institution Journal, January 10. https://www.hoover.org/ research/rugged-individualism-dead-or-alive-0 (accessed: August 23, 2019). Davidson, Telly. 2018. “The Millennial Magic of Greta Gerwig and Lady Bird.” March 2, The American Conservative. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/ articles/the-millennial-magic-of-greta-gerwig-and-lady-bird/ (accessed: April 22, 2019). Diener, Ed, Richard E. Lucas & Christie N. Scollon. 2006. “Beyond the Hedonic Treadmill: Revising the Adaptation Theory of Well-Being.” American Psychologist 61.4: 305-314. Duymedijan, Raffi. 2010. “Métaphore, conception ou …?: essai de construction de l’idéal-type du bricoleur.” In: Françoise Odin & Christian Thuderoz, eds. Des Mondes bricolés? Arts et sciences à l’épreuve de la notion de bricolage. Lausanne: Presses polytechniques et universitaires Romandes, 77-89. Erikson, Erik. 1968. Identity, Youth and Crisis. New York: Norton. Franzen, Jonathan. 2003. How to Be Alone. New York: Picador. [Ebook] Jacobs, Matthew. 2017. “We Asked Greta Gerwig to Explain 7 Cultural References from Lady Bird.” Huffpost, November 14. https://www.huffpost. com/entry/greta-gerwig-explains-7-cultural-references-from-lady-bird_n_ 5a09bbc2e4b0bc648a0c9d8b (accessed: April 22, 2019). Kahneman, Daniel. 1999. “Preface.” In: Daniel Kahneman et al., eds. Well-Being: The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, ix-xii. Lack, Hannah & Maisie Skidmore. 2018. “The Cultural References Behind Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird.” AnOther Magazine, February 14. http://www.anothermag. com/design-living/10570/the-cultural-references-behind-greta-gerwigs-ladybird (accessed: April 22, 2019).

Embracing Mindful Discomfort

Lady Bird. 2017. Directed by Greta Gerwig. Scott Rudin Productions, A24, Management 360 and IAC Films. Levi-Strauss, Claude. 1962. La pensée sauvage. Paris: Plon. Locke, Aaron. 2017. “The Significance of Pop Culture in Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird.” Hypable, November 19. https://www.hypable.com/pop-culture-in-ladybird/ (accessed: April 22, 2019). Mattern, Krista & Jeff N. Wyatt. 2009. “Student Choice of College: How Far Do Students Go for an Education?” Journal of College Admission 203: 18-29. Pappas, Evangelos & Marc Campo. 2017. “The Yoga Paradox: How Yoga Can Cause Pain and Treat It.” The Conversation, June 29. https://theconversation.com/theyoga-paradox-how-yoga-can-cause-pain-and-treat-it-80138 (accessed: April 23, 2019). Pezeu-Massabuau, Jacques. 2012. Philosophy of Discomfort. London: Reaktion Books. Thiede Call, Kathleen. 2001. Arenas of Comfort in Adolescence: A Study of Adjustment in Context. Mahwah, NJ/London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

203

“These Seats Are So Comfy” Livecasting and the Notion of Comfortable Theatre Heidi Liedke

The theatrical experience in the twenty-first century is characterised by a hyperawareness and constant negotiations of different sources of dis/comfort. One can observe that especially, but not exclusively, the bigger theatre institutions (and I am using the English context here) are increasingly very invested in minimising risk and discomfort for their audience members. This development started in the 1980s and 1990s when most “theatres were transformed by a wholesale redesign of their ‘interface’ with the audience” and “[a]udiences were flattered, wooed, even pampered, especially through advertising, point-of-sale, and front-of-house services” (Kershaw 2001: 143). In this day and age, potential risk and discomfort comes in very different shapes: when booking a ticket for a performance at the Old Vic on their website, for instance, one can be prompted with the following disclaimer: “Wait a moment… Severely restricted bench: This raised seat has poor leg room, no back rest, and has a severely restricted side view of the stage.” or: “Standing ticket: This ticket is a standing position with a severely restricted view. Listening post behind a high partition wall – Listening Post Only”. The National Theatre offers a less descriptive warning, a mere: “Info: Restricted Side View: Some action may be obscured.” And the Royal Court Theatre, apart from mentioning all pieces of information one might possibly want to know “ahead of your trip to see” the play, draws attention to another source of potential discomfort in an email to ticket holders for Cyprus Avenue, sent on 18 February 2019: Thank you for booking to see Cyprus Avenue on Tuesday 19 February 2019. The performance starts at 19:30. The running time is approx. 1hr 40 mins (with no interval). The age guidance for this play is 14+. This play contains emotive content. We generally avoid giving much away before you see the performance. […]. However, if there are certain themes that you know would cause you extreme distress and you’d like to speak to one of the Royal Court team to find out more before your visit, you can call the Box Office […] or email us […]. Please ensure you arrive in good time as we will be conducting bag checks upon entry to the building. Strictly no latecomers. (Emphasis added)

206

Heidi Liedke

While Butsch has shown how throughout history audiences were seen or discursively positioned as either too active or too passive, depending on where social concerns were (Butsch 2008: 1), the present-day attitude towards spectators seems to be driven by neoliberal concerns. In other words, when spectators are those who keep theatres going by paying for their tickets, they must be appeased a priori in such a way as to guarantee them comfortable entertainment, a ‘good night out’. And there is more to it: what is created here is a cultural climate concerned with safe spaces, one in which potential discomfort is minimised on all levels. This occasionally takes on the character of a ‘helicopter parent’ when the Old Vic, for instance, repeatedly alerts its audience to the improved ‘loo situation’, both in emails and on big posters at the theatre. The popularity of live theatre broadcasting (henceforth referred to as livecasting) is linked to these concerns with regard to a minimising of discomfort for theatregoers. The National Theatre’s initiative NT Live started in 2009 and was partly inspired by the live broadcasts produced by the Metropolitan Opera in New York. NT Live performances are filmed live at the National Theatre in high definition, using multiple cameras whose recordings are edited together and broadcast via satellite to around 2,500 venues around the world, live in Europe and some US cities, and time-delayed in countries further afield (NT Live homepage). They are primarily advertised as “events” and “experiences”, as is, for instance, captured in the wording of the press release published when Aviva became the initiative’s new sponsor in 2010. Sally Shire, the company’s Global Brand Development Director, said: We’re delighted to be supporting National Theatre Live, bringing the best of British theatre productions to international audiences in the comfort and convenience of their local cinemas. […] We look forward to seeing audiences increase over the coming season and enjoying the ‘National Theatre experience’ on the big screen. (“Aviva to Sponsor”; emphases added) It seems like a paradox to promise a certainly exciting experience that at the same time is going to be comfortable and convenient, but this tension lies at the heart of the initiative. In the same way in which theatres want to eliminate or at least prepare their visitors for potentially disrupting factors in order to create a pleasurable environment in which to experience a play, livecasting takes this appeal to convenience to the next level. It combines the – to many spectators – more familiar cinematic space with theatrical content in order to bring the theatrical experience not only geographically closer to audiences but also closer to what they are more familiar with, in a sense their cultural comfort zone. The aim to create a more convenient cultural encounter is complicated by the fact that the livecasting event relies heavily on technical equipment. As a consequence, with the livecasts there is “an additional

Livecasting and the Notion of Comfortable Theatre

risk and unpredictability”; since “recording and play back occur simultaneously and in real-time, there is no time for intermediate editing and hence no chance to eliminate potential flaws retroactively” (Georgi 2014: 157). One could say that an additional layer of potential risk is added onto the already existing one. Does that turn being a spectator in this setting into an inherently risky or, in fact, laborious business? Taking up recent scholarship on audience etiquette (Sedgman 2018) and ‘feels culture’ (Stein 2015), and putting this more generally in the context of twenty-first century theatre as the age of experiential spectatorship (Heim 2016), this chapter argues that theorisations of ‘comfort’ form a fruitful node to think about the implications of the changes in audience experience in a theatre vs. the cinema. Combining my own experience of attending livecasts with audience responses to recent livecasts on social media (especially Twitter), my argument is based on an analysis of actual audience responses, both my own and others’. I will suggest that the spectator’s situation is one of constant negotiation between dis/comfort and work, comfort as a new form of (unpaid) work, and distraction and attention. Livecasting, therefore, allows us to comment on the social dimension of comfort in the context of contemporary performance and theatregoing practices. I am structuring this dimension around four main axes. There is the notion of physical dis/comfort when, for instance, the layout of the auditorium is unable to meet the demand for seats that guarantee a satisfactory view of the stage, or travel to the venue is inconvenient. There is the notion of visual or aesthetic dis/comfort when – in the context of broadcasts – measures are either taken or not to create a view that is ‘better than the real thing’. Further, there is the notion of emotional dis/comfort when it comes to dealing with topics what may have different connotations for different viewers and be linked to traumatic experiences. The recent awareness of issues related to mental health in all kinds of sectors (work, education, but also culture) has led to the increased usage of ‘trigger warnings’ either a couple of days before a given show, as in the email cited above, or on the evening itself, for instance with the help of signs at the doors relating in detail what this content will be (specific topics and/or violent imagery). In some cases, a presenter may even interrupt a show directly before a scene dealing with a particular topic in order to give spectators the opportunity to leave the auditorium and come back after (as seen in SEX SEX MEN MEN at the Yard theatre in Hackney, London, attended on 26 February 2019). The very recently introduced ‘extra-live’ movement pioneers inclusive and ‘relaxed’ performances, which is motivated by the idea that the theatregoing experience should be accessible to all audience members, also those “who

207

208

Heidi Liedke

have difficulty adhering to traditional behavioural expectations” (Fletcher-Watson 2015: 62).1 A final dimension that is crucial within the neoliberal theatre economy is that of habitual dis/comfort, that is, when programmes or ways of presentation are realised in such a way as to cater to and confirm the habitus of a certain social demographic group, mostly the well-educated middle class. Thus, even though attempts are made by the NT to make a selection of its productions as broadcasts that represent a mix of what it offers, recent years have shown a trend toward relatively conventional choices, for instance many Shakespeare plays and/or plays that feature famous lead actors or actresses. These four sources or dimensions of dis/comfort are of a very complex nature, and the focus here lies on the notion of physical, visual/aesthetic, and habitual dis/comfort and the measures taken by the National Theatre to minimise factors that may disrupt physical, visual/aesthetic, and habitual pleasure and/or ease. These considerations are directly tied to the emergence of a new type of ‘comfortable criticism’: the casualness of attending high-class theatre performances in one’s local cinema without all kinds of regulations associated with theatre creates an informal, but nevertheless valuable, form of reflecting on the experience of theatre on social media. To start off, this chapter will offer thoughts about the implications of NT Live’s promise to give ticket buyers “the best seats in the house” and what this entails for the livecasting viewing situation, in combination with the notion of habitual dis/comfort. I will then shift the focus to another type of seat, namely the comfortable one, as found in a cinema. Does this setting make being a spectator easier, in that one does not have to put so much work into the act of looking, or does it create an additional layer that one has to work through?

1. NT Live and Habitual Dis/Comfort The main impetus behind NT Live is to create an experience that is better than film, inevitably different than actually attending the theatre, but imitating or even enhancing the quality of liveness. The trailers for NT Live follow a documentaryfilm aesthetic, showing backstage equipment, close-ups of actors, and bird’s-eye views of London. The trailer for the second season starts with a brand statement: “For almost fifty years, Britain’s National Theatre has been at the heart of theatrical excellence and innovation, then the curtain rose around the world on National Theatre Live”, followed by the promise of “a brand new season of the very best of British 1

The topic of emotional dis/comfort and the measures taken by theatres to deal with these issues merits a discussion on its own and cannot be taken up in detail in this chapter.

Livecasting and the Notion of Comfortable Theatre

theatre”. Over the past few years, the trailers have served the purpose of advertising a “premium offer”, as Bennett (2018: 49) puts it. Apart from that, the emphasis is on providing “the best of British theatre” at a location convenient to the ticket purchaser and making available additional content such as “a pre-performance talk, interviews with the director and/or cast members as well as relevant contextual information, [occasionally] followed by another presentation in the intermission” (ibid.). Bennett points out that in the aforementioned trailers the National Theatre dwells on the quality of the broadcasts. Not only is the equipment excellent, the producing team involved is, too: experts handling expert material delivering an already excellent cultural product. Thus, “the audience is affirmed in their good taste – all of these broadcasts are for them – even before the show proper” (Bennett 2018: 50; emphasis added). Put differently: the audience is reassured in having made the right choice for their ‘night out’, the risk that the theatre/cinema attendance is going to be disappointing is minimised (one knows what to expect) and, most importantly, they are put in a position of habitual comfort, derived from Bourdieu’s definition of ‘habitus’ as “a system of schemes of perception and appreciation of practices, cognitive and evaluative structures which are acquired through the lasting experience of a social position”, which implies a “‘sense of one’s place’ but also a ‘sense of the place of others’. […] [Because] nothing classifies somebody more than the way he or she classifies” (Bourdieu 1989: 19; emphasis added). Typically, an NT Live broadcast begins with the camera taking viewers into the theatre to a spot in the stalls where the presenter stands, a strategy common in Event Cinema “to promote the high production values behind the broadcast about to start” (Bennett 2018: 51). NT Live also extensively uses its Twitter account to provide views behind the scenes in the hours leading up to a live broadcast, as can be seen in figure 1 of the appendix. The NT Live’s PR in a sense reclaims Bourdieu’s argument, glossing over discourses of cinema as potentially less intellectual, more veered toward the ‘masses’, in order to present potential ticket buyers with the promise of becoming – or staying – as high-cultured as they perceived themselves to be in the first place. The place of the cinema is a priori reclaimed to confirm the sense of one’s place that one had before that. The cinema can become the theatre that is closer to home, that awaits those in the know. Baz Kershaw argues that “the protocols of contemporary audience membership, which aims to be complete in itself”, present the theatrical spectator as “the self-satisfied customer of a self-satisfied institution” (2001: 149; emphasis added). Kershaw makes this comment in the context of an argument about how applause “became more important to Western theatres in the second half of the twentieth century” and has come to replace other forms of audience engagement, thus sketching a shift from the audience “as patron, to client, to customer” (ibid.: 135). He contends that “the protocols of audience membership” – an essential

209

210

Heidi Liedke

part of them being that after a performance, there is applause – have undermined participation in performance (ibid.: 136) and thereby disempowered and acquiesced audiences. As he puts it provocatively, the “standing ovation becomes an orgasm of self-congratulation for money so brilliantly spent” (ibid.: 144). There is a parallel between this environment of applause and that which is provided for customers (rather than patrons) when they are given the opportunity to ‘watch’ theatre comfortably on a screen and are given a selection made by ’the institution’ of what is ‘best’ (in British theatre) for them. Kershaw’s argument can thus be seen in analogy to the fashioning of habitual comfort in the context of live theatre broadcasting.

