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Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 39 (2014) · Heft 1 Inhaltsverzeichnis Artikel: Michelle Gadpaille Eating Dirt, Being Dirt. Backgrounds to the Story of Slavery ................................. 3 Rodrigo Vidaurre “Is there a story? That's another story.” Reading Christine Brooke-Rose's Out as an indictment of realism ............................................................................ 21 Michael Fuchs The Great Arsenal of Democracy. Uncle Sam and American Exceptionalism at the End of the American Century ..................................................................... 43 Marjeta Vrbinc & Alenka Vrbinc Friends or Foes? Phraseological False Friends in English and Slovene ................. 71 Rezensionen: Gero Bauer Doris Feldmann/ Christian Krug (Hrsg.), Viktorianismus. Eine literatur- und kulturwissenschaftliche Einführung ......................................................................... 89 Rebecca Fasselt Ewald Mengel & Michela Borzaga (eds.), Trauma, Memory, and Narrative in the Contemporary South African Novel.................................................................... 93 David Klein Christiane Schwanecke, Intermedial Storytelling .................................................... 99 2 Der gesamte Inhalt der AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Band 1, 1976 - Band 36, 2011 ist nach AutorInnen alphabetisch geordnet abrufbar unter http: / / wwwgewi.uni-graz.at/ staff/ kettemann This journal is abstracted in: ESSE (Norwich), MLA Bibliography (New York, NY), C doc du CNRS (Paris), CCL (Frankfurt), NCELL (Göttingen), JSJ (Philadelphia, PA), ERIC Clearinghouse on Lang and Ling (Washington, DC), LLBA (San Diego), ABELL (London). Gefördert von der Steiermärkischen Landesregierung und der Geisteswissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz. Anfragen, Kommentare, Kritik, Mitteilungen und Manuskripte werden an den Herausgeber erbeten (Adresse siehe Umschlaginnenseite). Erscheint halbjährlich. Bezugspreis jährlich € 84,- (Vorzugspreis für private Leser € 68,-) zuzügl. Postgebühren. Einzelheft € 52,-. Die Bezugsdauer verlängert sich jeweils um ein Jahr, wenn bis zum 15. November keine Abbestellung vorliegt. © 2014 · Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG Dischingerweg 5, 72070 Tübingen E-mail: info@narr.de Internet: www.narr.de Die in der Zeitschrift veröffentlichten Beiträge sind urheberrechtlich geschützt. Alle Rechte, insbesondere das der Übersetzung in fremde Sprachen, sind vorbehalten: Kein Teil dieser Zeitschrift darf ohne schriftliche Genehmigung des Verlages in irgendeiner Form - durch Fotokopie, Mikrofilm oder andere Verfahren - reproduziert oder in eine von Maschinen, insbesondere von Datenverarbeitungsanlagen, verwendbare Sprache übertragen werden. Printed in Germany ISSN 0171-5410 Eating Dirt, Being Dirt Backgrounds to the Story of Slavery Michelle Gadpaille Andrea Levy’s award-winning novel about slavery, The Long Song (2011), 1 layers historical and fictional material to produce a rich text of women’s experience on a slave plantation in Jamaica. As a descendant of Jamaican immigrants to Britain, Levy draws upon the same black trans-Atlantic experience of cultural and ethnic hybridity that informed her novel Small Island (2004). Additionally, she taps the reservoir of slave memoir, testimony and narrative that survives in journals and reports from the early 19 th century. The anonymous Marly; or, A Planter’s Life in Jamaica (1828) 1 as a contemporary, fictionalized account of Jamaican plantation life shares many motifs with Levy’s novel. This study examines one small square of this narrative palimpsest: fictional accounts of the striking fact of pica, the consumption of non-food items, often dirt. It will ask how this phenomenon from the age of slavery worked its way into early plantation literature (Marly), from there into fictional slave narrative in general, and ultimately into Levy’s novel, where it forms a structural motif. After analyzing historical and modern accounts, I posit that eating dirt may constitute far more than pathology or taboo and represent a means of negotiating power for the powerless: those of the African diaspora, especially its girls and women. 1. Introduction: Who eats dirt? In Andrea Levy’s award winning novel The Long Song (24) there is a single mention of slaves eating dirt: early in the narrative, slaves from the novel’s Amity plantation are described as having “been whipped for eating dirt.” This minor incident, just one link in a chain of food imagery 1 Page numbers in the article refer to the edition given in the References. AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 39 (2014) · Heft 1 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Michelle Gadpaille 4 that connects white greed to black malnutrition, can be traced back to an earlier, anonymous account of slave life in Jamaica, Marly; or, A Planter’s Life, where dirt-eating (medically referred to as geophagy, one type of pica) also occupies the margins of the plantation narrative. Marly is the name of the young Scottish bookkeeper who works on a plantation in the northern part of Jamaica. At the time the island was “the largest sugar colony in the British Empire […and] contained some 320,000 Negro slaves, or more than half the total of the British sugar colonies” (Sheridan 1976: 239). In a minor episode from Marly, a slave mother and father bring their daughter to the overseer to be treated because she has been eating dirt: After shell blow, a negro man and a woman brought their daughter, a girl about sixteen years of age, who belonged to one of the field gangs, with a sad complaint to the overseer, that for some time past she had been addicted to dirt-eating (eating earth), and though they had endeavoured to persuade her to desist, by the means both of gentle and harsh treatment, they had not been able to make her abandon this abominable and pernicious propnsity. (86) Other contemporary historical accounts testify that the practice of pica among slaves was sufficiently common to be mentioned by many authors, including plantation owners, magistrates and anti-slavery activists. An 1823 guide for planters speaks at length of “the hateful, fatal habit of eating dirt” (Roughley 1823: 118). African slaves ate dirt and European authors recorded this, accompanied by various explanations and judgments. Plantation slaves nevertheless had many other well-recorded types of experience. The anonymous author of Marly selected the anecdote to make a point about slave-planter relations, but why did Levy choose a similar motif from the historical material, and how does this apparently background presence fit into the patterns of theme and image from The Long Song? Does the long trail of historical argumentation affect what pica can mean in a neo-slave narrative? These questions will be considered from a broad perspective, including evidence from Marly, a survey of historical accounts, as well as medical and anthropological material dealing with pica. This paper is not an attempt to trace influence or to uncover dependence on the part of Levy. After all, Levy’s text contains a lengthy acknowledgement of sources used in the writing of the novel (310-312). To get the background right, she has been to history, anthropology, journals, reports and previous fiction. Moreover, it should be acknowledged to what extent the modern slave narrative is always historical fiction. As Vivian Halloran established in her useful study Exhibiting Slavery (2009), there is a museum quality to the neo-narrative of slavery. Artifact and accuracy are crucial to the mimetic effect, and authors incorporate and Eating Dirt, Being Dirt 5 need to incorporate well-established facts about slaves’ working conditions, accommodation, punishment and family life. Instead of hunting for sources or dependence, the present article will explore one text-unit (pica among the slave population) with historical origins and attempt to trace its appearance in a range of texts from different eras. I will look at pica from a historical perspective, with a glance at its medical etiology. The aim is to arrive at a fuller understanding of the original pica phenomenon during the time of slavery as well as the deployment of this phenomenon; first, in proand anti-slavery propaganda and, second, in the construction of authenticity in the neo-narratives of slavery. Young offers an extensive list of fictional works that employ the motif of pica in an Appendix to Craving Earth (2012); there is no shortage of neo-slave narratives featuring dirt-eating. Thus, we will ask how this slim item of testimony from the age of slavery worked its way into the fiction of different traditions of slave narrative, and ultimately into Levy’s novel, where it forms part of a structural motif. 2. Historical backgrounds There is considerable evidence of the existence of geophagy among the slave population of Jamaican plantations, some of it from unimpeachable sources and some from anonymous and fictionalized texts. One of the clearest testimonials comes from the Planters Guide of 1823. This compendium of statistics and observations about slavery in Jamaica was assembled by Thomas Roughley, who had been a sugar planter on the island for more than twenty years. His testimony is first-hand, though subject to the inevitable bias of his race and position. His information was also highly polemical, despite its apparent statistical objectivity, for it formed part of the inquiry into the economic state of slaveholding in the years between the abolition of the British slave trade (1807) and the abolition of slavery itself (1834). This Jamaican planter is clear in his attitude towards dirt-eating among slaves: “Nothing is more horribly disgusting, nothing more to be dreaded, nothing exhibiting a more heart-rending, ghastly spectacle, than a negro child possessed of this malady” (Roughley 1823: 118-119). As an opening indication of attitudes, this passage establishes several points that will mark subsequent discourse about pica. First, disgust mingles with fear in this account, accompanied by Roughley’s clear statement that he views dirt-eating as a disease (“a malady”). This account records an emotional reaction, as well as a classification - an early medicalization of the practice. The word “possessed,” however, hints at a possible paranormal explanation for the affliction; eating dirt might take its place among other types of “possession,” by demonic spirits or animist deities. Whatever the explanation, it is clear that for this planter, the dirt-eating Michelle Gadpaille 6 slave is not himself. Despite his repulsion at the practice, Roughley does signal some sympathy for the sufferers, since he calls the spectacle “heartrending” when witnessed in a child. Roughley, then, positions himself as a sympathetic man, not repulsed by his black slaves per se but clearly disturbed even to the point of physical aversion by the habit of dirt-eating: “Such is the craving appetite for this abominable custom, that few, either children or adults, can be broken of it, when once they begin to taste and swallow its insidious, slow poison” (ibid: 119). Dirt-eating emerges as a form of addictive behavior; Roughley’s use of the word “poison” seems to apply to the habit rather than to the substance ingested, which is an interesting and quite farsighted view of pica. Roughley’s account then turns to the treatment of pica on the plantation: “For if by incessant care, watchfulness, or keeping them [the afflicted slaves] about the dwelling-house, giving them abundance of the best nourishing food, stomachic medicines, and kind treatment, it is possible to counteract the effects and habit of it for some time, the creature will be found wistfully and irresistibly to steal an opportunity of procuring and swallowing the deadly substance” (Roughley 1823: 119). This “kind treatment” resembles that described in Marly, but one must bear in mind the function of Roughley’s text: plantation owners, denied a fresh supply of slaves by the trading ban of 1807, had an economic interest in exhibiting benevolence in their treatment of the remaining slave population. According to Roughley, treatment for dirt-eating includes surveillance (as with any addiction), improved diet and medicine. Although any available stomach medicine of the era would have been nasty and probably ineffective (Roughley mentions cowitch worm medicine, glauber salts and castor oil for the children, 121-123), at least his plantation did not criminalize the practice but instead attempted to medicate it. A big plantation in Jamaica would have made substantial allowance for medical treatment of plantation workers, having an infirmary, several women slaves as nurses and even a Negro doctor (Sheridan 1976: 241). In some cases, medicine was the responsibility of the lady of the plantation, as mentioned by Mrs. Carmichael in her 1833 report of conditions in the West Indies (Carmichael 1833: 21). The narrator of Marly mentions the existence of a Negro doctor and a dispensary on his plantation (Marly 44), and in the Journal of a West-India Proprietor, Matthew Lewis (1834: 238) records the planning of a new hospital on his Jamaican plantation, as does Phillips (1914: 545) for Worthy Park plantation. Amidst this enlightened care for the afflicted slave, however, Roughley (1823: 120) uses the noun “creature.” The ill slave becomes a creature rather than a human being; it appears that for Roughley the eating of dirt deprives the slave of her/ his humanity. Even Roughley’s pronoun use shifts to the neuter “it”: “The creature sinks into total indifference, insensible to everything around it, till death at last declares his victory in its Eating Dirt, Being Dirt 7 dissolution” (Roughley 1823: 120). The vocabulary here does suggest some acknowledgement of the psychological accompaniment, perhaps even cause of pica; depression could, naturally, have contributed to the custom and to the voluntary lassitude as a co-result. This early Jamaican text, then, declares a complex position on slaves, their diet and its relation to their humanity. Though African slaves are constructed as subject to bodily disorders in a manner similar to the European population, the effect of this particular disorder is to render the slave non-human. This would therefore be one of several ways in which even the relatively enlightened slave owner or inhabitant of a slaveowning society could rationalize the sub-humanity of the slave. To eat dirt is to engage in an activity that ranks the eater among the non-human mammals. Roughley’s account shows that attitudes towards geophagy could encompass disgust, condemnation and sympathy, while remedies were rough and ready. Other Jamaican planters of the era also described dirteating among slaves. Writing in 1815, Lewis mentions it briefly in connection with a slave uprising (1834: 224-25). On Worthy Park estate in the 1790s, two newly-acquired slaves are reported to have died of dirteating (Phillips 1914: 546). This account affirms that dirteating was seen as fatal, whether because it actually led to death or because it functioned as a convenient explanation for death from other causes, and allowed the owner to displace responsibility onto the slave himor herself 2 . It is rare to find in the historical materials a report of a planter who took responsibility for the slave’s practice of pica. One such was a Doctor Collins, who reported on dirt-eating among slaves in James Stephen’s Report of 1830. Collins saw pica as the result of poor slave nutrition (Stephen 1830: 371). According to Collins, when a better master took over the plantation, the practice of pica dwindled (ibid. 372). Above all, Collins stressed that dirt-eating should not be treated as a crime or a moral issue. This, however, is exactly how geophagy was perceived on all sides of the slavery issue. Once anti-slavery journalism became established in the United States, for example, accounts from emancipated or escaped slaves elaborated on the conditions of slavery for readers who did not live in the slave states. In a journal such as the Emancipator, dirt-eating became one of the daily horrors of slavery: When we [the slaves] complained they would send for us to come to the house, and then they felt of us, and if we had not got the fever, they said it was all sham,--that "nigger had been eating dirt,"--and then they sent us 2 Ariela Gross (2000: 142) says that dirt eating sometimes figures in court cases, whereby slaves were blamed for their own diseases because they ate dirt. Michelle Gadpaille 8 straight off to the field, and we had to do our tasks the same as though nothing was the matter. (“Recollections of Slavery”) A similar account comes from The Anti Slavery Reporter (1832) in the form of court testimony in a hearing against a brutal Jamaican overseer named Chapman: Between the 18 th and 20 th October, can’t be positive, the two negro boys were in the hospital for eating dirt; they were ordered out at two o’clock on one of those days by the overseer to work, but they did not go, and were flogged; he again ordered them to be flogged; witness said, oh! No let them alone, they will go to their work tomorrow, probably; the house boy said they had dirtied themselves; Chapman said, make them eat it […] (283-84) This punishment of one unacceptable practice by further taboo breaking will become relevant when we consider the extended context of food in The Long Song. As a final historical example let us take an 1844 case, not from the islands, but from South Carolina, in which two “Negro girls” were sold off by their owner because they had “an objectionable habit of eating dirt” and he felt that dirt-eating would make them reproductively unfit and thus unprofitable (Lodge 1998). These young women were rejected for potential infertility, with dirt-eating ascribed as the only cause of this predicted effect. Thus, the diagnosis/ accusation of pica had multiple uses for a slave owner. It could be used to demedicalize any non-specific ailment (anything without accompanying fever), making the slave the perpetrator of his own disease (Gross 2000: 142). It could function as a rationale for resale of any slave. This monstrous unfairness constitutes a curious cession of control over the slave body; through this reasoning, the body became subject to its owner’s control through its digestive system. Though not owners of their bodies, slaves were responsible keepers of their digestive systems. To eat dirt could thus be a creative, self-destructive way of robbing the owner of his property, through either death or re-sale. In the case of the two dead slaves from Worthy Park, the fact that they were newly-acquired suggests other causes. Perhaps eating dirt was a voluntary way of ending an intolerable situation? Or perhaps it was an involuntary reaction to the psychological stress of being captured and sold? The medical literature provides support for both interpretations. These historical testimonies need to be considered as we unpack the significance of Levy’s dirt-eating slaves in The Long Song. Are we to see this as a disgusting habit, akin to coprophagy and a holdover from Africa, or are we to interpret it as a suicidal act of despair? Or perhaps it is a rebellious act, one intended to rob the master of the slave’s work and even life? Eating Dirt, Being Dirt 9 Contributing to the interpretive background of the contemporary novel, there is the account of the dirt-eating young slave in Marly, which forms the deep background to Levy’s neo-slave narrative. Though fictionalized, the anonymous account in Marly is contemporaneous with slavery (1828) and displays familiarity with plantation life in Jamaica (Williamson 2005: xii). Marly, therefore, straddles the border between historical source and fiction. Its relatively benign presentation of slave conditions cannot disqualify it as evidence, despite its participation in a crucial debate on “The West India Question” (Williamson 2005: xvii). After all, every writer who passed through the island and mentioned slavery had some kind of agenda. There are no unbiased slave narratives, testimonies or accounts 3 . When the narrator of Marly recounts the sight of the parents bringing their daughter before the overseer, there is pity rather than disgust in his tone. Notably, the parents find their daughter’s habit unacceptable; to them, this is no normal cultural practice carried over from Africa. They are portrayed as seeking help from the plantation officials and, unusually, as receiving it, for the Marly narrator testifies that this young girl will be taken to the plantation infirmary and fed for a while on the same food as the inhabitants of the big house. All participants in this small tableau seem mildly optimistic that a change of scene and diet will help the young teenager. Nevertheless, the incident takes place in the overall amelioration agenda of the anonymous author; close consideration of his discourse shows that he was not against slavery per se, but against its non-benevolent forms. The incident, by stressing two levels of paternal care (the parents and over them the plantation owners) contributes to the picture of slavery as potentially benign under well-intentioned slave owners. This sub-textual agenda tends to close off other interpretations of the pica - rebellion and willful suicide are not in the narrator’s purview. As modern readers, however, aware of the way pica could be manipulated by pro-slavery writers, we are free to seek other readings of the act of dirteating, readings informed by cultural, historical and medical information. Before focusing on any interpretation of pica in either The Long Song or Marly, it is necessary to survey medical opinions about geophagia, from both the 19 th century and more modern scholars. 3. The medicalization of pica There is no intent to cover the subject exhaustively, especially since this has recently been done in Sera L. Young’s monograph on the subject, Craving Earth: Understanding Pica - the Urge to Eat Clay, Starch, Ice and 3 See, for example, the deployment of Mary Prince in the anti-slavery debate in ”Trans-Colonial Collaboration and Slave Narrative” (Gadpaille 2011: 75). Michelle Gadpaille 10 Chalk (2012). Instead, we will look at historical medical opinion in addition to modern findings on the subject. There exist two streams of thought in the medical account of pica: the first considers whether pica is a disease or a cause of disease (Abrahams 1996: 65); while the second and more recent one suggests that pica may be a beneficial nutrition practice, equivalent to the modern practice of consuming vitamins. Young’s recent study (2012: 31) considers the “adaptive value” that pica can have in certain populations and under particular circumstances. Even those researching the behavior report on the challenge of defining its scope, or determining the extent to which it is involuntary behavior (Lacey 1990: 31). In the case of the young female slave who had been eating dirt, the narrator of Marly exhibits some confusion about whether pica is a crime, a disease or a symptom. All three possibilities are latent in his report of the incident: “She was rather a good looking negress, but like many others had fallen into this detestable negro practice of eating earth, a species of disease, which if persisted in for any length of time, uniformly terminates in dropsy and death” (Marly 86). Roughley (1823), in contrast, is committed to the disease theory, paying close attention to the details of the symptoms of the dirt-eating ailment: The symptoms arising from it are a shortness of breathing, almost perpetual languor, irregular throbbing, weak pulse, a horrid cadaverous aspect, the lips and whites of the eyes a deadly pale (the sure sign of malady in the negro), the tongue thickly covered with scurf, violent palpitations of the heart, inordinate swelled belly, the legs and arms reduced in size and muscle, the whole appearance of the body becomes a dirty yellow, the flesh a quivering, pellucid jelly. (120) The writer is being as medically objective as he can manage, using a Latinate vocabulary to signify the “scientific” nature of his observations (e.g. cadaverous, pellucid). The list both affirms Roughley’s familiarity with actual cases of diseased slaves and raises the question of whether all these symptoms can be blamed on eating dirt. Certainly some of them concur with the list of symptoms for pellagra - a disease associated with slaves and the descendants of slaves in the American south. Pellagra is a nutrition-deficiency disease, often associated with high levels of corn consumption and low niacin levels in the diet (Kiple 1977: 411-412). The situation was complicated by the existence of other diet-related diseases among plantation slaves in Jamaica: yaws (Lewis 1834: 208; Phillips 1914: 545), lockjaw (Lewis 1834: 96-97) and dysentery (Phillips 1914: 545), in addition to more mysterious ailments such as “crab-yaws,” “bonions” (Roughley 1823: 109) “chiga” or “cocoa-bag” (Lewis 1834: 215; 144). Eating Dirt, Being Dirt 11 Pica has also been studied medically as an informal means of providing missing nutrients in a deficient diet - especially as a source of iron (Lacey 1990: 33). Another common deployment of clay in the diet is as a remedy for either poisoning (Young 2012: 33-34) or gastrointestinal complaints, such as indigestion (Young 2012: 42). Slaves who arrived in the West Indies from Africa carrying hook worm even used clay as a treatment for stomach pain (Abrahams 1996: 65). This medicinal use of clay is in direct contradiction to Roughley’s concept of dirt as itself being poison to the slaves. In modern medical accounts, pica is most commonly reported in conjunction with pregnancy (Lacey 1990: 31; Abrahams 1996: 63), when the consumption of dirt, especially chalk, could be a folk remedy for nausea during pregnancy (Grivetti 1978: 172-173; Fessler 2002). For Young (2012: 41-42), the eating of clay in many African communities is associated with fertility, pregnancy and birth in a variety of ways. Pica has also been reported as being common among emotionally disturbed or mentally deficient people (Abrahams 1996: 68-69; Williams and McAdam 2012: 2050). Moreover, dirt consumption was still prevalent in the 20 th century among institutionalized children in Jamaica (Abrahams 1996: 67-68), the setting of both Marly and The Long Song. This brief survey of varied medical opinions shows that “no single theory satisfactorily explains geophagy” (Abrahams 1996: 71); the multiplicity of potential causes thus opens several new avenues of explanation for the dirt-eating episode in The Long Song and especially for the young woman in Marly. Perhaps we are meant to see the afflicted girl as suffering not just from an obsessive habit or a nutritional deficiency, but also from some underlying condition, perhaps an emotional problem or developmental delay. Certainly, the concern of her parents testifies to extra worry over this particular young woman, who is presented as under the control of her parents, even in a plantation society where the nuclear family (regardless of pro-slavery depictions) was not a stable institution. One could read the incident as marking the moment (late puberty - she is 16 years old) when the parents may have finally needed to face a deficiency in mental or physical capacity that had until then been less noticeable. As described by Carmichael and Lewis, the children of slaves had to graduate from the picaninny gang in the fields (Marly 83; Nugent 1966: 68-69) and move on to their particular roles on the plantation. Most women would end up as field hands. Only a few would qualify for more skilled work. A mentally deficient girl would be destined for a hard, outdoor life, one that her parents would wish to spare her. If, however, one accepts that the consumption of dirt or clay was merely a common diet-related practice among the slaves, then one could assume that it would be of less concern to the parents. However, it is also possible that life on the plantation Europeanized their value systems so that the slave Michelle Gadpaille 12 parents, far removed from Africa and its practices, internalized to some extent the European condemnation of pica. All of these explanations lead to a stress on the care ethic within the slave family; this is something that was downplayed or even denied by pro-slavery activists. It was more convenient to depict slaves as immoral people who did not form family units but were promiscuous and uncaring about their offspring. In severe contrast, the anonymous author of Marly specifies that this is a two-parent family and that both parents are concerned about their daughter. This forms part of the ameliorative atmosphere of this book; the author, though a man of his times, was critical of the abuses of slavery and inclined to support improvements in the slaves’ situation. In contrast, the brief mention of the off-stage whipping in The Long Song allows for little or no sympathy for the dirt-eaters. The episode only takes on added significance when considered together with a narrative built around the “foodways” (Singleton 1995: 125) of a plantation and its slave quarters. We will return to this later and give a close exegesis of the food spectrum of The Long Song. Before advancing this interpretation of the novel, it will be useful to consider pica as a non-medical issue. 4. Pica as cultural practice There is also a strong vein of anthropological research that views pica as merely a harmless habit, with a tendency to cluster among certain population groups: “Some researchers of the American south considered clayeating as just a long-standing, tenacious cultural habit, relatively harmless to the body” (Lacey 1990: 32). Similar observations have been made about West African societies (Abrahams 1996: 68). There, pica is often associated with rituals surrounding pregnancy and takes its place in the phenomenon of pregnancy cravings and altered eating patterns. In such cases it is not considered a pathology (Fessler 2002: 2050) but part of a pattern of culturally sanctioned practices. Eating dirt, clay or chalk while pregnant can be considered a practice in the normal range of human food behavior. In some communities in Africa and India (Abrahams 1996: 68), custom dictates the consumption of particular kinds of earth. The custom apparently continues among some women in the American south, although with some degree of secrecy and shame. The consensus seems to be that, except in excess, the practice is harmless and could even provide some digestive and nutritional benefit (Fessler 2002: 2050-51; Young 2012: 31). Eating earth could also have had ritual or spiritual significance, as one scholar suggests (Grivetti 1978: 173) and may have been associated with the fertility of the earth (Abrahams 1996: 63) or specifically with human fertility (Young 2012: 41-42). More controversially, it has been suggested Eating Dirt, Being Dirt 13 that dirt-eating was a form of mass suicide (Grivetti 1978: 173; Abrahams 1996: 64-65). Both scholars also hypothesize that the particular form of pica practiced by slaves (dirt-eating), might be symbolic of unity with a lost homeland (Grivetti 1978: 173) or even a promised afterlife (Abrahams 1996: 64). Neither scholar substantiates this idea. Such speculation unfolds against a background of evidence about what slaves actually ate. Evidence comes from plantation accounts, journals such as those of Trollope, Lewis and Carmichael, slave narratives and the various reports commissioned in the early 19 th century. Some sources stress the abundance of the slave’s vegetable diet while, in contrast, the Marly text depicts slaves adding meat to their diets by catching and eating both cats and rats (Marly 55; 46-47). Evidence about slave nutrition in Marly appears contradictory. On the one hand, the slaves’ provision grounds are shown as yielding a lavish vegetable harvest (Marly 61; 81), and breakfast for the field gang is reported to be boiled plantains with herring, lemon juice and hot sauce (Marly 44), a menu which, though not “sumptuous” still appears nutritionally adequate. On the other hand, plantation slaves are eating cats, rats and dirt. If the first assertion is true, then the second must reflect either choice on the part of the slaves or selective reporting on the part of a writer with an agenda. Thus, even the best accounts of slave foodways cannot clarify the extent to which they reflect cultural choices among the slaves, or regimens imposed by the owners (Singleton 1995: 125-26) - or by necessity born of deprivation. For instance, one finds the plantation owner Lewis seriously maintaining that the slaves “cannot endure animal food of any kind” (1834: 99) - an assertion which sounds suspiciously like a rationalization for depriving them of expensive protein. Similarly, in Marly, the new bookkeeper notes that the slaves cannot abide clean water but have a “preference for muddy water” (Marly 57), a highly dubious assertion. Despite this control of both food sources and their rationale, it has been argued that slaves nevertheless developed zones of autonomy in their plantation lives (Higman et al. 1998: 1-2). It is therefore possible to view pica as a symptom of such a zone, however counter-intuitive this might seem. Even this harmless practice of pica could have attracted attention and concern from overseers and owners, two groups that were not otherwise much concerned with slave welfare. The alleged threat to property erosion or even destruction would explain this refusal to accept this, just one among many customs that survived the Middle Passage. Moreover, as Lewis (1834: 224-25) clarifies in his journal, dirt-eating, no matter how normative a cultural practice in general, had also been coopted into the area of the taboo. Dirt featured as part of an oathing ceremony among rebellious slaves from the Jamaican parish of St Elizabeth in Lewis’s account. Far from being culturally normal in this case, dirt-eating was a taboo act, marked, forbidden, and with the power to bind transgressors. Lewis would not have been the only European to cluster taboos Michelle Gadpaille 14 associatively and identify them with rebellion and disrespect for authority. This detail from Lewis establishes how the practice of dirt-eating could be transmuted from normative custom to taboo - in the eyes of both the slaves and their masters. In The Long Song, therefore, we must recognize that the briefly mentioned incident of dirt-eating could have several cultural explanations, some overlapping and some contradictory. This plurality of explanations is especially marked in Marly, where it is difficult to identify any cultural tolerance of pica, and potential explanations range from pregnancy to mental disturbance, without any clear reading except the depth of parental care and paternal benevolence by the plantation. For plantation slaves, one cannot completely separate diet from culture and custom; explanations connected with nutritional deficits fit our modern concept of pica as symptom, but are insufficient to capture 19 th century eating habits. If one posits that the young woman could have been suffering from anemia or iron deficiency, this explanation inevitably leads back to the question of the diet of a plantation slave. In both Marly and The Long Song, there is supplementary evidence that slave diet was not ideal, although the general fertility of the slave garden-plots would seem to have precluded starvation in most parts of Jamaica, which is a large island (approximately 11,000 km²). Evidence from contemporary commentators suggests the abundance of the foodstuffs available to plantation slaves who cultivated their own plots (Lewis 1834: 83; 105-106, 108; Carmichael 1833: 166-173; Trollope 1859: 28). A dietary deficiency is, in fact, how the case is classified in Marly. The girl is put in the sanitarium and fed the white people’s diet for a while. In the real plantation accounts, however, nutritional deficit was not a popular explanation with masters; it settled too much of the onus on them and placed their profits in jeopardy. Even when dirt-eating can be classified as a custom, responses to it varied from punishment, whipping and restraint, to medical treatment and a change of diet. Marly depicts the more benign response, The Long Song the more stereotyped punishment reaction. There is the possibility that neo slave narratives reflect only one side of the pica story - a version filtered through the anti-slavery literature and the medical reports. Thus, a practice sanctioned by folk medicine and village practice may have been demonized by medicalization and by the need for anti-slavery testimony. 