Violence and the Limits of Representation

Violence and the Limits of Representation

Violence and the Limits of Representation Edited by Graham Matthews Lecturer, Newcastle University and Sam Goodman Honorary Fellow, University of Exeter

Selection, introduction and editorial matter Graham Matthews and Sam Goodman 2013 Individual chapters Contributors 2013 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2013 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries ISBN 978-1-349-45191-3 ISBN 978-1-137-29690-0 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9781137296900 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Contents List of Figures Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors vii viii ix Introduction: Violence and the Limits of Representation 1 Graham Matthews and Sam Goodman 1 The Violence of Representation and the Representation of Violence 12 Benjamin Noys 2 Violence and Love (in Which Yoko Ono Encourages Slavoj Ž i ž ek to Give Peace a Chance ) 28 Scott Wilson 3 (Im)material Violence: Discipline and the Gaze in James Kelman s How Late It Was, How Late 49 Graham Matthews 4 Sadeian Women: Erotic Violence in the Surrealist Spectacle 69 Catriona McAra 5 Demarcating Violence in the Dramaturgy of Lisa McGee s Girls and Dolls 90 Rosalind Haslett 6 Skeletons of Solid Objects : Imperial Violence in J. G. Farrell s Empire Trilogy 112 Sam Goodman 7 Contingent Violence: Bergson and the Comedy of Horrors in Schindler s List 129 John Mullarkey 8 Violence and Mediation: The Ethics of Spectatorship in the Twenty-First Century Horror Film 145 Xavier Aldana Reyes v

vi Contents 9 Objects of Surprise: Violence, Security, and Metaphysics 161 Robert Jackson Bibliography 179 Index 191

List of Figures 2.1 The structure of the real 30 2.2 The structure of violence 31 4.1 Dorothea Tanning, Notes for an Apocalypse, 1978 69 4.2 Dorothea Tanning, Le Petit Marquis (The Little Marquis), 1947 75 4.3 Dorothea Tanning, Pelote d épingles pouvant servir de f é tiche (Pincushion to Serve as a Fetish), 1965 78 4.4 Dorothea Tanning, Woman Fleeing Fear Itself, 1980 79 4.5 Leonora Carrington, Self-Portrait: Inn of the Dawn Horse, 1937 81 4.6 Leonora Carrington, The Meal of Lord Candlestick, 1938 84 vii

Acknowledgements This collection of essays stems from a series of conferences on critical theory held at the University of Exeter in 2009 10. These were generously supported by a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) as well as by the Department of English at the University of Exeter. We are grateful to Professor Colin MacCabe, Professor Robert Eaglestone, and Professor Scott Wilson for their inspiring keynote addresses as well as to Dr. Lara Cox, Dr. Taihei Hanada, and Dr. Matthew Salt for their unswerving commitment and encouragement. The editors also wish to thank the following for their generous support: Felicity Plester, Catherine Mitchell, and Chris Penfold at Palgrave Macmillan for all their help in bringing the book to print; Mrs Pamela S. Johnson at The Dorothea Tanning Foundation, New York, for help with and kind permission to use images from the foundation; the members of the Department of English at the University of Exeter and the School of English Literature, Language, and Linguistics at Newcastle University for all their advice and encouragement. viii

Notes on Contributors Sam Goodman teaches contemporary literature at the University of Exeter. His research interests are popular British fiction of the post- Second World War period, national identity, and the changing geopolitics of the era. He is the editor, with Victoria Bates and Alan Bleakley, of Medicine, Health and the Arts: Approaches to the Medical Humanities (forthcoming). Rosalind Haslett is Lecturer in Dramatic Literature at Newcastle University. Her research interests include dramaturgy and literary management, space in performance, theatre architecture, and theatre history. She is currently preparing a monograph on the history of the dramaturgy profession in American theatre. Robert Jackson is a doctoral candidate at Lancaster University and an artist and software developer. His research interests include computability theory, computational aesthetics, digital culture, and philosophy. He also writes for Furtherfield.org, and is an associate editor of Speculations. Graham Matthews is Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature at Newcastle University. His publications include Ethics and Desire in the Wake of Postmodernism (2012) along with other contributions to journals and edited collections on contemporary literature He is currently preparing a monograph on the literary landscape of the two cultures debate. Catriona McAra is Research Assistant in Cultural Theory at the University of Huddersfield. Her research interests include Surrealism, feminism, narrative art, and the aesthetics of the cute. She has published articles on Joseph Cornell, Dorothea Tanning, and Lewis Carroll. She is currently preparing an edited collection on Tessa Farmer and a monograph on Dorothea Tanning. John Mullarkey is Professor of Film and Television Studies at Kingston University, London. He has also taught philosophy and film theory at the University of Sunderland, England (1994 2004) and the University of Dundee, Scotland (2004 2010). He has published Bergson and Philosophy (1999), Post-Continental Philosophy: An Outline (2006), Philosophy and the ix

x Notes on Contributors Moving Image: Refractions of Reality (2010), and co- edited Laruelle and Non-Philosophy (2012), and The Bloomsbury Companion to Continental Philosophy (forthcoming). He is an editor of the journal Film-Philosophy, and the chair of the Society for European Philosophy. His work explores variations of non-standard-philosophy, arguing that philosophy is a subject that continually shifts its identity through engaging with supposedly non-philosophical fields such as film theory and animal studies (the realm of outsider thought with which he is most acquainted). He is currently working on a book entitled Reverse Mutations: Laruelle and Nonhuman Philosophy. Benjamin Noys is Reader in English at the University of Chichester. He is the author of Georges Bataille: A Critical Introduction (2000), The Culture of Death (2005), The Persistence of the Negative: A Critique of Contemporary Theory (2010), and editor of Communization and Its Discontents (2011). Xavier Aldana Reyes is Research Fellow in Gothic Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University. He is currently working on two forthcoming monographs, Body Gothic: Corporeal Transgression in Contemporary Literature and Horror Film and Spanish Gothic: National Identity, Collaboration and Cultural Adaptation, and has published widely in the areas of horror, the Gothic, transgression and corporeality, affect theory, and gender/queer studies. Scott Wilson is Professor in Media and Cultural Studies at Kingston University, London. His two recent books are The Order of Joy: Beyond the Cultural Politics of Enjoyment (2008) and Great Satan s Rage: American Negativity and Rap/Metal in the Age of Supercapitalism (2008). He is the editor, with Michael Dillon, of the Journal for Cultural Research and, with Fred Botting, of The Bataille Reader. His research interests include cultural and critical theory, psychoanalysis, and the legacy of Georges Bataille. He is currently working on a book on the audio unconscious.