2. Visual/Aesthetic Dis/Comfort ‘Prime seat access’ and high-quality equipment do not automatically satisfy and appease their experiencers (a term suggested by Nelson 2010); such a position glosses over the fact that there is still labour invested by spectators into their viewing experiences, adapting their engagement with a livecast to previous engagements with performances at a theatre. As far as the notion of visual/aesthetic dis/comfort is concerned, Nicholas Hytner – the artistic director of the NT and, together with David Sabel, mainly responsible for the launch of NT Live – has posited that for the duration of the broadcast the cinema becomes a theatre and, in the theatre, “the exact same performance” as on any other night is given (if one can say this about a performance at all). The show is not adapted for the broadcasts but a “strange hybrid of theatre and film” is created which he doesn’t “fully understand” but which “works” (Hytner 2012). However, as Wyver points out, Hytner in fact “told the cast ‘to recall the moments that they treasured in the rehearsal room and that had then perhaps got lost in the process of pitching a performance for a large space – the evening of the broadcast, he said, was the moment to return to them’” (Wyver qtd. in Stone 2016: 640). This does not mean that there is no live audience in the auditorium on the night the performance is being filmed but that actors are, paradoxically, encouraged to think back to these potentially small moments that were meaningful to them at a time when a larger (and remote) audience is about to see them. On the one hand, the show is the same since the actors do not, for instance, have to change their positions depending on where the cameras are. On the other hand, however, they know that huge remote audiences are watching from all over the world, and it is impossible to ‘unsee’ the cameras; therefore, this situation requires “a profound mental recalibration for the actors” (ibid.). What about the recalibration the spectators need to undertake? A NESTA survey conducted relatively at the beginning of NT Live found that cinema audiences “felt more emotionally engaged with the performance than they had expected, to an even greater degree than their theatregoing counterparts” (NESTA 2011), a finding

Livecasting and the Notion of Comfortable Theatre

that was referred to as “surprising”.2 The NT Live audiences in the cinemas are described as enthusiastic consumers, happy with that which they are given. Just like with live-music marketing, the marketing before live broadcasts “often positions audiences as consuming products purely for their functional value” (Sedgman 2015: 324). They want to know what they sign up/buy tickets for and once they know it, they do not mind – but perhaps even wish for – a mildly ‘preshaped’ experience such as a guided (edited) viewing situation. But when one looks at recent audience reactions on Twitter, one sees that many spectators negotiate their situation. They are more sophisticated than the PR gives them credit for, as they are acutely aware of the twofold character of their experience and their own status as both theatre spectator and moviegoer. For instance, one finds comparisons of the broadcast with the actual performance a spectator attended previously, like @mel_d267, who writes (about the broadcast of All About Eve) that “Also, I loved the audience’s audible reaction if [sic] disgust every show I was there. I was a bit disappointed that the ntl recording didn’t pick up audience reactions very well. I know it’s about what’s on stage but I enjoy hearing the audience laughing and applauding too” (13 May 2019). Other users express that they were initially doubtful of what it would be like watching a play in a cinema (all emphases in italics are added): @paulapg50: “Loved it! Wasn’t sure about the idea of seeing a play live in a cinema but I felt like I was there. Brilliant.” (12 April 2019)   @KeepCalmFannyOn: “I’ve never been to one of these ‘live’/recorded theatre screenings before, but I am very much looking forward to tonights #AllAboutEve @captheatres @NTLive @GillianA @AllAboutEvePlay” to which @Type40_Twigg replies: “It is stunning ! Xxx” which is followed up by @KeepCalmFannyOn with a still not convinced: “did you see it live, or one of these screening things? I'm hoping I get lost in it all…” (15 May 2019)   @aqua_libre: “Bravo! A totally different experience watching the play on a cinema screen. Brilliant cast, fantastic performances. Innovative staging and direction. Loved it.” (11 April 2019) 2

What is not clear is whether this means they are more invested in the performance as an event or in the story and characters; but since the finding is referred to as ‘surprising’ it is likely that the latter is the case – it seems counterintuitive to find a cinema experience more engaging than a theatrical one.

211

212

Heidi Liedke

Apart from @KeepCalmFannyOn’s reluctance to refer to the broadcasts either without quotation marks or as ‘screening things’, most spectators’ doubts seem to be resolved or their expectations are recalibrated – but this position of doubt is still something that needs to be worked through.

3. Cinema/Theatre and Physical Dis/Comfort The livecasting experience combines features of both cinema and theatre attendance. The key role of the notion of comfort for my analysis appears at first mainly in terms of physical comfort, yet what is even more interesting are the social connotations, that is, thinking about how ‘comfort’ is a key concept that is mobilised when ‘selling’ this experience and when evaluating its cultural capital and significance. When demarcating the overlaps and differences between cinema and theatre attendance, one needs to ask what some of the key parameters are with regard to the practicalities of attending a ‘regular’ theatre performance. At its core, a theatre attendance is an experience of heightened and guided hearing and looking – the words used to describe the attendees, audience (from Latin audire, to hear), and spectators (from spectare, to look/watch) underline this. Especially the dimension of vision and visuality has undergone quite a change with the commercial introduction of electric power in England in 1887. With those new visual possibilities not only a more comfortable viewing situation was created in the nineteenth century, but also “a freeing up of vision” (Crary 1990: 24). According to Dominic Johnson, this produced “amplified affective responses in audiences, such as laughter, discomfort, and fear” (2012: 37). To be able to see everything means to be exposed to a wider range of impressions that one has to reconcile and negotiate. With the further development of technologies and the combination with digital technologies and diverse media, this amplification of affective responses is, I would argue, multiplied. The heterotopic quality of theatre can be expanded this way. As Foucault has defined it, the theatre is heterotopic in that it juxtaposes several incompatible sites/spaces in a single real (mostly rectangular) space; he in the same sentence mentions the cinema that is also a heterotopia, “a very odd rectangular room, at the end of which, on a two-dimensional screen, one sees the projection of a threedimensional space” (1986: 25). Both spaces promise the potentialities of an other-space in which the parameters of the ‘real world’ are shifted and affect is elicited or invited (more on this below). Importantly, however, neither the heterotopic quality nor the ‘freeing up of vision’ happens in solitude; theatre is crucially a communal experience. This does not mean that audiences automatically present a homogenous group of responsecreators, as Nick Ridout (2013) convincingly argues. I claim that it is a form of

Livecasting and the Notion of Comfortable Theatre

communal negotiation oscillating between (isolated, private) attention and attention within a communal frame of co-presence with others. Foucault’s conceptualisation is therefore helpful but fails to take into account that theatre is inherently about bodies – both the actors’ and the audiences’ – and how they are positioned within the theatrical space in relation to each other. This is even more complicated in expanded spaces such as cinemas showing theatre performances, where there is the actual relation to the other cinemagoers and a virtual one to global audiences. Kirsty Sedgman’s remark that “theatre has always offered a concentrated space for rethinking the rules of social interaction” (2018: 6) because it brings bodies together in close proximity is very much to the point here. Put differently, in the theatre we are engaging in a shared experience in which cast and audience are seeking to transcend the atomised isolation of our everyday lives. If people in the stalls are chomping, slurping, texting or crunching the plastic beakers containing their post-interval drinks then that becomes more difficult. (Billington 2017) While I agree with the description of the interplay between and clash of daily isolation with shared experience that is enabled in the theatrical space, the ensuing disparaging judgment of fellow theatre-goers is rather paradoxical: one precisely needs these fellow ‘slurpers’ in order to have somebody to have a shared experience with in the first place. Put differently: apparently for a ‘full’ theatre-going experience one needs to sense the presence of others without actually sensing them. Billington’s remarks, however, need to be read in the context of recent observations (and complaints) regarding theatre etiquette, a topic that Sedgman takes up in her monograph from 2018. In the introduction, she enumerates several instances – from audience members climbing onstage to charge their phones to proclaiming marriage proposals to actors on stage (in this case Keira Knightley in her first preview of Thérèse Raquin in October 2015) – that substantiate commentators’ recent claim that “theatre spectatorship has reached ‘a new low’” (2). Sedgman also mentions how the UK’s Theatre Charter suggested an audience contract (a code of conduct) consisting of a list of dos and don’ts that audience members should follow “for harmonious theatregoing” (ibid.: 3). Commentators such as Billington or Richard Jordan (2016) blame the rise in “poor behaviour on institutional efforts to broaden the appeal of live performance” (Sedgman 2018: 3), statements that are striking for their elitism and lack of inclusivity. They demonstrate how there is still the notion that theatre must remain in the realm of ‘high culture’ and be guarded against invasions from ‘below’. There are other voices, too, who argue that relaxing the rules overall is to be welcomed for precisely this reason, as a way of widening participation and removing barriers to access. By creating a less restrictive environment and catering to the needs and wishes of a more representative

213

214

Heidi Liedke

audience, theatre might finally scrub itself free from the taint of cultural elitism and become a place where people – all people – can truly feel at home. (Ibid.: 3f.) Livecasting precisely picks up on that agenda to provide a space in which theatre can be enjoyed but where the ‘rules’ are relaxed, a process that could be seen either as inclusive or an undesirable popularisation of theatre. When one feels ‘at home’, one feels at ease and comfortable with oneself because the environment is familiar and the risk of (unwelcome) surprises limited. The NT Live scenario certainly aims at creating a ‘homey’ atmosphere. It contributes to a loosening up of theatre attendance etiquette by merging two ‘repertoires of action’, a phrase introduced by Erving Goffman (1959) in the context of social performance, attributed with two separate realms. When I attended the NT Live broadcast of Julie at the Curzon Brunswick Centre on 6 September 2018, there were no flyers or booklets distributed; the screening took place in the basement and the only information given to us was an announcement on a poster that there would be a pre-film feature. Before the broadcast began, we were shown close-ups of audience members at the Lyttelton Theatre at the NT, both individual members and shots of the entire audience, which made it possible to indulge in ‘people-watching’, something that Heim (2016: 2) has found is especially enjoyed by many (theatre) audiences during intervals or before shows. The equipment already demonstrated its quality at this point because one could even see individual hairs of the audience members. The theatre audience’s mumbling chatter was more audible than the chatter in the cinema, both because the audio equipment was clearly very sensitive and because there were fewer people in the cinema. A person sitting down next to me uttered a satisfied “Oh, this is so comfy”. The seats were indeed extremely comfortable; there was a lot of legroom and a working A/C. When watching All My Sons at Hackney Picturehouse on 14 May 2019, I was even able to stretch out my legs without disturbing anybody; an experience shared by @skylark22BHC1 (with an accompanying picture): “Recliner seats at the new @vuecinemas in Bromley almost too comfortable but Arthur Miller’s brilliant #AllMySons @oldvictheatre yesterday evening kept me riveted and on the edge: gripping, moving, superb cast.” (See appendix, fig. 2) At livecasts, people often bring their popcorn into the auditorium, just like they would when watching a film at the cinema; there are no bag checks or cloakrooms, and one is still admitted into the auditorium when one is not on time. As far as space for pre-show mingling is concerned, there are differences from venue to venue: at the West India Quay Cineplex, for instance, ticket holders had to wait in a corridor listening to DJ Snake and Selena Gomez blasting from the speakers before being admitted into the auditorium. At the Hackney Picturehouse, however, those attending the livecast re-appropriated the foyer to linger around there and chat over a glass of wine.