5. Pica in neo-slave narrative Twentieth-century writers of fiction about slavery have the freedom to employ the motif of pica in the service of their individual agendas. Andrea Levy, Edward P. Jones and others explore varied narrative functions Eating Dirt, Being Dirt 15 and signifying purposes for dirt-eating. The motif can be used for more positive signification, as for instance in the opening chapter of Jones’s novel The Known World (2004): Moses closed his eyes and bent down and took a pinch of the soil and ate it with no more thought than if it were a spot of cornbread. He worked the dirt around in his mouth and swallowed, leaning his head back […] He was the only man in the realm, slave or free, who ate dirt, but while the bondage women, particularly the pregnant ones, ate it for some incomprehensible need […] he ate it not only to discover the strengths and weaknesses of the field, but because the eating of it tied him to the only thing in his small world that meant almost as much as his own life. (1-2) Jones has Moses acknowledge pica as a feminized habit but affirms its spiritual and practical utility for him as a man and a farmer. His dirteating is different; he tastes the soil as part of a folk-science test of its readiness for a crop. In this case, pica has been denuded of most negative connotations. A historical motif from the slavery era has been reworked to erase shame and powerlessness while connoting folk wisdom. Levy’s neo-slave narrative will achieve a similar transformational effect. In The Long Song the pica incident remains in the background of the books’ major events, yet it feeds into a salient image pattern in the novel. Although no further dirt-eating occurs, one passage does show how far dirt has penetrated the slave identity: “And then the overseer, holding the negro-man up before him like some stinking rag, started to shake him fierce, as if all the dirt of the world resided within this black-man’s bones” (Levy 129; my emphasis). The enraged overseer of Amity plantation embodies the community’s metonymical thinking: from eating dirt to being dirt. The Long Song is a narrative that “was born of a craving” (1). Having begun with one kind of hunger, Levy rapidly introduces several variations on the motif. First, there is food from the point of view of white plantation owners, what the narrator calls “The puff and twaddle of some white lady’s mind” (Levy 8). Levy undoubtedly had in mind the journal keeper Lady Nugent, who came to Jamaica as the wife of the island’s Governor: “Two pages upon the scarcity of beef. Five more upon the want of a new hat... No butter but only a wretched alligator pear again! ” 4 . Food in Levy’s novel clearly separates the European from the acclimatized or Creole plantation resident. To reject avocado flesh and favor real butter was to be truly European. Levy extends the European/ Creole contrast with reference to jam. On first arriving in Jamaica, Caroline Mortimer praises the locally produced jelly made of guava fruit (23-24); her brother John Howarth, who has 4 This is a clear allusion to Lady Nugent, who comments on the indignity of having to use avocado as a butter substitute (Nugent 1966: 26). Michelle Gadpaille 16 been on the island for many years, takes a more cynical view 5 . It is within this context that the dirt-eating of the two absent slaves is mentioned: She [Caroline] wanted to try everything - oh yes, everything. ... Bring on the duck, guinea birds and jack fish, for Mrs Caroline Mortimer was eager to nibble upon their bones. Even breadfruit that was destined for the slaves’ tables. ‘Why should I not try it too? ’ she asked her brother, who replied sternly that several of his slaves had been whipped for eating dirt - did she propose to try that delicacy also? (23-24) The mention of pica thus comes as a taunt, replete with contempt for such practices. Dirt-eating signifies a boundary between the merely exotic (guava) and the genuinely unacceptable (dirt), but the experienced plantation owner perceives a slippery slope, much more dangerous than the slippage from butter to avocado. The resident European must be careful not to fall out of the human condition and into that of the slaves, in other words, to become dirt. Another European food, imported strawberry jam, is used by Levy as a metonymical signifier to accompany the labour and childbirth of the slave Kitty. This will result in the birth of July, the novel’s narrator. Kitty is told by the overseer, who is the baby’s father, to hush up while in labour because he is trying to enjoy a gift of strawberry conserve. The “dollop of strawberry jam” (Levy 14) on his cheek displaces and replaces the byproducts of birth, while clearly marking the boundary between civilized practices of indulgence and those more bloody events that must be excluded from European notice. Overall, Levy generates a symbolic economy of food in The Long Song, using various food items in a coded way to track the fictional July’s life against the historical background. Since the main action of the novel take s place in 1831-32 at the time of the Christmas slave rising (sometimes called the Baptist War), the festivities of the plantation owners receive careful attention, especially the dinner menu. Levy loads the owner’s table with pigeon pie, mutton pie, roast pork, guinea fowl, barbecued pork, liqueurs and two kinds of soup (vegetable and turtle), while rebellion is brewing outside the big house. The selection of delicacies accurately reflects those listed in contemporary accounts (Lewis 1834: 103-104; Carmichael 1833: 34-35). In the matter of slave food, Levy was also historically exact, mentioning pigeon peas, sweet potato, limes, star apples and pawpaw (236); even the unlikely-sounding episode where July is passing liquor out the window of the big house during a dinner party turns out to be based on an account of slave pilfering by Mrs. Carmichael (1833: 35-36). Levy, however, alters the perspective on this event from owner to slave, in the process losing the tone of moral condemnation and 5 Mrs. Carmichael (1833: 38-39) provides a source for the European opinion on local and British preserves. Eating Dirt, Being Dirt 17 achieving an atmosphere of chaotic carnival at the Christmas dinner (Levy 73). Levy uses a specific food item, pickles, as shorthand for sexual activity in conversation between July and her master Robert Goodwin (Levy 221- 22). The sexually charged conversation between master and servant happens at the dinner table in front of the mistress; pickles are a euphemism for sex. Goodwin and July discuss whether he wants pickles with his meat and whether these pickles should be sweet or hot. Food and sex become intimately related in this illicit relationship. This prepares the ground for July’s choice of revenge on Goodwin, which will come through food served up as she has been served up to her master. In order to fully decode the moment when Robert Goodwin is served a dish of cockroaches, one must return to the place in the novel where Goodwin commissions a family portrait (223) to record his power and position. The portrait includes him and his wife, but also July, his servant and mistress. In the painting she is holding a tray, immortalized in a position of servitude, offering up “sweets” (with all the connotations from the pickle conversation) to her master. When Goodwin abandons her to marry the despised Caroline, July plots a symmetrical revenge. Once again she will serve a choice dish. This time, however, she will choose the opposite of food: she settles on a dish of cockroaches: “July spent many days gathering up those cockroaches for Robert Goodwin’s leaving dish […] more than one hundred July managed to capture […] all were diligently hoarded by July, for far too easily had she just been discarded” (270-71). Levy’s choice of insect could have been influenced by the passage in Lewis’s (1834: 203) Journal where he mentions that cockroaches are “absolutely in legions.” These insects are appropriate not just because Goodwin has an established phobia of cockroaches, but also because in the symbolic economy of Jamaica, a cockroach is the one thing lower than dirt. Many proverbs still repeated today affirm that the cockroach occupies the unenviable position in the pecking order (Watson 1991: 41- 43), for example, “Brown man wife nyam cockroach a corner, save money fe buy silk dress,” or “Wen cockroach tink im backra, lil time im av fe change im skin” 6 . The identification between dirt and identity is further cemented here. For July has become what Goodwin fears and repudiates; she is the object at which his stomach now turns. Having thought of herself as the server, she discovers too late that she has also been the dish - and just as easily discarded as consumed. The rules of sympathetic magic therefore dictate revenge by externalizing her transformation - into a dish of cockroaches. 6 The brown man’s wife eating cockroaches in the corner is saving money to buy a silk dress; when a cockroach thinks himself a white person, he will soon have to change the colour of his skin. Michelle Gadpaille 18 It is quite permissible to see this tableau as related to slave magic, since Abrahams (1996: 67) notes the connection between pica and the Caribbean religious and magical practice of obeah. The dish chosen as a container is adequate to the occasion, oval, domed and silver lidded (Levy 267); its European opulence both masks and mirrors the dirt within. At the dinner table, Goodwin lifts the lid: A thousand black cockroaches suddenly freed into the light, scurried from out that dish. They swarmed across the table-top like a spill of dirty water to drop pitter-patter from the table on to the wooden floor. Some fell into his lap. Robert Goodwin was too stunned to feel the crawl of them. He sat entranced, staring at a hideous mound of dead and crushed roaches that were piled high upon the salver. He took a while to start yelling. (268) With this satisfying revenge, July negotiates her freedom from Goodwin as the cockroaches scatter. In common with West Indian slaves in general, July would find that freedom did not mean automatic prosperity or happiness. July’s fate after the Christmas rebellion, emancipation and the end of the plantation system will not be pretty. Levy leaves many years blank in her heroine’s history, but uses food to reunite the aging July with her grown son late in the narrative’s chronology. It is for stealing a chicken that July is hauled into magistrate’s court in the town of Falmouth, there to find that one of the jurors is her son, returned to the island after an English education. The Long Song, then, did begin with “a craving” - for a chicken in the soup pot, as well as the author’s craving to tackle the subject of slavery. Apparently an incidental reference, the novel’s pica emerges as the keystone in the novel’s signifying pattern of food. Levy imports from her sources not just the fact of pica’s existence among slave populations on the island, but the fact of European disgust, as well as European deployment of pica to dehumanize the slave and erect an impassable barrier between European and African. Although the pica motif was used in antislavery literature in the US to imply poor nutrition or even starvation, and to raise sympathy for slaves by implying their abjection and disease, Levy chooses instead the West Indian reality, where pica was a crime as much as a disease, regardless of its benign treatment in Marly. What Levy achieves is to recuperate a practice that was once folk, African and primarily female, but that had been historically recorded from perspectives that were imperial, western, scientific and often masculine. Moreover, Levy’s character July recovers the potential communicative function of pica, the possibility that is elided in the account of the young girl from Marly. In neo-slave narrative, pica can be used reflexively to signal a mute space of autonomy, and to give voice to silenced complaints and conditions, an agenda that underlies many neo-slave novels and that may even form a mirror of authorial activity. Letting the dirt out of the dish Eating Dirt, Being Dirt 19 becomes one creative use for the surviving artifact and testimony about slave life. References Abrahams, Peter W./ Julia A. Parsons (1996). “Geophagy in the Tropics: A Literature Review.” The Geographical Journal 162/ 1. 63-72. Gadpaille, Michelle (2011). “Trans-Colonial Collaboration and Slave Narrative: Mary Prince Revisited.” ELOPE 8. 63-77. Carmichael, Mrs. (1833). Domestic Manners and Social Condition of the White, Coloured, and Negro Population of the West Indies, Vol. 1. London: Whittaker, Treacher and Co. Fessler, Daniel M. T. (2002). “Reproductive Immunosuppression and Diet: An Evolutionary Perspective on Pregnancy Sickness and Meat Consumption.” Current Anthropology 43/ 1. 19-61. Grivetti, Louis Evan (1978). “Culture, Diet and Nutrition: Selected Themes and Topics.” BioScience 28/ 3. 171-177. Gross, Ariela J. (2000). Double Character: Slavery and Mastery in the Antebellum Southern Courtroom. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Halloran, Vivian (2009). Exhibiting Slavery: The Caribbean Postmodern Novel as Museum. University of Virginia Press. Higman, B.W. et al. (1998). Montpelier: A Plantation Community in Slavery and Freedom, 1793-1912. Barbados: University of the West Indies. Jones, Edward P. (2004). The Known World. London: HarperCollins. Kiple, Kenneth F./ Virginia H. Kiple (1977). “Black Tongue and Black Men: Pellagra and Slavery in the Antebellum South.” The Journal of Southern History 43/ 3. 411-428. Lacey, Ella P. (1990). “Broadening the Perspective of Pica.” Public Health Reports 105/ 1. 29-35. Levy, Andrea (2010). The Long Song. London: Headline Publishing. Lewis, Matthew (1834). Journal of a West India Proprietor, kept during a residence in the island of Jamaica. London: John Murray. Lodge, David (1998). “Banning of Slave Imports” Black History. Shelby County Historical Society. [Online] http: / / www.shelbycountyhistory.org/ schs/ blackhistory/ banslaveimports.htm. (16 April 2014) Macauley, Zachary, Ed. (1832). The Anti-Slavery Reporter. London: London Society for the Mitigation and Abolition of Slavery in the British Dominions. Marly; or a Planter’s Life in Jamaica [1828] (2005). Karina Williamson (ed.). Oxford: Macmillan. Nugent, Maria. (1966). Lady Nugent’s Journal. Ed. Philip Wright. Kingston: Institute of Jamaica. Phillips, Ulrich B. (1914). “A Jamaican Slave Plantation.” The American Historical Review 19/ 3. 543-58. “Recollections of Slavery. By a Runaway Slave” (1838). The Emancipator 122. September 13,1838. Documenting the American South. [Online] http: / / docsouth.unc.edu/ neh/ runaway/ runaway.html (17 Apri 2014). Roughley, Thomas (1823). The Jamaica Planter’s Guide; or, A system for planting and managing a sugar estate, or other plantations in that island, and throughout the British West Indies in general. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown. Michelle Gadpaille 20 Sheridan, Richard B. (1976). “‘Sweet Malefactor’: The Social Costs of Slavery and Sugar in Jamaica and Cuba, 1807-1854.” Economic History Review 29/ 2. 236- 257. Singleton, Theresa (1995). “The Archaeology of Slavery in North America.” Annual Review of Anthropology 24. 119-140. Stephen, James (1830). The Slavery of the British West India Colonies Delineated, being a delineation of the state in point of practice. London: Saunders & Benning. Trollope, Anthony (1859). The West Indies and the Spanish Main. London: Chapman & Hall. Watson, G. Llewellyn (1991). Jamaican Sayings with Notes on Folklore, Aesthetics and Social Control. Florida: University Press Florida. Williams, Don. E and David McAdam (2012). “Assessment, Behavioral Treatment, and Prevention of Pica: Clinical Guidelines and Recommendations for Practitioners.” Research in Developmental Disabilities 33/ 6. 2050-57. Williamson, Karina (2005). “Introduction.” Marly; or, A Planter’s Life in Jamaica. Karina Williamson (ed.). Macmillan. xi-xxxii. Young, Sera L. (2012). Craving Earth: Understanding Pica - the Urge to Eat Clay, Starch, Ice and Chalk. New York: Columbia University Press. Michelle Gadpaille Faculty of Arts Maribor Slovenia “Is there a story? That’s another story.” Reading Christine Brooke-Rose’s Out as an indictment of realism Rodrigo Vidaurre Christine Brooke-Rose’s Out (1964) is an experimental novel which contains numerous challenges to reader expectations. This paper uses close reading of some of its narratological and thematic elements to conclude that the novel systematically denies access to a referent that could be read as a coherent reality, and thus cannot legitimately be read as serving a programme of representation. Research on Out has failed to fully consider the novel’s radical uncertainty and ambiguity, as well as the ways in which it undermines and defers meaning, when reading the novel in e.g. post-colonial or post-histoire terms. This paper argues for a purely metafictional agenda to Out, which uses its particular features to question realism’s narrative conventions as well as the discourses that feed into it. Whereas Out’s radical uncertainty enables a huge array of interpretational possibilities, it simultaneously takes them all away, highlighting in the process the degree of reader agency involved in any interpretation of the novel. Scholars of Christine Brooke-Rose’s oeuvre have often placed her 1964 novel Out at the beginning of a second, ‘experimental’ phase in her work (cf. Martin 1989: 114, McHale 1992: 209, Canepari-Labib 2000: 161, Williamson 2010: 60), and the novel is certainly anything but a straightforward read. The narrative’s world is both idiosyncratic and challenging. Out is situated somewhere in Africa, in a post-apocalyptic world order, and presents us with feeble, relocated white people suffering the effects of nuclear radiation, whereas people of colour, who are either resistant or immune to radiation, are the socially privileged. An elderly, unemployed white man originally from the UK is the novel’s protagonist and main narrator; he and his wife live in dismal poverty in a small shack on the outskirts of a town, and he is shown in constant attempts to get employment, with only partial success. Their precarious economic situation is AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 39 (2014) · Heft 1 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Rodrigo Vidaurre 22 widespread among other ‘colourless’ immigrants he encounters, who hail from all over the world (e.g. Iran, USA, Russia), and it is clear that unemployment and food issues are widespread all over ‘Afro-Eurasia’. However, the situation is said to be even worse in the other geopolitical blocs the world is divided into: ‘Seatoarea’, ‘Chinese Europe’, and ‘Sino- America’. In addition to these ominous geopolitical blocs, there are further dystopian echoes of Orwell’s 1984, including a set of government slogans such as “We won’t demand satisfaction until we satisfy demand” and “Exalting all colours to the detriment of none.” The latter slogan denies a racism which is clearly present in the novel’s world, and which is inverted: colourless people are rejected and treated with suspicion, in part due to the possibility of their having ‘radiation illness’, and they live segregated in slums or settlements. The novel’s experimental and challenging nature, however, lies much less in its plot than in its form. The narrative unfolds in such a way that it is often unclear if a series of events takes place or is only imagined by the main narrator, if events imagined are in preparation for a situation about to occur or if they refashion an event that has already happened, which of the several versions provided for a single event actually happened (if any), and so on. In other cases, the events’ broad outline is clear, but contradicting versions of their details are provided, again without resolution. This uncertainty is possibly the main, but by no means the only, challenge to reader habits. Readers are also faced with descriptions that are completely unrelated to events, continuous repetition of the exact same phrases in very different contexts, descriptions that challenge the imagination as to what is being described, dialogue that defies the conventional wisdom of conversational exchanges, a plot that hardly moves (and whose only movement would be best described as circular), and so on.This paper is premised on the idea that these characteristics are linked to some of the novel’s main concerns, which I understand as epistemological and metafictional, and which I read as an exploration and critique of the premises and limits of novelistic narration itself. My reading foregrounds these aspects and concerns: I read the novel in formalist and literary theory terms, and see it as an indictment of the possibilities of literary realism, for which the novel’s world of (narrative) inversions provides an extremely fruitful playground. Different traditional possibilities for exploring reality in prose - the narration of observation of external phenomena, narration-based accounts of identity, scientific explanations for the constitution of the physical world, scientific theories for the workings of the psyche - are all applied repeatedly in the novel, but none of these forms of discourse provides results that are of use to the protagonist. This character, hailing from an old, extinguished world order, enacts the failure of realist means to describe reality in this new world, which remains incomprehensible and uncertain. He is doggedly committed to Christine Brooke-Rose’s Out as an indictment of realism 23 the observation of phenomena, but his failure to integrate them into a meaningful whole is shown throughout - inter alia by use of novelistic conventions which in this use are continuously broken and/ or ridiculed. The metafictional questions described above are often addressed within the novel’s metaleptical moments. However, pure metalepsis is hardly ever the case in the novel, I argue below; rather, we find statements which can be said to be located ‘between’ a homodiegetic narrator (such as the protagonist) and one located at a higher diegetic level. These statements thus find themselves in a kind of irresolvable double allegiance, closer to one or the other of both poles according to each case. But metafiction is not limited to the indictment of literary discourse and to metalepsis: I also read repeated questions of the protagonist - such as ‘Is there an answer? ’ and ‘Is there a story behind the story? ’ - as a reference both to his epistemological homelessness and to a certain understanding regarding the possibilities of significance and meaning in narrative representation. Rounding up this essay, I argue that just as the realist means of the protagonist are disavowed, so is his metafictional questioning, which is treated as inconsequential by the inhabitants of his world. This paper’s structure follows the points outlined above, each chapter addressing one main topic. Out has not received the same amount of critical attention as Brooke- Rose’s other novels, particularly Thru and Amalgamemnon. Most scholarship on the novel is found in papers or book-length studies that cover all of her novels to that point in time (e.g. Martin 1989, Birch 1994, Canepari-Labib 2002), or that analyse a set of novels of different authors from a particular theoretical vantage point (e.g. Heise 1997, Malina 2002) 1 . However, most of these studies posit interpretations of Out that fail to consider one or more dimensions of the radical uncertainty, ambiguity and undermining of meaning that are constitutive of the novel. Canepari-Labib for instance holds that the unfamiliarity of the world depicted in the novel is irrelevant (2002: 171), and suggests parallels between social and political processes in the novel and in contemporary reality. In so doing, however, she attributes elements of the narrative to the novel’s world, whereas the narrative leaves unresolved if they are part of the novel’s world or located in the narrator’s imagination. Birch performs the same operation in the opposite direction - attributing elements of the narrative to the peculiarities of the main character’s consciousness - when she takes his narration as evidence of his schizophrenia (60). Her reading thus disregards the possibility, which the text also supports, that the particular nature of his perceptions is not a product of 1 To my knowledge, the only published research dealing exclusively with Out is Canepari-Labib (2000). Rodrigo Vidaurre 24 illness, but rather of the changed parameters in the novel’s world 2 . These (as well as many other) readings of Out have in common their performing unjustified attributions, hypostasising elements of the narration which more careful consideration shows to be indeterminate and open. Heise’s book chapter on Out - one of the more careful and thoughtful readings, also unencumbered by an effort to relate it to Brooke-Rose’s other novels - takes the particular features of the narration seriously when she questions the ‘reality’ of many of the novel’s elements and scenes. She recognises the novel’s radical indeterminacy when she holds that two characters key to plot development, Mrs Mgulu and Mr Swaminathan, lead an ambiguous existence in the text, and that the narrative “suggests that they are perhaps mainly or exclusively figures in the protagonist’s mind rather than actual characters” (244). Heise also recognises that the protagonist’s daily life is in doubt, the narrative providing episodes in alternative versions and in other cases leaving open whether they are actual occurrences or the protagonist’s fantasies (253). In a beautiful formulation, she highlights that the text is structured by different “unrealities” (244). However, I would argue that Heise is trying to have it both ways when she holds that, although the reality of the novel’s events is uncertain, “the political power structure and the existence of a conspiracy if not against the protagonist, then at any rate against his race in general, is not in question” (253). Just as there are no means to determine the reality of elements, scenes and characters in the novel, I argue that the novel provides no means to distinguish which elements of the social institutions can be considered ‘real’, and that this ambiguity is constitutive of the novel’s world. Some research understands the main narrator’s particular perspective, which in the novel is sometimes related to illness 3 , as the postmodern condition 4 . This research shares with this essay that it does not dismiss his particularities as due to illness, mental shortcomings, or alienation. However, in my more literature-centred reading, I argue against his malady being a proxy representation of a philosophical condition or existential experience. In my reading of the novel there is no such embracing of a programme of representation; rather, I take his particular perspective to be yet another inversion which allows for further testing and playing with the assumptions behind narrative and language. His particular per- 2 Heise argues this point convincingly, when she says that “the peculiar disjunctiveness of perceptions in Out does not seem due to illness so much as to a world whose basic functional parameters have changed so radically that conventional reasoning cannot account for them anymore” (229). 3 The protagonist is often described as ill and poorly by many of the novel’s characters, including his own wife. 4 E.g. cf. Malina, Chapter 2: “‘Sometimes you vanish into a linguistic edifice you have erected’: Christine Brooke-Rose and the postmodern condition”, particularly 70-71. Christine Brooke-Rose’s Out as an indictment of realism 25 spective is yet another of the means that achieve deferral of meaning, and that maintains the reader, with the protagonist, ‘out’ of the novel’s world. 1. The indeterminable nature of (literary) phenomena in Out It is strongly characteristic of the novel that, in innumerable moments distributed throughout it, its readers are systematically denied footholds which would allow them to ascertain different aspects of the narrative itself or of its world. It starts with the question of whose is the narrating voice: long sequences are narrated in such a way that no singular attribution is possible, but rather a plurality of possibilities is systematically maintained. Through long passages and possibly most of the novel, there are many indications that it is the elderly white protagonist who is narrating - which is why I refer to him in this paper as ‘main narrator’. However, I hold that some critics go too far when they suggest he is the narrative’s only narrator, ascribing any ambiguities to an effect of his malady 5 . In numerous sections most signs point to a narrator that other critics have called a “disembodied narrative voice” 6 , and in yet other passages narration seems to have been taken over by one or even two higher-level, both heteroand extradiegetic narrators. The crucial point is, however, that practically throughout the whole novel it is impossible to ascribe the narration with certainty to one of these possible narrators. The following excerpt shows an example in point. A psychoscope might perhaps reveal the expression to be one of pleasure in beauty, rather than self love. The scene might occur, for that matter, in quite a different form. The personal maid, for example, could be Colourless after all. - Oh, no. I mean, she’d have to assist me in my bath. Oh, no. - Why not? says somebody or other representing something dead, but there is no person in the mirror. - Even my husband Dr. Mgulu, who stands on an Internationalist Platform, would not let his white boy assist him in his bath. - And yet, says somebody or other, his eyelids are the right colour. (26) 7 This passage can be read as an internal monologue of the main narrator, who in his fantasy describes an imaginary situation and then involves Mrs Mgulu in his imagination, who takes issue with the changes to the scene he has just envisioned. It can also be read as a disagreement between a narrator at a higher diegetic level, rewriting one of the scenes, and one of 5 E.g. Canepari-Labib or McHale. The latter holds that “we are always ‘inside’ his [the protagonist’s] consciousness” (209). 