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In the wake of trauma: visualising the unspeakable/unthinkable in Marie Darrieussecq and Hélène Lenoir

2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 27; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/02666286.2011.627215

1943-2178

Jean H. Duffy,

Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author would like to thank Katherine Shingler for inviting her to speak at the ‘Art in French Fiction since 1900’ conference (University of Nottingham, 2011) at which she presented an earlier version of this article; the Menil Collection for providing the reproductions of Rothko's Astral Image and the Rothko Chapel; Bill Viola Studio LLC for providing the reproductions of The Stopping Mind. Thanks are also due to Amy Chien of the Menil Collection and Christen Sperry-Garcia of Bill Viola Studio LLC for their assistance. Notes 1 – See Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (London: Routledge, 1992); Kali Tal, Worlds of Hurt: Reading the Literatures of Trauma (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Dominick LaCapra, Representing the Holocaust: History, Theory, Trauma (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996); Writing History, Writing Trauma (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001); Saul Friedlander, ‘Trauma, Transference and “Working Through” in Writing the History of the Shoah’, History and Memory 4 (1992): pp. 39–55; Eric L. Santner, ‘History Beyond the Pleasure Principle: Some Thoughts on the Representation of Trauma’, in Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the “Final Solution”, ed. Saul Friedlander (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 143–54. 2 – See, for example, Laurent Mauvignier, Des hommes (Paris: Minuit, 2009); Georges Mattei, La Guerre des gusses (Paris:Ballard, 1982); Didier Daeninckx, Meurtres pour mémoire (Paris: Gallimard, 1984); Nancy Huston, L'Empreinte de l'ange (Arles: Actes Sud, 1998); Frédérique Clémençon, Colonie (Paris: Minuit, 2003). 3 – See, for example, Henri Raczymow, Un cri sans voix (Paris: Gallimard, 1985); Philippe Grimbert, Un secret (Paris: Grasset, 2006); Patrick Modiano, Dora Bruder (Paris: Gallimard, 1997); Nacer Kettane, Le Sourire de Brahim (Paris: Denoël, 1985); Tassadit Imache, Une fille sans histoire (Paris: Calmann-Lévy 1989); Leïla Sebbar, La Seine était rouge: Paris, octobre 1961 (Paris: Magny, 1999). See also Susan Ireland and Patrice J. Proulx, eds., Immigrant Narratives in Contemporary France (Westport: Greenwood, 2001); Patricia M. E. Lorcin, ed., Algeria & France, 1800–2000: Identity, Memory, Nostalgia (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2006); Annelies Schulte Nordholt, Témoignages de l'après-Auschwitz dans la littérature juive-française d'aujourd'hui: Enfants de survivants et survivants-enfants (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008); Dominque Viart and Bruno Vercier, La Littérature française au présent: Héritage, modernité, mutations (Paris: Bordas, 2005), pp. 167–87. 4 – See Viart and Vercier, La Littérature française au présent, pp. 188–204; Kathryn Robson, Writing Wounds: The Transcription of Trauma in Post-1968 Women's Life-Writing (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004); Ruth Cruickshank, Fin de millénaire French Fiction: the Aesthetics of Crisis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Laurie Vickroy, Trauma and Survival in Contemporary Fiction (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2002). 5 – See the many studies on Perec's W ou le souvenir d'enfance (1975) and on Duras's L'Amant (1984). See also F. R. Ankersmit, Sublime Historical Experience (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005); Ulrich Baer, Spectral Evidence: the Photography of Trauma (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2002); David Bathrick, Brad Prager, and Michael David Richardson, eds., Visualizing the Holocaust: Documents, Aesthetics, Memory (London: Camden House, 2008); Brett Ashley Kaplan, Landscapes of Holocaust Postmemory (London: Taylor and Francis, 2010). 