Archive Feelings: A Theory of Greek Tragedy PDF
Preview Archive Feelings: A Theory of Greek Tragedy
WALKER PERCY, ARCHIVE FEELINGS FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY The Search for Influence • JESSICA HOOTEN WILSON THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS COLUMBUS CLASSICAL MEMORIES/MODERN IDENTITIES Paul Allen Miller and Richard H. Armstrong, Series Editors WALKER PERCY, ARCHIVE FEELINGS FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY A Theory of Greek Tragedy The Search for Influence • • MARIO TELÒ JESSICA HOOTEN WILSON THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS COLUMBUS COLUMBUS Copyright © 2020 by The Ohio State University. This edition licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Telò, Mario, 1977– author. Title: Archive feelings : a theory of Greek tragedy / Mario Telò. Other titles: Classical memories/modern identities. Description: Columbus : The Ohio State University Press, [2020] | Series: Classical memories/modern identities | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “With readings of thirteen plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, including the Oedipus cycle, the Oresteia, Medea, and Bacchae; an eclectic synthesis of Freud, Lacan, Derrida, Žižek, Deleuze, and other critical theorists; and an engagement with art, architecture, and film, this book locates Greek tragedy’s aesthetic allure beyond catharsis”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2020024072 | ISBN 9780814214558 (cloth) | ISBN 081421455X (cloth) | ISBN 9780814280812 (ebook) | ISBN 0814280811 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Greek drama (Tragedy)—History and criticism—Theory, etc. | Critical theory. | Psychoanalysis and philosophy. Classification: LCC PA3131 .T42 2020 | DDC 882.009—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020024072 Cover design by Christian Fuenfhausen Text design by Juliet Williams Type set in Adobe Minion Pro CONTENTS • Acknowledgments vii INTRODUCTION Re-impressions of Greek Tragedy: Toward Anti-cathartic Aesthetics 1 ARCHIVAL TIME ONE Archiving Oedipus 43 TWO The Archive and the Loop 89 ARCHIVAL SPACE THREE Anorganic Archives 135 FOUR Archival Crypts 183 ARCHIVAL ENDINGS FIVE Tragic Jolts, Jouissance, Impossibility 237 EPILOGUE Reading Greek Tragedy, Reading Archivally 275 Bibliography 283 Index 315 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS • I FIRST want to thank the two extraordinary anonymous referees of OSU Press for their constructive and sympathetic reading of the manuscript. It was a pleasure to engage with their suggestions in the process of revision. The series “Classical Memories/Modern Identities” offers a model for intel- lectual openness and fearlessness in the field of classics, and the enthusiasm of the editors, Paul Allen Miller and Richard Armstrong, has uplifted me. At OSU Press I found in Ana Jimenez-Moreno the most supportive and forward- thinking editor. They all have my most profound gratitude. Kathleen McCarthy carefully read the whole manuscript at a very busy time, formulating with concision and insight the lineaments of the project. Nelly Oliensis also generously read the manuscript during a semester of sab- batical and provided many suggestions for improving content and form. Brooke Holmes kindly discussed with me some of the book’s theoretical foun- dations. Leslie Kurke prodded me to strive for greater clarity. Frequent discus- sions with Mark Griffith energized me. A conversation with Jim Porter was crucial in getting me started. I also owe to him a meeting with Jacques Ran- cière, who has been a major influence. Portions of this book have been presented as talks at UC Berkeley, the Uni- versity of Edinburgh, UCLA (at the annual convention of the American Com- parative Literature Association), Cambridge University, Université Lumière Lyon 2, the College of the Holy Cross, UC Santa Barbara, and the Univer- • vii • viii Acknowledgments sity of Georgia. My readings of Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus and Philoctetes began to take shape in chapters I wrote for two edited volumes: Imagining Reperformance in Ancient Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and The Materialities of Greek Tragedy (Bloomsbury, 2018). My discussion of Francis Bacon in chapter 4 is further developed in an article that appeared earlier this year in Literary Imagination (22.2). Throughout this project, Berkeley has loomed large—and here I refer not just to inspirational faculty colleagues but also to the daring students who helped me think through ideas: from the classics graduate students in my fall 2015 seminar on tragedy and affect to the undergraduates in my compara- tive literature course on memory, destruction, and the archive in spring 2019. Weekly conversations with my graduate advisees David Youd (in classics and critical theory) and Christopher Scott (in comparative literature and critical theory) have been continually stimulating. I benefited greatly from feedback I received from the faculty writing group of the Berkeley Townsend Center, in particular Églantine Colon, Marianne Constable, Whitney Davis, and Suzanne Guerlac. Deepest thanks also go to the humanities division and the classics department at UC Berkeley for supporting a sabbatical leave in the academic year 2017–2018, during which most of the book was written. I would also like to acknowledge a local wanderer whose archival physicality opened up a line of inquiry around Oedipus that provided the basis of this book. Thank you to Mark di Suvero for granting me the honor of displaying the sculpture Che farò senza Eurydice? on the book’s cover and to Ivana Mestrovic and Ana Jimenez-Moreno for their assistance in arranging the permissions. I am very grateful to John Jacobs, a meticulous, astute, and sympathetic copy- editor. Many thanks also to the team at the press, which has made the pro- duction of the book such a pleasant experience: Laurie Avery, Tara Cyphers, Kristina Wheeler, and Juliet Williams. I dedicate this book to Alex Press, without whom it would never have been completed or even begun. Alex was my first and most valued interlocu- tor. Many of the ideas, both at the macro and micro level, come from him, and he has never stopped sustaining and encouraging me, even in the most difficult moments. A project as experimental and risk-taking as this could not have come to fruition without the support of a guide as philosophically acute, imaginative, exacting, and loving as Alex. His political consciousness and daily practice of an authentic ethics of alterity have made me a better intel- lectual and set me on a journey to become a better person. Strangely enough, his archive fever, manifested in a mania for genealogy, has also connected us, without ever really connecting us, with Freud himself—on the hundredth anniversary of Beyond the Pleasure Principle, no less. Acknowledgments ix UNLESS OTHERWISE indicated, the texts of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Eurip- ides are cited according to the most recent OCT editions—by Page (1972), Lloyd-Jones and Wilson (1990), and Diggle (1981–1994), respectively—and the translations are mine. This title is freely available in an open access edition with generous support from the Library of the University of California, Berkeley.
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