6 Martin sees Brooke-Rose’s novels after The Dear Deceit (1960) as characterised by this kind of narrative voice (113). 7 All quotations and page numbers refer to The Christine Brooke-Rose Omnibus: Four Novels: Out, Such, Between, Thru. Carcanet: Manchester, 1986. Rodrigo Vidaurre 26 the characters in it. A third possibility would be a disembodied narrator, very much devoid of omniscience, running through different possibilities for events. This passage also provides a further example of how the text quite purposefully undermines typical narrative attribution, in this case by involving a character in a conversation with a voice that is not part of the scene - “there is no person in the mirror” - but whose attribution is left wide open, as “somebody or other representing something dead.” Similarly to how it attaches uncertainty to the narrating voice, the text also opens up and systematically maintains various possibilities regarding narrated events. It is very often unclear how events occurred in the novel’s world, and even if described events occurred at all. The excerpt quoted above also provides an example of this feature: the section preceding it described a scene, the quoted excerpt then questioning if this was the way it occurred (“The scene might occur, for that matter, in quite a different form.”). Also frequent is the repeated narration, with variation, of what one would assume to be a single event, as in the following excerpts: The man stands in the road, shabbily dressed. He is Colourless. - Who was that, Ingram, did you see? - I’m afraid I didn’t, ma’am. (52) The man stands in the road, blue through the glass. - Who was that, Ingram, did you see? - No ma’am. (53) But then, she will complicate life for herself, sitting back in the cushions of the vehicle as it glides towards the tall wrought-iron gates. Her face is cavern-blue. - Who was that, Ingram, did you see? - I don’t know ma’am, a Colourless man. (56) Three times a dialogue and series of events start off, all of them sharing the same first line of dialogue, but both dialogue and events end up taking different paths. The narrative provides no basis to decide which, if any, of these three excerpts actually occurred in the novel’s world, but also no evidence to rule out some or all of them. It is worth noting that these three versions of events each start off with a different narratological point of view. Whereas the first one is indeterminate, the second excerpt can be read as having a point of view from within the vehicle (the white man being seen as blue through the tinted glass windows), whereas the third one can be read as having a point of view from outside of the vehicle, for instance located in the consciousness of the main narrator (Mrs Mgulu’s black face being not blue but ‘cavern-blue’ through the glass). Whereas none of these three excerpts is given a prerogative, in numerous cases the narrative establishes one, substantiating a version of events or phenomena as deserving credibility, for instance by repeated description or by predicating posterior events on them. However, this prerogative can then be taken back at a later point in the text, a narrative Christine Brooke-Rose’s Out as an indictment of realism 27 strategy which has been dubbed ‘denarration’ (Richardson 2001). An example of this approach is found close to the novel’s ending, in a dialogue between the main narrator (who asks the questions) and the new head gardener, in which the extensive previous descriptions of the Manor House gardens are authoritatively contradicted: - But what about the watering? Have you got anyone for the watering? - The watering? It’s being done all the time. As you should know if you’ve been here before. [...] - But what about the flowers? [...] - We don’t have any. […] The lawns are sprayed automatically anyway. You should know that if you’ve been here before. - Yes. I suppose so. One gets confused. (179) There is also a plethora of smaller instances of denarration throughout the novel, often in the shape of simple contradictions. At times the second, contradictory statement occurs in the immediate vicinity of the first one, whereas in other cases a significant number of pages may lie between both. Contradictions not only affect material like a focalisor’s position or understanding of things (which could after all be read as a change of opinion or due to new information) but even affect physical phenomena in the novel’s world. This is the case in the first pair of quotes presented below, both describing Mrs Ned’s bungalow as seen through one and the same kitchen window. At eye-level through the window, about three metres away, and to the left of the fig-tree which overlooks the road, there is Mrs. Ned’s bungalow. (20) At eye-level through the window, about four metres away, and to the right of the fig-tree which overlooks the road, there is Mrs. Ned’s shack. (68) It is easy enough in the negative. It is more difficult to bring about than to prevent. Is this proposition true? (47) It is more difficult in the negative, more difficult, that is, to stop than to bring about. (48) Yet another way readers’ attributions are undermined is through repetition of narrator statements in different contexts, which gives the statements’ meanings radically different possibilities. Because the main narrator can be read as prone to imagining and refashioning events in his mind, the repetition of the same formula in different contexts with different meanings could be read, in a mimetic understanding, as pointing to the existence of an original event, and its posterior imaginative reworking. However, the text undermines the possibility of such a narratological hierarchy: the different versions seem all equally plausible, and all equally weakened in their plausibility, due to this echo between them. From this position in the gutter, the paving stones look large as tables. The trousers widen slightly at the bottom, most of them brown or black. Shoes are dusty or caked with mud. […] Some people are always left, kissing the gutter. (85-86) Rodrigo Vidaurre 28 […] the staggering is unsteady, […] the paving stone moves up. Innumerable trousers widen slightly at the bottom, grey or buff-coloured [...]. From this position in the gutter the paving stones look as large as tables. - Are you all right, man? (158) The benzene-ring is enormous, the energy-rich bonds stretch interminably to the right. From this position the trousers are buff-coloured, widening slightly at the bottom like trees. The shoes match and shine, too glowing to be gripped. […] - Get up, man, get up! (180-181) The first reference to ‘gutter’ in the novel is the one in the first excerpt, in which it seems part of a figure of speech which describes the social position of white people in Afro-Eurasian society. Nearly a hundred pages later, the reference to paving stones and gutter is repeated, this time taking on a literal meaning, as the white narrator gets involved in a fight and lands on the pavement. The third excerpt again repeats elements of the previous ones - the benzene rings being a reference to the elongatedly hexagonal pavestones. Without using the word gutter, it describes the large benzene rings and what trousers and shoes look like, until it becomes clear that the narrator is begging on his knees to his interlocutor. Readers are thus confronted with an initial, apparently purely figurative use of a phrase, which is later overlayered by accounts in which the same phrase is motivated by turns of events that seem real rather than imagined, and where the phrase takes on literal meanings. The status of these statements is thus thrown into an uneasy light, and the text does not provide clues regarding the question of their relationship, causality, and temporality. As a result of this repetition, it becomes unclear for both figurative and literal uses if they can be taken at face value, if they are echoes of other statements (and if so of which), or if their relationship should be thought of in other terms. Over the course of the novel it also becomes impossible to take at face value the main narrator’s statements about himself - as indeed it becomes hard to conceive of the narrator himself as a single and coherent person 8 . There are for instance the various self-descriptions of his professional background previous to his relocation: gardener, broad-based liberal humanist, messenger, doctor, welder, builder, electrician, student of chemistry, student of creative thought... 9 One identification which is stable over 8 Fludernik has also pointed out that the identity of the main protagonist, as that of his various stories, are in doubt in Out (205). 9 Some critics take a position on this point, suggesting e.g. that the reader must assume the protagonist to have been a chemist (Canepari-Labib 2000: 170). However, this judgement, based on the use of chemical terminology, disregards the fact that the protagonist also uses many other types of specialised terms (e.g. from biology and gardening), goes against other statements of the protagonist, but most importantly fails to read this ambiguity as a constitutive to the narrator’s occupation and identity, as well as to the novel’s world. Christine Brooke-Rose’s Out as an indictment of realism 29 the novel is that of his being ‘Lilly’s husband’, but in a dialogue with his wife Lilly he is given three different names (“George”, “Bill”, and “Charlie”) over the space of two pages (92-93). Indeed, the narrator himself questions his identity, which is shown recurrently throughout the novel, but most poignantly when he questions his wife: “- Lilly, who am I, who was I? ” (170). The devices presented above are but a subset of all the devices with which Out undermines reader attributions, but I would argue that the range of their effects on the status of different narrative elements has been covered. From the readers’ perspective, the devices either make it impossible to establish phenomena or events with certainty, or they denarrate by negating events and descriptions that had seemed firmly established 10 , or they provide readers with an array of different alternatives to a singular event or phenomenon, all of them more or less on a par regarding plausibility. As a result, every element of the narrative becomes questionable, the holder of only a preliminary and temporary character, open for denial or reversal 11 . In this way, the novel denies access to a referent that could be read as a stable reality; it is not a question of ease or difficulty of access, but of impossibility. The effects of these devices can be seen as diametrically opposed to the characteristics Roland Barthes ascribed to his ‘reality effect’ (Barthes 1984: 186-7): the textual devices analysed above work against aesthetic verisimilitude (and thus aesthetic illusion), and make a direct collusion between referent and signifier impossible for readers. However, the undermining of a stable referent is not solely due to the extensive use of these narrative devices. I argue that this undermining is also effected by the novel’s treatment of different discourses - which in addition to impinging on their validity in the novel’s world, doubles up as their metafictional critique. The next chapter analyses how different discourse forms - narrative realism, the discourse of identity, natural sciences, psychology - are questioned in the novel. 2. Down the cul-de-sacs of discourse As just mentioned, both the impossibility of certainty in the novel’s world and Out’s undermining of its narrative referent are achieved using two kinds of means, narrative devices and the critique of discourses - howev- 10 Richardson makes the case for a continuum between ‘local’ denarration, which does not affect the stability of the narrative, and a ‘global’ one which undermines the world it purports to depict (171). I would argue that the denarration in Out is clearly on the ‘global’ side of the scale. 11 McHale reads the novel in a similar way when he says that “the phenomenological organization of this novel undermines the reliability of every narrative proposition in it” (210). Rodrigo Vidaurre 30 er, drawing an analytical line between both kinds can at times be arbitrary. Regarding the first form of discourse to be analysed - narrative realism (as discourse) - I suggest the undermining occurs mainly through irony, aimed at traditional formulas of realist description, at conventional forms of reader reception, and at language use. In the case of the latter, two devices used repeatedly in Out are the play with and the literal interpretation of idioms 12 . A recurring formula in the novel involves Mrs Ned, the protagonist’s neighbour, with variations on the following theme: “Her arms throw her voice about, it rebounds against the walls and she catches it” (30-31) 13 . Further examples follow this same principle of blending literal and figurative meanings, such as the repeated description of the Manor House’s gently curving white wall, which makes it impossible to know “whether things are any different round the corner” (e.g. 107). This idiom, which in its conventional usage has space function as a metaphor for time (just as in the related ‘to turn the corner’ or ‘just around the corner’), is used to humorously pose a literal (spatial) question of whether things are different around this particular (and in this case actually nonexistent) corner. Using language this way - highlighting the multiple meanings and ambiguities that are part of everyday language use - again undermines the creation of stable significance in the novel. Realist descriptions are treated similarly: well-worn realist formulas are parodied and deconstructed by analysing them literally for content. Both excerpts below begin by using a commonplace of novelistic description, to then debunk the informational content their conventional use supposedly conveys: The vein must seem like a rampart to the fly, unless perhaps the fly has no conception of a rampart, any more than it has of love, and does not even know that the vein is blue. (43) The gesture is one of helplessness, palms flat and briefly facing upwards, paler, almost pink, and heavily lined. The gesture would be the same if the helplessness were faked. (62) This ironic treatment affects not only the particular description, but the realist formula itself, and shows up the ambiguities that this use of language contains. In addition, it shows how taking these literary formulas at face value rests on a complicity of readers with narrators - a complicity which could be described as an unquestioning ‘wanting to believe’. (As 12 This play would highlight the materiality of language and thereby contribute to disrupt the illusion of medial transparency that is associated with realism. 13 In another variation it is her laughter that Mrs Ned’s arms throw about, in yet another her arms throw her voice about but it is her laughter that rebounds against the walls; there are also instances of her arms not throwing her voice about any longer, but her voice being quiet and her arms resting. Christine Brooke-Rose’s Out as an indictment of realism 31 well as questioning these formulas, the novel is, of course, also breaking aesthetic illusion in these passages 14 .) The typical reader reception of realist fiction is also parodied, I would argue, in several passages that deal with the subject of identification, and which poke fun at the hermeneutical approach of Einfühlung towards literary characters. There is, for instance, the head gardener’s instruction to identify with each plant individually in order to understand its needs, and his advocating for introductions between the plants and the protagonist (61, 62). Another example is the passage where the protagonist’s wife Lilly explains how she likes to identify with inanimate things like the night wind, which “has the rhythms of strength” (89), whereas the narrator questions this practice and states that “the wind is only the wind” (90). To sum up, I read the novel as undermining the discourse of narrative realism through a questioning of language forms, through its parodic treatment of realism’s stock formulas, and through an ironic perspective on how readers engage with it. All three approaches share in common their questioning of what is actually conveyed in realist narration, and of how it is conveyed, this is, of the linguistic means with which a realist text comes to establish a certain illusion of a transparent, ‘objective’ representation of the world. A further form of discourse questioned as fundamentally is the language of observation and its memory. Both their reliability and their validity as sources of knowledge are thrown into doubt innumerable times, as in the following excerpt: Through the trellis the winter sky is blue and pale, paler than the summer sky. But it is difficult to re-visualise the exact degree of blueness in the summer sky without interposing picture postcards as sold in the city streets. No sky is as blue as that, not even here in the South. It is difficult to re-imagine the exact degree of heat, and picture postcards are cold. (14) This excerpt is exemplary for a frequently used device, which starts off with a conventional description, but which is then shown to fail the narrator’s consistency checks. In a further example, an originally straightforward description of the bloom of a certain tree gets messy when it is checked against the time of year, then deemed incompatible with bloom and fruit of a second kind of tree, and finally related to the observation of winter flies making love (which would also have implications for the time of year). The debate on the reliability of the tree description extends over a number of pages (21-29; sometimes only in the background), and is further difficulted by the fact that the main narrator is not a native of the region, and thus not altogether certain of the facts he uses to try to determine its consistency. 14 Fludernik reads many of Christine Brooke-Rose’s devices, in Out and other novels, as “anti-illusionist” (205). Rodrigo Vidaurre 32 Memory’s unreliability also affects the discourses of personal identity and intimacy. Memory, however, is not the main source of unreliability, as intimacy and identity are shown to be particularly open to wilful manipulation. Out’s protagonist and his wife get intimate by making “mental love” (161), titillating each other with stories of when they met. However, these memories - exchanged in sex-like encounters treated with bucketloads of irony (“Don’t stop, don’t stop” (94)) - are riddled with corrections, editions, differing versions, and petitions to change the script. In Out, intimacy and its common memory do not provide access to deeper levels of truth, in this case of the self; rather, the common past is instrumentalised as a source of pleasure for the present, a story to be shaped and edited according to the desires of the moment. Moreover, individual personal memory is found just as wanting and is also disavowed as a source of identity and truth. This is my reading of the semi-existential conversations the protagonist has with his supervisor, Mr Swaminathan, an authority figure with an Indian name and humorously linked to Indian mysticism 15 . Mr Swaminathan categorically discards the possibility of memory providing identity, and the protagonist’s struggle with his own identity seems to prove this point in practice. The discourse of objective science fares no better than the previously analysed ones - in spite of the prominent role played by science and its machines in the novel. Science’s disavowal occurs on several levels. To begin with, natural science is shown to be unable to provide answers to the uncertainties of day-to-day observation. Whereas the senses may not be perceptive or precise enough to apprehend certain events, scientific instruments (of which there are literally dozens in the novel) only provide the answers to these events’ occurrence in theory. In practice, in a recurring argument which works analogously to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, the setting up of the corresponding scientific instrument would influence the phenomena being observed. For instance, the question as to whether Mrs Ned looked up at the protagonist as he approached her shack could not have been answered by his carrying a camera with a telescopic lens at eye level, as this fact would in itself have made her look up (29). In other cases, the machinery that could be set up would provide information completely unrelated to the context: “A telescope might perhaps reveal a planet off course, a satellite out of orbit.” (18) Out adds to these limitations a further, more fundamental one, in its insistence that scientific phenomena do not have an equivalent in external reality, but only exist in the brain of the person behind the machine. Literally dozens of questions are given this double treatment: it is impossible to answer the question, as setting up the scientific machine would 15 E.g. Mr Swaminathan is connected with “unscientific” levitation (103). Christine Brooke-Rose’s Out as an indictment of realism 33 disturb the phenomenon being observed, and the answer itself would only exist in the brain of the machine operator. Science’s relevance is also cast into doubt in that most questions for which its help is considered (and most often found wanting) are systematically irrelevant to the story, its protagonists, and the novel’s world. An example of these pointless questions is the question if the innumerable eyes of flies making love show ecstasy or not (11). On top of this, the facts of scientific reality are shown up as certifiable knowledge, but irrelevant and useless for practical purposes. This is how I read the following excerpt: We can make our errors in a thought, and reject them in another thought, leaving no trace of error in us. No evidence at all is needed for a certainty acquired by revelation. Yes, but what relation does it have to the real thing? The number of molecules in one cubic centimetre of any gas, at sea-level pressure and at a temperature of fifteen degrees centigrade, is approximately twenty seven million million million, and each molecule can expect five thousand million collisions per second. (125-126) The first sentences of this excerpt ponder the question of attaining truth, but once the question of the ‘real thing’ is posed, readers are submitted to a litany of unhelpful scientific facts 16 . The novel thus suggests, I argue, that the discourse of the natural sciences is incapable of providing answers of relevance to humans in their quest for knowledge. This would mean that the natural world’s phenomena in Out cannot be determined with certainty, neither as a result of personal observation nor due to natural sciences and their machines - and the same holds true for identity and the psyche. As discussed above, personal identity is inaccessible to individuals (on their own or within intimate relationships), but the same applies to the science of the psyche in Out’s post-apocalyptic world. This science, as well as its machinery and doctors, take up a special position in the novel. Readers are presented with psychoscopes, complex machines only available for the privileged, which perform, in one session, many of the steps of lengthy Freudian psychoanalysis - and some of them at distance (141). However, psychoscopy and its biogrammes also contain a bias, somewhat similar to the Heisenberg principle in that the use of the method influences the scientific outcome. In the words of one doctor, “diagnosis prognosticates aetiology”, or, as it is also put, “diagnosis provokes its own cause” (both 139). The medical practice, made up of its discursive and machine components, would in the process of profiling the personality actually mould it. Thus there is no possibility of accessing an objective truth regarding identity: in the process of accessing 16 These scientific facts can be read as deconstructing the identity principle as they atomise the object into its innumerable parts - thus giving a complex statement about the possibility of truth statements, as well as their necessary framing/ abstraction of an object. Rodrigo Vidaurre 34 it, identity is already changed. The protagonist protests that this selfknowledge is false, built up by the instruments and the minds behind the instruments, but he is told its resemblance to the real thing is close enough (168). It is as if all possible sources of knowledge fail the protagonist. His own observation of external phenomena quickly runs into contradictions and the impossibility of making comparisons; he finds it impossible to determine any truth about himself, as his interrogation of his wife regarding his identity shows; the natural sciences provide answers that are true but completely irrelevant; the science of the mind moulds the patient, and the diagnosis will deliver its own causes. In addition to this, the protagonist is considered ill by many of the novel’s characters: he seems not to be in total control of his face and bodily movements, for instance, and also seems prone to talking to himself. All these limitations of the protagonist are shared by Out’s readers, who find themselves in a very similar position to his. This is all the more so because, as one critic has noted, the protagonist himself is a reader in this world, a focalisor who sees rather than a protagonist who acts (Malina 2002: 63-64). Out’s readers see mostly through the eyes of this possibly confused protagonist and face his same questions when trying to make sense of this world, unfamiliar to both him and them: one could say that they are re-enacting his situation. While all sources of knowledge also fail the readers, they are left with the additional question if events are confusing because they are perceived by a confused protagonist (as his possible shortcomings and failures become theirs), or if this confusion and uncertainty is part of the world he describes. At least three of the novel’s repeated phrases deal precisely with these epistemological issues. The first holds that whereas no amount of positive evidence conclusively confirms a hypothesis, one piece of negative evidence is enough to conclusively falsify it. The second states that errors can be made in one thought and rejected in another, leaving no trace of error in consciousness, and the third highlights that no evidence is required for a certainty acquired by revelation. All three can be read in relation to the protagonist’s quandary: the first highlights the impossibility of empirical certainty in an unfamiliar world, the second refers to the process of adjusting to new information, and the third to the possibility of simply believing. However, this awareness of epistemology does not help the protagonist in his quest to make sense of things. Whereas his wife focuses on the domestic, and suggests the protagonist start with small things such as believing in a bowl of gruel, he doesn’t seem capable of simple beliefs by revelation; he faces the age-old question of how to acquire trustworthy knowledge, which morphs into an enormous challenge in the novel’s unfamiliar and shifting world. Readers can never be sure if the protagonist is the better or the worse for his unbelieving approach - or if it is what makes him go in circles. Christine Brooke-Rose’s Out as an indictment of realism 35 3. Metalepsis from the ‘space’ between protagonist and author In the introduction I noted that Out makes extensive use of different kinds of metalepsis. It is hardly ever a case of clear metalepsis, however, but metalepsis to varying, uncertain degrees: also in this point the novel works against clear attributions 17 . The clearest examples of this are statements which have a form of double allegiance, as they can be attributed both to protagonist and a narrator located at a higher diegetic level, often discussing the process of writing (as discussed in Ch. 1). There is indeed a certain parallel in their activity, as the protagonist is continuously running through possible situations in his mind and constantly editing them. This is why the following dialogue can be equally read as an interior dialogue of the protagonist, who is self-statedly happy to talk to himself (161), as an ironic conversation between protagonist and higher-level narrator, or as a discussion (or self-dialogue) between two higher-level, heteroand extradiegetic narrators. - Look, since you’re inventing this dialogue you ought to give something to the other chap to say. - But I must get all those facts in. - He won’t let you, he exists too, you know. - I suppose so […] And the facts, anyway, are not true. - I know. You must be more realistic. Say for instance that you were trained at a Resettlement Camp. - I built the tower of Pisa and it leant. - Inside it spirals. A bronchoscope might perhaps reveal - Oh shut up. […] - Well, you started it, your dialogue gets out of hand. […] - You’re incapable of preparing any episode in advance. You can’t even think. (19-20). Once again the text makes a definite attribution impossible. There are numerous similar examples, which even when they centre on narrative topics such as the requirements of dialogue or of realistic narration can never be attributed undoubtedly to a narrator at a higher diegetic level - or, for that matter, to the main narrator. There are also numerous instances of metalepsis of a more subtle kind, where passages work both as narration and metanarratorial comment. An example is given in the next excerpt, which discusses the set-up of the protagonist’s home. The specification of the lavatory door as ‘certainly 17 The discussion of this chapter can be seen as a parallel, ontological construction to that of the previous chapter with its focus on epistemology and discourse. The question of how to gain access to a world becomes one of how this access implies a clash of different worlds/ world orders. In a sense, then, the epistemological uncertainty principle becomes ontological. Rodrigo Vidaurre 36 another possibility’ is part of a hesitating description of the protagonist’s shack, and seems a reference to the uncertain status of all things in the novel’s world. It stands in playful contrast to the description of the door to the front room as ‘not a possibility’, because off-limits now that the room is rented: In the short passage, almost cubic in its brevity, the lavatory door to the left is certainly another possibility. To the right of the kitchen door, facing the lavatory door, the door to the front verandah room, where the lodgers live, is not a possibility. (18) I read many of these instances as self-conscious (and subtly metaleptic) comment on the process of writing; again, their focus is often on what it takes to make description and dialogue have verisimilitude. The fact that the protagonist plays through hypothetical scenes in his mind again and again gives these passages a double meaning: on the one hand they could reflect e.g. an obsessive preparation of encounters with authorities on the side of the protagonist, or on the other show the back and forth of a higher-level narrator writing up a scene, criticising its make up, and deciding to modify it. This double possibility, in which events make sense both as a narratorial comment of the protagonist or as that of a higherlevel narrator, also attaches to the repeated phrase that sometimes it is only necessary to imagine things for them to occur in the novel’s world - for instance gruel. The novel’s repeated phrases themselves often develop metaleptic qualities through their use in different contexts. Whereas the narrative’s style means that it can accommodate nearly any sentence once as a statement of the main narrator, once a sentence is repeated its meaning often changes to involve a narrator at a higher diegetic level and/ or become metafictional. The repetition that ‘the manor house’s tall wroughtiron gates can sometimes be opened by an effort of the will’ can be read as a realist statement of mechanical fact, or as the protagonist’s idea that imagining things can make events occur, or as a metanarratorial comment that mixes the above readings with a description of writing/ reading. (This statement of fact is, not surprisingly, also contradicted a number of times: in other passages the gates can only be opened by remote control.) Other repetitions centre on the use of language itself, for instance the discussion of bungalow vs. shack as the better term for the housing in the ‘colourless’ settlement, or the game played with the double meaning of bungalows in the sunset being on fire/ having a party. The constant repetition, often unmotivated, of this kind of formulas, which occur both in narratorial comment and as part of the dialogue of different characters, involves the possibility of a higher-level narrator and is thus a form of metalepsis. A previous chapter had noted that the repetition of a phrase in different contexts makes it develop different meanings: the phrase works its Christine Brooke-Rose’s Out as an indictment of realism 37 way through a variety of different semantic meanings within the level of representation. As the previous paragraph shows, repetition can also generate different meanings by making a phrase relevant at different narratological levels. Metalepsis is thus also one of the ways in which the text opens up different semantic possibilities and works against the possibility of readers making certain attributions. On top of this, the metaleptical use of repetition, just as the other metaleptical moments discussed above, is anti-illusionistic, and thus a further instance of anti-realism. 