Livecasting and the Notion of Comfortable Theatre

The tweets posted after the livecast of All My Sons at the Old Vic reflect that the atmosphere is perceived as one of great comfort and convenience, merging two heterotopias and repertoires of action associated with them, both from a physical and economic angle (all of the responses were posted on 14 May 2019, the day of the livecast, unless indicated otherwise): @Rach52Ireland tweeted that she was “[a]shamed to say I don’t know much about Arthur Miller’s plays, so this seemed like a good way to start… Love NT Live, such a good way to see great theatre at a fraction of the price, and less hassle than having to travel. #ntlive #ArthurMiller #AllMySons #theatre #lovetheatre” (emphasis added). The two final hashtags are noteworthy: the user is not talking about #cinema or #broadcast; for her this is simply hassle-free theatre. This attitude and assessment are echoed by @CaitrionaDowd, who writes: “Loved this. The absolutely incomparable Sally Field a (my president) Bill Pullman. Great that cinemas like @omniplexD6 are bringing accessible, live broadcasts of some of the world’s best theatre to packed screens too.” And @AlisonL43733634’s recommendation is that you should “give it a go if you enjoy theatre. A truly immersive theatre experience, great live acting & interval drinks delivered to your seat! Fantastic!” (emphases added) – thus again associating the notion of comfort with cinema-as-theatre. Other users, such as @DebEdgington, also stress the accessibility NT Live affords and the fact that it enables people to see a performance even if it is sold out at the theatre (again, no distinction made between in situ performance and broadcast). The response resembling a customer review the most is the following by @chrisjerrey: “If you love your theatre but baulk at the cost of the West End, check out the @NTLive series. Last night I saw All My Sons by Arthur Miller at Chequer Mead in East Grinstead. Worked out at less than £20 each for tickets and drinks and the play was stunning.” (Posted on 15 May) The price/performance (involuntary pun) ratio is clearly dwelled on more here than the content of the play. Despite the promises made, however, the broadcasts are usually not 100% perfect, which calls for a brief remark on glitches: typically, they include slight delays in the transmission or interruptions in the video and/or audio played. For a typical example of a situation where the experience of comfort is endangered and how this is resolved, see appendix, figure 3. On the night of a broadcast, the NT Live’s Twitter account is constantly monitored so that an employee is immediately there to help if a customer is unhappy with the NT Live experience. The exchanges that often follow from this read like live chats more commonly associated with a ticket booking website or an online shop. The event attended is nothing ‘magical’ but a product to be consumed; if there is a flaw, the NT Live team is immediately ‘there’ to fix it. The NT seems to take responsibility for the experience of all spectators, also those at the cinemas – it becomes clear that they are invested in ensuring comfort by responding to complaints quickly via social media. As these virtual exchanges also show, the concept of presence is re-shuffled. Spatial and – in the case of Encore

215

216

Heidi Liedke

broadcasts, that is broadcasts of a show that are transmitted on later nights than the one when they were recorded – temporal co-presence is under contestation in the NT Live scenario. This stands in contrast to position of the concept of co-presence in the theatre context, as suggested by Erika Fischer-Lichte. For her, it is a sine qua non for the theatrical experience in general. Fischer-Lichte argues that theatre does not liberate the body from the mind; rather, it revokes the dichotomy by making the concerned performer appear as embodied mind, thus enabling the spectators to experience the performer as well as themselves as embodied mind. Instead of postponing the fulfillment of the promise of happiness to the end of the civilizing process, the performer’s presence fulfills it instantly. Man is embodied mind. (2008: 99) In such moments, spectators “sense the performers’ presence and simultaneously bring themselves forwards as embodied minds” (ibid.). All of this is not physical or even visible labour – Fischer-Lichte uses the term sensing. In the context of live theatre broadcasting I would speak of an oscillation between uncomfortable selfconsciousness and comfortable self-awareness. I suggest that it makes sense to rethink Fischer-Lichte’s argument in light of comfort: the shift or the redefinition of co-presence does not exclude the dimension of comfort, but it stands in tension to it. On the one hand, it is broken up because one can still witness the cultural product even though the ‘in-house’ audiences and actors and actresses are far away – and this comes with the awkward awareness that one is missing out on something. On the other hand, it is possible to still feel part of a crowd (a much larger one than is normally the case) and thus sense the others’ presence as a kind of co-presence that provides the comfort of being part of a community. Most importantly, to have signed up to this membership (to take up Kershaw’s terminology from above) also means to perform. As Heim has argued, it is not only the actors who are performing – so are spectators. Attending a play comes with a set of (implicit) rules and “its own idiosyncrasies, prescribed gestures and spontaneous expressions” (Heim 2016: 2) that come into play in the encounter between actors and audience members, creating an “electricity of co-creation” (ibid.). Heim also holds that the twenty-first century has brought about an expansion of the audience’s repertoire of action and that, for instance, spectators’ tweeting their responses to the production during a performance of Andrew’s Three Sisters in 2012 is an example of what it now means to perform as an audience. New technologies bring about new opportunities for the audience to perform (ibid.: 3). Yet Heim excludes the space of the cinema as a site where a) the abovementioned encounters can happen and b) where the performance of being a spectator plays a role. With regard to new technologies, Sedgman claims that

Livecasting and the Notion of Comfortable Theatre

audiences’ heightened attention must be directed towards the performance rather than dispersed around it. […T]his does not always mean sitting quietly, actually; some events might require chanting, or singing, or other elements of ritual. What is required, though, is a communal agreement to work for the performance rather than against it. To cross that threshold together, a certain level of concentration is required from both performers and audiences. It is this shared focus, directed towards the work of art, that produces intensity. Distractions are anathema because they risk disrupting the flow. (2018: 34f.) While Sedgman then also adds exceptions to this last phrase, I want to be even more explicit and speak about the unifying power of distractions and the need to think about spectatorship within the live broadcasting context especially as a relational model, based on attention on that which is contemplated, an acknowledging of other spectators’ presence, and a mediated engagement with the contemplated. I suggest that it is necessary to expand Heim’s argument, and I beg to differ slightly with Sedgman: in the livecasting setting, the cinematic space is transformed into a space similar to that of the theatre, in which spectators find themselves in the position of having to perform their role. And distractions are actually part of this newly established role of being a performer: as I will show in the final section of this essay, ‘distractions’ in the form of tweets are in fact verbalisations of affective engagements that are facilitated by the comfort of viewing a theatrical event in a cinema setting. While certainly performative, they are not disruptions of the flow (of attention), but rather a prolongation or extension of this attention; the rules of attention are loosened up, it is dispersed – distraction and attention can stand in a mutual loop of exchange.

4. Labours of Un/Comfortable Spectatorship One could argue that comfort is crucial for fully absorbing the experience of any cultural event. A nod to F. R. Leavis is helpful here: he claimed in 1930 that the “plight of culture” is how “the modern is exposed to a concourse of signals so bewildering in their variety and number that, unless he is especially gifted or especially favoured, he can hardly begin to discriminate” (2006: 12). Leavis developed this idea against the background of the fragmented, mechanised daily lives of people in the Western hemisphere at the time he was writing, but our present-day context holds a myriad of distractions, too, especially in the form of digital technologies. According to Leavis, in order to achieve complete absorption in an art object, all kinds of disturbances had to be eliminated – the observing spectator could only be elevated when they absorbed themselves in the sound or image. I have argued that the livecasting frame increases the potential for comfort, which in turn might be

217

218

Heidi Liedke

seen as increasing the appreciation of art in Leavis’ sense. Yet when put into practice by feeling and – to borrow from Billington – slurping spectators, this frame is always already under contestation. Nevertheless it is a facilitator for new forms of responding to the theatrical experience. What I mean is that the equation between comfort and absorption of art is not as straightforward as Leavis makes it sound. Even if a setting, such as the livecasting setting, is invested in creating the highest level of comfort, a kind of full absorption cannot be achieved in practice – but perhaps this is not a desirable goal in the first place. For spectators, other challenges and opportunities to engage with a cultural product can arise. Taking up the argument developed in the previous section about how attention and distraction form an exchange loop in the livecasting setting, I claim that being a member of a livecasting audience can actually be more participatory than being a member of a traditional theatre audience because one is engaged in different acts of labour. Indeed, an insistence on ‘prime seat access’ and the increased comfort this portends glosses over the labour invested by spectators into their viewing experiences. Theatre livecast attendees are not just spectators or listeners, they are not only involved in processes of reception, and they certainly do not merely want to be ‘comfy’. They are performers, fans, participants, and (mis-)spectators; they can be all this because their repertoires of action have been expanded. They can be all this because they are experiencing a loosening up of etiquette that also lowers the barrier of wanting to and actually contributing to a (critical, but also affective) discourse of theatre assessment. The context that affords such a loosening up of parameters is that of millennial digital media practices and participatory culture; crucially, these practices are not restricted to millennials, but the term is used to describe a “construct and […] [an] evolving, self-defined culture”, as Louisa Ellen Stein emphasises in her study Millennial Fandom (2015: 7). In Convergence Culture (2006) and Spreadable Media (2013, co-authored with Sam Ford and Joshua Green), Henry Jenkins argues that commercial media producers, for better or worse, have to deal with the expectations of participatory culture, much of which he sees as having roots in fandom (Stein 2015: 9). More than that, they should (and increasingly are) consider(ing) fandom as offering “a vital model for present and future media culture en large” (ibid.: 9f.). Perhaps the most valuable contribution Stein’s study makes is to identify the centrality and realisations of celebrating and sharing collective passion in millennial fan practices. She draws on a multitude of sources, such as posts on Tumblr and blogs, and argues that millennial fans often tout emotional response – or what is known in millennial culture as ‘feels’ – as a driving force behind their creative authorship communities. What I refer to here as feels culture thrives on the public celebration of emotion previously considered the realm of the private. In feels culture, emotions remain intimate but are not

Livecasting and the Notion of Comfortable Theatre

longer necessarily private; rather, they build a sense of an intimate collective, one that is bound together precisely by the processes of shared emotional authorship. In this equation, emotion fuels fan transformative creativity, and performances of shared emotion define fan authorship communities. We can think of emotionally driven collective authorship as a quality of the blog and of digital culture more broadly. (Stein 2015: 156f.) Any blog post – and I would like to extend this to tweets, too – is always already a collective text “waiting to be elaborated upon” (ibid.: 157) and drawing on the repository provided by ‘feels culture’, which “combines an aesthetics of intimate emotion – the sense that we are accessing an author’s immediate and personal emotional response to media culture – with an aesthetics of high performativity, calling attention to mediation and to the labor of the author” (ibid.: 158). What is at stake here, thus, is the performance or the enactment of the personal from behind the front of the digital space as a whole, as well as the linguistic conventions dominant within it: in the case of Twitter, factors such as the low word limit, the layout of tweet, and the use of emojis and hashtags, which make the tweets searchable and thus more widely accessible and individual. When these tweets are about capturing the experience one had witnessing a cultural product, as the examples below will demonstrate, this is not just ‘blabber’. While this type of response is based on affect and therefore not a form of expertise acquired by education, it is still labour. From the perspective of the institutions producing that which is tweeted about, every tweet is an advertisement for a production, a currency, a commodity, or a social thing “whose qualities are at the same time perceptible and imperceptible by the senses” (Marx 1977: 436). The tweeters also sign the unspoken ‘theatre contract’ that Darko Suvin defined in 1985 as a “two-way relation between spectators and performers” (1985: 9) for the context of traditional, representational theatre. The actors’ visible physical and emotional labour onstage is assisted (and in fact made possible) by the ‘invisible’, mostly silent presence of spectators who agree to suspend their disbelief. In the contemporary world of theatremaking, going “to ‘the theatre’ does not always mean going to a theatre; being an audience member does not always mean watching, listening, being quiet, sitting down” (Sedgman 2018: 13). The different dimensions of dis/comfort – the habitual, the visual/aesthetic, and the physical – afford different ways to pay attention and be a spectator. One that I want to dwell upon in particular is the inexpert mis-spectator, a figure at first glance quite similar to the casual and careless ‘slurper’ that Billington describes so disparagingly. Attending theatre is a process of negotiation, on the side of the spectators but also on the side of theatre critics or theatres. For the context of live theatre broadcasting, where the use of social media is especially encouraged by the theatre institutions and there is no opportunity for ‘live’ discussions, these negotiations are

219

220

Heidi Liedke

extended into the online space where “the affordances of digital tools supposedly enable cultural participants to connect across national boundaries”; as is the case with online fan and millennial cultures, where the “most commercially visible images […] come from US and British media texts” (Stein 2015: 6). How do the spectators reflect on their positionality and how do they verbalise their experience? In an audience survey conducted in 2018 by the RSC after the live screening of Romeo and Juliet, 69% of respondents found the livecast ‘totally absorbing’ and 71% felt an emotional response to it. Some of the reactions on Twitter regarding Macbeth (collected on the @NTLive page as ‘Moments’) indeed attest to that: the livecast is described as “Blimey @NTLive my heart is hammering out of my chest #Macbeth #NTLive” by @scrufflove and all @Jenstra1 can write is “OMFG Goosebumps #macbeth @NTLive”. After the livecast of Antony and Cleopatra on 6 December 2018, @VibhutiJPatel tweeted “This was just all sorts of brilliant. Ralph Fiennes and Sophie Okonedo are dazzling. And the fact I was able to watch it from my local cinema @CamPicturehouse because of @NTLive still amazes me. #AntonyandCleopatra #Shakespeare”. @PhilofBeeston thought that “#AntonyandCleopatra from @NTLive was superb. Fast moving production inhabited Hildegard Bechtler’s amazingly versatile set. Verse speaking was perfectly articulated by whole cast. Sophie Okonedo gave an outstanding Cleopatra – no wonder Ralph Fiennes’ Antony was so love-struck.” And @BethanMedi summed it up thus: “I am absolutely blown away by the @NationalTheatre broadcast of #AntonyandCleopatra. It was exciting and full of passion from start to finish. There is nothing quite like theatre!!” First of all, one notices different degrees of seriousness – some users go into more detail than others. Secondly, the format of the tweet posted casually from one’s smart phone brings about a – certainly also performative – colloquialisation of responses (in comparison to reviews by professional theatre critics), something that Ong, with regard to the digital age more generally, has fittingly described as ‘secondary orality’ (Ong 2002 [1982]) and that we now, given how drastically the implications of ‘the digital’ have changed since the early 1980s, might refer to as tertiary orality. It resembles chats one has with friends after the performance. This casualness increases the immediacy of the experience because the responses reflect spontaneous responses to the performance right after leaving the cinema (they were all posted on the night of the show). It is crucial to note that the social dimension of theatre-going both overlaps with and differs from the social dimension of the online space: both have their own (behavioural, linguistic) etiquettes. The online space allows for a more fragmented, catchy way of reacting to something which both increases the ambivalence (and thus can relativize any ‘absolute’ statements) and the playfulness of the engagements, when, for instance, emojis or gifs are used. In his poignant chapter “Mis-spectatorship, or, ‘redistributing the sensible’” (2012), Nick Ridout suggests that “a measure of inexpertise may be crucial to an