6 – Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Photography (1927)’, in The Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture Reader, ed. Vanessa R. Schwartz and Jeannene M. Przyblyski (London: Routledge, 2004); Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, trans. J. A. Underwood (London: Penguin, 2008) p. 14; Roland Barthes, La Chambre claire: Note sur la photographie (Paris: Seuil, 1980); Susan Sontag, On Photography (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979). 7 – Sontag, On Photography, p. 70. 8 – Barthes, La Chambre claire, p. 1. 9 – Georges Didi-Huberman, Images malgré tout (Paris: Minuit, 2004). 10 – Marianne Hirsch, Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), 127. 11 – See, for example, François Bon, Décor ciment (Paris: Minuit, 1988); Marie Darrieussecq, Le Pays (Paris: POL, 2005); Jean Rouaud, L'Invention de l'auteur (Paris: Gallimard, 2004); and Marie NDiaye, La Naufragée (Paris: Flohic, 1999). 12 – White (Paris: POL, 2003), Elle va partir (Paris: Minuit, 1996). 13 – Darrieussecq, White, p. 113. 14 – Ibid., p. 60. 15 – Ibid., p. 121. 16 – Ibid., p. 142. 17 – Ibid., pp. 64–65. 18 – See ‘Interview by Amy Concannon and Kerry Sweeney (March 2004)’, Site Marie Darrieussecq, http://www.uri.edu/artsci/ml/durand /darrieussecq/en/eninterview2004.html. Accessed 10 September 2010. 19 – Cf. ‘Glissons sur ce mot journée quand le soleil ne se couche pas’, (Darrieussecq, White, p. 57). 20 – Ibid., p. 197. 21 – The skēnē was the structure behind the playing area that was used initially for the changing of costumes and masks and that was later integrated into the performance space as background. Skēnē originally meant, ‘tent in a military encampment or at a religious festival’; (Edith Hall, Greek Tragedy: Suffering Under the Sun (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 54). See also Graham Ley, A Short Introduction to the Ancient Greek Theatre (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). 22 – Rebecca W. Bushnell, A Companion to Tragedy (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2005), p. 203. 23 – For example, Euripides's Oedipus Ion and the stories of Paris and Perseus. Other echoes between White and Greek mythology and tragedy include preoccupation with proper burial rites (and exclusion from shared mourning), dreams, ghosts, madness, suicide, and exile. 24 – Darrieussecq, White, p. 158. 25 – See Sheldon Nodelman, The Rothko Chapel Paintings: Origins, Structure, Meaning (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997). 26 – Darrieussecq, White, pp. 142, 189–91. 27 – Ibid,. p. 158. 28 – Ibid., p. 158. 29 – Ibid., p. 158. 30 – Ibid., p. 67. 31 – These works are located as follows: Antigone (National Gallery of Art, Washington), The Omen of the Eagle (National Gallery of Art, Washington), The Eagle and the Hare (Collection of Christopher Rothko), The Syrian Bull (Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio), Sacrifice of Iphigenia (Collection of Christopher Rothko). See James E. B. Breslin, Rothko: A Biography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Stephen Polcari, ‘Mark Rothko: Heritage, Environment, and Tradition’, Smithsonian Studies in American Art 2.2 (1988): pp. 33–63. 32 – ‘Address to Pratt Institute, 1958’, in Mark Rothko, Writings on Art, ed. Miguel López-Remiro (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1954), pp. 125–28, 126. 33 – Compare Dore Ashton, About Rothko (New York: Da Capo, 1996, first published 1983), pp. 137–39. 