4. In search of lost meaning In reaction to all the undermining of attributions in Out, to its evershifting landscape of facts and events, in sum to the huge uncertainty attached to all things in the novel - and this in a novel which makes explicit epistemological concerns - I would like to finalise this paper by analysing Out’s treatment of narrative signification and meaning. Both are dealt with, I argue, in an approach similar to that described in previous chapters: these core elements of realist narration take a beating, mainly in the protagonist’s parodic search for identity and meaning, which noone else but him sees as relevant, and which is performed in spite of his surroundings continuously showing him how ill-suited he is for the task in hand. The constant repetition of certain of the protagonist’s questions that are part of his search - some of them directly metafictional - again suggests a metaleptical involvement of a narrator at a higher diegetic level, and makes them relevant for an understanding of the novel itself. I argue that, inter alia in the way this questioning is dealt with, the novel takes a stand against a practice of literary hermeneutics that sees realism as a vehicle for socially or personally relevant ‘answers’. As on both a literal and a metafictional level Out itself works as background for these questions (‘Is there a story behind the story? ’ can also be asked of this novel), I will briefly describe further ways in which Out differs from traditional realist novels - in addition to the peculiarities of narrative style already presented. To begin, Out is characterised by a close to complete absence of plot and character. Events hardly move, and what movement there is seems circular; the repetition of phrases throughout the novel is mirrored by the repetition of daily situations, and an overall repetition of the protagonist’s situation. The space that character and plot take up in other novels is taken up in Out by an extensive description of surroundings, by a neutral, often unmotivated observation of phenomena such as the movement of pigeons on a roof, by interior monologue and dialogue, and so on. The protagonist is in himself extremely passive (more focalisor than protagonist, as mentioned before) and his actions are also described in the passive: conversations occur, and he doesn’t fall, but rather ‘the paving stone moves up’. The same applies Rodrigo Vidaurre 38 to many of his movements, which are not described as such, but rather as a change of size of the perceived objects. The novel’s world is thus to a large extent reduced to sense impressions, to things occurring and blobs of colour changing shape and size, much of which holds no significance for the story. The novel even makes explicit that passages can be devoid of significance, and seems to poke fun at readers’ search for significance in the process: “The number of the vehicle is 24.81.632. There is no numerical significance in such a number.”(42). Whereas he questions his wife on his identity, the protagonist’s questions regarding a ‘secret’ and an ‘answer’, as well as his ‘is there a story? ’ and ‘is there a story behind the story? ’, are addressed to figures of authority and knowledge: Mr Swaminathan and different doctors (e.g. 91, 133, 140). I read these questions as referring to a hermeneutics of depth, metanarratively addressing the question of significance and meaning in texts, but also carrying existential currency, functioning as a sign for the protagonist’s epistemological homelessness in the novel’s drab world. While his wife talks mainly about gruel and recipes, the protagonist repeats these questions again and again, and the novel treats them just as it does him: as vestigial of a previous age and world. Even the fact that his voice can hardly be heard seems to point to the questions’ irrelevance and to the lack of mark they leave in this new world’s air. The clearest answer he gets is when his questioning is discarded by Joan, a white woman who has married a successful black man and thus belongs to the socially privileged. - […] What did he say? I can’t hear him. An answer. What do you mean an answer? Don’t be so metaphysical. Do you mean an explanation of the origin? Or do you mean a cure? Surely you know that diagnosis only prognosticates aetiology. [...] It’s a short way of saying that they don’t claim to find either the ultimate cause or the ultimate cure, but they do know exactly how it functions, and can prescribe accordingly. I mean every neurosis has its mechanics, which are absolutely predictable [...]. (151) No ultimate causes, no ultimate cures, and no answers either, but knowledge of the mechanics of all neuroses: Joan’s approach is cheerfully pragmatic, eager to enjoy the benefits of psychoscopy, which provides one with a “technique for living” (150). This world’s science and knowledge are untroubled by the hermeneutical questions of the protagonist, which are deemed irrelevantly ‘metaphysical’. Indeed, not even the elite of this world is capable of dealing with the ambiguities involved in hermeneutical questioning. Joan describes her dislike (shared by all her acquaintances) of artists, diplomats, and - more to the point - old books and old films, the latter screened at ‘film museums’. After a couple of minutes they would all cause an unnerving feeling because it would be impossible to tell “what view are we being urged to take? ” (152). Christine Brooke-Rose’s Out as an indictment of realism 39 However, Joan’s answer also shows that the scientific knowledge in the novel’s world is uncertain, delivering no causes or origins, but only temporary solutions: “Knowledge certain or indubitable is unobtainable” (60). Positive evidence cannot conclusively confirm a hypothesis, after all, whereas one bit of negative evidence conclusively falsifies it, as a repeated phrase states 18 . Indeed, the only way around this problem seems to be to discard evidence-based knowledge and to settle for revelation, for which “no evidence at all is needed” (e.g. 115, 125). One sense of the term ‘revelation’ would seem to be as code word for the conventional knowledge and opinions of a society (and possibly spread by its government): “[...] revelation is open to all regardless of age, sex, race or creed. It is not, however, compulsory. […] Just fill up this form and queue here” (115). I read revelation, however, also in a hermeneutical sense, as code word for a text’s ‘deeper meaning’. In its opposition to conventional novels and its both continuous and explicit refusal to engage with the question of a ‘secret’, an ‘answer’, or of a ‘story behind the story’, Out suggests, I argue, that realist novels provide answers to these questions by means of revelation without evidence. This kind of ‘knowledge’ or ‘truth’ of narrative realism, and even the ‘epiphanies’ of modernist texts,would actually be - the novel suggests - the product of complicity by uncritical readers, mistakenly relying on a hermeneutics of depth in their perpetual attempts to distil significance and meaning out of narrative 19 . Revelation of this kind is precisely what Out systematically denies its readers: Out’s continuous undermining of certainty, its different possibilities for singular events, its narration that simultaneously offers different possibilities for how it is constituted, and its treatment of the protagonist’s questions point to the fact that there is nothing in Out to be ‘believed in’ in the sense of conventional reading experiences. Out’s protagonist (as well as the novel’s re-enacting readers) searches throughout the novel for comprehension and a stable truth, but the novel’s world has no such things on offer. Truth in Out is available only in theory, in the army of machines that could hypothetically answer questions, but the machines are never available, and in their use truth is anyway influenced and changed. As already mentioned, it is uncertain if the protagonist’s lonely struggle with the novel’s world is due to his malady (in which case his troubles could be easily dismissed as an account of sickness), or if it is due to the 18 There are further moments in the novel that insist on this point. Mr Swaminathan for instance defines knowledge as conjectures that have passed stringent tests (83- 84). 19 The novel’s use of the term ‘revelation’ with its religious associations can be seen as highlighting the lack of actual evidence for the beliefs held. ‘Revelation’ as a term highlights the fact that semiotic structures are bypassed, to privilege its recipient with a direct access to meaning and order. Rodrigo Vidaurre 40 novel’s world itself. Readers are placed in the same position as the protagonist - their fate is tied to his, in the words of a critic (Malina 2002: 64) - taking part in the same observation of phenomena and re-enacting his perceptual surprises. In this endeavour, however, they cannot resort to their day-to-day knowledge of an outside world as a corrective to the protagonist’s unfamiliar perceptions; instead, the text forces readers to rely radically on the information it itself produces. This is precisely why the question of cause (malady or world? ) can be left open. I suggest this is the reason why the text presents us with a dystopic world full of inversions: the non-applicability of their own day-to-day evidence forces readers to follow the protagonist’s narration, re-enact his jumps in judgements, and face the same epistemological questions. Unsurprisingly, the protagonist, as a discourse instance, fails to provide readers with certainty, just as all the other novel’s discourses did. It is thanks to its inversions - in the novel’s world and in its form of narration - that Out can ensure readers’ uncertainty and deny them the possibility of looking for the ‘revelation’ of stable significance and deeper meaning. Whereas the novel’s particularities make possible a whole myriad of interpretations, such as those posited in previous research, it is also relentless in its undermining of them, and readers will look in vain for interpretations which are not affected by this uncertainty. The novel’s world can only manage this because, in another of the novel’s repeated phrases, “it is easy enough in the negative” (e.g. 47, 49, 128, 174). References Barthes, Roland (1984 [1968]). “L’effet de réel.” In: Le bruissement de la langue: Essais Critiques IV. Paris: Editions du Seuil. 179-187. Birch, Sarah (1994). Christine Brooke-Rose and contemporary fiction. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Brooke-Rose, Christine (1986). Out. In The Christine Brooke-Rose Omnibus: Four Novels: Out, Such, Between, Thru. [1964]. Manchester: Carcanet. 7-198. Canepari-Labib, Michaela (2000). “The Deconstruction of Racial Identity in Christine Brooke-Rose’s Out.” Annali anglistica 4/ 1. 161-189. Canepari-Labib, Michela (2002). Word-worlds: language, identity and reality in the work of Christine Brooke-Rose. Oxford: Peter Lang. Fludernik, Monica (1996). Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London, New York: Routledge. Heise, Ursula (1997). Chronoschisms: time, narrative, and postmodernism. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Malina, Debra (2002). Breaking the Frame: Metalepsis and the Construction of the Subject. Columbus: Ohio State UP. Martin, Richard (1989). “‘Just Words on a Page’: The Novels of Christine Brooke- Rose.” Review of Contemporary Fiction 9/ 3. 110-123. McHale, Brian (1992). Constructing Postmodernism. London, New York: Routledge. Christine Brooke-Rose’s Out as an indictment of realism 41 Richardson, Brian (2001). “Denarration in Fiction: Erasing the Story in Beckett and Others.” Narrative 9/ 2. 168-175. Williamson, Andrew (2010). “Invisible Author? Christine Brooke-Rose’s Absent Presence.” Contemporary Women’s Writing 4/ 1. 55-72. Rodrigo Vidaurre Institut für Englische Philologie Freie Universität Berlin Germany Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH+Co. KG • Dischingerweg 5 • D-72070 Tübingen Tel. +49 (07071) 9797-0 • Fax +49 (07071) 97 97-11 • info@francke.de • www.francke.de JETZT BESTELLEN! Charlotte A. Lerg Die Amerikanische Revolution UTB Profile 2010, 128 Seiten, div. Abb., €[D] 9,90/ SFr 15,90 ISBN 978-3-8252-3405-8 Die revolutionären Ereignisse der Jahre 1763- 1791 und die erkämpfte Unabhängigkeit spielen eine zentrale Rolle in der amerikanischen Kultur und Gesellschaft, als Gründungsmythos und darüber hinaus. Die moderne USA und ihre Rolle in der Welt sind ohne die im ausgehenden 18. Jh. gelegten Grundlagen nicht zu verstehen. 081310 Auslieferung September 2010.indd 26 14.09.10 19: 49 The Great Arsenal of Democracy Uncle Sam and American Exceptionalism at the End of the American Century Michael Fuchs In the decade following the “end of history,” a number of high-profile American novelists, among them Thomas Pynchon and Toni Morrison, examined American history and highlighted the ways in which America’s past haunted its present. Steve Darnall and Alex Ross’s comic Uncle Sam similarly investigates America’s history and its continued influences on the nation at the end of the American Century. As my article will demonstrate, the graphic narrative thus highlights the pillars upon which American exceptionalism was built. On first glance, Uncle Sam appears to be a liberally positioned text that asks America to remedy past wrongs and re-consider its (exceptionalist) role in the world, but a closer look reveals an awareness of how important conservative ideas (including traditionalist constructions of American exceptionalism) are to the imagined American community. My article discusses how Uncle Sam struggles with these seemingly opposing forces and effectively suggests that these contradictions define America. 1. American Exceptionalism at the End of the American Century American exceptionalism has been conceived as “the distinct belief that the United States is unique, if not superior, when compared to other nations” (Weiss & Edwards 2011: 1). While ideas connected to American exceptionalism can be found throughout the post-Columbian history of America, the concept’s emergence can most readily be traced to Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. In his magnum opus, the French political thinker argues that “the position of the Americans is […] quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one” (1840/ 2007: 31). Published about half a cen- AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 39 (2014) · Heft 1 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Michael Fuchs 44 tury after the Revolutionary War, Tocqueville’s book was written at a time when the United States was still seeking to establish its identity, trying to ascertain what it was and in what ways it was different from the rest of the world. Not coincidentally, Herman Melville wrote around the same time that “we Americans are the peculiar, chosen people - the Israel of our time” (1850/ 1892: 144) and Walt Whitman sang his song to America. That through much of the nineteenth century, America “was truly more exceptional […] than at any time since” (Hodgson 2009: 156) seems to be a rather coincidental historical foundation upon which the “state fantasy” (Pease 2009) of American exceptionalism was built. When, in the early twentieth century, Marxists pondered why the United States, as the emblem of capitalism, was the only Western country which lacked a serious socialist movement and thus seemed to be exempt from their envisioned determinist historical pattern, American exceptionalism appeared to be the logical answer. In fact, none other than Joseph Stalin coined the term ‘American exceptionalism’ in 1929 (Pease 2007: 108).This connection to socialism defined America’s exceptional role through much of the twentieth century, for it was because of the foe of communism that the myth of American exceptionalism was increasingly perpetuated around the globe. Harry S. Truman’s declaration that one of the most essential tasks of the President of the United States was to “lead the whole free world in overcoming the communist menace” (1953/ 2013: par. 8) seems exemplary of how the United States defined its global role during the Cold War. Starting in the late 1980s, the Soviet system fell apart and so did the established world order of mutually assured destruction. As a result, the U.S. stood tall as the lone superpower - an exceptional role at a time when a new world order was about to be negotiated, indeed. However, the U.S.S.R.’s collapse also affected Americans in a significant and unexpected way: “[T]he absence of a war with an external enemy onto which the antagonisms that emerged between [the various sub-groups of the American nation] could get projected […] caused deep fissures to appear” (Pease 2009: 35). These fissures surfaced in myriad forms during the 1990s: Dances with Wolves (1990) drew on tensions between Native Americans and Whites (while seemingly unconsciously employing the noble savage stereotype in the process); the O. J. Simpson trial and Rodney King tape reignited racial tensions; and the 1995 decision to remove an Enola Gay exhibit from a fiftieth anniversary commemoration of the Hiroshima bombing in the Smithsonian due to allegations that the exhibit overemphasized the bombing’s tragic aftermath (rather than celebrated its role in assuring American victory over Japan) offered evidence of the depth of America’s struggle with its own past at that time. In this late-twentieth-century environment of looming chaos, confusion, and American self-questioning and self-(re-)discovery, several pieces of fiction explored the meaning of ‘America’ by investigating the nation’s The Great Arsenal of Democracy 45 past. On the surface, Thomas Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon (1997) dealt with the drawing of the Mason-Dixon line and white man’s intervention in nature, but the novel also elaborately linked processes of globalization that had emerged in the early American republic to the late twentieth century while critiquing slavery and the expulsion of Native Americans in the process. Cleverly set against the backdrop of a covenant that used to house Native American women, Tony Morrison’s Paradise (1997) took issue with essentialist constructions of race, thereby problematizing American history, which so strongly hinges upon the binary opposition between black and white (and white and red), at large. And Don DeLillo’s Underworld (1997) pondered whether America, indeed, stood “triumphant for a third time this century, this time in the wake of the Cold War” (Bush 1991/ 2013: par.11). Whereas George H. W. Bush considered the Soviet Union’s dissolution “part of the ongoing story of America’s success” (Cohen 2009: 7), Underworld’s non-chronological structure subverts the idea of a predetermined historical process culminating in the triumph of America. Alongside these books penned by literary heavyweights, Steve Darnall and Alex Ross’s Uncle Sam was published in 1997 and broached similar questions as the abovementioned novels did, yet it employed the mass culture medium of the comic for its purposes. Originally published in two 52-page issues and subsequently reissued as a “deluxe edition” containing both issues plus some additional images, an introduction by music journalist and cultural critic Greil Marcus, and a short history of Uncle Sam’s evolution, Uncle Sam combines artist Alex Ross’s “hyperrealist photographic register” with 1990s’ American comic books’ tendency to “place[] illustrations in the service of stories drawn from outside the traditional confines of the comic book subculture” (Gabilliet 2005/ 2010: 102, 104) and emerges as a ‘comic of ideas’ rather than one that centers on plot. The comic opens by depicting its titular character as a poor homeless man in a nondescript American city before sending him on a journey through time and space in order to rediscover America’s innocence. In the course of the episodic tale, Sam revisits some of the most iconic moments in U.S. history, including the Boston Massacre, the Ford Hunger March, and the JFK Assassination. Confronted with all those dark spots in the history of the American nation, a disillusioned and lamenting Sam ponders the question “What has become of America? ”. On his journey to answering this question, Sam cannot but engage with American exceptionalism, an idea that lies at the heart of what ‘America’ means, for, as Deborah Madsen has suggested, American exceptionalism is the “single most powerful agent in a series of arguments that have been fought down the centuries concerning the identity of Americans and America” (1996: 1). Michael Fuchs 46 2. “We’re number one and there’s a lot of idiots who don’t know that”: Reflecting (on) American Exceptionalism Although Madsen considers American exceptionalism the “single most powerful agent in a series of arguments […] concerning the identity of […] America,” the exact meaning of the term is elusive, for it has carried a variety of meanings for different groups and has been employed for partly wildly opposing purposes over the decades. According to Seymour Martin Lipset, five major tenets unite America and help distinguish it from the rest of the world, “liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism, and laissez-faire” (1996: 19). Arnon Gutfeld has identified four theses that help explicate American exceptionalism, namely “Frederick Jackson Turner’s material-geographic explanation; David Potter’s materialcultural explanation; Sven Steinmo’s institutional-political explanation; and Sacvan Bercovitch’s cultural explanation” (2002: 34). And Donald Pease (2009: 8) has opined that American exceptionalism refer[s] to clusters of absent (feudal hierarchies, class conflicts, socialist labor party, trade unionism, and divisive ideological passions) and present (a predominant middle class, tolerance for diversity, upward mobility, hospitality toward immigrants, a shared constitutional faith, and liberal individualism) elements. These three definitions show differences in the more minute details, but a general agreement as to the meaning of Amerian exceptionalism. This general consensus entails an accord concerning the features which have characterized the United States from its very beginning and which have not only contributed to, but, in fact, shaped the global understanding of America’s ostensibly unique role in the world - its exceptionalism, that is. Uncle Sam draws on various conceptualizations of American exceptionalism and emphasizes four elements which have defined America’s exceptionalist role: time, space, democracy, and, most importantly, freedom. American exceptionalism’s temporal dimension is connected to the belief that America was a virgin land and its settlers were a “civilizing force in a new land, unblemished by the many faults of the old one” (Strassfeld 2006: 285). As a result, “Americans have long seen the American experience as one of new beginnings and an escape from the superstitions, prejudices, and practices of Europe” (Strassfeld 2006: 285). America has thus often been seen as an innocent nation without history, whose people is united by an ideology rather than shared historical traditions. Yet Uncle Sam takes a decided stand against the exceptionalist construct of America being, as Daniel Bell (1991: 51) put it, “exempt from the laws of […] history.” Uncle Sam shows how its titular character experiences American history first hand, as Sam’s physical location in the space-time-continuum constantly changes. One moment, he is walking through a memorabilia The Great Arsenal of Democracy 47 store somewhere in the late-twentieth-century American South, the next, he sees dozens of slaughtered Native Americans in Illinois in the year 1832. This structure of interweaving distinct moments in American history far apart in time and space is employed throughout the comic, as past, present, and future uncannily merge. The resulting eradication of the borderlines between past and present is typical of what Linda Hutcheon has termed ‘historiographic metafiction’, which “offers a sense of presence of the past” (1988: 125). This presentness of the past is reinforced by Sam’s constant recitation of iconic phrases that were uttered by past presidents and other political figures or originated in popular culture, thus supporting Hutcheon’s argument that metahistoriographic texts depict a “past that can only be known from its texts, its traces” (1988: 125). Uncle Sam employs its metahistoriographic layer to great effect in order to attack the “belief that America ha[s] a consensual history, that its past is less marked by conflict than other countries” (Lipset 1996: 25), a belief that has - among others - resulted from the conceptualization of America as the land of new beginnings without a past. In addition, the interconnections between past and present allow Uncle Sam to highlight that all of the dark moments that are scattered throughout American history (knowledge of which had been suppressed for so long) haunt America’s present and, especially in a nation characterized by its futureorientation, its future. Through its emphasis on the past’s presentness, Uncle Sam suggests “the importance of phantoms to the general constitution of […] American national identity and consciousness” (Weinstock 2004: 7); that is, that America is anything but exempt from history. But the comic brings an important aspect to the table: To discuss specters, following Jacques Derrida, is “to speak […] about certain others who are not present, nor presently living […] in the name of justice. Of justice where it is not yet, […] where it is no longer, […] and where it will never be” (1993/ 2006: xviii 1 ). Especially in a democratic society, these phantoms thus bespeak of a desire for justice, the necessity of a truthful representation of history. Of course, as a metahistoriographic text, Uncle Sam constantly highlights “the inherent possibility of, and concomitant danger in, the effacement of historical fact,” but it also underlines the need for “retaining the reference to historical truth outside of merely competing subjectivities” (Berlatsky 2011: 1). Indeed, by stressing that Uncle Sam merges the “200 million stories” (Darnall & Ross 1997/ 2009: I.1 2 ) the American nation could narrate, already the comic’s first page clarifies that Sam’s memories do not represent the subjective memories of an individual, but rather the 1 Emphasis in original unless noted otherwise. 2 Like many comics, Uncle Sam is not paginated. In order to facilitate crossreferencing, I have decided to provide issue numbers in Roman and page numbers in Arabic numerals. Michael Fuchs 48 collective memory of a nation, the repressed parts of which resurface. In this context, Donald Pease (2009: 73) writes that [t]he recognition of what was shameful about the historical past would enable its victims and their oppressors to take up a different position in the future. The shame would involve acceptance of the fact that America was an imperial society predominated by white settlers who pirated land, exploited and enslaved subaltern laborers, bullied and sometimes murdered whoever got in their way. While Pease’s analysis of Clinton’s New Covenant suggests that such an acceptance of America’s dark history would expand the national family and symbolically welcome new members to its collective, the spectral dimension of American history depicted in Uncle Sam implies that the (formerly) oppressed groups will never be entirely equal, for there can never be justice for those past wrongs. No reparation payments, no casino licenses, no affirmative action, and no “exterior scaffolding” (Nora 1989: 13) of history via memorials to fallen Native Americans, African- American slaves, or abolitionists can remedy what happened. Pierre Nora’s quotation in the previous sentence is taken from his work on ‘lieux de mémoire’, in which he highlights the interrelations between certain sites and memory; time and space, that is. This is also true of American mythology, for its temporal dimension is closely linked to space. From John Winthrop’s ‘city upon the hill’ to the falling Twin Towers, space has always played an important role in imagining the New World. No wonder that Charles Olson proclaimed “SPACE to be the central fact to man born in America” (1947/ 1997: 11). Of course, Frederick Jackson Turner put forward the seminal elaboration on space’s significance to the American self in his frontier thesis. Turner argued that the steady westward expansion influenced American culture at large because frontiersmen and -women acquired both a democratic lifestyle and a very specific kind of individualism, as they were compelled to confront the unknown and constantly adapt to a continually changing environment. As William Spanos (2007: 36) has noted, the forward-moving boundary line between wilderness and settlement, the unfamiliar and the familiar, anxiety and complacency, distrust and confidence, violence and peace, ‘them’ and ‘us’ […] became the sine qua non of youthful American civilization and the exceptionalist national identity. While the westward expansion has been “inextricably linked to the values associated with American exceptionalism” (Hietala 2003: 256), Uncle Sam inverts the myth of the westward movement by distributing four parts of a United States map over the comic (Fig. 1). Tellingly, the first of these images depicts the West and the final one the East Coast. The movement from the Pacific to the Atlantic is accompanied by images of violence, ignorance, racism, moral decay, moral panics, economic hopelessness, The Great Arsenal of Democracy 49 and destruction. The images’ sequential order involves a movement towards the East; back to Europe, thus undermining one of the central claims for America’s uniqueness - the “aspirations of a new land to escape the institutionalized vices of the old” (Shafer 1991: vii). Michael Fuchs 50 The Great Arsenal of Democracy 51 Michael Fuchs 52 Fig. 1: Uncle Sam’s eastward movement. The Great Arsenal of Democracy 53 On the one hand, this return to Europe implies that solutions to certain social ills - such as the seeming omnipresence of poverty and apparently unprovoked outbursts of violence in the middle of American streets already introduced in the comic’s first few pages - might be (or might have already been) discovered back in the Old World. On the other hand, the westward movement’s inversion also tackles the topic of confronting the national past. Henry David Thoreau wrote that “[w]e go eastward to realize history, and study the works of art and literature, retracing the steps of the race - we go westward as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure” (1862/ 1991: 86-87). In this way, the eastward movement, which is directed towards the past and paradoxically accompanies the comic reader’s progress, supports the verbo-visual muddying of past, present, and future. Moreover, this inversion of the westward movement myth presents a (slightly) more positive perspective on America’s struggles with its history in light of Thoreau’s words, for it suggests that bringing certain repressed aspects of American history and all too easily ignored characteristics of the present to the people’s conscious awareness may be a first step towards learning, a first step towards remedying certain fissures in American society. Especially in a nation that values free speech and that is considered the oldest democracy in the world, the ideal arena to remedy these fissures would be politics. Indeed, Clinton’s New Covenant was indicative of a desire to address these issues. Besides finally embracing a multicultural America, the New Covenant was meant to re-establish trust in political leaders. “Our political system […] rotates between being the butt of jokes and the object of absolute scorn,” as a result of which “most people have lost faith in [the American] government,” said Clinton in his New Covenant speech (1991/ 1996: 88-89). In his first inaugural address, he thus urged Americans “[t]o renew America, we must revitalize our democracy” (1993/ 1994a : 2). Created during Clinton’s second term as President of the United States (but still published before the Lewinsky scandal broke), Uncle Sam strongly echoes the distrust in politicians diagnosed by Clinton as early as page one when Sam opines, “People have a right to know whether or not their president’s a crook” (Darnall & Ross 1997/ 2009: I.1). However, the comic’s openly critical mindset concerning American politics becomes most apparent in the second half of its first issue. After stumbling through an anonymous mass of people, Sam stops in front of a shop window, as an announcement for Democrat Ray Elliott’s first and only run for a senate seat catches Sam’s attention. In the next panel, Sam is confronted with numerous television sets tuned in to various channels. The televisual flow of multitudinous voices merges reports on how Elliott’s major opponent and current senator “spent over three million dollars on ‘attack ads’” with a report on a right-wing channel that underlines “that the senator was committed to the people” and a seemingly random announcement that Michael Fuchs 54 “[o]dds