Livecasting and the Notion of Comfortable Theatre

interruption of the consensus around value to which experts, both performance makers and spectators, routinely contribute, a consensus in which we agree only to see and hear what we already know” (173). In this line of thought, to know (to be an ‘expert’) is to be ‘lazy’, to already have done the work – it is a comfortable position. To not know, however, is laborious, it is uncomfortable because one still needs to, for instance, familiarise oneself with theatregoing protocols or connect the dots to understand the plot of a play. Ridout illustrates his idea of the misspectator with the help of the compound figure Marcel (from Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu). Marcel seems to pretend that he does not know that this is a play; he looks at the scenery in front of him as if with a ‘blank mind’, ignoring the unspoken agreement that to be in a theatre means to submit oneself to an illusion of reality, to play. As a consequence, for him attending a play is clearly a highly (self)reflexive act driven by the awareness of the fakeness of theatrical representation with regard to reality, but at the same time he willingly submits himself to the illusion. Knowing is equated with ‘mere’ spectatorship, while disrupting the consensus through not knowing is linked to the figure of the mis-spectator who labours. In analogy, I am arguing that the live broadcast attendee’s position between comfort and discomfort is a particular case of twenty-first century (mis)-spectatorship and illustrates how spectators deal with the ways in which they are engaged. “In the case of crowdsourced theatre criticism”, MacArthur (2016: 261) points out, “there is no need to hide one’s inexperience”. For instance, social media users assess a review somebody else has written while admitting they have not seen the show. The same holds true for livecasts, where the unabashedly personal dominates responses on social media to livecasts.3 Answering a call to share their favourite livecast of 2017 posted on the NT Live Facebook page on 25 December 2017, many commentators inserted biographical information and private context for how they came to watch their favourite livecast and, in the case of Angels in America, members of the LGBTQ community reported being especially grateful to have seen the play.4 The comments are mini-reviews, yet not only with a focus on the plays themselves or the quality of the livecast (occasional complaints about glitches in the transmission), but also on the experience of attending them. A survey of these responses presents one with a huge collection of private glimpses of different emotional perspectives on a given livecast. On their Facebook page, the NT Live’s prompt was to name the favourite production and say why, and not how it had made them feel, but this for the majority seemed to be synonymous.

3 4

For a discussion of how this brings about the persona of the ‘feeling I’ in online (mis)criticism, see Liedke 2019. Link to NT Live Facebook page (post on 25 December 2017, accessed on 24 October 2018): https://www.facebook.com/ntlive/posts/10155211513058857.

221

222

Heidi Liedke

On the one hand, the tweets resemble coughs and ‘here I am’ expressions because the majority of spectators finds it hard to find comfort in silence. On the other hand, through these tweets a keying together of spectators can happen; negotiations of dis/comfort characterise the live theatre broadcasting situation and find their expression in an informal form of reflecting online. In the context of the contemporary theatrical experience a loosening up of regulations and a merging of the etiquette(s) and/or repertoires of action associated with both theatre- and cinema going occurs and coincides with an awareness and negotiation of different sources of dis/comfort. It is against this background that the spectator’s position emerges as one between dis/comfort and work and comfort as a new form of (unpaid) work in the context of new performance practices and experiences. In sum, livecasting exemplifies a specific area in contemporary performance practices that provides comments on the social dimension of dis/comfort. As a recent trend in media consumption, it complicates the self-fashioning of the theatregoer, the public perception of theatregoing, and the branding of theatre venues. Theorisations of ‘comfort’, thus, shed a light on what this trend shows with regard to changing audience experiences in a theatre vs. the cinema. Ultimately, ‘dis/comfort’ – and its four axes: physical, visual/aesthetic, emotional, and habitual – is a central concept that is activated and used rhetorically when the theatre institutions are ‘pitching’ the livecasting experience to their audiences and when its cultural significance is evaluated.  

Livecasting and the Notion of Comfortable Theatre

Appendix

Fig. 1: Screenshot from the NT Live Twitter page showing the filming equipment being set up in the Old Vic Theatre a few hours before the start of the live broadcast of All My Sons on 14 May 2019.

Fig. 2 Screenshot of Tweet by @skylark22BHC1 and comments.

223

224

Heidi Liedke

Fig. 3: Screenshot of exchange on Twitter on the day of the broadcast of All About Eve, 11 April 2019.

Livecasting and the Notion of Comfortable Theatre

Works Cited “Aviva to Sponsor National Theatre Live.” 2010. Aviva.com, September 23. https://www.aviva.com/newsroom/news-releases/2010/09/aviva-to-sponsornational-theatre-live-8059/ (accessed: May 21, 2019). Bennett, Susan. 2018. “Shakespeare’s New Marketplace: The Places of Event Cinema.” In: Pascale Aebischer et al., eds. Shakespeare and the ‘Live’ Theatre Broadcast Experience. London: The Arden Shakespeare, 41-58. Billington, Michael. 2017. “Imelda Staunton Is Right: Eating in Your Seat Is a Crime Against Theatre.” The Guardian, March 6. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/ 2017/mar/06/imelda-staunton-eating-theatre (accessed: May 21, 2019). Bourdieu, Pierre. 1989. “Social Space and Symbolic Power.” Sociological Theory 7.1: 14-25. Butsch, Richard. 2008. The Citizen Audience: Crowds, Publics, and Individuals. New York: Routledge. Crary, Jonathan. 1990. Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, MA/London: MIT Press. Fischer-Lichte, Erika. 2008. The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics. London: Routledge. Fletcher-Watson, Ben. 2015. “Relaxed Performance: Audiences with Autism in Mainstream Theatre.” Scottish Journal of Performance 2.2: 61-89. Foucault, Michel. 1986. “Of Other Spaces.” Diacritics 16.1: 22-27. Georgi, Claudia. 2014. Liveness on Stage: Intermedial Challenges in Contemporary British Theatre and Performance. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Random House. Heim, Caroline. 2016. Audience as Performer: The Changing Role of Theatre Audiences in the Twenty-First Century. London/New York: Routledge. Hytner, Nicholas. 2012. Travelling Light Post-Show Q and A. YouTube, February 17. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzrq_KJe0SE&feature=youtu.be (accessed: May 21, 2019). Jenkins, Henry. 2006. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: NYU Press. Jenkins, Henry et al. 2013. Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture. New York: NYU Press. Johnson, Dominic. 2012. Theatre & the Visual. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Jordan, Richard. 2016. “Is This the Worst West End Audience Ever?” The Stage, July 12. www.thestage.co.uk/opinion/2016/richard-jordan-is-this-worst-westend-audience-ever (accessed: May 21, 2019). Kershaw, Baz. 2001. “Oh for Unruly Audiences! Or, Patterns of Participation in Twentieth-Century Theatre.” Modern Drama 44.2: 133-154.

225

226

Heidi Liedke

Leavis, Frank Raymond. 2006 [1930]. “Mass Civilisation and Minority Culture.” In: John Storey, ed. Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 12-20. Liedke, Heidi. 2019. “In Appreciation of ‘Mis-’ and ‘Quasi-’: Quasi-Experts in the Context of Live Theatre Broadcasting.” Platform, Special Issue ‘On Criticism’ 13.1: 86-102. MacArthur, Michelle. 2016. “Crowdsourcing the Review and the Record: A Collaborative Approach to Theatre Criticism and Archiving in the Digital Age.” In: Duška Radosavljević, ed. Theatre Criticism: Changing Landscapes. London/New York: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 255-272. Marx, Karl. 1977. “The Fetishism of Commodities.” In: David McLellan, ed. Karl Marx. Selected Writings. Oxford: Oxford UP, 435-443. Nelson, Robin. 2010. “Experiencer.” In: Sarah Bay-Cheng et al., eds. Mapping Intermediality in Performance. Amsterdam: Amsterdam UP, 45. NESTA. 2011. NT Live: Digital Broadcast of Theatre, Learning From the Pilot Season, June 1. http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/nt-live (accessed: May 20, 2019). NT Live. n.d. “About Us.” http://ntlive.nationaltheatre.org.uk/about-us (accessed: May 20, 2019). Ong, Walter J. 2002 [1982]. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London/New York: Routledge. Ridout, Nicholas. 2012. “Mis-Spectatorship, or, ‘redistributing the sensible’.” In: Gabriela Giannachi et al., eds. Archaeologies of Presence: Art, Performance and the Persistence of Being. London: Routledge, 172-182. —. 2013. Passionate Amateurs: Theatre, Communism, and Love. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Sedgman, Kirsty. 2015. Review of Coughing and Clapping: Investigating Audience Experience, edited by Karen Burland & Stephanie Pitts. Cultural Trends 24.4: 324-326. —. 2018. The Reasonable Audience: Theatre Etiquette, Behaviour Policing, and the Live Performance Experience. Basingstoke: Palgrave Pivot. Stein, Louisa Ellen. 2015. Millennial Fandom: Television Audiences in the Transmedia Age. Iowa City: Iowa UP. Stone, Alison. 2016. “Not Making a Movie: The Livecasting of Shakespeare Stage Productions by The Royal National Theatre and The Royal Shakespeare Company.” Shakespeare Bulletin 34.4: 627-643. Suvin, Darko. 1985. “The Performance Text as Audience-Stage Dialog Inducing a Possible World.” Versus 42.3: 1-16.

Discomforting Silences in Alt-Right America, 2019 Simon Strick A military march is heard from offstage, and a cannon fires. Hamlet: “What warlike noise is this?" William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2

Excuse me, going off on a tangent. In this volume, so many authors have spent words getting comfortable with theorising the dynamics of comfort and discomfort that I can think of few better closures than a reflection on the dis/comforts of silence. Ending things with silence requires at least a nod to the tradition of Hamlet, which also clues us into silence’s dialectic of sorts: the Danish prince makes his exit with “The rest is silence (dies)”, while the military movements of Fortinbras flood the stage with the soundings of war. When silence is the conclusion, the noise of war is pulled from the background into the stage light. This article investigates two and a half instances of such political and politicised silence that foreground the discomforting media cacophonies battling out the current culture war. They have become the constant ambient noise to our academic thinking in cultural studies. Silence is staged and enacted in these examples, and they are here read to make this noise audible to us inhabitants of a cultural warzone. The examples operate in different ways: I read one as ‘progressive’ because it destabilises a collective through silence in order to possibly make it more receptive to the situation; the other is read as ‘reactionary’ because its silence assembles a collective as adversarial and therefore less porous to change or compromise. My sympathies will and should be explicit in this article, and the conclusion hopefully explains why. I begin with a half-example of how violence and silence can interrelate and will seize briefly on an important metatext to silence and violence: Gus Van Sant’s quasi-wordless movie Elephant (2003) depicts an assortment of American Hamlets traversing long hallways of their school before two of them erupt in violence. The movie fictionalises the school shooting of Columbine, Colorado, and juxtaposes violent noise with discomforting quiet: the character of Eric Harris, one of the two adolescent shooters who killed twelve people and injured 21 more in their lo-

228

Simon Strick

cal high school in 1999, is shown walking through the lively cafeteria of his high school, days before the massacre. As he pauses, the aural commotion – clatter of plates and chatter of students – is amplified in the soundtrack to a cacophony; Harris’ character holds his head in anguish, flooded by the terror of the ordinary. The moment is recalled in the film’s conclusion, as the now active shooter – clad in tactical gear – again enters the now deserted cafeteria, an unmoving body lying on the floor, chairs, trays, and backpacks forming a disarrayed still life of what panic leaves behind. The warlike noises of school and shooting have disappeared, and the soundtrack reveals birds singing. The killer sits to enjoy the calm; the viewer is profoundly shaken by it. What does this suggest? This protagonist has dispensed gunshots and death to produce silence, to extract the noisy violence that was woven into his everyday experience of school. Now, like a surgeon after having removed a tumour, he sits down to take a sip from a forgotten plastic cup, seizing the moment to relax and listen to the stillness wrought. To get comfortable in this public space, characterised as warlike and hostile by sound design, he fabricated the silence that always comes after gunshots. The other shooter, modelled after Dylan Klebold, enters into the calm to enumerate the names of costudents he has killed. He is shot mid-sentence by Eric Harris’ character. This detail (as well as others) is the film’s fictionalisation, and one wonders how this fiction of an improvised two-boy-commando turning on each other should offer any narrative comfort. What we know is what the film shows: adolescence, the terror and insecurity and little comforts of the everyday, the dynamic precarities of student life, and violence that seems to still or staunch a desire for calm. All these are gathered up in a confluence and looking for a way out, looking for and not finding (maybe narrative, maybe emotional) closure. At least this is what my students suggested to me; they found it hard to accept that the film does not try to ‘make sense’ of the shooters’ acts. My students were looking for a way out, too; a trajectory to achieve the comfortable posture and distance of a ‘we’ that now better understands ‘them’. Learning, or yearning, to differentiate. The film does offer scattered scenes of being bullied, of homosexual love, a fascination with fascism, and violent computer games but never singles out one ‘motivation’ to explain. We wish for a single, clearly delineated ‘motivation’ that retrospectively makes clear how school and/or society have come to produce a deadly ‘pathology’ in certain boys, but the movie denies any such certainty. There is no psychological diagnosis, no symptomatic nods to societal problems, no tipping point from student to shooter. What we get instead is the ambiguity of a fragmented ordinary world. If anything, Elephant renders the movements and bodily composure of a school shooter to evoke the same awkward corporeality that a teenager performs stacking books at the library. The body that slumps in chemistry class is the body that kills or gets killed in the hallway. The film follows several students on their daily routines

Discomforting Silences in Alt-Right America, 2019

traversing the hallways, and these only begin to differ from each other once the violence enforces a distinction between killer and victim. There is no (psychological or sociological) ‘motivation’ to explain this catastrophic differentiation, no inherent evil or malice, no sudden transformation from awkward student to psychotic killer. Rather, there is the enigma of young people being variously and simultaneously languid, violent, excited, bothered, murderous, friendly, fussy, terrified. Intensities and improvised trajectories form to different results and scenes that everyone seems half comfortable with in this uneven tapestry of events and affects called school life,1 and the small domestic scenes orbiting it. Violence, the movie suggests, emerges from within this ordinary rather than cutting into it. More often than not, it does not, and ‘nothing happens’ (the ordinary) happens instead: people get their degrees, get jobs, move to a different city, grow up. This ordinary of Elephant’s school-life is a ‘messy’ situation in the sense that we do not know which way it will swing or why it finally does. The film ingeniously demonstrates this by following various student characters on their similar walks and by showing the same scene of casual conversation (a picture is being taken for a photography project) in the hallway from three different perspectives: no matter the focalisation, the scene is always equally detached, unremarkable, ordinary – never that different, but it is resolved in the eventual separation between killer, victim, and survivor. I think it is important, as Kathleen Stewart registers in her book Ordinary Affects (2007), that ‘the ordinary’ is a messy scene with many possible inputs and outcomes. To make sense of it means to get comfortable with that which affords little signification and – in this case of a fictionalised Columbine, Colorado – offers no comfort.2 Giving unequivocality to the ambiguity of things would be comforting, but Gus Van Sant’s movie makes explanatory power seem fleeting and dissipating. Scholarly and other interpretations long for the comfort of denotation, for the arrangement of signifiers in a consequential and talkative row, so that we know our way around a text, a discourse, an event, a world. Understanding things, having an orientation in them, containing them in analytical or descriptive language, making them speak, that is comfort. This article is no different in longing for it. So we talk, and discuss, and write, marching down the paragraphs of our analyses and outrage and sadness like all-to-familiar hallways.