34 – ‘Address to Pratt Institute, 1958’, 126. See Bonnie Clearwater: ‘[Abraham's] act was an absurd choice because it meant the suspension of reason in the face of faith. Abraham's act was unprecedented and completely original. However, Rothko noted, “As soon as an act is made by an individual it became universal”. He apparently equated Abraham's unique act with artists such as himself who take a leap of faith to create unprecedented gestures. Rothko was also intrigued by another ethical question raised by Kierkegaard in regard to Abraham's predicament: should he tell his wife Sarah and Isaac what God commanded of him? Abraham resolves not to explain his actions. According to Kierkegaard, he could not do so because his actions would not be understood. As Rothko told his audience at the Pratt Institute, “This is a problem of reticence,” which could be applied to art. He remarked that some artists “wanted to tell all like at a confessional.” He, however, “preferred to tell little’” (The Rothko Book (London: Tate Publishing, 2006), pp. 66–67). 35 – Darrieussecq, White, pp. 136–37. 36 – Compare Rothko's 1944 untitled watercolours. See Mark Rothko, 1903–1970 (London: Tate Gallery, 1996, first published for the exhibition at the Tate Gallery 17 June–1 Sept. 1987). 37 – Darrieussecq, White, p. 23. 38 – Ibid., p. 29. 39 – Ibid.,145. See also pages 25, 30, 94, 101–02, 105–06, 206–07. 40 – Ibid., p. 23. 41 – Ibid., p. 196. 42 – Note also the similarity between the title here and that of Sarraute's Vous les entendez?. In both cases the title condenses the ‘content’ of the text that follows into a single very short sentence composed simply of a subject and predicate (i.e. the most basic form of narrative structure); both novelists exploit the status of the personal pronoun as shifter in order to create ambiguity, the ‘vous’ of Sarraute's title addressing simultaneously (a) character(s) within the text and the reader, the ‘elle’ of Lenoir's novel referring both to the narrator's dying landlady and to another tenant in the house, a single mother ‘Mme Petersen’ who, with the old woman's death and the likely sale of the property, will also disappear from his life. 43 – See also Jean H. Duffy, Thresholds of Meaning: Passage, Ritual and Liminality in Contemporary French Narrative (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011), pp. 235–53, and ‘Territoriality Disputes, Pollution and Abjection in Nathalie Sarraute and Hélène Lenoir’, Romanic Review 98, no. 4 (2007): 387–412. 44 – The description of his aunt suggests also the possibility of intergenerational transmission of dysfunctional and/or psychologically controlling parenting patterns: ‘Ces voix, toujours. Intactes. Leurs voix. Où qu'il soit, où qu'il aille, elles le ratrappent, le saisissent, saisissent ses poumons. Leurs mots, leurs phrases, leur musique. C'est entré en lui. Un rien les fait lever, pousser leur vigoureuse mélodie, “comme si on était des chiens!”. La même, d'une sœur à l'autre, interchangeable, immortelle, sans visage et pourtant tellement charnelle, verdie d'amertume, charriant des monceaux de plaintes indignées, la voix Bachet, perpétuée d'une femme à l'autre depuis des générations peut-être et mieux préservée, moins menacée d'altération que leur sang et qui ne s'apaisait que lorsqu'elles sentaient couler sous la peau de leur enfant cette sève grumeleuse et noire qui gonflait les veines saillantes de leurs bras puissants, de leur cou épais où battait le même organe, identique pour les trois sœurs’ (Lenoir, Elle va partir, pp. 49–50). 45 – Ibid., p. 46. 46 – Ibid., pp. 80–81, 84. 47 – Ibid., p. 158. 48 – Ibid., p. 60 49 – Ibid., pp. 61, 88. 50 – Ibid., p. 79. 51 – ‘Elle quittera la ville, ou moi. Moi, bien sûr. N'importe où, nulle part. Et je ferai une croix, un grand cercle rouge sur la carte, zébrures, hachures tout autour jusqu’à trente kilomètres à la ronde. J'entourerai cette zone de pointillés gras, comme autant de barbelés, chevaux de frise, tanks, canons, rideau de fer que je ne pourrai franchir que masqué, lunettes noires, cravate, je me ferai pousser la barbe, rôdant dans ma voiture de fonction aux vitres teintées, apercevant Jérémie, douze ans, quatorze ans, un échalas à grosse tignasse couvert de bleus, filant en rollers entre les dealers et les flics en civil près de la gare, et elle… Elle…’ (ibid, pp. 166–67). 52 – Lenoir, Elle va partir, pp. 49–50. 