are, you’re being raped right now - and don’t even know it” (Darnall & Ross 1997/ 2009: I.29). The message of politicians (and the associated media industries) mind-raping their voters is blatantly obvious and continued a few pages later at a parade and subsequent victory party that celebrates Republican senator Louis Cannon - a loose cannon who bears marked visual resemblance to Rush Limbaugh - who has apparently emerged victorious over Elliott. When Sam enters the hall, sourceless voices talk of Cannon being “a symbol of a nation that’s happy with itself” and express excitement about the senator’s new program called “Contract II: The New Something” (Darnall & Ross 1997/ 2009: I.36), a (non-)descriptor that contrasts Cannon’s business-orientation (‘Contract’) with Clinton’s religiously connoted rhetoric (‘Covenant’), parodically plays on America’s desire for the new combined with tradition and continuity (implied by the ‘new’ and ‘II’), and, by using a phrase that could just as easily be a title conceived by a lazy Hollywood marketer for the next sequel to a blockbuster, highlights the media’s accompliceship in duping the masses. When Cannon enters the stage, Sam notices passivity in the audience, remarking that “[t]hey’re acting like they’ve seen crowds on television” (Darnall & Ross 1997/ 2009: I.37). Thus, Sam establishes a connection with (presumably) passive television spectators who simply tune in to the televisual flow and uncritically and silently accept not only the disparate images fused on the tube, but also the messages massaged into their brains. Whereas Jean Baudrillard argued that in the post-political world, silence and indifference towards politics is “nothing […] to deplore,” but rather “a collective retaliation” and “refusal to participate” (1978/ 1983: 14), for “today’s political arena” is “empty” (1986/ 1989: 110), Uncle Sam’s equation of television viewers and people attending the victory party asks for more visible and active forms of resistance (i.e., participate in democratic processes). This critique is sustained when only Sam appears to be able (or willing? ) to read between Cannon’s rather vacuous lines. It is worth quoting Cannon’s self-explanatory speech, as understood by Sam, at length here: We proved that you wanted to get big government off your back once and for all! We proved that you wanted something done about the problems of immigration! […] We proved that we could write laws that would directly benefit those corporations at the expense of the less affluent and vote that legislation into law without letting the public know! […] We couldn’t have done it without the slickly-assembled attack ads that distorted my opponent’s record and cast doubt on his personal behavior or the major news media, whom we routinely intimidated by calling them “liberal.” But most of all, we couldn’t have done it without you, the people of this great state! […] You cynical, apathetic, ignorant, beaten-down sheep! If there’s one thing I’ve learned about you, the American people - it’s that you […] fear change! […] That’s why […] I’ve The Great Arsenal of Democracy 55 used carefully-crafted catchphrases - like “family values” and “hiring quotas” and “fiscal responsibility” and “global competitiveness” - because they suggest my concern while barely concealing my contempt for every single one of you. (Darnall & Ross 1997/ 2009: I.37-38) In its depiction of the victory rally, Uncle Sam zeroes in on American democracy’s undercurrents. Apparently, America could not fulfill its utopian promise to implement the “government of the people, by the people, for the people” Abraham Lincoln had envisioned in Gettysburg (1863/ 2012: 150), but is rather governed by politicians who primarily act in their own interests (or are large corporations’ mere puppets and act in their interests). Whereas Baudrillard diagnosed the “simulation of government” in which “no one minds” the “mistakes made by […] political leaders” already in the mid-1980s, Uncle Sam clearly condemns the emergence of what Baudrillard termed “consensus through indifference” (1986/ 1989: 110). In addition, Cannon’s assertion that “[w]ith enough […] money, you can manipulate the American people into accepting just about anything” (Darnall & Ross 1997/ 2009: I.39) touches upon the rise of a political elite in the United States. “American democracy,” wrote Frederick Jackson Turner, “is fundamentally the outcome of the experiences of the American people in dealing with the West” (1920/ 2008: 28). Yet, in combination with the inversion of the westward movement, Cannon’s lines indicate an undesired return to Europe, for they picture a stark break with the idealist image of a classless America where no elite rules, but everybody participates in democratic processes. The comic thus repeatedly pictures America as a nation that is not so different from other nations - let alone exceptional - and questions the nation’s exceptionalist claims in the process. Despite being flabbergasted by the lack of large-scale protests against Cannon’s type of ‘politics’, Sam is most shocked by the fact that a second Uncle Sam stands by Cannon’s side and proclaims he - and not the comic’s protagonist - would “lead this nation to great things” (Darnall & Ross 1997/ 2009: I.40). When Good Sam meets his double again later in the comic, Evil Sam is sitting on a throne composed of hundreds of TV screens smoking a fifty-dollar bill. The representative of excessive and uncontrolled capitalism stubs out the Grant on the United States Capitol’s dome and tells Good Sam that the comic’s hero “couldn’t handle the truth” (Darnall & Ross 1997/ 2009: II.36) and that in Evil Sam’s America - where obviously money, and not the people, reigns - “everything’s the truth” (Darnall & Ross 1997/ 2009: II.37). When Evil Sam elaborates on the phrase’s meaning, one of the aspects he mentions is the effacement of America’s “long national nightmares” (Darnall & Ross 1997/ 2009: II.37). Thus, of course, the question of history’s representation is foregrounded again, as are the struggles over - and the related question of how to properly deal with - the nation’s past. In this way, Uncle Sam’s critique of Michael Fuchs 56 America comes full circle, as it underlines the interrelatedness of capitalism and the numerous exceptional American fault lines - from the extermination of native populations and the enslavement of blacks to the Great Depression and Republicans’ vitriol against big government during the Reagan-Bush era (during which government expenditures tripled) - the comic touches upon. Even though Uncle Sam’s focus on the fault lines and fissures in American culture and its interrelated questioning, if not even deconstruction, of traditional conceptualizations of American exceptionalism seem to be expressive of an ideology that asks not merely for a reconsideration of, but an honest and serious confrontation with America’s history and its national creed, the comic’s - and its protagonist’s - role in the constant (re-)negotiation of America’s national identity proves to be more complex than at first might appear. 3. “You’re not the spirit of a nation - you’re a spirit of freedom”: Uncle Sam’s Exceptionalism It is not without reason that a comic that investigates America focuses on the experiences of Uncle Sam, one of the nation’s most enduring icons. Klaus Rieser has explained that iconic figures such as Uncle Sam “are highly relevant for the day-to-day integration of the otherwise heterogeneous composition of the American social landscape,” for they “bond […] the nation together on a symbolic level” (2013: 3). Yet it is not only Sam’s continued presence in the American imagination that makes him the perfect vehicle for questioning American ideals, but, much more so, the fact that “he has been variously appropriated by both the orthodox and the iconoclast alike” (Kern 2013: 171). As Louis Kern has demonstrated, Uncle Sam’s image has provided a platform upon which his - and the United States’ - meaning has been negotiated for nearly two hundred years. Kern has shown that while Sam, especially since James Montgomery Flagg’s iconic ‘I Want You’ recruitment poster, has been predominantly associated with U.S. militarism and unquestioning patriotism, there has always been an alternative dimension to Uncle Sam’s image, too; one that is critical of the United States. This aspect is significant insofar as it highlights a dividedness that is characteristic of the American nation. In Uncle Sam, its protagonist personifies this dividedness, for, on the one hand, he is clearly critical of his country, yet, on the other hand, he truly comes to embody American exceptionalism. In the comic, Sam repeatedly meets other national symbols, including the American Bald Eagle, Columbia, Britannia accompanied by a lion, Marianne, and the Russian Bear, in a world that is separated from the sphere of mortals, a late-twentieth-century Olympus. Sam seems nearly as lost in the world of national symbols as on Earth, for he is utterly con- The Great Arsenal of Democracy 57 fused - not only as a result of the chaotic events in the mortal realm, where past and present constantly merge, but also because he is uncertain of who he is. Even though readers can witness how Sam experiences an identity crisis starting on page one, his confusion is taken to an entirely new level when his doppelganger proclaims to be “the spirit of America” (Darnall & Ross 1997/ 2009: II.25), a role that Sam thought was his. Yet Britannia clarifies that Sam is “not the spirit of a nation,” but rather exceptional, for he is “a spirit of freedom” (Darnall & Ross 1997/ 2009: II.28). Tellingly, Britannia rather than Columbia explains Sam’s role in the world, a gesture that reveals the belief in America’s exceptionalist status among this planet’s nations. Indeed, when Britannia adds that “the eyes of the world are still upon you. Waiting to see what you do” (Darnall & Ross 1997/ 2009: II.29), the reader is tempted to ponder, in the words of Thomas Pynchon (1997/ 1998: 354): “Does Britannia, when she sleeps, dream? Is America her dream? ”. Britannia’s emphasis on ‘waiting’ establishes an orientation towards the future, a future represented by Uncle Sam. As a result, the implied answer to Pynchon’s question seems to be “yes, Britannia dreams of America” despite America’s obvious flaws. What thus becomes apparent is that even media texts critical of the United States often cannot suppress the idea of the nation’s exceptionalist nature. Sylvia Söderlind (2011: 9) writes in this context that exceptionalism, whether one calls it an ideology, a myth, a creed, an ethos, or a god-given truth, inflects every discourse involving relations between the United States and its - internal as well as external - others[,] and even dissenting counterdiscourses rely on the commonality of assumptions underlying the national ethos. Uncle Sam provides testament to Söderlind’s argument. Although the comic highlights the various fault lines in American society, it still takes for granted the uniqueness - indeed, the exemplary status - of the home of the brave. Through the allegorical equation of Sam and the United States, Uncle Sam suggests American exceptionalism to be closely linked to freedom, a concept Andrew Bacevich has, in the American context, described as “not so much a word or even a value as an incantation” (2008: 6). However, the comic does not fail to highlight that America took a long and bumpy road until those not conforming to the ideal of being heterosexual, white, and male had access to these freedoms. While Columbia explicitly stresses that she “tried to vote in 1880” (Darnall & Ross 1997/ 2009: II.26), a brief exchange between Sam and a Mr. Bones doll that revives the visual tropes of blackface minstrels and stereotypical representations of African-American dialects reveals what is at stake in this context. When confronted with the atrocities of white lynch ‘justice’, Sam begs Mr. Bones to keep in mind that “we gave you your freedom … I Michael Fuchs 58 mean, eventually” (Darnall & Ross 1997/ 2009: I.23; ellipsis in original). Enraged, Mr. Bones responds: “Oh, did you? Did you really? Free to enter through the servants’ entrance at hotels? Free to get my ass beaten for having the nerve to want to vote? Well, thank you, Suh! Thank God Almighty I’m free at last! ” (Darnall & Ross 1997/ 2009: I.23). The exchange between Sam and Mr. Bones touches upon the ways in which African Americans were, in fact, Americanized - that is, turned into modern political subjects in the American nation-state - and casts a dark shadow on the image of the United States as beacon of freedom. Indeed, this image is about as ambiguous as American exceptionalism per se - and not only because it took the exemplary democracy nearly two hundred years to fulfill its promise to consider all humankind equal. After all, for the pioneers crossing the Atlantic in the early decades after the New World’s ‘discovery’, freedom primarily meant freedom from their respective kings and queens (and the related feudal systems) as well as freedom from papal power. Similarly, for many (right-wing) Americans who have essentially followed this early interpretation of freedom to this day, freedom connotes freedom from state intervention, which, especially in the aftermath of 9/ 11, collided with a growing desire for (national or private? ) security. And, for many, freedom still stands for the freedom to fulfill their dreams. The latter two definitions of freedom, however, all too easily ignore socio-economic realities, for these notions of freedom are clearly rooted within a specific socio-economic milieu whose members think they don’t (and never will) need ‘evils’ like social insurance and whose members have access to the freedom of fulfilling their dreams. At the end of the day, not all individuals living in America can participate in the American Dream. Confronted with economic hardships, numerous people take jobs in order to survive, not in order to fulfill their dreams. Tellingly, Sam notes that a “woman realizes that working forty hours per week will not be enough” (Darnall & Ross 1997/ 2009: II.13) upon seeing a Hispanic American scrubbing the floor of a fast food restaurant in the middle of the night. Apparently, this woman is among those deprived of their liberty due to the workings of the capitalist system. Despite these apparent flaws, the ideal of freedom presents itself as one of the notions inherently connected to American exceptionalism that can hardly be argued against. Who in their right mind would, after all, not be in favor of freedom and the expansion of what Thomas Jefferson called the “empire of liberty” (1780/ 1951: 238)? Lines of thought like the one just presented consciously and/ or unconsciously conflate “universalism and exceptionalism […] for rhetorical and political ends” (García 2011: 58). This conflation of universalism and exceptionalism has a long tradition in American rhetoric that can at least be traced back to Thomas Paine’s claim that “[t]he cause of America is in great measure the cause of all mankind” (1776/ 2003: 3-4). While Sam does not invoke this line in particular, he does conjure up the ghost of The Great Arsenal of Democracy 59 Thomas Paine and his Common Sense when he realizes that ‘God bless America’ has become such a vacuous phrase that it can even be employed as a word puzzle in Wheel of Fortune, wondering: “What would Tom Paine have made of this? ” (Darnall & Ross 1997/ 2009: I.29). But to return to the merging of universalism and exceptionalism, it is important to note that through this rhetorical strategy, America effectively manages to speak for ‘all mankind’. While the idea of freedom already presents difficulties within the borders of the U.S.-American nation-state, the situation becomes all the more complex when leaving the territory of the United States. In this context, it is worth considering that the idea of ‘exporting’ freedom - and, especially, the American version thereof - to (select) dictatorial or military regime-led countries tends to ignore that these political systems have evolved over decades, if not centuries, and are thus in many cases part of the respective nation’s identity. “The world must be made safe for democracy” (Darnall & Ross 1997/ 2009: I.39), exclaims Sam while channeling Woodrow Wilson at one point. 3 Yet the line implies that America, on the one hand, knows how to prepare the world for democracy and freedom and, on the other hand, entails that everyone desires liberty and that democracy is always the right form of government, assigning freedom and democracy universal truth values in the process. In her elaborations on universalism, Judith Butler has recognized a paradox in the concept. She (1996: 49-50) argues: There are cultural conditions for [universality’s] articulation that are not always the same, and that the term gains its meaning for us precisely through these decidedly less than universal conditions. This is a paradox that any injunction to adopt a universal attitude will encounter. For it may be that in one culture a set of rights are considered to be universally endowed, and that in another those very rights mark the limit to universalizability. Indeed, freedom may very well be one of these conditions that limit the transnational applicability of American ideals, for certain people may consider freedom a kind of burden or may even misuse it, since they are 3 While Britannia, Marianne, and the Russian Bear appear in - and thus add a transnational dimension to - the comic, the Vietnam War is merely alluded to once (when Sam quotes William Westmoreland’s infamous statement that “[t]he Oriental doesn’t put the same high price on life as does the Westerner” [Darnall & Ross 2009: I.20]), and it appears as if, in the words of Jean Baudrillard, “the Gulf War did not take place” (1991/ 1995), since except for a rather random image of Saddam Hussein displayed on one of the screens Evil Sam’s throne is made of, there are no references to the (First) Gulf War in the comic. Uncle Sam’s strong focus on events that occurred within the United States’ borders stresses that in order for America to fulfill its utopian promises, it must turn inwards, focus on itself, on the inside, not the global arena on the outside. Michael Fuchs 60 not used to it and cannot properly appreciate it. 4 In addition to the problem of universalizability, the militaristic undertones of Wilson’s rhetoric underline the conflicting desires of freedom and security, the latter of which generally depends on state intervention in private freedom. A related problem, as Godfrey Hodgson stresses in his The Myth of American Exceptionalism, is the gaping chasm between real-world actions and American ideals. Hodgson (2009: 14) writes: Americans have felt so proud of their nation’s achievements that they have wanted to socialize their children, and their immigrants’ children, with their national pride. Increasingly they have felt called upon to share their beliefs, including their belief in their own exceptionalism, with a wider world. It is, after all, one thing to believe in one’s own exceptionalism. That can be morale-building and invigorating. It is quite another to arrive in another country - Iraq, for example - of whose history one knows little and whose language one cannot speak, and expect the inhabitants to accept one’s claim to exceptional virtue, especially if one’s actions do not immediately confirm it. This paradox lies at the heart of what Michael Ignatieff has described as “the messianic American moral project” that imagines “America teach[ing] the meaning of liberty to the world” (2005: 14) - and the paradox might nowhere be more apparent than in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s conceptualization of the United States as the “great arsenal of democracy” (1940/ 2013: par. 71). Not coincidentally, Uncle Sam quotes this oxymoronic phrase (Darnall & Ross 1997/ 2009: I.39; Fig. 2) and, in the process, questions America’s practice of bringing freedom and democracy to the rest of the world by military force without necessarily considering the larger implications while at the same time turning a blind eye to its own flaws. 4 Especially in the American context, such reasoning is highly problematic, for this type of rhetoric was employed by anti-abolitionists and white supremacists. In Thomas Dixon’s Clansman, for example, black liberation leads to widespread laziness among the freedmen, including an unwillingness to plant crop, for “[t]he negroes are all drawing rations at the Freedman’s Bureau,” and black retaliation for decades of suffering by promptly “disfranchis[ing] their former masters” (1905/ 1970: 117, 247), i.e., celebrating their freedom by taking it from another group. The Great Arsenal of Democracy 61 Fig. 2: The panel’s visual composition underscores the paradoxes contained in the phrase ‘great arsenal of democracy’. 4. Novus Ordo Seclorum? Uncle Sam’s Exceptionalism Uncle Sam finds itself in a dilemma, for the comic proves to be well aware of all the paradoxes at the heart of America - and American exceptionalism, for that matter. Yet it seems as if Uncle Sam embraced these apparent contradictions - following the Whitmanian national credo of “I contradict myself,” for “I contain multitudes” (1855-1892/ 2004: 1323, 1325) - because it concludes in an ambiguous way. In the comic’s climax, its idealist yet disillusioned protagonist defeats his evil double by inhaling his foe. By metaphorically smoking the opium pipe of self-absorbed and self-righteous American ideology, Sam effectively incorporates all of America’s negative facets that Evil Sam had represented. After the - quite literal - clash of titans, Sam suddenly reassumes his role as an elderly homeless man in the streets of an anonymous late-twentieth-century American city. Not surprisingly, Sam is slightly confused at first, but after having discovered his beloved and believed-to-be-lost hat that screams Michael Fuchs 62 American patriotism, he seems to go about his daily chores reinvigorated, happy, and goal-driven again, as he struts around singing “Yankee Doodle.” Fig. 3: Uncle Sam’s concluding panels are filled with ambiguities. The Great Arsenal of Democracy 63 Yet Sam’s apparent happiness leaves a sour aftertaste, for a question emerges: Has he, the embodiment of the United States (or the embodiment of freedom? ), again forgotten? Will he blissfully ignore his experiences and what he has (supposedly) learnt from them? Uncle Sam’s final two panels are decidedly undecided about the issue. In the comic’s second-to-last panel (Fig. 3), Sam drops a dollar bill and apparently does not care about losing the money. This seemingly irrelevant gesture may suggest that Sam’s (and thus the United States’) disposition has fundamentally changed - Idealist Sam has won, he will fight for an American version of welfare capitalism, and the world will become a better place - thanks to Uncle Sam’s leadership, of course. On the other hand, Sam’s blissful ignorance of dropping the dollar might just as well be indicative of a self-centered neglect of events occurring around him on a much larger scale. Columbia’s first appearance without disguise in late-twentieth-century America in the comic’s final panel (Fig. 3), in fact, supports the latter interpretation. Tellingly, she, who was replaced by Sam as the embodiment of the nation in the second half of the nineteenth century, picks up the dollar. Her look is one of resignation, as if she had realized that Sam was to forget (again) and continue his (downward) path; a path that will lead the United States ever farther away from what America was (supposedly) meant to be. While until this point, (Good) Sam had represented the American collective, Columbia, who apparently needs the one dollar so much more than now high and mighty Sam, assumes this role in the final panel. Sam, on the other hand, comes to embody the aloof American government, which has lost touch with reality, as Uncle Sam’s critique of America suddenly also includes liberals who have become absorbed by conservative ideas of what America is (meant to be). In the comic’s concluding panels, Uncle Sam’s protagonist is heading towards a sign displaying the Great Seal of the United States, underscoring the call for a return to the ideals and dreams America was meant to represent that is omnipresent throughout the comic. 5 Despite the prominent display of the year in which Americans declared their independence from the British Crown on the sigil, the comic’s socio-historical contexts and setting in late-twentieth-century America raise the question whether this ‘new order of the ages,’ the beginning of the new American era approved by God at the end of what Henry Luce termed “the American Cen- 5 Of course, ambiguity strikes here, too, for the sigil can be easily linked to the dollar bill, thus suggesting that while Sam might ignore the one (insignificant) dollar, he won’t be ignoring larger sums of money and will continue on the ‘American’ path that has given birth to corrupt politicians and cut-throat capitalism. The sigil’s representation in the comic, which resembles a sign advertising some ‘weird’ cult, only adds to the ambiguity. Finally, it seems as if Sam has passed the sign without even looking up in the final panel, which, of course, suggests that Sam no longer thinks about the ideals represented by the sigil. Michael Fuchs 64 tury” (1941), is (or, rather, will be) different from the ‘new order’ in 1776. “Of course” would only be a logical answer to this question, for 221 years passed between the Declaration of Independence and Uncle Sam’s publication. And one would expect things to have changed in the course of more than two centuries. Indeed, even though America had taken a central role in global politics soon after its ‘discovery’, and the United States had assumed a leading position in several industries by the end of the nineteenth century, it was only in the aftermath of the two world wars that the United States emerged as the global power known today. That Uncle Sam was penned and published towards the end of the American century and a couple of years after George H. W. Bush had declared the dawn of the New World Order 6 (eleven years to the day before America and the world witnessed an attack on said order on a sunny September morning) is not only indicative of the increasing U.S. dominance in the course of the twentieth century, but, even more so, the changing geopolitical landscape of the late twentieth century. After all, for a large proportion of the twentieth century, American exceptionalism was primarily defined vis-à-vis the Soviet Union as representative of the counterideology to Americanism. With the disintegration of the U.S.S.R., the United States lost its decades-long foe that, somewhat paradoxically, served as an anchor for order, an easily identifiable Other, the disappearance of which led to insecurity. For many, the Soviet Union’s collapse harbingered an age of chaos and confusion, while others even connected it to an impending end of history, for “[t]here [was] no real opposition any more,” as “the great anti-capitalist ideology ha[d] been emptied of its substance” (Baudrillard 1986/ 1989: 116). Tellingly, in the comic, Sam is first shocked and then confused when he meets the Russian Bear in the pantheon of national symbols. Sam notices that his former enemy “sounds […] fragile” and “doesn’t look like an Evil Empire” (Darnall & Ross 1997/ 2009: II.29), which underscores how quickly Reagan’s messianic rhetoric and religious polity had been outmoded in view of the increasingly interconnected and interdependent global world of the late twentieth century. That the bear even shows sympathy for Sam’s situation and tries to offer advice for the future, for Sam “cannot win the battle the old way” (Darnall & Ross 1997/ 2009: II.29), provides a nearly too obvious example of the changes many felt were taking place during the 1990s, in which former enemies suddenly emerged as potential allies. Especially in some of his first speeches in office, Bill Clinton drew on these ideas and anxieties. For example, in a glowing commitment to American exceptionalism at American University 6 It should not be forgotten that Mikhail Gorbachev conceptualized his New World Order nearly three years before Bush gave his “New World Order” speech. The Great Arsenal of Democracy 65 in Washington, D.C., just five weeks after his inauguration, President Clinton (1993/ 1994b: 208) said: [A]cross America I hear people raising central questions about our place and our prospects in this new world we have done so much to make. They ask: Will we and our children really have good jobs, first-class opportunities, world-class education, quality, affordable health care, safe streets? After having fully defended freedom’s ramparts, they want to know if we will share in freedom’s bounty. […] I believe we can do that, and I believe we must. For in a new global economy, still recovering from the after-effects of the cold war, a prosperous America is not only good for Americans, as the Prime Minister of Great Britain reminded me just a couple of days ago, it is absolutely essential for the prosperity of the rest of the world. Clinton’s words pay lip service to the chaotic times he was living in, but these contexts quickly disappear behind the patriotism inherent in his description of the United States as the ‘leader of the free world’ and concurrent conjuration of American exceptionalism. Similarly, Uncle Sam’s concluding panels suggest that while Uncle Sam - and thus the United States - might be somewhat aware of all the geopolitical changes occurring around him, he has, to quote the Mr. Bones doll, “a tendency to forget these things” and to re-focus on the ideals and myths that (supposedly) made the nation unique. As one of the - if not the - foundational myths of the nation, the myth of American exceptionalism assumes an incontestably crucial role in the creation of the imagined American community and its role in the world. Constantly invoked by politicians and frequently employed in popular culture, 7 the idea of American exceptionalism is still thriving. While voices condemning United States’ exceptionalist thinking have emerged in large numbers in the more recent past (which, of course, is not meant to suggest that this is an entirely new phenomenon, for even Tocqueville had already diagnosed problems in Americans’ exceptionalist attitudes), it should not be forgotten that these critical voices are often enmeshed in a discursive field that still perpetuates and often promotes American exceptionalism’s ideas and ideals. Uncle Sam presents a case in point, for even though the comic clearly criticizes the United States’ self-image as ‘the great arsenal of democracy,’ its lack of state-funded social programs, its 7 For an extremely telling example, consider the aptly titled Independence Day (1996), directed by Roland Emmerich, a German, in which humanity at large is attacked by an extraterrestrial civilization, only for Americans to discover a way to counteract the aliens’ technological superiority through self-sacrifice for the nation. In the movie’s most blatant advocation, if not invocation, of American exceptionalism, the United States circulates a message among the world’s nations that a counterattack is being planned—a British officer’s reaction? “It’s about bloody time,” as if no other nation could devise and lead such a counterstrike. Michael Fuchs 66 commodification of politics, its media (over)saturation, and its tendency to ignore its own fault lines (fault lines that in many ways have not only defined the nation, but made it unique in one way or another), Uncle Sam still advocates America’s exceptional role in the world by repeatedly stressing that, to quote Columbia, even “if America sometimes fouled up along the way - and it did - that was the fault of the dreamers. It wasn’t the fault of the dream” (Darnall & Ross 1997/ 2009: II.28). It would be all too easy to conclude on this quotation, yet this punch line oversimplifies matters, for not only does it disregard America’s global entanglements, but also the fact that the dream per se is so idealistic and utopian that it can never be reached. In his book on the paradoxes of American exceptionalism (America as the land of the free, yet also featuring the highest number of people incarcerated, to name just one of these paradoxes), Seymour Martin Lipset correctly highlights that there is “a persistent value strain within [American] culture,” which “leads Americans to evaluate their nation and society according to pure ideals. No country could ever measure up to [Americans’] ideological and religious standards” (1996: 268). But high goals are needed if one wants to better oneself. Indeed, the pursuit of these unreachable goals is necessary if America seeks to maintain its image, maybe even role, as world leader. The continuous pursuit of these utopian American aspirations presents a key component of the perpetually “unfinished country” (Lerner 1959) that is America. At the same time, the loss of these American ideals is one of the aspects that Sam strongly critiques throughout the comic, for he sees a “nation that’s happy with itself” (Darnall & Ross 1997/ 2009: I.36) despite (or maybe because of? ) its flaws. In the end, Sam’s effective call to, as Langston Hughes put it, “let America be America again” (1936/ 1995) remains unanswered, for the call yearns the imagined loss of an America that never was but always will be, for America never was - and most likely never will be - America to everyone. References Bacevich, Andrew J. (2008). The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism. New York: Holt. Baudrillard, Jean (1983). In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities. [1978]. Transl. Paul Foss. New York: Semiotext(e). Baudrillard, Jean (1989). America. [1986]. Transl. Chris Turner. 