1

2

‘Affect’ as a term and concept will circulate throughout this article. My primary references for affect theory, in addition to those already unfolded in this volume, are Stewart (2007) and Gould (2010). For a discussion of the Columbine shootings in the light of aggrieved masculinity, see Kalish/Kimmel (2010).

229

230

Simon Strick

1. March for Our Lives Silence can cut into this longing and this marching; it does so in my first example. On March 24th 2018, a month after the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, in which 17 people were killed and 17 more injured, a march occurred in Washington DC. Dubbed March for Our Lives, an estimated 200,000 to 800,000 gathered around Pennsylvania Avenue, joining the biggest youth-led protests since the Vietnam War era, co-organised by the gun-control advocacy group Never Again MSD. The televised event, attended by many celebrities and described as a possible “tipping point” for national gun control legislation (Miller 2018), found a climactic moment in an unexpected contribution. Then 18-year-old Parkland-survivor Emma González did something unique in the current mediasphere of constant opinion noise: in her speech, she remained silent. Two minutes into her presentation, González stopped speaking, saying nothing for four minutes but looking straight ahead into the audience. She then, on the prompt of an alarm clock, concluded: Since the time that I came out here, it has been 6 minutes and 20 seconds. The shooter has ceased shooting, and will soon abandon his rifle, blend in with the students as they escape, and walk free for an hour before arrest. Fight for your lives before it’s someone else’s job. (Lopez 2018) González’ silence was not a ceremony of commemoration or part of those institutionally mandated ‘moments of silence’ that puncture our receptive (and consumptive) rhythms of tragedy: shock – outrage – reflection – mourning – political demand. This silence rather ripped into those discursive and collective scripts. Not preordained by protocol but forced upon a confused audience, it produced a tension that few attendees could bear. From the TV transmission we can parse some of the shared discomforts taking hold in these few minutes: people erupted into applause and ceased to clap, chants of “Never Again” assembled and fell apart, fists were defiantly raised and self-consciously taken down. González cried, people were crying also, or chatting among each other, taking selfies. A woman approached González on stage and whispered something to her to no visible effect. Cameras panned aimlessly for appropriate reaction shots in order to ‘document’ or ‘capture’ public feelings of mourning, resolve, and/or anger. The audience and its media surveyors were looking for a release to the tension and ‘flailed about’, looking for possible modes of structuring the event, of affirming themselves, devising a possible narration, a possible orientation within the silence. I use ‘flailing’ in Lauren Berlant’s sense, articulated in her article “Genre Flailing”. Her reflection on academic and political practices in this time of Trumpist unravelling of political and lived worlds offers itself as a powerful description of epistemological discomfort:

Discomforting Silences in Alt-Right America, 2019

genre flailing is a mode of crisis management that arises after an object, or object world, becomes disturbed in a way that intrudes on one’s confidence about how to move in it. We genre flail so that we don’t fall through the cracks of heightened affective noise into despair, suicide, or psychosis. (Berlant 2018) One aspect of genre flailing, as Berlant explains, is that a scholar might not be able to distinguish between analysis or interest in an object and their obsession with that object. So, one comes to occupy different genres – analysis, metacommentary, rant, evasion, historicisation, protest, demand – in the hope of regaining orientation, a foothold for possible critique or interpretation, or anything really. What is true for the academic trying to make sense of the ‘public sphere’ is also true for a crowd longing for affirmation and receiving silence: for four minutes at the March for Our Lives, there was no release and no closure, and González forced her ‘affective noise’ onto a discomforted ‘national’3 audience. The collective subjectivity demonstrating against mass murder became ‘a disturbed object’ of her silence and tried to assemble with some futility around different genres of collective or individual reaction: ‘I am here this is happening’-selfies, chants for or against something, or the public display of tears in the hope that others reciprocate lest one’s reaction becomes ‘inappropriate’. People became porous to all sorts of possibilities to resolve or at least work with the tension and discomfort wrought by this silence. We might read González’ ‘performance’ (such terms strain and break sometimes) as a reversal of that normative script of the ‘moment of silence’ by which institutions shape their collectives’ emotional breadth.4 In her unannounced reenactment of that specific 6:20 minute-interval of violence and dying and escape, González displaced the scripts of mourning and reflection that collective silence after tragedy is supposed to afford. Such discomforting silence, in this reading, could contribute to what Roi Wagner has called instances of “micro political resistance” (2012: 99), that is a disruption of dominant scripts of power that make silent and let speak. It does so because it makes room to affectively register and foreground 3

4

In Trump’s time, or the time of what David Neiwert terms “Alt-America” (2017), I want to at least bracket the term ‘national’, since this project has become so fundamentally disturbed and warlike. This section’s reflection owes a lot to a 2016 lecture in Berlin given by Prof. Edwin Hill, author of Black Soundscapes White Stages: The Meaning of Francophone Sound in the Black Atlantic (2013). Under the title “Black Static”, Hill analysed the pertinent normative dynamics of ‘moments of silence’ that were performed nationally after the Charlie Hebdo-massacre in France. He pointed to the colonial agendas implicit therein: muslim or non-white students who refused to participate in the mandated observation of ‘national silence’ were reprimanded and subsequently surveilled, their ‘refusal to remain silent’ taken as evidence of disloyalty to the nation and its shocked unity and sympathy for the terrorists. When the nation’s body is silent, those voicing dissent – and any voicing can be ‘dissent’ in such moments – can be expunged from the collective. Sadly, this lecture is unpublished and Mr Hill did not respond to requests.

231

232

Simon Strick

those intervals of violence that a public assembles its collective emotions and its righteousness around. González’ silence also showed how difficult it is to follow the public sphere’s protocols, how difficult to find words and interpretations while living during wartime. However, disruption and resistance might be terms too large for what Emma González did: her silence after all occurred on a national stage, was televised by media, and became readily absorbed into the associated genres, which shapes dissensus into ‘powerful moments’ and ‘brave survivors’. Notwithstanding such reservations pertaining to the current media sphere (which I will explore in the next section), something is salvageable by thinking this silence through the concept of ‘dis/comfort’: González temporarily interrupted discursive and collective automatisms and comforts and built an affective sense of discomfort out of silence paired with violence. This discomfort is productive not in that it triggers a wholesale (and thus perchance ‘liberating’) breakdown of discursive norms and thereby allegedly critiques the processes that make them. It is productive because it caused a collective to flail, that means compelled it to improvise for impossible modes of resolution and collectivising – beyond the normative script of outrage, mourning, and political demand that frequently waltzes over the mundane and intimate aspects of the very violence and injustice it protests. It is productive because it gestures to a mode of being affected by this tragedy and this attention that engages the norms of speaking and being silent differently. This is what Sara Ahmed has offered towards a definition of dis/comfort: To feel uncomfortable is precisely to be affected by that which persists in the shaping of bodies and lives. Discomfort is hence not about assimilation or resistance, but about inhabiting norms differently. The inhabitance is generative or productive insofar as it does not end with the failure of norms to be secured, but with the possibilities of living that do not ‘follow’ those norms through. (2014: 155) This is a possibility offered by silence, and González shapes a critical sensibility about what it means to be an actor in the ‘sphere of representation’ and to (impossibly) represent on behalf of those dead or about to die. Roi Wagner also considers this sensibility in his concluding thoughts about how one might speak for a subaltern who has ‘chosen’ to remain silent,5 which might be as close as we can get to a how-to of discomforting silence: The representative should consider, depending on circumstances and discursive partners, whether it is not better to join the subaltern’s silence. The representative should consider, concretely and pragmatically, whether she might not con5

Wagner discusses examples of “subaltern silence as micro political resistance” (2012: 99) in the context of a psychiatric ward and a silent subject detained in limbo by Israeli immigration officials.

Discomforting Silences in Alt-Right America, 2019

duct more power by replicating the subaltern’s forceful silence into the sphere of representation. The representative should consider whether she might not do better standing by the subaltern subject while and in refusing to speak. (2012: 116) The open question arising is, who is the subaltern subject whose silence is joined, and how can we make such silence work to make a collective receptive again?

2. Amid the Noise I came to Emma González’ silence through my research on the Alternative Right and the vexed continuum of reactionary and neofascist noises they produce. For me, this continuum reaches from anonymous postings on illicit (but public) message boards like 4chan and certain corners of reddit.com, to far-right ‘alternative media’ (e.g. Rebel Media, InfoWars, countercurrents.com), to Trump’s administration, to various politically extreme groupings, to acts like the Christchurch massacre in New Zealand of March 2019, which the shooter described in his alleged manifesto as an intervention into the media and culture wars of the West. Predictably, Emma González and the March for Our Lives was ridiculed by the Alternative Right’s media producers as the manifestation of the ‘social justice warrior’, of outrage culture, leftist brainwashing, and so forth. As other media stories latched onto the ‘innocence’ of adolescent survivors and their turn to anti-gun activism, the Alternative Right attacked the “Parkland Teens” Emma González and David Hoggs as media stooges and ‘crisis actors’. Maybe one instance of a plethora of insulting YouTubevideos suffices to illustrate the endless discourse the Alternative Right produces: right-wing opinion leader and white nationalist James Allsup voiced a polemical takedown in his video “March For Our Stupidity” (2018): he presented González and Hoggs as the ‘kiddy front’ to a big-government and big-money conspiracy that aims to expunge the second amendment. Videos like Allsup’s provide affective relays that internet users can ‘tune in’ for emotional amplification, for example in their desire for violence. User Raveglory300 commented on the video, referencing González’ shorn hair: “Hoggs has a very punchable face. Edit: same with the bald girl”. Tuning into ‘right-wing feelings’ in order to funnel violent desires serves to attune oneself to an atmosphere, and it makes the digital feel like home, the bar or breakfast table where you can speak your ’raw’ mind. Or, such affective clustering – an agitated video voice explaining how bad the cultural/political situation is, how ‘they’ are coming for ‘your guns’ and ‘your rights’ in new disguises of smart boys and bald-headed girls – triggers people to relate their own experiences and go off on their own tangents. People like sirsaint88, who also commented on Allsup’s video:

233

234

Simon Strick

I worked in a public school for a decade and have seen some of the things you mention. It’s all about pressuring the kids into ‘groupthink’. Kids are very susceptible to peer pressure, and nowadays they get verbally shredded if they don’t toe the liberal line. They’ve been taught what to think just not how to think like you said. Great video. Keep’em coming. As life’s experiences are shared, uncomfortable observations that feel like private thoughts reach the public context they craved, and ‘unpopular opinions’ of a war going on become truisms. “Our children are being weaponized against us in our public schools”, opines ActualJusticeWarrior (2018) in his video “Exposed: The March For Our Lives” (which YouTube’s algorithm will probably suggest to you if you watch James Allsup’s take). A shared atmosphere becomes the validation of a worldview, and the confirmation of a long history of being uncomfortable with the ‘way things are’ is put into words. The Alternative Right, which media scholar Adrienne Massanari describes correctly as “an amorphous networked community” (2018: 4) that assembles around antifeminism, racism, and ultranationalism, works online to proliferate and disseminate such ‘right-wing feelings’ electronically. They produce affectively charged media environments in which the threats of feminism, immigration, liberal democracy, racial others, a global Jewish conspiracy, anti-white propaganda (all distinctly or as a conjoined ideological force) are made palpable in the ordinary. From ‘ordinary feelings’ flow unmaskings of ideological ‘groupthink’ as well as of a ‘liberal party line’ undermining education and society. Such affects and minute observations collude and amass to confirmations of a de facto dictatorship and/or conspiracy that must be felt before it can be seen. Violence, resentment, and vague feelings of being under siege (“weaponized against us”) latch onto these relays and receive amplification, recognition, and validation in return. Sexism, racism, and their associated white and male power fantasies can flow more easily in such ecologies and travel in digital rants against these ‘crisis actors’ without needing much explication or declaration. They become encoded as affects of ‘resistance’ and ‘unpopular opinions’ and ‘common sense’. In these online spaces, there is no silence; there are constantly marching words and images trying to articulate reactionism and neofascism as ‘ordinary feelings’. The Alternative Right’s foundation is reversal: where a general public discusses immigration or minority representation, the Alternative Right feels an assault on the dominance, normalcy, and culture of ‘us’ (aka white people). Where I see feminism and antiracism as projects of emancipation, they feel a thought police oppressing straight white men, infringing on their ‘okayness’ (Strick 2018), and requiring ‘white emancipation’. Where we leverage criticism against their racist, sexist, and intolerant speech acts, they feel acts of silencing and compound this to a “culture of silence” perpetrated by what they call the “repressive left” (Sargon of Akkad 2018).