53 – See ‘Bill Viola, June–September 1999’, http://www.sfmoma.org/media/features/viola/BV02.html, consulted December 10, 2010. 54 – Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House: Writings 1973–1994 (London: Thames & Hudson, 1995), 213–14. 55 – Viola, Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House, p. 215. 56 – See Holly Rogers, ‘Acoustic Architecture: Music and Space in the Video Installations of Bill Viola’, Twentieth-Century Music vol. 2, no. 2 (2005): pp. 197–220, 209. 57 – Viola,Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House, p. 216. 58 – Ibid., p. 213. 59 – See Rogers, ‘Acoustic Architecture: Music and Space in the Video Installations of Bill Viola’ for a more detailed description of The Stopping Mind, to which my commentary is indebted. 60 – Lenoir, Elle va partir, pp. 155–56. 61 – Ibid., p. 213–15. 62 – Ibid., p. 156. 63 – Ibid., p. 148. 64 – Ibid., p. 13. 65 – Ibid., p. 156. 66 – Ibid., p. 47. 67 – Viola, Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House, p. 216. 68 – In Elle va partir: the headlights of cars sweeping across the ceiling of Mattis's room (7), the switching on and off of the minuterie (71), a flickering lightbulb (165). 69 – In Elle va partir: the ‘faux silence écrasant’ (p. 52): the scratching of the mice/rats in the walls, the strong wind battering the branches outside his room, as well as a host of other incidental sounds that are perceived, remembered or imagined by Mattis (coughs (p. 51), sounds made by windscreen wipers (p. 51); the imagined ‘chuchotement’ of Lilo's ‘voix monotone’ as she says the rosary at the old woman's bedside (p. 127), the sound of a rake sweeping up fallen leaves (‘chchrrhhh-haa, chchrrhhh-haa, chchrrhhh-haa’, p. 127), the ‘zinzin’ of television conversation (p. 154), a crackling light-bulb (p. 165), the humming of a fridge (p. 165)). 70 – See, for example, the photographs Mattis has pinned to his wall, the images of a tree in different seasons in the old woman's hospital room, the brief sequences of TV shows glimpsed as he channel-hops, the jumble of images and commentaries from TV that seems to have replaced the old woman's engagement with the real world (pp. 155, 102, 161, 24–26). 71 – Ibid., pp. 51, 60, 69, 83. 72 – Note, too, the image of the old woman on her death-bed (pp. 100–1). 73 – There are hints that Edmée may have wanted to adopt the surviving Higgins child. Mattis wants to ensure that his elderly landlady's dying wishes are observed. 74 – The contrasts between the two works favoured by Darrieussecq's and Lenoir's protagonists are telling. Rothko's emphatically frontal mature paintings seem to draw the viewer into a virtual picture space of unfathomable depth and appear, at least in Edmée's case, to suspend ‘normal time’; Viola's installation surrounds the viewer and, by bombarding him/her with different visual and acoustic data, erupts into his real space and the real time of his sensory experience. It is true that, during the intervals between the volleys of images and noise, as ‘the ‘disarmed’ images subside into the pictorial’ (Viola, Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House, p. 214) and Viola's whispered words are foregrounded, the viewer of The Stopping Mind is granted a respite and the over-voice invites him/her to yield to the pull of a space that is ‘like a large black cloud of soft cotton, silent and weightless’ (ibid., p. 216). However, that respite is only temporary, will give way again to ‘the immanent potential for violent reactivity’ that is ever present in that space; moreover, in contrast with the vibrant depths of Rothko's paintings, the space that is conjured up in Viola's chant contains no pulse of life; it is ‘the oblivion of nothing’, a void in which all signs of life are gradually surrendered (‘Breathing through a small opening. Finally, I let that go. I let it go’, ibid., 216). 75 – Indeed, there is an explicit reference to this device in the account of Mattis's channel-hopping (Lenoir, Elle va partir, p. 162).