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The Significance of the Frontier in American History [1920]. New York: Penguin. Weinstock, Jeffrey Andrew (2004). “Introduction: The Spectral Turn.” In: Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock (ed.). Spectral America: Phantoms and the National Imagination. Madison: U of Wisconsin P. 3-17. Weiss, David, and Jason A. Edwards (2011). “Introduction: American Exceptionalism’s Champions and Challenges.” In: Jason A. Edwards/ David Weiss (eds.). The Rhetoric of American Exceptionalism: Critical Essays. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. 1-8. Whitman, Walt (2004). “Song of Myself.” [1855-1892]. In: Ezra Greenspan (ed.). Song of Myself: A Sourcebook and Critical Edition. New York: Routledge. 142- 196. Michael Fuchs Independent scholar Graz Austria Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH+Co. KG • Dischingerweg 5 • D-72070 Tübingen Tel. +49 (07071) 9797-0 • Fax +49 (07071) 97 97-11 • info@narr.de • www.narr.de JETZT BES TELLEN! Theory and practice of corpus-based semantics Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Vol. 25 2014, 200 Seiten, €[D] 49,00/ SFr 63,10 ISBN 978-3-8233-6754-3 The book is a clear yet challenging overview of both the theoretical and the practical aspects of doing semantic research through the use of language corpora. Via a very hands-on approach it presents the relevant semantic and corpus linguistic issues in an accessible way and aims at providing a very practical experience of doing advanced corpus-based research. Friends or Foes? Phraseological False Friends in English and Slovene Marjeta Vrbinc & Alenka Vrbinc False friends are interesting because it is necessary to translate them appropriately to avoid being misunderstood and because it is necessary to explain the origin of the semantic difference. The problem of phraseological false friends (PFFs) has not been researched exhaustively. This article focuses on thirteen idioms that are the same or similar in form but different in meaning in English and Slovene, the aim being to look at phraseological components of English and Slovene lexicons with a view to identifying and describing the false semantic equivalence between idioms in these two languages. Details are given about each individual idiom. The idiom in English is followed by the definition of its meaning and its appropriate semantic equivalent in Slovene with a literal translation of the Slovene equivalent. The PFF in Slovene is listed, which is also followed by the definition of its meaning and its appropriate semantic equivalent in English. The similarities and differences between the idiom in English and the PFF in Slovene are commented upon. Since PFFs may represent a problem in communication, translation and lexicographic treatment, it is necessary to raise awareness of the lexical traps into which non-native speakers of English as well as any other language may easily fall, regardless of their level of linguistic knowledge. 1. Introduction False friends is a term coming from language teaching and referring to pairs of words in two languages that are perceived as similar but have different meanings. It is not a novel occurrence since the term ‘false friends of the translator’ was introduced as early as 1928 (Koessler and Derocquigny 1928). False friends are a well-known problem in teaching of and translating into foreign languages as well as in bilingual lexicography. Since false friends resemble one another to a great extent, they often AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 39 (2014) · Heft 1 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Marjeta Vrbinc & Alenka Vrbinc 72 deceive learners of either language and, consequently, they are a source of mistakes. Teachers should therefore be concerned with helping students to fully understand the meanings of false friends and to avoid using them erroneously. Teaching a language should also include acquainting students with differences between languages and with the ways in which languages increase their vocabularies including aspects of etymology. As mentioned by Dobrovol’skij and Piirainen (2005: 107-108), different historical processes affect word meanings, which results in two groups of false friends: a. pairs of words in two closely related languages, which can develop semantically in different directions (e.g., the English word gift in the meaning of ‘present’ vs. the German word Gift in the meaning of ‘poison’) b. internationalisms, i.e., Euro-Latin and Euro-Greek words, which have been borrowed repeatedly during different phases of history; they often undergo different semantic developments in two or more languages (e.g., the Latin word concursus, which may mean ‘bankruptcy’ in e.g., German (‘Konkurs’) or Slovene (‘konkurz’) or ‘competition, music or art contest’ in e.g., French (‘concours’)) It has further been proposed to classify false friends into grammatical and lexical ones (Sheen 1996). Grammatical false friends are relatively rare and fall outside the scope of this article. Lexical false friends, on the other hand, may be either absolute or partial: a. absolute: words in two languages that have no common meaning (e.g., concurrence in English vs. konkurenca (‘competition’) in Slovene) b. partial: the L1 and L2 words have at least one common meaning and at least one different meaning (in Slovene proces, which corresponds to the English word ‘process’ in all meanings, but proces in Slovene is also used with reference to the English word ‘trial’) Due to their unpredictable nature, false friends are of interest to linguists and lexicographers for two reasons: firstly, from the point of view of practice, it is necessary to translate them appropriately to avoid being misunderstood; and secondly, from the theoretical and linguistic aspect, it is necessary to explain the origin of the semantic difference by an adequate methodological process (cf. Matešić 1995: 239, 240). It is true that the problem of false friends has been researched exhaustively (e.g., Wandruszka 1978, 1979; Neuhaus 1988; Gorbahn-Orme and Hausmann 1991; Kroschewski 2000; Chamizo Domínguez and Nerlich 2002), but at the same time it has to be stressed that all these studies mostly deal with one-word false friends. This may give the false impression that in the field of phraseological units no such phenomena as false friends may exist. This is certainly not true although it has to be pointed Friends or Foes? Phraseological False Friends in English and Slovene 73 out that false-friend relationships in phraseology are far less frequent since fixed expressions, especially highly colourful and metaphorical idioms and proverbs, are relatively infrequent. According to Moon (1994: 117), they appear to be more frequent in spoken than in written text, although to date there have been few extensive studies of their actual distribution. In contrast to numerous studies focusing on one-word false friends, studies on phraseological false friends (PFF) are not at all so numerous, but some do exist. One of these studies concerns German-Russian PFFs (Rajxštejn 1980), PFFs in French and German are the subject of Ettinger’s research (Ettinger 1994), German and Dutch PFFs are discussed by Piirainen (1997, 1999), and the same author also considers other language pairs (Piirainen 2001, 2004a, 2004b). English and Polish PFFs are studied by Szpila (2000), whereas Croatian and German PFFs are dealt with by Matešić (1995). In this article, we will concentrate on PFFs rather than on false friends in general, which is why we have to define the phenomenon in question. Without a doubt, PFFs pose more subtle and complicated problems than one-word false friends because they resemble each other on the level of mental images and lexical constituents, i.e., on the level of inner form, whereas they display significant differences on the semantic level. PFFs evoke different images, and their identity does not concern the form, as is the case in words (e.g., the Slovene adjective aktualen meaning ‘topical’ in English vs. the English adjective actual). Therefore, Dobrovol’skij and Piirainen (2005: 109) define this lexical phenomenon by focusing on mental image and meaning: “False friends in conventional figurative language are two or more expressions that evoke almost identical or very similar mental images but show significant differences in the actual meaning”. Szpila (2000: 79), on the other hand, concentrates on formal characteristics and meaning and defines PFFs as “phraseological units in two or more languages whose lexical and syntactic structure is identical or similar but which differ in the scope of their extension”. The explanation of PFFs, however, should not be based only on etymology. On the contrary, the images behind many phraseological units can very often be attributed to folk etymology, which means that the images trigger certain associations in native speakers who try to explain the origin of a phraseological unit in this way. Dictionaries of false friends mostly include one-word lexical items, which is logical because they are more numerous and more frequently used, the consequence being that they represent a more common trap for non-native speakers. Szpila studied twelve dictionaries of false friends, only one of which included PFFs (there designated as phraseological traps or misleading phraseologisms) (Szpila 2006: 82, 83). Learners of a foreign language should certainly be encouraged to use (monoas well as bilingual) dictionaries, including dictionaries of false friends, but their teach- Marjeta Vrbinc & Alenka Vrbinc 74 ers should also make them aware of the fact that PFFs may not be found in a dictionary of false friends. The aim of this article is to look at phraseological components of English and Slovene lexicons with a view to identifying and describing the false semantic equivalence between idioms in these two languages. The term ‘idiom’ is here understood as a linguistic unit comprising two or more items whose meaning does not represent the sum of meanings of its individual components, i.e., it is characterized by semantic irregularity. In other words, an idiom is complex regarding its form and simplex regarding its meaning. 2. Classification of idioms based on analysis of the relation between their form and meaning When making a contrastive analysis of idioms in English and Slovene, the following groups of idioms can be established: 1. idioms identical in form and meaning: raise/ lift a/ one’s hand against/ to sb - dvigniti roko nad koga go in (at) one ear and out (at) the other - pri enem ušesu gre komu noter, pri drugem ven sth comes to sb’s ears - kaj pride komu na ušesa 2. idioms similar in form and identical in meaning: the other side of the coin - druga plat/ stran medalje (‘the other side of the medal’) when the cat’s away, the mice will play - kadar mačke ni doma, miši plešejo (‘when the cat isn’t at home, the mice dance’) between you, me and the gatepost - med nama/ nami rečeno (‘said between ourselves’) 3. idioms different in form and identical in meaning: throw in the sponge/ towel - vreči puško v koruzo (‘throw the gun in the corn’) out of the frying-pan (and) into the fire - z dežja pod kap (‘from rain under the eaves’) make a mountain out of a molehill - delati iz muhe slona (‘make an elephant out of a fly’) 4. idioms identical in form but different in meaning (i.e., phraseological false friends): jump out of one’s skin - zdrzniti se od groze/ strahu (‘recoil in horror/ fear’) and NOT skočiti iz kože (‘be very excited or angry’) Friends or Foes? Phraseological False Friends in English and Slovene 75 lead sb by the nose - plesati tako, kot kdo gode (‘dance in the way somebody fiddles’) and NOT vleči koga za nos (‘lead sb up/ down the garden path’) step/ tread on sb’s toes - užaliti koga (z vmešavanjem v njegovo delo) (‘offend sb (by interfering with their work)’) and NOT stopiti komu na prste (‘get on to sb’) Since the paper focuses on idiomatic expressions in English and Slovene whose component elements correspond lexically but whose meanings diverge, we will here present in detail only the idioms included in group 4 above. We will concentrate on the semantic aspect of PFFs rather than on their grammatical/ syntactic structure. 3. Idioms in English and their phraseological false friends in Slovene When studying false lexical equivalence, the closeness or sameness of form has been made tertium comparationis. Thirteen idioms equal or similar in form but different in meaning in English and Slovene have been identified and are analysed in this section. Some of these pairs of idioms show certain common features, whereas many of them have nothing in common. First, a table is included giving details about each individual idiom. In the left-hand column, the idiom in English is followed by the definition of its meaning and its appropriate semantic equivalent in Slovene with a gloss in brackets indicating a literal translation of the Slovene equivalent. The right-hand column lists the PFF in Slovene, which is also followed by the definition of its meaning and its appropriate semantic equivalent in English. Then, the similarities and differences between the idiom in English and the PFF in Slovene are commented upon. The first two examples have a common feature, that is, they both represent a comparison in Slovene but not in English: Idiom in English and false friend in Slovene apple of one’s eye used only in combination with the verb paziti (‘take care’): paziti na koga kot na punčico svojega očesa Definitions a person or thing that is loved more than any other take care of somebody very much Translations ljubljenček koga (‘one’s favourite’) guard with one’s life The pupil at the centre of the eye was known as the apple, because it was supposed to be a globular solid body. In Old English, the phraseological Marjeta Vrbinc & Alenka Vrbinc 76 unit apple of one’s eye referred to the pupil of the eye and was used as a symbol of something cherished and watched over (cf. OED, Oxford Dictionary of Idioms: 8). The same holds true of the Slovene phraseological unit paziti na koga kot na punčico svojega očesa, which according to Keber (2011: 780) originates from Latin Quasi pupillam oculi sui and is of Old Slavonic as well as of Biblical origin. Thus, in English, apple of the eye was used as a figure for a much loved person or thing. The great West Saxon king, Alfred (848-99), used the unit in this sense in his translation of Gregory’s Cura Pastoralis (c. 885). When the Bible was translated into English, William Tyndale used it to render a number of texts such as Deuteronomy 32: 10, where the Lord’s care for Israel is described as follows: He found him in a desert land, and in the waste, howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye (Flavell and Flavell 2006: 8-9). (Note: This passage contains the verb keep meaning ‘have or take charge or care of’, which closely resembles the meaning of the verb paziti in the Slovene phraseological unit.) Interestingly, a comparison of the King James Version of the Bible from 1611, the Slovenski standardni prevod (Slovene Standard Translation) from 1997 and Dalmatinova Biblija (Dalmatin’s Bible) from 1584 reveals that all the occurrences of apple of one’s eye correspond in the Slovenski standardni prevod to punčica svojega očesa or to the shortened form punčica, where the meaning of svojega očesa is implied, and to sèrkala njegoviga ozheſſa or sérklu v’ozheſsi in Dalmatinova Biblija (see Table 1 below). In the older Slovene translation of the Bible, the noun zrklo (as it is spelt in standard modern Slovene) is used as opposed to punčica in the contemporary translation (these two Slovene nouns both refer to parts of the eye). Thus, both English and Slovene versions of the Bible are identical as far as lexis is concerned. It is evident from the Slovene versions of the Bible (see Table 1 below) that paziti na koga kot na punčico svojega očesa (as used in modern Slovene) is similar in lexis to the Slovenski standardni prevod from 1997, whereas Dalmatinova Biblija from 1584 uses a noun that is not present in the phraseological unit today. This means that the development of the phraseological unit in Slovene went in a direction opposite to that in English. In English, the lexis in the phraseological unit resembles that in the King James Version of the Bible from 1611 (i.e., the older version) and not that in the Contemporary English Version from 1999 (i.e., the more recent version). The Biblical meaning of the lexical item in question is ‘something that is treasured/ protected/ loved greatly’, which means that the original meaning corresponds neither to the current meaning in English nor to that in Slovene (or maybe to a certain extent to both). In the Contemporary English Version from 1999, the apple of one’s eye is nowhere to be found. If we study the translation of the above extracts in the Contempo- Friends or Foes? Phraseological False Friends in English and Slovene 77 rary English Version, we can see that some other metaphorical expressions are used (see the parts in bold in the examples taken from the Contemporary English Version below). By comparing the King James Version and the Contemporary English Version, we can establish that the semantic meaning is retained, although it is realized by different lexical items. The fact that apple of one’s eye is absent in the Contemporary English Version may suggest that the translators considered it stylistically inappropriate, thus not using it in the latest translation of the Bible. In both examples taken from the Contemporary English Version and quoted in the table below, the comparison is expressed by the structure ‘as precious [...] as’ and ‘as much as’, whereas King James Version uses the apple of the/ his eye. Here, a parallel can be drawn between the Contemporary English Version and the Slovenski standardni prevod, since in both versions of the Bible comparison is expressed in these passages. Comparison is, however, also preserved in the current meaning as well as in the grammatical structure of the idiom in Slovene. Zech 2,8 For thus saith the LORD of hosts; After the glory had he sent me onto the nations which spoiled you: for he that toucheth you touchet the apple of his eye. Source: King James Version Sakaj taku pravi GOSPVD Zebaot: On me je poſlal k’Ajdom, kateri ſo vas obrupali: nyh muzh ima konez. Kateri ſe vas dotakne, ta ſe dotakne sèrkala njegoviga ozheſſa. Source: Dalmatinova Biblija Then the glorious LORD All-Powerful ordered me to say to the nations that had raided and robbed Zion: Zion is as precious to the L ORD as are his eyes. Whatever you do to Zion, you do to him. Source: Contemporary English Version Kajti tako govori GOSPOD nad vojskami, ki me s svojim veličastvom pošilja k narodom, ki so vas plenili, kajti kdor se vas dotakne, se dotakne punčice njegovega očesa: Source: Slovenski standardni prevod Sir 17,22 The alms of a man is as a signet with him, and he will keep the good deeds of man as the apple of the eye, and give repentance to his sons and daughters. Source: King James Version On téh ludy dobru djanje hrani, kakòr en pezhatni pèrſtan, inu dobra della varuje, kakòr sérklu v’ozheſsi. Source: Dalmatinova Biblija The Lord values our gifts to the poor as much as we value fine jewelry or a most prized possession. Source: Contemporary English Version Človekova miloščina je pred njim kakor pečatni prstan, na človekovo dobroto gleda kakor na punčico. (Svojim sinovom in hčeram daje možnost spreobrnjenja.) Source: Slovenski standardni prevod Table 1: The apple of one’s eye in two English and two Slovene versions of the Bible. Marjeta Vrbinc & Alenka Vrbinc 78 Interestingly, the idiom in English and its literal counterpart in Slovene both originate from the Bible. One would therefore expect full semantic equivalence, but strangely enough, this is not the case. This deviation could be due to the history of language development: at one point the meanings in English and Slovene diverged and acquired the connotations we know today. In the Slovene idiom, the focus is on comparison; thus, the meaning of the verb paziti (‘take care’), which is the obligatory component element of the phraseological unit, is emphasized by kot na punčico svojega očesa (‘like the apple of one’s eye’). The part of the Slovene phraseological unit that corresponds to the English idiom has the adverbial meaning, which is strongly emphatic, implying ‘very much’ (i.e., intensifying meaning typical of a great majority of similes in English as well as in Slovene). It should be stressed that the meaning of the phraseological unit in Slovene is closer to the original meaning as found in the Bible. Idiom in English and false friend in Slovene walk on eggs/ eggshells hoditi kot po jajcih Definitions be very careful how you behave around someone because you might easily make them angry or upset walk with careful, soft steps Translations ravnati s kom v rokavicah/ z rokavicami (‘deal with sb in gloves’) walk carefully The origin of this phraseological unit is disputable, but the general consensus is that a parallel can be drawn between walk on eggs/ eggshells and some other phraseological units (e.g., walk on thin ice) denoting cautionary actions and implying that something is easily broken. The common feature of the English idiom and the Slovene PFF is the ‘carefulness’ component. The nominal slot can be filled with two nouns in English and just one in Slovene (jajce ‘egg’). However, egg as well as eggshell is associated with thinness and delicacy, with something that is very brittle or fragile. Consequently, eggs should be handled with care. In Slovene, the verb is used in its literal meaning (hoditi ‘walk’) and kot po jajcih (‘as if on eggs’) expresses comparison, implying ‘in a careful way, carefully’. In English, the idiom indicates careful behaviour towards somebody else in order not to upset him/ her, which means that the phraseological unit is demotivated to a greater extent than in Slovene, where it is the very way of walking that is implied (i.e., walk softly, quietly). Among the collected PFFs in English and Slovene, another common semantic element has been identified in some idioms, i.e., phraseological units expressing strong emotion. An in-depth analysis has indicated that a Friends or Foes? Phraseological False Friends in English and Slovene 79 very different emotion is involved when comparing the meaning of the English idiom and that of its literal counterpart in Slovene. For the sake of more thorough elucidation of the ‘emotion-meaning’ relation, we have chosen two pairs to show the difference in meaning: Idiom in English and false friend in Slovene jump out of one’s skin skočiti iz kože Definitions move violently because of a sudden shock be very excited or angry Translations zdrzniti se od groze/ strahu (‘recoil in horror/ fear’) go up the wall In both the English idiom and its PFF in Slovene, strong emotions are expressed: in English, surprise, unpleasant shock or a feeling of being frightened are implied, whereas in Slovene, the underlying feelings are those of excitement and anger. A closer comparison of the semantic meaning of the English and Slovene idioms reveals that the idiom in English is used in a more direct sense (= a person is jumping in order to get rid of his/ her skin) than its Slovene false friend (= a physical activity is transferred to an emotional feeling). In Slovene, the meaning is much more figurative, that is why it can be claimed with a high degree of certainty that the Slovene idiom has undergone a meaning extension: from concrete to abstract or from physical to mental. Literally, jump out of one’s skin suggests a physical activity: When frightened, one may jump so quickly that skin is left behind. Skin represents an external protective covering of a human body that cannot be stripped off except in exceptional circumstances, such as anger, rage, pain, and here may lie a possible explanation for the meaning extension of the Slovene idiom. Idiom in English and false friend in Slovene tear one’s hair (out) puliti si lase Definitions show that you are very angry or anxious about sth be very unhappy Definitions 1. delati si sive lase (‘make oneself grey hair’) 2. znoreti, ponoreti (‘go mad’) be very sad and upset This pair of idioms deserves special attention in that the meaning in English is broader than that in Slovene. The English idiom refers to several emotions: anger, anxiety, worry, grief, desperation. In Slovene, however, Marjeta Vrbinc & Alenka Vrbinc 80 the meaning is limited to unhappiness and desperation. This means that to a certain extent, these two idioms are full equivalents, but only in contexts where desperation and grief are implied. In this narrower meaning, the origin can be attributed to ancient rituals in which mourners expressed grief forcefully by tearing their clothes or hair (Keber 2011: 449). If, on the other hand, the English idiom expresses emotions other than grief and desperation, the Slovene idiom puliti si lase can be regarded as a true false friend and should be translated using other (phraseological) expressions. A subclass of this type of relation is represented by idioms that express emotion in one language but not in the other. The following example represents emotion on the Slovene side: Idiom in English and false friend in Slovene lose one’s nerve izgubiti živce Definitions lose courage to do sth difficult or dangerous become angry or excited Definitions srce komu pade v hlače (‘the heart falls into sb’s trousers’) lose one’s cool The false friend relationship in this pair of expressions probably stems from the metaphorical meaning of the noun nerve in English and živec in Slovene. The noun nerve implies ‘courage’, whereas the plural form of the noun živec in Slovene implies various kinds of strong emotion (such as excitement, anger, nervousness or irritation) in different fixed expressions. There are, however, some more or less isolated cases of phraseological units in Slovene where the noun živec could imply ‘courage’ (e.g., imeti (dobre) živce - have (good) nerves, meaning ‘have the courage to do sth’), which is certainly not the case in izgubiti živce (‘lose the nerves’). It is interesting to note that the appropriate translational equivalent for the English lose one’s nerve is the idiomatic expression srce komu pade v hlače, where the noun srce (‘heart’) symbolizes courage. It should be stressed that idiomatic expressions containing the noun srce with the semantic component ‘courage’ are also relatively infrequent in Slovene. In the following two examples, emotion is expressed by the English idioms: Idiom in English and false friend in Slovene with one’s tail between one’s legs used only in combination with the verb stisniti (‘squeeze’): stisniti rep med noge Friends or Foes? Phraseological False Friends in English and Slovene 81 Definitions feeling ashamed or unhappy because you have been defeated or punished move away, escape, give up Definitions ves osramočen (‘ashamed’) turn tail This idiom refers to the way a dog behaves when it is punished - it walks away with its tail down. Regarding the etymology, this idiom has the same roots in English and Slovene, but the semantic meaning differs. In Slovene, it relates to ducking responsibility like a frightened dog that puts its tail between its legs and runs away. Here, a parallel can be drawn between the English idioms with one’s tail between one’s legs and turn tail because they both contain the lexical element tail, thus implying canine behaviour and suggesting the same origin. Idiom in English and false friend in Slovene over the moon za luno Definitions extremely happy and excited stupid, naive Definitions v devetih/ malih nebesih (‘in the ninth/ small heaven’) in cloud-cuckoo land Someone who is over the moon is elated. The phrase was frequently used in the 1970s by footballers and their managers to express their delight at victory. This overuse was seized upon by the satirical magazine Private Eye, which proceeded to ridicule televised post-match interviews with the result that both over the moon and its counterpart sick as a parrot have become football clichés. The phrase over the moon alludes to feeling so high with excitement that jumping or flying over the moon seems easy. A character in John Vanbrugh’s play The Relapse (1969) talks of leaping over the moon, and, in the well-loved nursery rhyme (Hey diddle, diddle/ The cat and the fiddle/ The cow jumped over the moon ...), whose earliest known date in print is 1765, there is an enormously happy cow who does just that (Flavell and Flavell 2006: 202-203). There are several phraseological units in Slovene containing the noun luna (‘moon’), and it can be established that they all express something negative, or more precisely, strange behaviour by a person (e.g., a state of confusion, absent-mindedness, stupidity or not being up to date). The moon is associated with the irrational or unconscious. An extreme emotion, even a positive one, borders on madness (this is reflected in a number of collocations, such as madly excited, madly jealous, madly in love in English and noro razburljiv, noro ljubosumen, noro zaljubljen in Slovene). Marjeta Vrbinc & Alenka Vrbinc 82 The meaning of the Slovene phraseological unit za luno (‘behind the moon’) can be explained in line with these thoughts. The next two idioms contain the nouns word and beseda, which indicate a kind of spoken or written communication: Idiom in English and false friend in Slovene put words into sb’s mouth polagati komu besede v usta Definitions suggest that sb has said sth when in fact they have not help sb say sth that is expected or needed Definitions obračati besede koga (‘turn sb’s words’) put words into one’s mind The idiom in English and its idiomatic translational equivalent in Slovene as well as the PFF in Slovene and its idiomatic equivalent in English all contain the noun word (‘beseda’) in its plural form. This noun certainly refers to something that is said or written, i.e., to communication in general, which is also a common feature of the English idiom and the Slovene false friend equivalent. The difference is that the English idiom implies that something is deliberately not understood in the way it was uttered (negative connotation), while the Slovene false friend implies that somebody tells the speaker what to say and how to say it (positive connotation). On the other hand, it can be claimed that in both cases putting words into somebody’s mouth has the same underlying idea, i.e., suggesting what somebody has said (idiom in English) or should say (idiom in Slovene). Idiom in English and false friend in Slovene eat one’s words požreti/ snesti besedo Definitions admit that what you said was wrong not do what was promised/ said Definitions vzeti besedo nazaj (‘take back the word’) backtrack The idiom eat one’s words and its Slovene translational equivalent vzeti besedo nazaj both imply that somebody publicly admits that what he/ she said was wrong. If, on the other hand, we take into consideration the Slovene idiom požreti/ snesti besedo, which is a word-for-word translation of eat one’s words, we can see that this idiom also refers to something that was promised, but the implication here is that you promised something but did not keep the promise. One of the senses of the Slovene word Friends or Foes? Phraseological False Friends in English and Slovene 83 beseda is ‘promise’, which means that beseda (‘word’) is used in this sense in the idiom požreti/ snesti besedo. We could say that eat one’s words and vzeti besedo nazaj, on the one hand, and požreti/ snesti besedo, on the other, do share the semantic component implying that somebody said or promised something, but the difference is that in the first case, you have to admit that you were wrong, whereas in the second case, you do not fulfil your promise. In Slovene, the slot for the verbal component can be filled with two verbs, namely požreti (‘gobble (up)’) and snesti (‘eat’). The former is considered slightly rude or impolite, whereas the second one is neutral as far as register is concerned. The same characteristic (i.e., neutral register) also applies to the English verb to eat. The group of idioms presented below does not have any common feature, such as comparison or emotion: Idiom in English and false friend in Slovene lead sb by the nose vleči koga za nos Definitions control someone and make them do exactly what you want them to do make sb believe sth which is not true Definitions plesati tako, kot kdo gode (‘dance in the way somebody fiddles’) lead sb up/ down the garden path The concept of the English idiom is relatively easy to understand. We can imagine that if somebody leads somebody else by the nose, they grab the person by the nose, which means that they cannot breathe properly. Moreover, this person can be pulled into a certain direction without being able to offer resistance. The situation itself suggests that this person does