Discomforting Silences in Alt-Right America, 2019

They never shut up about their feeling silenced, and endlessly expressing these feelings is their – highly lucrative and highly connective – business model online (Lewis 2018). The Alternative Right on the internet follows two main strategies: 1) they produce transgressions, scandals, and online events (noise) for attention; and 2) use these events and the mediatised public’s reaction to justify and distribute their political views and affective charges to wider audiences. They have a number of modes of activity, and I name the personifications of two: the troll, who gives the media machine something to do, multiplies the points of friction, and feeds on the feedback; and the ideologue, who channels events, signs, and affective states into believable lifeworlds that are centred on white male victimologies. Sometimes, both figures amalgamate into a single format of reactionary entertainment, such as Stephen Crowder, host of the online show “Louder With Crowder” with 4,3 million subscribers (e.g. Crowder 2018). He serves as the Alternative Right’s equivalent to John Oliver, a trollish counter informant who dispenses outrage, statistics, facts, and jokes simultaneously to produce communal moments, in which audiences might realise the ‘madness of the left’ with a laugh and an outrage. In a way, the Alternative Right challenges the discursive comforts offered by traditional media and the comfortable communities addressed by liberal info-comedians like Stephen Colbert and John Oliver. At the same time, they build a differently comforted and comforting community, where laughs and calls for violence are baked into outrage as the seemingly last resort of a marginalised counter public trying to collectivise against a dictatorial left, a corporate regime, a brainwashing education system gone insane. To a certain extent, these cultural confrontations offer the comfort of clear-cut antagonisms to both sides: the discursive ‘other’ seems easy to identify, the frontlines are clear, and strategists can endlessly talk about how they heroically have identified the enemy and what next steps they recommend.

3. (Yet) More Marching for (Yet More) Life From this media ecology cum cultural warzone that the Alternative Right foments comes the second example of a discomforting silence. It presents a rare occurrence, since the Alternative Right (Lewis 2018) presents a mediascape favouring immediate voicings, rapid reactions, instantaneous ‘spins’, and ‘counter-spins’, and fasttalkers that frame fabricated events. Such fast spins are the primary skill of Ben Shapiro, one of the most prominent right-wing political commentators, host of the Ben Shapiro Show podcast, and former editor at Breitbart.com.6 He is also supporting 6

“The top conservative podcast in the nation”, as his website proclaims, with this further laundry list of right-wing paranoia: “Shapiro is the author of seven nonfiction books, including The

235

236

Simon Strick

actor in this second case study on how silence and collective scripts interact in discomforting ways, the event which Wikipedia canonises as the “Lincoln Memorial Confrontation” of January 2019 (Wikipedia 2019). Shapiro, who is Jewish and famous for his argumentative ‘takedowns’ of political correctness, feminism, trans-identities, and pro-choice activism, offers ideological scripts to right-wing sensibilities. Sometimes these scripts reframe all of history within a mythology of right-wing heroism. Such was the case in the speech Shapiro gave at the annual anti-abortion demonstration called March for Life in Washington, 2019, as a prelude to and prescription of the aforementioned confrontation: Just this week, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that pro-lifers were not in line with ‘where we are as a society’. Well, you know what? Maybe they’re right. Maybe we, today, here, are not in line with society, to which I say, good. So were the abolitionists. So were the Civil Rights marchers. So were the martyrs in Rome and the Jews in Egypt. Righteousness doesn’t have to be popular, it just has to be righteous. And so we march. We march for those who can’t. The media will ignore us because they always do. They’ll cover the marches they prefer politically […] They bet that the tens of thousands of us, who brave the cold every year to stand here with the souls of future America, will be forgotten. (LifeSiteNews 2019) This was what Shapiro said at the March for Life on January 18th , as the first of a long line of mostly white speakers promising/demanding an end to abortion. Followed by televised Donald Trump and on-stage Vice President Mike Pence, Shapiro opened the demonstration by framing the attendants in a fictional 2000-year tradition of ‘righteous unpopularity’. Among the audience that morning were 16-year-old Nicholas Sandmann and his fellow students of Covington Catholic High School in Park Hills, Kentucky, who were later that day to become (in)famous actors on the national stage. Maybe Nick Sandmann absorbed Shapiro’s scripting of himself as Civil Rights hero and champion of the forgotten because it made him feel, in Shapiro’s words, “righteous”. It made him feel like being in the right place: we are the abolitionists, the dissidents, and the future of America. Ben Shapiro after all imagined a positive and important future for these Catholic boys, 16 years old and on their day off. After the March for Life, Sandmann and his fellow students likely decked themselves in Trump merchandise – hats, caps, and shawls sporting “Make America Great Again” – and proceeded to walk towards the Lincoln Memorial, where their so-called ‘chaperones’

New York Times bestseller Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America (2012) and national bestsellers Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America’s Youth (2004), Porn Generation: How Social Liberalism Is Corrupting Our Future (2005).” That is all you need to know about Shapiro.

Discomforting Silences in Alt-Right America, 2019

were scheduled to pick them up for the bus ride home.7 Gathering at the stairs of the memorial, the Covington students encountered something unforeseen, a confluence of the disparate elements making up American Culture at the Lincoln Memorial that day: five activists of the ‘Black Hebrew Israelites’ had set up shop at the foot of the Memorial and taunted passersby. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Black Hebrew Israelites are a hate group, embracing ideological tenets such as racial segregation, Holocaust denial, religious homophobia, and the promotion of a race war. Several people with cameras attended the scene, and there are multiple videos available online (e.g. ETADIK Media 2019). Here are some of the things the Black Hebrew Israelites shouted at the mostly white Catholic boys that assembled in their immediate vicinity: “incest babies”, “white ass crackers”, “racist faggots”, “go back to Europe”, and – pointedly – “future school shooters”. This disruption of the fun-having Catholic collective with racial and homophobic call-outs, however, did not prompt an embarrassed silence from the noisy white boys. Instead, they committed a sort of ‘genre flail’ of their own, improvising to keep things and latent aggressions afloat: the about 60 Covington students performed a series of school chants, which they regularly display at the basketball matches of their high school, ‘against’ the Black provocateurs. Such chants are less about communication or agitation but about forming a comforting, noisy collective. They are about joining into a half-serious atmosphere, about feeling coherence and presence through the playful but serious performative warfare against an opponent. Chanting for the Covington boys meant to resort to learned and comforting behaviours of adversarialism, rehearsed at countless school activities, in the face of unexpected aggression. Individuals emerged from the group to stage the next chant by taking off their shirts or leading the group into the next choreography. Such behaviour is, as Nick Sandmann later described it on national TV, not a display of hate but of “school spirit”. As the Covington Boys were gearing up for another chant, a further confluence happened. Several demonstrators from the concurrently happening Indigenous Peoples March entered the scene and inserted themselves between the Black Hebrew Israelites and the Covington Catholics. Omaha tribe member Nathan Phillips led the small group and proceeded to play his drum and chant an indigenous song in order to deescalate the situation, as he later reported. In the ensuing scene, the Covington students dance and sing mockingly to Philips’ song, collectively disparaging the Native American without individually meaning it. They commit to another genre

7

As a short video later revealed, these pro-life Catholic students harassed a group of girls with the comment “It’s not rape if you enjoy it” (Top Arriveria 2019). This comment might have been a spillover-effect of the pro-life rhetoric that had droned on all morning, and the teenagers maybe ‘acted out’ its sexist core.

237

238

Simon Strick

flail, a group effort stuck between racist performance and accepting the de-escalation offered by the chant. Nick Sandmann does not seem to join into this mockery but after some time emerges face to face with Nathan Phillips. Sandmann stands still and silent. An atmosphere of confusion and diffused aggression pervades, but within it, Sandmann singles himself out as the main antagonist to the man playing a drum. The iconic picture is taken: a silent, white boy in a MAGA-hat, smiling or smirking at a Native American activist (see appendix, fig. 1). Echoing the abovecited internet comment that targeted Emma González, media personality and religious critic Reza Aslan tweeted later: “Honest question. Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kid’s?” In the video footage of the event, many people filming with cameras and smartphones can be seen, and further that Sandmann visibly encourages his fellow students to remain ‘passive’. It seems likely that Sandmann chose to remain silent because he was conscious of this concurrent mediatisation framing the scene – this is the era of digitised cultural warfare, after all. Maybe he was thinking about his school’s image, or about the pro-life demonstration his group was associated with, maybe he was even mindful of the political affiliation expressed by his MAGA-hat. Maybe he was trying to ‘cancel out’ the political noise of the scene, the palpable confrontation of ethnic and political camps caught in disparate moments of ‘activism’. One of the Native American protestors explicated the ’racialized situation’ to one of the Catholic boys: “We have been here for a million fucking years, you have only been here for a couple of generations. Go back to Europe.” Like an answer to this call, Sandmann motions his fellow student to keep silent. With several cameras and smartphones pointed at him, Sandmann was trying to produce an image of himself – an icon of harmlessness or of silent defiance: remaining silent not for the ‘discomforting silence’, but for the optics. Sandmann leaves a short time after this confrontation, most other Covington boys follow, and Nathan Philipps raises his drum in a victorious gesture. The Hebrew Israelites continue their discussion with the remaining audience, and their leader has no problem to stay afloat of the volatile ebbs and flows of the situation: he spits further inflammatory statements, is visibly comfortable doing it, and exclaims with a laugh: “Your president is a homosexual!” Again, this assemblage of various groups and motions gathered at the Lincoln memorial might have swung either way. It offers rich material for a whole host of possible narrations and resolutions: there are radical activists articulating a Black religious identity against white and Jewish dominance, disparaging white Catholic boys with a flurry of insults. There are school boys performing an institutionalised masculine and white culture and political attachment to the Trump administration, reclaiming their collectivity. There are Native American activists working against their silencing in the American public sphere with the slogan “We are still here” – a traditional motto of the Native American Movement highlighting the ongoing

Discomforting Silences in Alt-Right America, 2019

colonial and genocidal history of the US. The Covington event is a confluence of these disparate movements, discourses, even populations. In this confusing moment, Nick Sandmann seizes on a script or an affect that the Alternative Right strategically intensifies and weaponises: the affect of affirming presence amidst alleged calls to disappear. His choice to remain silent and face to face with Nathan Phillips can be read through what Kathleen Stewart describes under the heading The Affective Subject: “The affective subject is a collection of trajectories and circuits. Out there on its own, it seeks out scenes and little worlds to nudge itself into being. It wants to be somebody. It tries to lighten up, to free itself, to learn to be itself.” (2007: 59) Nick Sandmann sought out such a scene and seized on what presented itself to him to assemble that scene – whether by instinct, choice, or opportunity is as difficult to answer as it is unimportant for the scene’s interpretation. His trajectory, that corporeal script giving him composure, determination, and a sense of self, was maybe foretold in Ben Shapiro’s earlier narration of who he is: a Civil Rights hero, a white, conservative somebody standing tall for the forgotten, for those exiled and to be excluded from the American present (“Go back to Europe”). Within this trajectory, Sandmann shed the (suddenly) ungainly performance of school chants and choreographies, and entered into a different mode of corporeal presence: smilingly standing his ground, comfortably affirming his position with a smile vis-a-vis an African American extremist and an Indigenous American activist. Whether Sandmann’s decision is carried by a precise political agenda or a longstewing ‘radicalisation’ is in my opinion less interesting to investigate – trajectories and scripts seize upon us as much as we surf on them spontaneously or with intent. Of interest is the spontaneity of the scene and Sandmann’s clear effort to improvise with a new tonality of white presence in contrast to the insults and the school chants. He departs from the playful and juvenile mood of his in-group to arrive at a different atmosphere, a different trajectory to nudge himself into being. I may overinterpret this scene of gestural politics, but why not, and moreover, what to do instead? Reveal (as some have done) this boy and his school as being ‘white nationalist’ all along? Defend this smile as innocent and only becoming adversarial by context? These are less interesting resolutions to approach this scene, which is marked in my opinion by the new script of whiteness that Sandmann improvises on: where former whiteness may have politely ignored or evaded the Native American activist against white colonialism and violence (maybe called the police) to retain its ‘default’ status, Sandmann’s relaunched whiteness accepted the adversarial position vis-a-vis the colonised as if a white smirk would enact a disruption of discursive power and protocol. This is a new script made available through the culture war that the Alternative Right wages and the atmosphere it creates: that there is a constant demand for white and male removal (“Go back to Europe”), room-making (“We are still here”),

239

240

Simon Strick

and silence, and that a mere continued presence of white men can be claimed in itself as a disruption and critique of this ‘war against white men’. Sandmann’s silent affect – of not being moved, of visibly making his comfort in this adversarial place – seized on this trajectory, tapped into this mood, and ‘hit a nerve’: the endlessly productive meme machine of the Alternative Right made the valences of his silence explicit, rebranding the Covington student as the culture war’s latest icon, expressed in the slogan Stand Your Ground (see appendix, fig. 2). This slogan has at least two modalities or echo effects, which implicitly suffuse not only the posters and memes but also Nick Sandmann’s performance: “Stand your ground” denotes a set of laws in place in several American states, allowing weapon carriers to shoot in self-defence when a perceived threat does not remove itself. George Zimmermann, who shot unarmed Black teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012, was acquitted from murder charges on the grounds of Florida’s Stand Your Ground laws (Coates 2013). “Stand your ground” also – much like the Native American slogan “We are still here” – echoes a speech act uttered by the white nationalists that demonstrated in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. They proclaimed “You will not replace us” and “Jews will not replace us”, referencing the idea of ‘white genocide’ and what is known as the ‘Great Replacement’-theory. Sandmann figured as that white body which defiantly withstood replacement. My point here is less that Nick Sandmann or the other Covington Students committed a hate crime, displayed racist behaviour, or are personally associated with white nationalism.8 Such descriptions in my view reduce racism to ‘the thing racist people do’ and moreover fail to address the problem of the Alternative Right’s affective core: it is more an amorphous network than an inventory of racists, more an atmosphere than a series of criminal acts, more a situational gesture than an ingrained ideological belief. None of these aspects excludes the others. Sandmann seized on an affective trajectory that calls forth white subjects and white bodies to remain and stand ground in the face of alleged removal, and the call to disappear and make room, to “go back to Europe”. It calls on white bodies to make their comfort in this ‘assailed positionality’, and to claim this comfort as victory and necessary defiance. The ambient feeling of always being threatened with removal, of having to stand one’s ground, of assuring one’s continued presence in the face of replacement and deposition, is the core of what I call the Alternative Right. The Alternative Right is an affective movement, a circuit and trajectory instilling a sense of presence, of self, of place, and of future. If this sounds vague, it makes something understandable about the New Right that Sara Ahmed has called attention to some years 8

Again, James Allsup produced a video about the event that sought to polemicise and mock the media’s discussion of Sandmann’s racism (Allsup 2019). Allsup tiraded that “standing still is white supremacy”. Affectively speaking, I would argue it indeed is.

Discomforting Silences in Alt-Right America, 2019

ago in her text “Fascism as Love” (2014: 122ff.): the various forms of right-wing and neo-fascist agitation do not capitalise on hate (exclusion) anymore, but on love and validation for allegedly victimised whites and men. This weaponises their feelings of casual, quotidian unease and connects them to a trajectory of righteous resistance, of standing ground. It re-centres whiteness, masculinity, and heterosexuality in adversarial comfort. This posits a different explanatory mode than for example Michael Kimmel’s (2017) frequently quoted ‘aggrieved entitlement’, which he uses to describe the politics of angry white men. The Alternative Right does not stop at uniting in grief over endangered privileges and lost invisibilities – its protagonists proceed to make their comfort in standing antagonised, and follow this adversarial comfort into different trajectories ranging from angry posting to voting to terrorist murder. What the ‘Lincoln Memorial Confrontation’ demonstrates in my opinion is something rather frightening: that an increasing number of people, like Nick Sandmann, are learning to produce such standings from scratch, comfortably improvising with the scripts of white victimhood and white defiance they have been given. They do so, like everybody I suppose, because they have what Kathleen Stewart calls “dreams of presence” (2007: 21). They simply want to belong, to believably occupy a public scene. The Alternative Right’s affective service and delusion is to distribute such feelings of being replaced to those (white men) looking for them.

4. Scholarly Noise and Silence There are also dreams of academic presence, of course. Of being read, cited, of contributing to the furthering of critical analysis. The wonderful editors of this volume pointed out that – rather than staying silent about my positionality on the silences here discussed – I should include some sort of academic self-reflection in order to make explicit the political and interpretational stance that I have taken here. I agree that it is necessary to make that kind of scholarly noise. I think so for at least two reasons: first, the humanities have become one of the primary targets of the Alternative Right’s agitation, as is visible from the myriad attacks and defamations against gender studies, queer studies, and many other fields (Strick 2019a). That such attacks often successfully discredit our profession in the public’s eye is also owed to the problem that this public is aware of few other narrations or gestures regarding what gender studies or cultural studies are about. To take a political stance here, to say that white nationalism flows through the improvised gestures of 16-year-old boys, and that this calls for different ways to explain the New Right or the current cultural climate, is an effort to develop a different image of what the humanities can do and what they might stand for. I have serious doubts that the humanities can or should survive on a diet of meta-cultural-commentary, literary

241

242

Simon Strick

exegesis, and neutral historicisation – in the face of a Trump administration or an AFD lobbying against higher education in these fields, or in the face of right-wing agitators calling student protests against them ‘thought policing’ and ‘Linksfaschismus’. I prefer not to be silent on these affective charges, and scholarly neutrality for me is not a good way to effectively dodge them. Such reasoning is pretty straightforward, a choice of sides in the conflicts of the present; the acknowledgment that higher education is an ‘actor’ in this cultural scene. The second reason makes this choice more complicated because I do not think refusing to be silent means to commence yelling countercharges. That is not where I think my scholarly comfort or discomfort lies. I want to explain this. In a 2017 TED-talk, Nigerian-American motivational speaker and activist Luvvie Ajayi had the following to say about this volume’s topic: I realize comfort is overrated. Because being quiet is comfortable. […] And all comfort has done is maintain the status quo. So we've got to get comfortable with being uncomfortable by speaking these hard truths when they’re necessary. […] In a world that wants us to whisper, I choose to yell. (TED 2018) When I, rube from West Germany, was studying at Humboldt University in EastBerlin, seeking my home in the dynamics of early 2000s gender studies, queer critique, and postcolonial rethinkings, this precise dialectic between comfort and yelling was the privileged mode of scholarly voicings. Our scholarship was to be about hard truths and revealing deconstructions, spoken to produce discomfort in hegemonies exposed, all the while displaying comfortable command of the theories necessary to do so. Some of us chose to yell in theory, as it were, to disrupt the comforts of canon, of disciplinary boundaries, of hegemonic knowledges, and clandestine power structures. The idea was (and is) scholarship informed by activism – down with the comfortable status quo of knowledge production and invisible hierarchies. To me, it is telling that such gestural politics of ‘producing discomfort’ have now found their way into the genre of the TED-talk – a prominent example of neoliberalism’s remaking of critical intervention into a comfortably marketable event. Ajayi’s demand to “leave the comfort zone” – for activist yells instead of status quo-whispers – becomes wonderfully commodified in contemporary “attention economies” (Goldhaber 1997) and their neoliberal dynamics to produce a steady rhythm of disruption and stagnation. TED-talks make heard to forget, and canonise to outsource. But apart from such neoliberal cooption of activist gesturing, I cannot help but acknowledge that the Alternative Right has fully adopted the language of ‘hard truths’ and ‘ideology critique’ at this juncture. Ben Shapiro’s aforementioned rundown of a counterhistory of ‘pro-lifers as dissidents’ is only the most hyperbolic example of how the New Right has successfully remodelled itself as a subversive, marginalised, and indeed anti-colonial force that exposes (left) hegemony, (fem-

Discomforting Silences in Alt-Right America, 2019

inist) oppression, and the (racist) discrimination of white men. Researching for some years the Alternative Right’s echo-chambers and also their less echo-y media venues, I have come to realise that everybody on the internet forums and the real-world marches has already subscribed to this particular form of comfort distilled from speaking that ‘uncomfortable’ thing, anticipating that ‘antagonism’ by the ‘status quo’ that I and others supposedly represent. The Alternative Right is very “comfortable with being uncomfortable”, and the streams of money- and attentionrevenue they generate help to distribute this comfort to more people. They use familiar but inverted languages, talking and posting and protesting against reverse racism, reverse sexism, male and white identity politics, and the colonising force of feminism. They are handing my scholarly vocabularies back to me as inverted and disturbed objects, but with the same gestural politics that I once absorbed. It would be too easy to simply follow these reversals by stating that not comfort, but speaking up “is overrated”, so I am not going to state that. Rather, this article has compared two instances of discomforting silence in the present United States of 2019, mainly in order to reorient myself in this disturbed object world. What are the possible uses of silence in a public sphere assembled around yells and attention? One silence was enacted on behalf of the victims of the death machine that American culture in part presents, the other on behalf of a defiant refusal to make room for critics of this death machine. Emma González silently disrupted public protocols of protest, outrage, and mourning to reclaim the ‘time of dying’ at the Washington Mall. She reclaimed the fear and desperation of young people against gun lobbies, inactive politicians, and a culture that prioritises discursive agitation over the acknowledgement of loss. Nick Sandmann’s silence primarily disrupted scripts of his peers’ white juvenile behaviour in order to (re)claim white male unassailability at the Lincoln memorial. He did so against political correctness, Native American protests against colonisation and genocide, and maybe against the hateful words of Black separatists. Coming back to my observation on scholarly discourse made in this conclusion, I would argue that there is no ‘qualitative’ or ‘aesthetic’ difference between these silences – meaning a difference that would help us as scholars to sort this out in scholarly aka academically neutral terms. Both silences could be claimed to ‘disrupt’ protocol and to make the violence they protest against visible.9 However, there is a stark difference in their respective performativity and effect: González’ silence opened up a discursive monoculture (a protest against gun culture) to all sorts of spontaneous resolutions and impasses. It allowed, as González herself did, a collective to be overwhelmed and confused, to abandon conventions of protest and 9

Nick Sandmann sued several media outlets for defamation after the incident because they had depicted him as a racist and not as a person bravely standing in the face of racist aggression.

243

244

Simon Strick

look for alternatives. Sandmann’s silence, by contrast, solidified a discursive ambience into rigid antagonisms, in which the canonised cohorts of America’s brutal history stood against each other, again. The difference here is one of affect, which is said to be right-wing populism’s primary tool of agitation: the instilling of polarising feelings in large populations (people vs elites, autochthones vs immigrants, and so forth). Sandmann and the rigidly bifurcated readings that mainstream and right-wing media subsequently attributed to the scene were uniquely successful in reinforcing such reductive readings of the scene, and of American culture at large. In my honest opinion, I think the answer to the Right’s reductions is not to come up with counterreductions (which many academic reactions to the New Right have offered), but rather to acknowledge – as Emma González did – that one is indeed overwhelmed, exhausted, and struggling for orientation. That one may find the traditional genres of the humanities inefficient to get a grip: contextualising analyses, historicising closures, and deconstructions to me seem insufficient to make the warlike and present noise stop, as we have entered a time of gestural politics, of having to work and feel amid such noise. What I mean is not just that gestures are now political (they have been the longest time, as Rosa Parks and Emmett Till remind us) but rather that a new system of scholarly gestures should be found, a different quality and tonality of doing the work of the humanities. Simply put: when gender studies (cultural studies, postcolonial studies, …) is both academically and socially marginalised, while also being attacked as the colonising, oppressive, and all-engulfing force of “Gender Ideology” (as the right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland puts it), what are its possible operative modes? With little consolidated structure to withdraw to and little public support for one’s analytical answers to the charges made, where does one go? How does one write? One answer is to become porous and attentive to one’s own exhaustion (Strick 2019b), to make one’s dis/comfort in it, and to find languages and gestures that can transmit ways of being porous to other genres and other people, to develop other interpretational modes and affective charges, other ways of staying busy nonetheless. Like the chorus of that Talking Heads’ song suggested: “Why stay in college? Why go to night school? / Gonna be different this time / Can’t write a letter, can’t send a postcard / I ain’t got no time for that now.” This is life during wartime and there is pressure on the humanities, so what do we make/have/need time for?

Discomforting Silences in Alt-Right America, 2019

Appendix

Fig. 1 Iconic picture of the Lincoln Memorial Confrontation. (News Break).

Fig. 2 Stand Your Ground. (Anonymous).

245

246

Simon Strick

Works Cited Actual Justice Warrior. 2018. “Exposed: The March For Our Lives.” YouTube, April 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpQ6gtWzs2Q&frags=pl%2Cwn (accessed: October 19, 2019). Ahmed, Sara. 2014. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. London: Routledge. Allsup, James. 2018. “March For Our Stupidity.” YouTube, March 26. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=S8XssXVGXyQ&frags=pl%2Cwn (accessed: October 19, 2019). —. 2019. “MAGA Hat Teens Trigger Twitter Witch Hunt.” YouTube, January 20. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eLvn6R-xkA&frags=pl%2Cwn (accessed: October 19, 2019). Anonymous. “standyourground.png”. Gates of Vienna, https://gatesofvienna.net/ wp-content/uploads/2019/01/standyourground.png (accessed: December 2, 2019). Berlant, Lauren. 2018. “Genre Flailing.” Capacious: Journal for Emerging Affect Inquiry 1.2. http://capaciousjournal.com/article/genre-flailing/ (accessed: October 19, 2019). Coates, Ta-Nehisi. 2013. “How Stand Your Ground Relates To George Zimmerman.” The Atlantic, July 16. https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/07/ how-stand-your-ground-relates-to-george-zimmerman/277829/ (accessed: October 19, 2019). Crowder, Stephen. 2018. “REBUTTAL: Vox’s Latest Anti-Gun/NRA Propaganda! | Louder With Crowder.” YouTube, March 26. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=aM88wp03DNo&frags=pl%2Cwn (accessed: October 19, 2019). Elephant. 2003. Directed by Gus Van Sant. Fine Line Features / HBO Films. ETADIK Media. 2019. “FULL ‘the Native American Elder Attacked By MAGAHatted Teens’ Video.” YouTube, January 21. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= 47zsrDHphGY&frags=pl%2Cwn (accessed: October 19, 2019). Goldhaber, Michael H. 1997. “The Attention Economy and the Net.” First Monday 2.4. https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v2i4.519 (accessed: October 19, 2019). Gould, Deborah. 2010. “On Affect and Protest.” In: Janet Staiger et al., eds. Political Emotions. London: Routledge, 18-44. Hill, Edwin. 2013. Black Soundscapes White Stages: The Meaning of Francophone Sound in the Black Atlantic. Baltimore, Maryland: John Hopkins UP. Kalish, Rachel & Michael Kimmel. 2010. “Suicide by Mass Murder: Masculinity, Aggrieved Entitlement, and Rampage School Shootings.” Health Sociology Review 19:4: 451-464. Kimmel, Michael. 2017. Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era. New York: Nation Books.