everything the other one wants. The metaphorical meaning of this idiom evolves from the situation in which bulls and other animals sometimes have rings through their noses so that a rope can be tied to the ring in order to lead them along. The purpose of leading an animal was transferred to a human being, but the underlying image was retained. This expression is also used in Shakespeare’s play Othello, when Iago says Othello “will as tenderly be led by the nose as asses are” (Act I, Scene 3). In Slovene, however, the idiomatic expression vleči koga za nos (‘pull sb by the nose’) has not been extensively etymologically researched, but it seems that its motivation is similar: when a person is told a lie, they move in the direction suggested by the liar, i.e., the liar leads them in a certain direction, which is, of course, not the right one. Since the idiomatic expression implies ‘lying’, it has a negative connotation. The noun nose and its corresponding Slovene noun nos frequently express the semantic component of lying, especially in combination with Marjeta Vrbinc & Alenka Vrbinc 84 the adjective long (‘dolg’). An absurdly long, extended nose has become the visual symbol of a liar. The same metaphor is used in a number of children’s stories, the most famous one being that of Pinnochio. Idiom in English and false friend in Slovene step/ tread on sb’s toes stopiti komu na prste Definitions offend or annoy sb, especially by getting involved in sth that is their responsibility prevent sb from doing sth bad Definitions užaliti koga (z vmešavanjem v njegovo delo) (‘offend sb (by interfering with their work)’) get on to sb By comparing the idiom in English and the PFF in Slovene, we can establish a common semantic component: interfering in somebody else’s activities. The difference is that in English, the person affected is offended or annoyed as a consequence of this interference because the activities are necessarily negative, whereas in Slovene the interference prevents a negative deed. In Slovene, the connotation is ‘to prevent sb from doing sth bad, negative or even illegal’. Keber (2011: 775) explains the origin of the Slovene idiom by the fact that fingers and toes play a very important role in a great majority of man’s manual and motor activities. By stepping on somebody’s toes, however, these activities are prevented. Idiom in English and false friend in Slovene let sb stew in their own juice cvreti/ kuhati se v lastnem soku Definitions leave sb to worry about and suffer the unpleasant effects of their own actions sweat heavily Definitions pojesti, kar si je kdo skuhal (‘eat what one has cooked for oneself’) sweat buckets Etymologically, this idiom comes from cooking meat in its own juice. This idea is preserved in the Slovene idiom cvreti/ kuhati se v lastnem soku, where lastni sok (‘one’s own juice’) implies ‘sweat’, and both verbs (cvreti se ‘fry’, kuhati se ‘cook’) are used metaphorically with the meaning ‘to be in a very hot place’. A parallel can be drawn between the meat juices that are emitted when meat is cooked and a person who starts sweating when it is hot. If someone sweats heavily because of heat, this is perceived as something unpleasant; a person who breaks into a sweat does not feel Friends or Foes? Phraseological False Friends in English and Slovene 85 well, and the same applies to the meaning of the English idiom: an unpleasant situation which is a consequence of one’s own past actions. Idiom in English and false friend in Slovene get one’s wings dobiti krila Definitions pass the exams that mean you are allowed to fly a plane become more energetic Definitions narediti izpite za pilotiranje (‘pass the exams for flying’) gain new/ fresh impetus to sth In this case, one and the same concept is expressed by an idiomatic expression in English (get one’s wings) and by a free combination in Slovene (narediti izpit za pilotiranje). The literal, word-for-word equivalent in Slovene has the status of an idiom, but with a completely different meaning. In English, the noun wings refers to a certificate of ability to pilot an aeroplane, indicated by the addition to the uniform of a badge representing a pair of wings. The literal interpretation of the English idiom is therefore ‘to get the badge with a pair of wings’. Nowadays, the meaning is extended: it no longer suggests only a badge but the documents proving that somebody is qualified for the job of a pilot. The reason for the drastic difference between English and Slovene is likely to lie in cultural differences. In Slovenia, getting a badge of this kind is not associated with passing an exam or flying a plane, although the wing (of a plane) is translated by krilo, the noun that is used in the PFF dobiti krila. The noun krilo is used in a metaphorical sense implying something that encourages a process or activity to develop more quickly. In Slovene, the idiom developed from the animal world, where a bird uses its wings to fly high up. People associate wings with the ability to fly and consequently with the ability to make good progress, having a lot of energy. 4. Conclusion This contribution deals with a topic that has not so far been the subject of numerous linguistic studies. Phraseological as well as lexical false friends represent a great problem in communication, translation and lexicographic treatment. It is therefore necessary to first raise awareness of the lexical traps into which non-native speakers of English as well as any other language may easily fall, regardless of their level of linguistic knowledge. As a small-scale experiment carried out within the framework of a seminar intended for professional translators has shown, even experienced language users do not even think of such idioms as being problematic; Marjeta Vrbinc & Alenka Vrbinc 86 consequently, they translate these units word for word, which results in incorrect translation and incorrect comprehension of a text. To avoid this, it is essential to find and treat these pairs of idioms appropriately and at the same time to acquaint learners with them in the course of learning a foreign language. The best way to achieve this is to include them in coursebooks and, of course, in bilingual, general and especially phraseological dictionaries. Interestingly, many Slovene idioms included in the study whose findings are presented in this contribution are not in a false-friend relationship with German, thus being closer to German than English. This may be explained by the fact that a long shared history of language contact and bilingualism between Slovene and German is reflected in the phraseology of both languages. However, this falls beyond the scope of the present study but may be an interesting topic for further research into the influence of language contact on phraseology. 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Marjeta Vrbinc University of Ljubljana Faculty of Arts Slovenia Alenka Vrbinc University of Ljubljana Faculty of Economics Slovenia Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH+Co. KG • Dischingerweg 5 • D-72070 Tübingen Tel. +49 (07071) 9797-0 • Fax +49 (07071) 97 97-11 • info@narr.de • www.narr.de JETZT BES TELLEN! JETZT BES TELLEN! Stefan Keller Integrative Schreibdidaktik Englisch für die Sekundarstufe Theorie, Prozessgestaltung, Empirie Giessener Beiträge zur Fremdsprachendidaktik 2013, 319 Seiten €[D] 62,00/ SFr 79,80 ISBN 978-3-8233-6799-4 In dieser Studie wird der Frage nachgegangen, wie sich hochrangige und komplexe Schreib- und Ausdruckskompetenzen im Fach Englisch modellieren lassen und wie entsprechende Lernarrangements in der Praxis umgesetzt und evaluiert werden können. Im ersten Teil wird ein Lernarrangement für die Gymnasiale Oberstufe theoretisch fundiert und didaktisch ausgearbeitet. Dabei kommen peer-review, Musteranalysen und Lernportfolios zum Einsatz. Im zweiten Teil werden die Resultate einer Evaluation mit Versuchs- und Vergleichsgruppe geschildert. Dabei wird besonders auch auf Fragen der Messung und Evaluation von komplexen Schreibkompetenzen eingegangen. Im dritten Teil schließlich werden Konsequenzen für die Weiterentwicklung des Englischen Schreibunterrichts aufgezeigt, und zwar von der Unterstufe bis zum Ende der Sekundarstufe. Dabei wird ein integratives Modell der Schreibförderung dargestellt und begründet. Rezensionen Doris Feldmann/ Christian Krug (Hrsg.), Viktorianismus. Eine literatur- und kulturwissenschaftliche Einführung. (Grundlagen der Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 38). Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2013. Gero Bauer Viktorianismus: Eine literatur- und kulturwissenschaftliche Einführung, herausgegeben von Doris Feldmann und Christian Krug, bietet einen einführenden Überblick über aktuelle Forschungsschwerpunkte, Methoden und Themenfelder der anglistischen Viktorianismusforschung. Dabei ist die explizite Zielsetzung des Buchs, „aktuelle literaturwissenschaftliche und kulturwissenschaftliche Theorien und Methoden“ (11) zu verknüpfen und gleichzeitig den Begriff ‚Viktorianismus‘ als Epochenbezeichnung neu zu reflektieren und kritisch zu hinterfragen: Es geht den HerausgeberInnen „nicht darum, die Bezeichnungen abzulehnen, sondern ihre jeweiligen Funktionen zu analysieren“ (13). Gleich zu Beginn stellen Feldmann und Krug klar, dass „‘der Viktorianismus‘ keine klaren Epochengrenzen hat“ (12) und der Begriff, eine „Zuschreibungskategorie[] post factum“ (ebd.), folglich kein einheitliches, zeitlich und kulturell fest zu umfassendes Phänomen beschreibt. Dementsprechend ist das Buch auch keine chronologisch aufgebaute ‚Geschichte‘ des Viktorianismus, sondern eine an thematischen und methodischen Schwerpunkten orientierte Sammlung von Fallstudien. Das Ziel, Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft zu verbinden, kommt für Feldmann und Krug vor allem im Anspruch zu tragen, die Idee der Textualität sowohl auf nicht-textuelle kulturelle Produkte (z.B. aus den bildenden und darstellenden Künsten oder der Werbung) auszuweiten als auch tatsächliche Texte in ihrer materiellen Kulturfunktion zu analysieren (cf. 14 f.). Dabei reflektieren sie immer wieder die eigene Verortung in den jeweils relevanten Wissenschaftstraditionen, z.B. den britischen und amerikanischen Cultural Studies und der deutschen Kulturwissenschaft (cf. 15 f.). Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit soll sein, deutsche und englische Kulturwissenschaften zu verbinden und sie an „gemeinsamen kulturwissenschaftlichen Prämissen“ (16) zu orientieren. AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 39 (2014) · Heft 1 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Rezensionen AAA Band 39 (2014) Heft 1 90 Die HerausgeberInnen haben den Anspruch, eine „neue Art von Kulturgeschichte zu schreiben“ (18), nämlich eine „Alltagsgeschichte unterschiedlicher kultureller Gruppen, einschließlich ihrer Codes und Institutionen sowie Mentalitäten und Praktiken“ (ebd.; Herv. dort). Hierbei sei bereits erwähnt, dass die Studie sich dennoch fast ausschließlich auf Perspektiven und Produkte der Mittelschichten konzentriert, eine angesichts der historisch bedingten kulturellen Dominanz dieser sozialen Gruppe und ihrer hohen literarischen und marktwirtschaftlichen Produktivität allerdings auch wenig überraschende Tatsache. Als roter Faden dominiert in allen Kapiteln eine Rückbindung kultureller Phänomene der Zeit an marktwirtschaftliche Prozesse und ihre immer stärker als ‚Spektakel‘ inszenierten Manifestationen (z.B. die Great Exhibition). Beispielsweise stellt Doris Feldmann fest, „wie sehr der literarische Markt schon im Viktorianismus mit einer weitverzweigten Warenkultur verbunden war“ (59). Diesen durchgängigen Fokus auf die Interaktion zwischen Kultur und Marktwirtschaft begründen Feldmann und Krug damit, dass „die ideelle Dimension von Kultur - also Wertesysteme, Ideen bzw. Anschauungen und Bilder bzw. Vorstellungen - immer an materielle Vermittlungsprozesse gebunden bleibt, von sozioökonomischen Strukturen durchzogen und ihrerseits wiederum für diese konstitutiv ist“ (18). Weitere Konstanten der Studie sind wiederholte Verweise auf den im 19. Jahrhundert stattfindenden Prozess der diskursiven Herausbildung eines englischen ‚Nationalgefühls‘ und einer ‚nationalen Identität‘ durch die Überhöhung von Leitfiguren (Königin Viktoria als ‚Mutter der Nation‘; cf. 143-148) einerseits und die Abgrenzung vom als kulturell verschieden konstruierten ‚Anderen‘ (Stichwort Orientalismus) andererseits. Auf einer abstrakteren Ebene thematisiert der Band außerdem immer wieder, wie im 19. Jahrhundert, vor allem durch die Ausdifferenzierung der modernen Wissenschaften, verstärkt versucht wurde, der (wirtschaftlich, kulturell, sozial) immer komplexer werdenden Alltagswelt durch Taxonomien eine im Sinne von Foucaults ‚Ordnung der Dinge‘ greif-, überschau-, und bewältigbare Dimension zu verleihen. Die von insgesamt sieben AutorInnen verfassten zwölf Kapitel des Buchs folgen einem gleichbleibenden Aufbau: Die jeweils thematisierte Fragestellung oder Methodik und das relevante kulturhistorische Phänomen werden kurz skizzenartig eingeführt und der/ die AutorIn gibt einen historischen Abriss und eine Einordnung. In einem zweiten Schritt wird die jeweilige Methodik/ das jeweilige Phänomen an einem literarischen/ künstlerischen/ architektonischen/ wirtschaftshistorischen Beispiel demonstriert. Dabei entsteht ein Bild des ‚Viktorianismus‘, das zwar keinen Anspruch auf Gesamtheit im Sinne chronologischer Geschichtsschreibung haben kann, dennoch aber erfolgreich nicht nur relevante aktuelle Methodiken der literatur- und kulturwissenschaftlichen Forschung vorführt, sondern zudem mit seinen Beispielen auch wichtige und kulturell wirkmächtige RepräsentantInnen der Zeit vorstellt. Dass sich hierbei eine gewisse Engführung im Sinne des ‚Kanons‘ nicht vermeiden lässt, ist zum Einen in Hinblick auf den einführenden Charakter der Studie nicht weiter störend; zum Zweiten beeindruckt auf der anderen Seite die Fülle an verschiedenem ‚Handwerkszeug‘, das im Verlauf dieses schmalen Rezensionen AAA Band 39 (2014) Heft 1 91 Bandes angewandt wird, was die HerausgeberInnen bereits in der ambitionierten Einführung explizit reflektieren: „Methodisch kombinieren wir in den Kapiteln vor allem psychosemiotische, idologiekritische, sozialhistorische und diskursanalytische Ansätze.“ (22) Die Studie ist in sechs „Themenkomplexe“ und „paarweise Sektionen“ (19) unterteilt: Der Bereich des „Populären“ (ebd.) wird anhand von Douglas Jerrolds Melodrama The Rent Day und der „Eisenbahn als Fetisch in der visuellen Kultur“ vorgestellt. Es folgt eine Sektion zu „Autorenschaft und Vermarktung“ mit den Beispielen Charles Dickens und Elizabeth Gaskell (männliche und weibliche Autorschaft). Weniger literaturals kulturhistorisch geprägt sind die beiden Kapitel zu „Veränderungen der viktorianischen Gesellschaft“ (20), die sich mit den sozialkritischen Schriften Henry Mayhews (London Labour and the London Poor) und Elizabeth Gaskells (North and South) und den gesellschaftlich-wirtschaftlichen Auswirkungen der Great Exhibition 1851 auseinandersetzen. Der vierte Komplex thematisiert auf einer abstrakteren Ebene „viktorianische Anschauungen oder Denkmuster“ (ebd.) am Beispiel zeitgenössischer Geschlechter- und Sexualitätsdiskurse sowie evolutionsbiologisch geprägter Romane von Robert Louis Stevenson (The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) und H. G. Wells (The Time Machine). Als viktorianische „Repräsentationsfiguren“ und Katalysatoren der neuen Vorstellung von einer ‚britischen Nation‘ fungieren Königin Viktoria und der kulturell wirkmächtige Dracula-Mythos. Abschließend beleuchtet das letzte Kapitel das „Nachwirken des Viktorianismus“ (21) in der Gegenwart anhand neoviktorianischer Bearbeitungen des Sherlock-Holmes-Stoffes. Der Band rezipiert ausführlich aktuelle und relevante ältere deutsch- und englischsprachige Forschungsliteratur der betreffenden Themenfelder. Eine Literaturliste am Ende jedes Kapitels bietet nicht nur eine vollständige Auflistung aller zitierter und referenzierter Texte, sondern auch jeweils etwa fünf Titel zur weiterführenden Lektüre. Die aufgenommene Literatur wird nicht nur unterstützend eingesetzt, sondern die bisherige Forschung wird auch kritisch beleuchtet und hinterfragt. Auch auf theoretischer Ebene sind die AutorInnen auf dem neuesten Stand. So bietet der Band eine Fülle theoretischer Reflexionen, die in einer solch kurzen Einführung nicht oft anzutreffen ist. Im Kapitel zu „Geschlechter- und Sexualitätsdiskursen“ wird nicht nur auf die inzwischen ausführlich rezipierte Debatte zur kulturellen Überformung von Geschlecht im Sinne Judith Butlers hingewiesen (cf. 113), sondern auch auf die teils weniger präsente These Thomas Laqueurs, der in seiner medizinhistorischen Forschung eine transhistorisch konstante Vorstellung einer biologischen Binarität von Geschlecht im Sinne eines ‚two-sex model‘ erfolgreich in Frage gestellt hat (cf. 113). Somit ergibt sich für die folgenden Ausführungen zu viktorianischer Geschlechtlichkeit und Sexualität ein sehr differenziertes Bild. Allerdings überrascht etwas, dass in einer Studie, die sich das 19. Jahrhundert als Fokus wählt, im Kapitel zu Geschlechtern und Sexualitäten zeitgenössische Diskurse zu Homosexualität keinen höheren Stellenwert einnehmen. Hier wird lediglich an einer Stelle auf „eine Vielzahl nicht-reproduktiver Sexualpraktiken sowie marginalisierte Subjektpositionen [...] (wie Homosexualität, ménage à Rezensionen 92 trois oder Masturbation)“ (122) hingewiesen. Gerade in einem Band, der im positiven Sinne wiederholt starken Bezug auf feministische Forschungen zur sexualisierten Objektposition viktorianischer Frauen unter einem konsumierenden ‚male gaze‘ nimmt, wäre eine ausführlichere Thematisierung der sich im 19. Jahrhundert immer stärker ausdifferenzierenden Binarität homosexuell - heterosexuell wünschenswert gewesen. Positiv fällt auf, dass die AutorInnen darum bemüht sind - auch über die Auswahl der eigenen Forschungsgegenstände -, auf eine im viktorianischen England kaum präsente Unterscheidung zwischen ‚Hoch‘- und ‚Populärkultur‘ zu verweisen. So reicht die Bandbreite thematisierter ‚Texte‘ von der Dichtung Robert Brownings und Alfred Tennysons (cf. 113-119) bis zu aktuellen Kino- und TV-Adaptionen des Sherlock-Holmes-Stoffes (cf. 167-180). Gerade letzteres Kapitel präsentiert in anschaulicher Weise, wie in der Gegenwart über Techniken der Adaption und Appropriation - sowohl in neu geschaffenen ‚kulturellen‘ Texten als auch in der wissenschaftlichen Viktorianismusforschung - ein selektives und den Bedürfnissen der heutigen Zeit (Stichwort Nostalgie) entsprechendes Bild der ‚Epoche‘ des Viktorianismus konstruiert wird. Das Konzept des Bandes geht insgesamt auf. Es gelingt den AutorInnen aller Kapitel, immer wieder mehrere Ebenen anzusprechen: Historische Abrisse, Metareflexionen zum eigenen Vorgehen und dichte Analysen der ausgewählten Forschungsgegenstände wechseln einander auf produktive Weise ab. Die Sprache ist größtenteils präzise und dem einführenden Charakter der Studie angemessen. Die AutorInnen explizieren immer wieder argumentative Ziele und reflektieren ihr eigenes Vorgehen. Einige wenige Abschnitte verlieren sich etwas in unnötig kompliziertem Fachjargon, und an manchen Stellen werden Kenntnisse philosophischer und theoretischer Konzepte vorausgesetzt, die das Buch für Studierende im Grundstudium teils wohl schwer zugänglich machen werden. Sehr hilfreich ist allerdings das ausführliche Glossar, das viele im Verlauf des Bandes aufkommende Schlüsselbegriffe (z.B. Abjekt, Heterotopie, Semiotik) noch einmal kurz und prägnant definiert bzw. einführt. Außerdem endet jedes Kapitel mit einer knappen Zusammenfassung der wichtigsten Argumente, wodurch ein leichter Zugang im Sinne eines Studienbuchs gewährleistet ist. Gero Bauer Englisches Seminar Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen Deutschland Rezensionen AAA Band 39 (2014) Heft 1 93 Ewald Mengel & Michela Borzaga (eds.), Trauma, Memory, and Narrative in the Contemporary South African Novel. (Cross Cultures 153). Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, 2012. Rebecca Fasselt The book arises from a research project, under the auspices of the English Department at the University of Vienna, Austria, dedicated to the study of the complex relationship between trauma, memory and narrative in the contemporary South African novel. Most articles in the volume expand on papers the contributors presented at an international conference at the University of Vienna in April 2010. The collection of essays complements the volume Trauma, Memory, and Narrative in South Africa: Interviews edited by Ewald Mengel, Michela Borzaga and Karin Orantes (2010), which compiles in three sections a number of interviews with South African authors, psychologists and academics. In conjunction, the two volumes make a valuable, cross-disciplinary contribution to the growing field of South African trauma studies. Mengel’s and Borzaga’s book gathers a number of prominent scholars in the field of South African literature to discuss the ubiquitous engagement with trauma in South African writing in the era after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). In the introduction, the editors present some of the central parameters underlying their conceptualisation of trauma. Briefly reflecting on seminal trauma scholars such as Bessel Caruth, Cathy van der Kolk and Judith Herman, Mengel and Borzaga conclude that their theories are “insufficient instruments with which to analyze the more complex situation in a postcolony such as South Africa” (xi). Whereas “Western” trauma theories mainly focus on the traumatisation of an individual through a single, identifiable event in the past, traumatic stress in South Africa is intricately connected to the historical conditions of colonialism and apartheid, which led to the collective traumatisation of generations. The “decolonization” of Eurocentric trauma theories and their adaptation to specific local, non-Western contexts would be an inadequate theoretical approach according to the editors. Rather, they call for the inclusion of francophone theorists such as Frantz Fanon, Achille Mbembe and Albert Memmi who “are much more adapted to the situation in a postcolonial country” (xiii) and have thus far largely been neglected in the field of trauma studies. Sarah Nuttall’s notion of “entanglement”, Mengel and Borzaga posit, seems particularly useful for exploring the multifarious facets of trauma in the context of South Africa, where both oppressor and oppressed can be described as traumatised. The editors note that “white trauma - which is certainly different from black trauma - is nevertheless and unavoidably ‘entangled’ with black trauma” (xi). Yet although suggesting that Manichean oppositions cannot account for the complex realities of the postcolony, the editors nonetheless seem to advocate a clear-cut line, rather than entanglement, between “Western” and postcolonial theories and experiences of trauma. What furthermore distinguishes the postcolonial (South African) context Rezensionen 94 from trauma studies in the West in the eyes of the editors is the role played by the categories of the “body” and the “sacred.” Referring again to Mbembe’s work, the authors stress that the body should be restored to a central category of theoretical analysis as it first feels the effects of poverty, racialisation and death. The sacred in the postcolony has not only become “the imaginative resource par excellence” (xiv) but also plays a powerful role in the healing of trauma. This emphasis on the possibility of rehabilitation, implying that traumatic experiences can be reclaimed and resisted, stands in stark contrast to Caruth’s view of trauma as an “unclaimed experience.” While the revaluation of the body and the sacred according to Mengel and Borzaga is crucial to the conception of postcolonial trauma studies, the book itself seems to give evidence to the untenability of the editors’ overt rejection of “Western” trauma theories. The majority of the articles do not engage with any of the francophone thinkers whose works Mengel and Borzaga aim to recuperate for postcolonial trauma studies. In fact, it is only Borzaga’s article “Trauma in the Postcolony: Towards a New Theoretical Approach” that extensively draws on Mbembe’s work. The chapters following the introduction are divided into three parts: “Trauma: Theories and Experiences”, “Trauma and Literary Representations” and “Trauma, Memory, and History.” The first part gathers six essays that address trauma from a theoretical as well as personal angle, emphasising the diverse experiences and interpretations of trauma in South Africa. The only article that does not refer to the South African context is Ruth Leys’s theoretical piece “Trauma and the Turn to Affect” with which the collection opens. The prominent critic of Caruth’s deconstructive trauma theory argues that recent works in cultural studies that stress the primacy of affect in a person’s experience of trauma share the “anti-intentionalism” of Caruth’s approach. Examining the consequences of the “affective turn” for the interpretation of art works, Leys, drawing on Walter Benn Michaels, posits that the danger of the affective approach lies in its production of an “indifference to political or ethical dispute” (24). The essay indubitably presents a concise overview of recent developments in trauma studies. It points towards the diversification of the field since Caruth’s seminal Unclaimed Experience (1996), yet its inclusion in a volume that vocally highlights its focus on trauma in a specific geographical setting appears somewhat debatable. Elleke Boehmer, in the following essay, discusses the omnipresence of trauma and a new range of crises (HIV/ AIDS, crime, xenophobia) in post-TRC literature. Drawing on an impressive range of texts such as J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999), K. Sello Duiker’s The Quiet Violence of Dreams (2001), Achmat Dangor’s Bitter Fruit (2001), Damon Gulgut’s The Good Doctor (2003) and the non-fiction volume At Risk (2007) edited by Liz McGregor and Sarah Nuttall, Boehmer argues that current South African writing resembles “a traumatized subject prone to experiencing systemic disorders as repeated negative affect” (34). Inclined to suffer from Freud’s “repetition compulsion”, this literature, as the essay contends, is unable to write into being a new national imaginary. Although painting a predominantly dark picture of the post-TRC literary landscape, the author does not fail to draw attention to Rezensionen 95 works rejecting to be bowed down by the pervasive language of crisis. One such example is Makhosazana Xaba’s contribution to At Risk, which abstains from presenting an effusively hopeful vision, but displays an openness to slow, yet determined progression. The phenomenon of affect is again the focus in Vilashini Cooppan’s insightful reading of Dangor’s Bitter Fruit as a counter-narrative to “mimetic TRC literature”, which all too often tends to paper over distinctive past injustices in favour of writing into being a cohesive national “we.” Contrasting with Leys’ critique of the affective, Bitter Fruit, as Cooppan contends, with its meticulous portrayal of distinct modes of “post-apartheid feeling” mimics as well as deconstructs the TRC and thus offers a welcome alternative to the “traumatic narrative of moving on that organizes its plot” (60). Borzaga, in the next essay, draws on Antjie Krog’s There Was This Goat (2009) in order to corroborate her point that “Western” theories of trauma fail to grasp the complexities of a postcolonial country like South Africa. While advocating a re-theorisation of trauma along the lines of Nuttall’s notion of entanglement, Borzaga’s insistence on the West-Rest dichotomy, however, seems to contradict her focus on entangled rather than inherently different identities. Sindiwe Magona turns her attention to the visceral dimension of trauma, deploying the isiXhosa expression “isegazini” (“it is in the blood”), and provides a psychoanalytic reading of André Brink’s novel A Dry White Season (1979) and her own Mother to Mother. Yazir Henry’s essay demonstrates how public analysis and dissemination of an individual’s trauma can lead to re-traumatisation or the prolongation of trauma. He criticises Krog’s Country of My Skull (1998) for editing and misinterpreting his testimony as well as those of other activists before the TRC. Like Cooppan, Henry succinctly points out the dangers underlying all attempts to forge a post-apartheid national “we”, contending that “her [Krog’s] story is not mine” and that the “manner in which she uses the words ‘my’, ‘we’, and ‘ours’ in her book is contentious” (111). While he has already put forward this argument elsewhere, the inclusion of his piece in the volume is invaluable as it draws attention to the shortcomings of a text that still remains a seminal work on the TRC. The second section of the book examines in detail literary representations of trauma, focussing for the most part on historical trauma. The first essay by Ewald Mengel explores thirteen (fictional and non-fictional) subgenres of the contemporary South African novel that have emerged as being particularly suitable for the representation of trauma. He argues that the various narrative forms and techniques employed in the novels reflect an openness that resists a simple rhetoric of closure and reconciliation. Thereafter, Derek Attridge engages with the ethics of representation by exploring narrative portrayals of township violence in Coetzee’s Age of Iron (1990), Brink’s An Act of Terror (1993) and Elsa Joubert’s The Long Journey of Poppie Nongena (1980). He praises Coetzee’s novel for thematising the problematics of representing otherness by means of using a witness narrator who attempts not to speak for the people living in the township, while deploring that Brink’s novel intends to persuade the reader into becoming politically active. Joubert’s work, by contrast, due to its (controversial) inclusion of direct eye-witness accounts as Rezensionen 96 Attridge notes “gains force from our willingness to believe that it records not an imagined reality but reality itself” (192). Sorely absent from his analysis are accounts by black writers. The following essay by Chris N. van der Merwe discusses the role religion plays in a time of trauma, examining a range of contemporary South African novels dealing with the Christian and Muslim tradition. Bridging the chasms induced by trauma, religion, as Van der Merwe suggests, “provides continuity as well as possibilities of renewal” (214) and thus offers the possibility for “post-traumatic growth.” Next, Annie Gagiano provides an overdue re-reading of Mongane Wally Serote’s 1981 novel To Every Birth Its Blood, arguing that it has previously been misjudged by prominent critics. Instead of depicting its characters in a spectacular mode, an accusation made by Njabulo Ndebele, the novel’s worth, according to Gagiano, lies in its portrayal of apartheid “as an invasive, traumatizing presence in people’s everyday lives” (232). Again, this is achieved through the novel’s emphasis of the “affective dimensions” rather than on actual “‘physical’ violence and violation” (232). Perhaps the most interesting and provocative essay in this section is Tlhalo Sam Raditlhalo’s discussion of trauma in Coetzee’s Disgrace. Contrary to many critics who have defended the novel against charges of re-inscribing colonial discourse, he accuses Coetzee of unwittingly centralising whiteness and failing to situate rape within the context of the historical trauma experienced by the various population groups in the country. The final contribution to this section by Carmen Concilio looks at “forced removals as sites/ sights of historical trauma in South African writings of the 1980s and 1990s.” Deploying Roberto Beneduce’s work on trauma that takes issue with a mere clinical approach which tends to sideline the “specific historical, geographical, and cultural contexts” (265) of what we usually describe with the “single medical category” of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder, Concilio analyses Coetzee’s Age of Iron, Miriam Tlali’s Muriel at Metropolitan (1979) and Athol Fugard’s Tsotsi (2006). For her, the study of literary representations of trauma is not about “clinical investigation, diagnoses or cures” (278) but constitutes an invaluable endeavour to understand the conditions that gave rise to and supported apartheid in order to prevent its recurrence. Like the two previous sections, the final part of the volume, “Trauma, Memory, and History”, includes six essays. The focus here is on novels whose plots echo the model of the TRC. It opens with David Attwell’s analysis of trauma in Coetzee’s Summertime (2009). The author argues that the novel contains various levels of “refracted” trauma, which is underscored by the experimental structure of the novel. Thereafter, Geoffrey V. Davis, in perhaps one of the most optimistic essays of the collection regarding the healing potential of narrative, examines Red Dust (2000) by Gillian Slovo and Southern Cross (2002) by Jann Turner. The protagonists of both works, he argues, are able to work through their individual traumas, mainly bound to feelings of white complicity, and begin a journey towards healing. Jochen Petzold in his thought-provoking contribution explores “trauma-narrative and the politics of self-accusation” in Jo-Anne Richards’s The Innocence of Roast Chicken (1999). Although Richards attempts to deal with white complicity, Petzold criticises Rezensionen 97 the novel for turning the white girl narrator/ protagonist, who witnesses the rape of a white neighbour by a black farm worker, into the “true victim of apartheid” (332). The narrator’s self-fashioning as both guilty party and victim encourages an empathetic reading of her character and eschews any engagement with the lives of the text’s black characters. In the next essay, Susan Mann turns to the voices of children in contemporary South African literature. She suggests that, while the child has lost its innocence, which in itself constitutes a traumatic experience, this enables her/ his voice to even more powerfully draw attention to social injustices. Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s monologic and dialogic principles, Michael Meyer maintains that Zoë Wicomb’s novel David’s Story (2001) employs a dialogic aesthetic that the author juxtaposes to the monologic discourse of colonialism and apartheid to “bring us closer” (357) to the characters’ trauma. In the final essay of the volume, Sue Kossew examines trauma, memory and history in Marlene van Niekerk’s The Way of the Women (2006). She refers to Caruth, Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub as well as Renate Lachmann to explore the changing dynamics in the relationship between “madam” and “maid.” On the whole, then, the essays in this edited volume do not present a view of trauma that is aligned to a single, coherent theoretical school, but rather offer a multiplicity of, and at times even contradictory, interpretive models, pointing towards the complexity of trauma in the South African context. The book persuasively demonstrates that there is no denying of the historical particularity of trauma in the South African setting. The focus on the body, affect and the sacred in many of the essays extends the traditional categories and concepts of trauma scholarship. In this way, the book follows in the footsteps of earlier re-writings of trauma studies in South Africa. As the accompanying interview volume highlights, it was mainly due to the work of South African therapists that traditional conceptualisations of post-traumatic stress were put into question. Working with anti-apartheid activists who had frequently been detained and abused by the police and were living in constant fear of further violence and arrest, a group of South African therapists coined the term “continuous traumatic stress” in the 1980s. Notwithstanding these specific local inflections of trauma, the editors’ insistence on the fundamental difference of South African trauma to the West, a tendency that has recently emerged in much postcolonial scholarship on trauma, seems problematic as pointed out above. While Mengel, Borzaga and Orantes present the same argument in the interview volume, some of the interviewees hold a more differentiated view. In an interview with Borzaga, Ashraf Kagee notes that “I don’t necessarily see a big dichotomy between West and non-West. In the present context the boundary [...] is semi-permeable” (2010: 127). For him, South African society displays some while lacking other features of a Western society. Michael Rothberg already noted in a 2008 special issue of Studies in the Novel on trauma in southern African and North American contexts that the “West/ non- West binary cannot explain the situation in South Africa” (2008: 228). Studies of trauma that pit the West against the postcolonial world according to Rothberg furthermore will not do justice to Fanon’s work on colonial trauma Rezensionen 98 as he built his theories among other sources on phenomenology, Marxism and psychoanalysis. What is required, then, it seems, is a more relational model that engages with the complex workings of trauma by eschewing simple oppositions between the West and the Rest, the particular and the universal, the individual and the collective. The authors brought together in the book draw on a wider range of postapartheid texts. Coetzee’s work, however, appears slightly overrepresented as the contributions by Attridge, Raditlhalo, Concilio, Attwell and Mann look at his novels. In contrast to the volume of interviews, the focus in this book is mostly on historical trauma, its legacy and the work of the TRC. Apart from Boehmer’s article, there is little engagement with other forms of trauma in the post-transition era such as those resulting from the pervasive violence against women and children, HIV/ AIDS and xenophobia. While the interview volume engages with the trauma experienced by African immigrants who, since the transition to democracy, have increasingly sought refuge in South Africa, the body of literary works dealing with post-apartheid immigration and xenophobia is absent from the book 1 . Such work would be central to gaining a better understanding of the increasing diversification of trauma in the country that no longer merely has its origin in the violent oppression of apartheid. Notwithstanding its shortcomings, Mengel’s and Borzaga’s book presents a carefully contextualised study of literary engagements with trauma from which such future scholarship can take its lead. References Beukes, Lauren (2010). Zoo City. Auckland Park: Jacana. Borzaga, Michela (2010). “Testing the DSM Model in South Africa: An Interview with Ashraf Kagee.” In: Ewald Mengel/ Michela Borzaga/ Karin Orantes (eds.). Trauma, Memory, and Narrative: Interviews. Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi. 127-136. Duiker, K. Sello (2001). The Quiet Violence of Dreams. Cape Town: Kwela Books. Mpe, Pashwane (2001). Welcome to Our Hillbrow. Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press. Rothberg, Michael (2008). “Decolonizing Trauma Studies: A Response.” Studies in the Novel 40. 224-234. Schonstein Pinnock, Patricia (2000). Skyline. Cape Town: David Philip. Rebecca Fasselt Department of English University of Johannesburg South Africa 1 These works include, among others, Phaswane Mpe’s Welcome to Our Hillbrow (2001), Patricia Schonstein Pinnock’s Skyline (2000), K. Sello Duiker’s The Quiet Violence of Dreams (2001) and Lauren Beuke’s Zoo City (2010). Rezensionen AAA Band 39 (2014) Heft 1 99 Christine Schwanecke, Intermedial Storytelling. Thematisation, Imitation and Incorporation of Photography in English and American Fiction at the Turn of the 21 st Century. (Studies in English Literary and Cultural History 52) Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2012. David Klein Auf ihre umfangreiche Studie zum Intermedial Storytelling in der englischen und US-amerikanischen Erzählliteratur um die Wende zum 21. Jahrhundert stimmt die Verfasserin ein mit einem Spiel. Zu lesen ist zu Beginn ein Bibelzitat aus dem ersten Evangelium nach Johannes: „Im Anfang war das Wort.“ Blättern wir weiter, eröffnet sich unserem Blick ‘Fleischgewordenes’ in Form einer doppelseitigen Photocollage, die sich aus zweimal fünfunddreißig Einzelbildern zusammensetzt, die ihrerseits auf jeder Einzelseite zu je zwei weiteren Gruppen geordnet sind. Es sind dies Bilder, wie wir sie aus den Nachrichten, dem Fernsehen oder der gedruckten Presse kennen: Soldaten auf dem Schlachtfeld in Afghanistan, die Explosion einer Atombombe, John F. Kennedy am Rednerpult, die beleuchteten Straßen einer chinesischen Metropole, winkende Politiker, lächelnde Berühmtheiten, ein freundlich grüßender Dalai Lama, ein die Zunge bleckender Albert Einstein und dazwischen Kunstwerke, Gemälde, architektonische Meisterleistungen. Was wir sehen sind Bilder, die, mehr als nur Photographien, zugleich ‘Bilder’ unser Welt und Wirklichkeit sind. In dieser schier überwältigenden Fülle stehen die Einzeldarstellungen jedoch nicht allein. Bisweilen gehen sie einen sonderbarem Dialog mit benachbarten Abbildungen ein: So grenzt die Hand Gottes, die sich in Michelangelo Buonarottis sixtinischem Deckenfresko zart nach der Hand Adams ausstreckt, direkt an eine Photographie des Eiffelturms, der sich in hellem Mittagslicht gen Himmel reckt. So versucht Marilyn Monroe das Aufflattern ihres weißen Kleides in der berühmten U-Bahn-Szene aus Billy Wilders The Seven Year Itch (1955) dort kokett zu unterbinden, wo ein anderer, kälterer Wind auf dem Großen Sankt Bernhard den roten Umhang Napoleon Bonapartes und die wallende Mähne seines Schimmels in Jacques Luis Davids monumentalen Feldherrenbildnis (1800) bergauf treibt. Auch gleicht das charakteristische Winken Queen Elizabeth II dem ausgestreckten Arm der ‘benachbarten’ Freiheitsstatue, das gelbe Muster des Kostüms der First Lady der gelb-schillernden Zeichnung einiger angrenzender Tropenfische, und auf den qualmenden Nordturm des World Trade Centers am 11. September 2001 antwortet ein seltsam zergliederter, eine Treppe hinabsteigender Akt aus dem Atelier eines derjenigen Künstler, die sich dereinst ‘Futuristen’ nannten und rebellisch die Zerstörung der Bibliotheken und Museen gefordert hatten. Wenngleich also jedes der Bilder in Schwaneckes expositorischer Collage ein in sich geschlossenes Geschehen zeigt, so zeigt es doch immer auch auf andere Bilder und generiert auf diese Weise einen Sinnüberschuss, der selbst zwar nicht mehr zu sehen ist, wohl aber im Raum ‘dazwischen’ - im ‘inter’ - erahnbar wird: Die Sprachlosigkeit des photographischen Mediums ist im Rezensionen 100 Begriff, sich im syntaktischen Bilderverbund selbst aufzugeben. 2 Die Photographie - so scheint es - steht kurz davor, zur Schrift oder gesprochenen Sprache zu werden. Sie ahmt sie nach, nimmt Anleihen bei ihrem Schwestermedium, tut so, als sei sie etwas, das sie nicht ist. Vielleicht verweisen auf diesen Umstand noch die einzig verbliebenen Schriftzeichen in der Photocollage 3 , eckig umklammerte syntaktische Ellipsen, Auslassungszeichen also, die die beiden Bilderblöcke auf jeder der beiden Seiten ein weiteres Mal im oberen Drittel durchschneiden. In ihrer Funktion nicht Anwesendes anzuzeigen, verweisen auch sie auf jenen Raum in dem sie selbst stehen, auf jenes ‘inter’ also. Was dort im Begriff ist, sich zu materialisieren, kann in den Bildern nicht mehr festgestellt werden, umkreist diese jedoch wie jener Wind, der Marylin Monroe durch den Rock fährt und Napoleons Umhang in Bewegung versetzt. Dieser Wind ist wie ein ‘Sinn’, der nur dort aufblitzt, wo die Bilder versuchen, Schrift zu werden. Er kann nur zwischen ihnen erahnt, nicht aber in ihnen festgestellt werden, weswegen er abflaut, wo nur eines der Bilder alleine steht: „The image“, so heißt es mit Roland Barthes auf der darauffolgenden Seite, „is peremptory, it always has the last word.“ Die Betonung liegt in diesem Fall - so ließe sich spekulieren - auf dem Singular, dem the. Was hier als Präsenz und Absenz der Schrift in einem photographischen Artefakt erahnbar wird, dem spürt Schwanecke in umgekehrter Blickrichtung in zwölf eindrucksvollen Einzelanalysen englischsprachiger Romane der letzten zwanzig Jahre nach. Werden in der expositorischen Kollage Photographien zur Schrift, so geht es - vereinfacht gesagt - in der Folge um das Verhältnis erzählender Literatur zur Photographie. Gerechtfertigt erscheint ein solches Unterfangen - wie die Vf. darlegt - angesichts der immensen Proliferation photographischer Artefakte, die der Digitalisierungsschub ab den 1990er Jahren in den untersuchten Kulturräumen mit sich gebracht hat. Denn hier eröffnet sich ein Experimentierfeld, das für Schreibende und Photographierende gleichermaßen neue Möglichkeiten bereithält und die konventionellen Grenzen der jeweiligen Zeichenverbundsysteme erneut zum Gegenstand spielerisch-literarischer Verhandlung macht. Ausgangspunkt der Studie bildet also zunächst ganz allgemein die Frage, wie weit der Einfluss des immer deutlicher sich ausbreitenden photographischen Mediums auf die erzählende Literatur reicht: Reagieren narrative Texte auf die rasche Verbreitung und Ubiquität photographischer Artefakte nach dem Digitalisierungsschub der 90er Jahre? Und wenn ja, mit welchen Mitteln? Inwieweit kann ein narrativer Text überhaupt ‘photographisch’ sein, ohne dabei seine Narrativität aufzugeben? Ab wann darf eine Photographie als ‘narrativ’ betrachtet werden, ohne dabei zum narrativen Text zu werden? Und inwieweit können hybride Gattungen oder Texte, die andere, nicht-verbale Medien in sich aufnehmen oder sie ‘verschlingen’, wie Schwanecke in Anlehnung an Virginia Woolf formuliert (5), Geschichten erzählen? 2 Zur Frage, ob die Photographie eine Sprache ist, vgl. Barthes (1961/ 1982: 9-24). 3 Abgesehen von denjenigen Schriftzeichen, die in vereinzelten Photos zu finden sind. Rezensionen 101 All dies sind Fragestellungen, die in den Bereich der Intermedialitätsforschung fallen. Um sie beantworten zu können, bedarf es methodischer Vorüberlegungen. Schwanecke geht hier behutsam und konsequent vor und nähert sich dem Begriff der Intermedialität zunächst über die für ihren besonderen Fall am intermedialen Dialog beteiligten Agenturen ‘Medium’, ‘Photographie’ sowie ‘literarischer bzw. narrativer Text’. Ein Medium begreift Vf. mit einer Definition von Werner Wolf (2002: 13) als je nach Konvention und Gebrauch verschiedenes Mittel der Kommunikation. Es ist somit stets funktional gebunden an historische und soziale Faktoren, die materielle und semiotische Aspekte seines Gebrauchs gleichermaßen regeln. ‘Medium’ ist vor diesem Hintergrund also keine feststehende Größe, sondern ein „Kompaktbegriff“ (13), der semiotische Systeme wie die gesprochene oder geschriebene Sprache, materielle oder technische Kanäle wie Druck-, Daten- oder Funktechnik, soziale Faktoren wie Produktionsbedingungen, Distributionswege und Rezeptionsgewohnheiten, sowie konkrete Artefakte wie Filme, Opern, Texte oder Photographien gleichermaßen umfasst. Was narrative Texte oder die Photographie als Medium auszeichnet, kann also nur im breiteren Kontext der genannten Faktoren beantwortet werden. Dasselbe gilt für mögliche Momente von Intermedialität, die Vf., erneut mit Werner Wolf (2002: 16), als Momente der Transgression konventionell verschiedener Mediengrenzen definiert. Trägt man der Mehrdimensionalität des zugrunde liegenden Medienbegriffs Rechnung, so wird schnell deutlich, dass mediale Transgressionen nur insoweit nachweisbar sind, als feststeht, was diesseits und was jenseits der unterschiedlichen Mediengrenzen liegt, sprich: was Photographie als ‘Photographie’ und was Narrativität als ‘Narrativität’ kennzeichnet. Was die Photographie betrifft, mangelt es bis heute an einer allgemein akzeptierten Theorie, weswegen Vf. aus einer Vielzahl verschiedener Ansätze gezielt die für das eigene Vorhaben wichtigsten Eigenschaften versammelt. Dies geschieht stets in Rückbindung an die Aspekte des Kompaktbegriffs Medium: In materieller Hinsicht ist die Photographie ein graphisches Bild, das sich durch das Vorhandensein einer räumlichen Begrenzung und spezifische kompositionelle Aspekte auszeichnet. Anders als die Sprache ist die Photographie nicht-linear bzw. atemporal. In semiotischer Hinsicht ist sie, mit Roland Barthes, zudem bestimmt von einem Paradox, insoweit sie zwei Botschaften beinhaltet, von denen die eine, codierte, sich erst auf Grundlage der anderen, nicht-codierten, entwickelt (vgl. 33). Dies führt zu einer grundsätzlichen Polysemie der Photographie, zumal die Grenze zwischen codierter und nicht-codierter Botschaft oft schwer zu ziehen ist. Darüberhinaus ist der semiotische Status der Photographie insoweit unbestimmt, als sie Symbol, Index und Ikon zugleich ist (vgl. 32f). Was zuletzt ihre konventionellen Produktions- und Rezeptionsgewohnheiten betrifft, wird ihr häufig reine Objektivität zugesprochen, da das, was sie zu sehen gibt, mit Sicherheit einmal so gewesen ist, wie Vf. erneut mit Roland Barthes formuliert (vgl. 33). Was die Eigenschaften narrativer Texte anbelangt, greift Vf. auf die kognitive Narratologie zurück. Grundlage für das Vorhandensein von Narrativität bildet hier zuvorderst ein kognitiver Modus des Rezipienten, der Erfahrungen Rezensionen 102 im Hinblick auf ein spezifisch narratives Makro-Schema hin verarbeitet, das sowohl in der Realität als auch in künstlerischen Artefakten vorkommen kann (vgl. 36). Ausgelöst wird ein solcher Modus durch besondere Stimuli, welche ihrerseits entweder werkextern verankert sein können wie in den individuellen Rezeptionsgewohnheiten, oder werkintern vorliegen können wie in Form von Genrebezeichnungen oder eines voice overs im Film. Die werkinternen Stimuli oder „micro-frames“ (37) sind es sodann, die aus einem Kunstwerk ein spezifisch narratives machen. Vf. nennt diese mit Bezug auf Gerald Prince ‘Narrateme’ (vgl. 37) und unterteilt sie sodann in solche inhaltlicher, syntaktischer und qualitativer Art. Inhaltliche Narrateme sind Elemente und Eigenschaften der Geschichts- oder histoire-Ebene wie Zeit, Raum, Figur, physische oder mentale Handlungen (vgl. 39). Syntaktische Narrateme fallen in den Bereich der Vermittlungs- oder discours-Ebene 4 wie Chronologie, Selektion, Teleologie Kausalität u.a., während sich qualitative Narrateme auf eine „Sinndimension“ (40, Wolf 2002a: 44) beziehen, die über das Dargestellte hinausgeht, wie beispielsweise der nicht mehr explizierte Reifeprozess einer Figur. Spielt letztere Kategorie im Hinblick auf intermediale Fragestellungen nur eine untergeordnete Rolle, so sind es vor allem inhaltliche und syntaktische Narrateme, die bei der Identifikation und methodischen Abgrenzung medialer Transgressionen in Erzähltexten behilflich sein sollen. Denn entscheidend ist, dass Narrateme im Sinne mentaler Mikroschemen (vgl. 44) sowohl transgenerisch als auch transmedial sind (vgl. 35f sowie 41f). Narrativität kommt damit nicht mehr exklusiv Erzähltexten zu, sondern kann - je nach Grad der relativen Häufigkeit oder Dominanz entsprechender Stimuli - kognitiv in solchen Gattungen oder Medien aktualisiert werden, die traditionell nicht als narrativ gelten wie beispielsweise das Drama oder die Photographie. Analog gilt dasselbe für entsprechende, die Photographie evozierende Mikroschemen, die Vf. ‘Photoreme’ nennt und die sich durch Visualität, Begrenztheit, Atemporalität, Polysemie, Objektivität u.ä. auszeichnen. Je höher ihre Anzahl und je prototypischer ihre Okkurrenzen, desto wahrscheinlicher ist es, dass das Medium oder Zeichensystem ‘Photographie’ bei der Rezeption makroschematisch aktiviert wird. Die Grenze, die zwischen den beiden Medien verläuft, ist damit fließend. Dies ist dort von besonderer Relevanz, wo Narrateme und Photoreme in einem singulären Zeichenverbundsystem vorliegen wie beispielsweise in einem Erzähltext ohne Abbildungen, der dennoch Strukturen oder Eigenheiten der Photographie nachahmt. Für einen solchen Fall schlägt Irina Rajewsky den Begriff der ‘intermedialen Bezugnahme’ vor (vgl. Rajewsky 2002: 17), den Vf. zusammen mit dem Begriff der ‘Medienkombination’ (im Sinne einer Kombination zweier konventionell distinkter Zeichenverbundsysteme in einem singulären Artefakt) übernimmt (vgl. 19f) und in ein eigenes Stufenmodell integriert (vgl. 48). Die intermediale Bezugnahme lässt sich darin entweder durch die Thematisierung der Photographie auf Inhaltsebene (A) oder 4 Zur Unterscheidung von histoire und discours vgl. Genette (1972/ 2011) sowie weiterführend Rimmon-Kenan (1983). Rezensionen 103 durch ikonische Imitation auf Vermittlungsebene (B) realisieren. Unterschieden werden hier wie dort je zwei weitere Abstufungen: Im ersten Fall wird die bloße Thematisierung der Photographie von zunehmend strukturellen Bezügen auf Inhaltsebene abgegrenzt (A1/ A2) und im zweiten Fall wird die sporadische Evokation des photographischen Mediums von einer solchen abgehoben, die auf allen Textebenen vorliegt (B1/ B2). Ist das Maß an Intermedialität im Bereich der intermedialen Bezugnahme fließend und je abhängig von Anzahl und Markiertheit der Photoreme bzw. Narrateme, so bildet die Medienkombination in Schwaneckes Schema eine gesonderte Klasse (C), zumal hier zwei konventionell distinkte Zeichenverbundsysteme in einem hybriden Artefakt vorliegen. Auch hier wird ein weiteres Mal unterschieden und zwar zwischen solchen hybriden Texten, die durch semiotische Heterogenität (C1) gekennzeichnet sind, und solchen, in denen semiotische Homogenität (C2) überwiegt. Je ausgewogener das Verhältnis zwischen Photographie und Text in Bezug auf Quantität und Sinnkonstitution, desto deutlicher die semiotische Homogenität des entsprechenden Artefakts (vgl. 52). Zwar scheint sich die Photographie der Narrativität in besonderem Maße zu widersetzen, sie kann dennoch ein entsprechendes mentales Schema auslösen, wie Vf. anhand des Kuleshov-Effekts illustriert (53f). Das Stufenmodell erlaubt eine sinnvolle Systematisierung jüngerer und jüngster intermedialer genres. Jeder der im zweiten Teil der Arbeit untersuchten Erzähltexte findet darin seinen Platz. Wenngleich sich also die Bezüge der zwölf analysierten Werke untereinander auf den ersten Blick nicht erschließen, so laufen sie hier in einem neuralgischen Punkt zusammen und werden strukturell aufeinander beziehbar. Auch dienen die unterschiedlichen Abstufungen des Modells als Spielanordnungen, die Analysevorgaben machen und dabei die Funktionsstelle jeder Einzelanalyse im Gesamtzusammenhang der Arbeit erleichtern. Die Veränderungen prototypischer medialer Strukturen werden so auf einen Blick sichtbar. Dem Schema gemäß befasst sich Schwanecke zunächst mit solchen Texten, in denen Photographie zwar allein auf der Inhaltsebene vorkommt, hier jedoch eine zunehmende dominante Rolle spielt, angefangen bei Don De Lillos Mao II (1991) weiter über Paul Austers Leviathan (1992) und Kate Atkinsons Behind the scenes at the Museum (1995) bis zu Penelope Livelys The Photograph (2003). Ob die allein inhaltlichen Bezüge zur Photographie hier einen Fall der Intermedialität darstellen, darf, wie Vf. selbst anmerkt, zwar in Frage gestellt werden (vgl. 60). Die besondere Funktion, die die Photographie in den genannten Texten einnimmt, ist jedoch, so Vf. weiter, für die Handlungswelt strukturgebend. Denn wie in den Einzelanalysen deutlich erkennbar wird, nimmt die Photographie hier gerade im Hinblick auf Figurenzeichnung, Geschichtsverständnis, Identitätsbildung, Mediengebrauch, Gedächtnisfunktion und Wirklichkeitskonstruktion eine Sonderstellung ein. Oft bildet sie die Schnittstelle, an der die entscheidenden Konfliktlinien verlaufen, wie dies beispielsweise in Mao II im spiegelbildlichen Einsatz des Mediums durch Pressewesen einerseits und Terroristen andererseits erkennbar wird. Die Möglichkeiten der Imitation der Photographie (im Sinne einer intermedialen Bezugnahme) sind mannigfaltig, wie Vf. in einem weiteren Schritt Rezensionen 104 zeigt. Sie erstrecken sich von der Nachahmung materieller Aspekte mittels Typographie wie den rechteckigen Textblöcken in Beryl Bainbridges Master Georgie (1998), bis zur Evokation photographischer Produktions- und Rezeptionsweisen wie Helmuts ‘photojournalistischem Blick’ in Rachel Seifferts The Dark Room (2001), der von einem objektiven Beschreibungsmodus und dominant parataktischem Satzbau begleitet wird. Sie zeigen sich sodann in der Evokation ästhetischer Aspekte des Mediums wie beispielsweise dem lückenhaften Handlungsverlauf, der episodischen und randomisierten Handlungsstruktur sowie den Kapitelanfängen in medias res in Gail Jones Sixty Lights (2004). Und sie zeigen sich, neben anderen Erscheinungsformen, durch „primacy of vision“ und „absence of sound“ (102) wie bei der figuralen und narrativen Wirklichkeitskonstruktion in Salman Rushdies The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999). Je deutlicher und häufiger entsprechende Verfahren zur Anwendung kommen - so die These - ,desto wahrscheinlicher werden die Texte als ‘photographische’ rezipiert, wenngleich Photos darin nicht physisch präsent sind. In einem letzten Schritt untersucht Schwanecke Texte, in denen beide Zeichenverbundsysteme anwesend sind, sich in Funktion und Dominanz jedoch zunehmend durchdringen. Bilder sind hier imstande, die Schrift zu unterbrechen, sie zu konterkarieren oder das fortzusetzen, was sie sagt. Sie bilden damit neben der Schrift eine weitere sinngebende und interpretationssensible Ebene. Je offener entsprechend vielschichtige Sinnstrukturen sind, desto mehr steht der Rezipient in der Pflicht, sich an der Vervollständigung der dargestellten Welten zu beteiligen. So können Photos narrative Funktionen übernehmen, wie beispielsweise die Figurenzeichnung in Leanne Shaptons Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry (2009), oder zur Konstitution von Raum und Zeit beitragen wie in Aleksandar Hermons The Lazarus Project (2008). Auch können Photos anstelle der Schrift über psychische Zustände informieren, die nicht mehr versprachlicht werden können (vgl. 158f, 165), wie in Jonathan Safran Foers Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2005), wo sie gar bei der narrativen Konstruktion von Kausalitätsketten zum Einsatz kommen (vgl. 176). Gerade der offene aber subtile Widerspruch zwischen dem, was die Photos ‘sagen’ und dem, was die Schrift sagt, wie ihn Carol Shields in The Stone Diaries (1993) praktiziert, ist, wie Schwanecke zeigt, unweigerlich gekoppelt an Momente der Metaierung und einer Reflexion über die jeweiligen an der Semiose beteiligten Zeichensysteme. Momente der Intermedialität sind damit potentiell auch Momente der Medienreflexion. Gerade bei letztgenanntem Aspekt zeigt sich das besondere Potenzial intermedialer Kunst: Sie erkundet den Einfluss der Medien auf das Individuum und die Gesellschaft, auf Freiheit und Einschränkungen, Macht und Unterwerfung. Sie erlaubt in letzter Konsequenz eine Neubewertung der hauchzarten Zeichentextur, mit der sich eine Gesellschaft ‘umkleidet’ (184). Dies zu zeigen, gelingt Schwanecke in den pointierten Einzelanalysen in unterschiedlichsten Varianten und Spielarten. Ihr ist damit eine höchst innovative und originelle Studie gelungen. Ohnehin ist eine systematische Beschreibung in- Rezensionen 105 termedialer Beziehungen zwischen Photographie und Literatur lange überfällig gewesen. Zweifel ließen sich allenfalls anmelden, was den Rekurs auf die kognitive Narratologie im methodischen Teil betrifft. Denn hier stellt sich die Frage, inwieweit die Öffnung des Begriffs des Narrativen in transmedialer, transgenerischer und transdisziplinärer Hinsicht (36) sinnvoll ist. Zwar sind Momente von Narrativität aus kognitiver Perspektive ubiquitär. Die konzeptionelle Rückbindung intermedialer Fragestellungen an ein kognitives Schema führt jedoch nicht nur zurück zu einem „reader-based or reception-centred approach“ (36, Anm. 49), sondern bringt an manchen Stellen auch begriffliche Vermengungen mit sich, in denen medientheoretische Feinheiten in Gefahr geraten, nivelliert zu werden. Der Bildklassifikation W. J. T. Mitchells beispielsweise, der gemäß graphische Bilder (zu denen auch die Photographie gehört) von optischen, perzeptuellen, mentalen und verbalen abzugrenzen sind 5 , hält Vf. aus kognitiver Perspektive entgegen, dass das, was beim Betrachten eines Photos verstanden und wahrgenommen würde, sich von Betrachter zu Betrachter stark unterscheide (vgl. 30). Aus diesem Grund seien graphische Bilder den mentalen ähnlicher als auf den ersten Blick anzunehmen sei. Die Klassifikation Mitchells sei also nur bedingt anwendbar. Hier sind jedoch Einwände anzumelden. Denn gerade in der klaren Trennung zwischen unterschiedlichen Bildklassen, wie sie Mitchell vorschlägt, wird ein Horizont erkennbar, an dem sich die mögliche Komplexität der Photo- Sprache-Beziehung abzeichnet: Bleiben graphische von mentalen Bildern aus heuristischen Gründen streng unterschieden, so ist ein Photo in dem Moment kein ‘Photo’ mehr, wo ein Betrachter es anschaut oder darüber spricht. Es ist stattdessen zunächst ein perzeptuelles, sodann ein mentales und zuletzt ein verbales Bild. Dasselbe gilt für mehrere Betrachter, die sich über ein Photo austauschen. Auch sie reden (möglicherweise mittels verbaler Bilder) über mentale Bilder und im eigentlichen Sinn nicht über Photos. Es stellt sich damit erneut die Frage, was es bedeutet, ‘wie’ ein Photo zu ‘sprechen’ und, ob dies überhaupt machbar ist und nicht von vornherein an der Sprache scheitern muss. 6 Treibt man die Klassifikation Mitchells also auf die Spitze, so werden die sprachlichen Möglichkeiten intermedialer Bezugnahmen im Sinne 5 Zu den optischen Bildern gehören Spiegelungen oder Projektionen, zu den perzeptuellen gehören Wahrnehmungsdaten; mentale Bilder sind Träume, Erinnerungen oder Ideen, während verbale Bilder Metaphern oder Beschreibungen sind. Vgl. 30 sowie Mitchell (1986/ 1987: 10). 6 Vielleicht schreibt Roland Barthes aus diesem Grund über die Photographie: „[...] la photographie serait la seule à être exclusivement constituée et occupée par un message ‘dénoté’, qui épuiserait complètement son être; devant une photographie, le sentiment de ‘dénotation’, ou si l’on préfère, de plénitude analogique, est si fort, que la description d’une photographie est à la lettre impossible; car décrire [Herv. im Original] consiste précisément à adjoindre au message dénoté, un relais ou un message second, puisé dans un code qui est la langue [...]: décrire, ce n’est donc pas seulement être inexact ou incomplet, c’est changer de structure, c’est signifier autre chose que ce qui est montré“ (Barthes 1961/ 1982: 12). Und wenig später heißt es: „Si [...] il n’y a pas de perception sans catégorisation immédiate, la photographie est verbalisée dans le moment même où elle est perçue; ou mieux encore: elle n’est perçue que verbalisée [...]“ (ebd. 21). Rezensionen 106 der sprachlichen Imitation photographischer Kommunikation verschwindend klein. Sie werden dann bestenfalls erahnbar anhand von Momenten der Störung, der Reibung, der Paradigmatisierung 7 und der atemporalen Dysfunktionalität temporaler Sprache. Sie blitzen dort auf, wo die sprachliche Vermittlung an ihre Grenzen stößt, sie kündigen sich dort an, wo simulierte oder reale Medien in der Konkurrenz um Deutungs- und Bedeutungshoheit ihre je eigene Medialität hervorkehren. 8 Beschreiben ließen sich derartige Momente möglicherweise systematisch im Rahmen einer ‘konventionellen’ oder strukturalistischen Erzähltheorie, die Narrativität zuvorderst an das Vorhandensein einer fiktiven Sprechinstanz im Sinne eines Erzählersubjekts bindet. Dessen ungeachtet jedoch ist Schwaneckes Studie zum Intermedial Storytelling ein wichtiger und äußerst lesenswerter Beitrag zu einem sich zunehmend profilierenden Forschungszweig. Die hier genannten Einwände sind daher in erster Linie Aufforderungen zur produktiven Fortsetzung der wissenschaftlichen Diskussion. Bibliographie Barthes, Roland (1961/ 1982). L’obvie et l’obtus. Essais critiques III. Paris: Seuil. Genette, Gérard (1972/ 2011). Die Erzählung. München: Funk. Mahler, Andreas (2012). “Probleme der Intermedialitätsforschung. Medienbegriff - Interaktion - Spannweite.” Poetica. Zeitschrift für Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaften 44/ 3-4. 239-260. Mitchell, W. J. T. (1986/ 1987). Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Rajewsky, Irina (2002). Intermedialität. Tübingen & Basel: Francke. Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith (1983). Narrative Fiction. Contemporary Poetics. London: Routledge. Warning, Rainer (2001). “Erzähen im Paradigma. Kontingenzbewältigung und Kontingenzexplosion.” Romanistisches Jahrbuch 52. 176-209. Wolf, Werner (2002). “Das Problem der Narrativität in Literatur, Bildender Kunst und Musik: Ein Beitrag zu einer Intermedialen Erzähltheorie.” In: Vera Nünning/ Ansgar Nünning (eds.). Erzähltheorie Transgenerisch, Intermedial, Interdisziplinär. Trier: WVT. 23-104. David Klein Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Deutschland 7 Zum Begriff des Erzählens im Paradigma vgl. Warning (2001). 8 Vgl. in diesem Zusammenhang Mahler (2012: 257ff.). Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH+Co. KG • Dischingerweg 5 • D-72070 Tübingen Tel. +49 (07071) 9797-0 • Fax +49 (07071) 97 97-11 • info@narr.de • www.narr.de JETZT BES TELLEN! Rachel Falconer / Denis Renevey (ed.) Medieval and Early Modern Literature, Science and Medicine Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature, Vol. 28 2013, 256 Seiten, €[D] 49,00 / SFr 63,10 ISBN 978-3-8233-6820-5 This inter-disciplinary volume investigates the contiguities and connections that existed between poetic early modern periods. The aesthetic aspects of medical texts are analysed, alongside the medical expertise articulated in literary texts. Substantial common ground is discovered in the devotional, medical, and literary discourses pertaining to health and disease in these two periods. Medieval and early modern theatres are shown to have staged matter pertaining ones. Finally, the volume demonstrates how certain branches of learning, for example, marine navigation and time-measurement, were represented as forms of both art and science. Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH+Co. KG • Dischingerweg 5 • D-72070 Tübingen Tel. +49 (07071) 9797-0 • Fax +49 (07071) 97 97-11 • info@narr.de • www.narr.de JETZT BES TELLEN! Christina Ljungberg / Mario Klarer (eds.) Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 29 2013, IV, 206 Seiten €[D] 49,00/ SFr 63,10 ISBN 978-3-8233-6829-8 looks at the tensions and disputes that pervade American culture. Focusing primarily on various structural areas of confrontation, the essays in this collection explore the diverse forms of artistic expression television, digital technologies, and advertising.