Discomforting Silences in Alt-Right America, 2019

Lewis, Rebecca. 2018. “Alternative Influence Report.” Data & Society, September 18. https://datasociety.net/output/alternative-influence/ (accessed: October 19, 2019). LifeSiteNews. 2019. “Ben Shapiro at March for Life.” YouTube, January 18. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkrJawCk7J0&frags=pl%2Cwn (accessed: October 19, 2019). López, Germán. 2018. “Emma González’s Incredible Moment of Silence at March for Our Lives.” Vox, March 25. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/ 2018/3/24/17159916/march-for-our-lives-emma-gonzalez-silence (accessed: October 19, 2019). Massanari, Adrienne L. 2018. “Rethinking Research Ethics, Power, and the Risk of Visibility in the Era of the ‘Alt-Right’ Gaze.” Social Media + Society, April-June: 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305118768302 (accessed: October 19, 2019). Miller, Susan. 2018. “‘We will be the Last Mass Shooting’: Florida Students Want to be Tipping Point in Gun Debate.” USA TODAY, February 18. https://eu. usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/02/17/we-last-mass-shooting-floridastudents-might-tipping-point-gun-debate/347992002/ (accessed: October 19, 2019). Neiwert, David. 2017. Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump. New York: Verso. News Break. “Statement of Nick Sandmann, Covington Catholic High School junior, regarding incident at the Lincoln Memorial [CNN, 2019-01-21].” https:// www.newsbreak.com/news/1257784356586/statement-of-nick-sandmanncovington-catholic-high-school-junior-regarding-incident-at-the-lincolnmemorial (accessed: December 2, 2019). @rezaaslan. 2019. “Honest question. Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kid’s?” Twitter, 19. Jan. 6:04 p.m. Sargon of Akkad. 2018. “Culture of Silence | Brendan O’Neill Interview.” YouTube, November 9. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obvOCp-4QZY&frags=pl% 2Cwn (accessed: October 19, 2019). Stewart, Kathleen. 2007. Ordinary Affects. Durham: Duke UP. Strick, Simon. 2018. “Alt-Right Affekt: Transgressionen und Provokationen.” Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaften 19: 113-125. —. 2019a. “Sokal Squared, Jordan Peterson und die rechten Affektbrücken von Siegen.” Special Issue “Neue Rechte und Universität”, ed. by AG Siegen Denken. Navigationen - Zeitschrift für Medien und Kulturwissenschaften 19.2: 65-86. —. 2019b. “TIRED TRUMP oder: Die Ermüdung der Theorie.” In: Lars Koch et al., eds. The Great Disruptor: Über Trump, die Medien und die Politik der Herabsetzung. Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler, 21-46.

247

248

Simon Strick

TED. 2018. “Get comfortable with being uncomfortable | Luvvie Ajayi.” YouTube, January 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QijH4UAqGD8 (accessed: October 19, 2019). Top Arriveria. 2019. “Covington MAGA teens on abortion due to rape: ‘It’s not rape if you enjoy it.’” YouTube, January 22. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= CqUh7nlXn2k (accessed: October 19, 2019). Wagner, Roi. 2012. “Silence as Resistance before the Subject, or Could the Subaltern Remain Silent?” Theory, Culture & Society 29.6: 99-124. Wikipedia. “January 2019 Lincoln Memorial Confrontation.” https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/January_2019_Lincoln_Memorial_confrontation (accessed: October 19, 2019).

Contributors

Dorothee Birke is Associate Professor of English Literature at NTNU Trondheim, Norway. She is particularly interested in the political implications of form in contemporary literature, the study of reading and reception, and the history of the English novel. Her current projects deal with representations of the housing crisis in contemporary theatre and with the media-ecological significance of book culture in online environments. Dorothee has held research fellowships at the Freiburg and the Aarhus Institutes for Advanced Studies. Besides being the author of two monographs (Memory’s Fragile Power and Writing the Reader), she has published in journals such as Narrative and Style. Angela Breidbach teaches art in Hamburg and art history at Leuphana University, Lüneburg (as a visiting lecturer). She has published extensively on relations between pictorial space and memory in the work of, among others, Cézanne (2003) and William Kentridge (2005). She received her Habilitation from Leuphana University in 2016, with a thesis on Hans-Peter Feldmann, W.G. Sebald, and William Kentridge, published in the same year. Presentations on her research have taken her to Cape Town (2013), Berlin (2014, 2018), Copenhagen (2014), Oxford (2016) and Hamburg (2017). At present she is compiling an image-atlas of Sebald’s prose, in which she is mapping the interconnections between texts, images and the major topoi of his writing. As an artist, Angela was awarded the Rektor-Kunstpreis at the University of Jena in 1998. Her work has been shown internationally, with museum exhibitions in Jena, Hamburg, London and Erfurt. Zuzanna Bułat Silva is Assistant Professor in the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Wrocław, Poland. Her main research interests include lexical semantics, cross-cultural pragmatics, and endangered languages. She has published a book on Portuguese cultural key words, Fado – A Semantic Approach (Bułat Silva 2008, in Polish) and several articles on emotion words in Spanish and Portuguese. Since 2010 she has been working on the notion of ‘home’ in Portuguese as a member of EUROJOS research group led by professor Jerzy Bartmiński. In 2013, she co-founded the interdisciplinary research group ‘Scales of Home in To-

250

Contributors

day’s Europe’ (scalesofhome.eu). Zuzanna has held an Endeavour Research Fellowship at the Australian National University (2018) and was Bogliasco Fellow in 2019. Sarah Butler is a novelist and lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. She has three novels published by Picador in the UK and with fourteen international publishers: Ten Things I’ve Learnt About Love (2013), Before The Fire (2015) and Jack and Bet (2020). In November 2018, she published a novella, Not Home, written in conversation with people living in unsupported temporary accommodation in Manchester. Her work explores ideas of home, belonging, identity, family, and urban landscapes. Sarah is currently a CHASE Scholar in Creative Writing at the Open University, considering the relationship between the novel and the concept of home. Sarah also explores the relationship between writing and place through participatory projects. Recent writing residencies include writer-inresidence on the Central line; at Great Ormond Street Hospital; and Stories From The Road – a project exploring personal stories of Oxford Road, Manchester (www.urbanwords.org.uk). Stella Butter is Professor of English and American Literature at the University of Koblenz-Landau. Her research focuses on the way literature reflects and shapes processes of modernisation. This interest also informs her current research project on “The Value of Home in Contemporary English Literature”, on which she has published a number of articles. Moreover, she is a founding member of the interdisciplinary research group ‘Scales of Home in Today’s Europe’ (scalesofhome.eu). Further publications include the monographs Kontingenz und Literatur im Prozess der Modernisierung (2013) and Literatur als Medium kultureller Selbstreflexion (2007) as well as articles on emotions and intimacy in contemporary literature. Elisa Carandina is Associate Professor of modern and contemporary Hebrew Literature at INALCO, Paris. After her PhD in Hebrew Studies at INALCO and at the University of Turin, Italy, she was Diane and Guilford Glazer and Lea and Allen Orwitz Teaching Fellow in Modern Hebrew at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and Teaching Fellow of Modern Hebrew Literature and Language at L’Orientale University, Naples and Ca’ Foscari University, Venice. She has published numerous articles on contemporary Hebrew literature with particular focus on the practice of rewriting, mainly from a gender studies perspective, dealing with the works of Orly Castel-Bloom, Etgar Keret, Edna Mazya, Rutu Modan, Dan Pagis, Galit and Gilad Seliktar, Zeruya Shalev, Yona Wallach, A.B. Yehoshua, Rina Yerushalmi, and Nurit Zarhi. Currently she is working on a research project regarding life-writing in contemporary Hebrew literature with particular focus on graphic novels.

Contributors

Didymus Tsangue Douanla is a PhD candidate at the University of KoblenzLandau, where he is currently employed as a research associate. He obtained his master’s degree in American and Commonwealth literatures from the University of Yaoundé I in 2015. His dissertation project is concerned with concepts of home in contemporary Anglophone Cameroon fiction. His other research interests include postcolonial literatures, classical mythology, creative writing, and African graphic novels. Heidi Liedke is Assistant Professor of English Literature at the University of Koblenz-Landau. In her postdoctoral project, she examines the aesthetics of live theatre broadcasting and how it oscillates between the poles of spectacle, materiality, and engagement. She completed her PhD in 2016 at the University of Freiburg and published a monograph based on it as The Experience of Idling in Victorian Travel Texts, 1850-1901. Heidi was a Postdoctoral Humboldt Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London from 2018-2020. Recent articles have dealt with quasiexperts, live broadcast spectators, and Polish decadent poetry. She is also in the final stages of co-authoring a book on the cultural history of sloths. Andrew Liston teaches English language and literature at Friedrich Schiller University, Jena. He wrote his PhD on recent ecological literature by Swiss authors at the University of St Andrews. His research focus has remained on literature with an environmental concern, and he is currently writing a monograph on the poet Robert Burns, using a contemporary eco-critical perspective to posit Burns as a proto-ecological writer. Dorothee Marx (née Schneider) is a PhD candidate in American Studies at Kiel University, where she is currently employed as a research associate. She was awarded her master’s degree in “English and American Literatures, Cultures and Media” from Kiel University in 2016. Her dissertation project is titled “Bodies Irregular. Temporalities of Disability in Contemporary North American Literature” and examines the life narratives of traumatised, disabled or chronically ill characters in comics and novels. Her further research includes works on the role of fertility tracking in graphic memoirs, the depiction of disability and im/mobility, the influence of toxic positivity on disability self-representation, and the function of cripping up in contemporary film. She is the first recipient of the Martin Schüwer Publication Award for Excellence in Comic Studies for her article “The ‘Affected Scholar’: Reading Raina Telgemeier’s Ghosts as a Disability Scholar and Cystic Fibrosis-Patient” that appeared in C LOSURE in 2018. Nourit Melcer-Padon is a senior lecturer and Head of the English Department at Hadassah Academic College in Jerusalem. She focuses on the interrelationship of

251

252

Contributors

historical reality and fiction, and her research interests include comparative literature, plastic art, and culture. She is the author of Creating Communities: Towards a Description of the Mask-Function in Literature as well as many articles on various topics. She is currently writing a monograph about the imaginary of home in Italian and Italo-American literature and is engaged in continuing research of social aspects of the Jewish community in seventeenth-century Livorno. Burak Sezer studied English and Mathematics at the University of Cologne (Staatsexamen) and Comparative Literature at the University of Rochester (MA). Currently, he holds a scholarship at the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities Cologne, where he is writing a dissertation on the form and function of mathematics in Thomas Pynchon’s work. He is particularly interested in the American Renaissance as well as in resonances between the hard sciences and literature. Juliane Strätz is a PhD candidate in American Studies at the University of Mannheim, where she is currently employed as a research associate. She holds a Master of Education from the University of Potsdam as well as a Master of Arts from Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts. In 2015, she was awarded a Fulbright scholarship. Since 2020, she has been a member of the research network “The Failure of Knowledge / Knowledges of Failure”, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. In her dissertation project, entitled “Human Machines? Laboring Bodies in Late Capitalism”, she analyses how contemporary US-American novels critique normalised late capitalist assumptions about work through the depiction of labouring bodies and in so doing create an alternative, embodied knowledge that questions common understandings of the ‘normal’ body. Simon Strick is an independent scholar of American, Media and Gender Studies based in Berlin. He is author of the book American Dolorologies: Pain, Sentimentalism, Biopolitics (SUNY Press, 2014) and editor of the Amerikastudien/American Studies special issue (Re)Considering American Eugenics (64.2). Simon has held positions at Humboldt University Berlin, Paderborn University, JFK-Institute Berlin, ZfL Berlin, and the University of Virginia. In 2018, the VW-Foundation funded his research on Feeling (Alt)Right: Affective and Identity Politics of Online Extremism. The resulting book Rechte Gefühle will be published in spring 2012. Together with Susann Neuenfeldt and Werner Türk he founded the performance group PKRK, which has been active in Berlin since 2009 and has staged over 20 productions so far.

Cultural Studies Elisa Ganivet

Border Wall Aesthetics Artworks in Border Spaces 2019, 250 p., hardcover, ill. 79,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-4777-8 E-Book: 79,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-4777-2

Andreas Sudmann (ed.)

The Democratization of Artificial Intelligence Net Politics in the Era of Learning Algorithms 2019, 334 p., pb., col. ill. 49,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-4719-8 E-Book: free available, ISBN 978-3-8394-4719-2

Jocelyne Porcher, Jean Estebanez (eds.)

Animal Labor A New Perspective on Human-Animal Relations 2019, 182 p., hardcover 99,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-4364-0 E-Book: 99,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-4364-4

All print, e-book and open access versions of the titles in our list are available in our online shop www.transcript-verlag.de/en!

Cultural Studies Burcu Dogramaci, Kerstin Pinther (eds.)

Design Dispersed Forms of Migration and Flight 2019, 274 p., pb., col. ill. 34,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-4705-1 E-Book: 34,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-4705-5

Pál Kelemen, Nicolas Pethes (eds.)

Philology in the Making Analog/Digital Cultures of Scholarly Writing and Reading 2019, 316 p., pb., ill. 34,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-4770-9 E-Book: 34,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-4770-3

Pablo Abend, Annika Richterich, Mathias Fuchs, Ramón Reichert, Karin Wenz (eds.)

Digital Culture & Society (DCS) Vol. 5, Issue 1/2019 – Inequalities and Divides in Digital Cultures 2019, 212 p., pb., ill. 29,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-4478-4 E-Book: 29,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-4478-8

All print, e-book and open access versions of the titles in our list are available in our online shop www.transcript-verlag.de/en!