Between the Psyche and the Polis: Refiguring History in Literature and Theory

256 Pages·2017·33.183 MB·English

by  Anne Whitehead (editor), Michael Rossington (editor)

BETWEEN THE PSYCHE AND THE POLIS

Between the Psyche and the Polis
Refiguring history in literature and theory
Edited by
MICHAEL ROSSINGTON and ANNE WHITEHEAD
University of Newcastle upon Tyne
First published 2000 by Ashgate Publishing
Reissued 2018 by Routledge
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Copyright © 2000 Michael Rossington and Anne Whitehead
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Publisher's Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but
points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.
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The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes
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A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 00108822
ISBN 13: 978-1-138-72780-9 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-1-315-19072-3 (ebk)
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Notes on Contributors ix
Preface xii
Introduction: Between the Psyche and the Polis 1
Michael Rossington and Anne Whitehead
PART I: HISTORY IN THEORY: AFTER MARX AND FREUD
1 Old Idolatry: Rethinking 'Ideology' and 'Materialism' 21
Simon Jarvis
2 History and the Sacred in de Man and Benjamin 38
Nigel Mapp
3 Freud and the Force of History: The Project for a Scientific
Psychology 59
Clare Connors
PART II: TRAUMATIC HISTORIES
4 Parting Words: Trauma, Silence and Survival 77
Cathy Caruth
5 Reading Trauma: Charlotte Delbo and the Struggle to Represent 97
Victoria Stewart
6 Trauma, Testimony and the Survivor: Calling Forth the Ghosts of
Bosnia-Herzegovina 108
Stephenie Young
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PART III: MEMORY AND CULTURAL HISTORY
7 In the Penal Colony 123
John Frow
8 Séance Fiction: Confronting the Ghost(s) of the Mexican
Revolution in Madero, el otro by Ignacio Solares 143
Robin Fiddian
9 The Angel of Memory: 'Working Through' the History of the
New South Africa 157
Christopher J. Colvin
PART IV: NACHTRAGLICHKEIT: HISTORY AND
AFTERWARDSNESS
10 History and Trauma: Reviewing Forrest Gump 111
Susannah Radstone
11 Traumatic Memories of Remembering and Forgetting 191
Elizabeth Cowie
12 Aftermath: Pastiche, the Postmodern and the End of History in
Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus 205
Rachel Carroll
Bibliography 219
Index 232
Acknowledgements
Most of the essays in this volume were first presented as papers at a two-day
international conference, 'Refiguring History: Between the Psyche and the
Polis', organized by the editors and hosted by the Department of English
Literary and Linguistic Studies at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in
May 1999. We acknowledge financial support from our Department, Faculty
of Arts, and University Research Committee Small Grants Research Fund
without which the conference could not have taken place. Several colleagues
and many postgraduates in our Department assisted in its organization
including Marie Addyman, Linda Anderson, Celeste-Marie Bernier, Janice
Burrow, Jerome de Groot, Suzanne Fairless, Christopher Goulding, Claire
Lamont, Marita le Vaul-Grimwood, Andrew Moor, Tracy Olverson, Jennifer
Richards, and Terry R. Wright. Special thanks to Rowena Bryson, the
Department Secretary, Rachel Woolley, the Conference Secretary, and to all
the delegates who gave papers. The idea for the conference developed out of
the 'Rethinking History' reading group, established in the Department in 1997.
It gives us pleasure to acknowledge here the energy and commitment of the
group's members: Linda Anderson, Victoria Bazin, Rachel Carroll, Jerome
de Groot, Neil Hairsine, Nick Montgomery, Andrew Moor, Jennifer Richards,
and Rieko Suzuki.
The essay by John Frow in this volume was first published in Journal of
Australian Studies: The Beautiful and the Damned, no. 64 (2000) and Cathy
Caruth's essay here is also published in Cultural Values, vol. 5, no. 1 (2001).
Grateful acknowledgement is made by Cathy Caruth and Clare Connors to
Sigmund Freud Copyrights, The Institute of Psychoanalysis, The Hogarth
Press and Basic Books for permission to quote from The Standard Edition of
the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, translated and edited
by James Strachey (translation modified as stated in the case of Cathy Caruth's
essay), and by Victoria Stewart to Yale University Press for permission to
quote from Charlotte Delbo, Auschwitz and After. The cover image, 'Granada,
Spain, 1933', is courtesy of Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos. Every
effort has been made to trace all copyright holders of quoted material, but if
any have inadvertently been overlooked, they should contact the publishers
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vi i i Between the Psyche and the Polis
in the first instance to make any necessary arrangements. The editors thank
Professor Linda Anderson, Head of the Department of English Literary and
Linguistic Studies at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, for her support
and encouragement of this project throughout. Cathy Caruth, John Frow, Simon
Jarvis, Nigel Mapp and Lyndsey Stonebridge offered much appreciated critical
engagement at various stages in the volume's inception. Special thanks to
each and all of our contributors for adapting so readily to a tight production
schedule, to Colette Anderson, Rowena Bryson, Pat FitzGerald, Tom Norton
and the Department of English Literary and Linguistic Studies at the University
of Newcastle upon Tyne for various kinds of assistance in producing the book,
and to Erika Gaffney and Ruth Peters at Ashgate for their help and advice.
Michael Rossington and Anne Whitehead
Department of English Literary and Linguistic Studies
University of Newcastle upon Tyne
May 2000
Notes on Contributors
Dr Rachel Carroll is Lecturer in English at the University of Teesside. Her
research interests include modernity, the postmodern, feminist literary theory
and twentieth-century women writers. She has published articles in Critique:
Studies in Contemporary Fiction, The Yearbook of English Studies, and Textual
Practice.
Professor Cathy Caruth is Director of the Comparative Literature Programme
at Emory University. She is the author of Empirical Truths and Critical
Fictions: Locke, Wordsworth, Kant, Freud (Johns Hopkins University Press,
1991), and Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History (Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1996). She has also edited Trauma: Explorations
in Memory (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995) and co-edited, with
Deborah Esch, Critical Encounters: Reference and Responsibility in
Deconstructive Writing (Rutgers University Press, 1995).
Christopher J. Colvin is a doctoral student in cultural anthropology at the
University of Virginia. His research is on the use and transformation of
psychologically-inspired models of conflict resolution and reconciliation in
post-apartheid South Africa.
Clare Connors, a lecturer in English at The Queen's College, University of
Oxford, is currently completing a PhD on theorizations of 'force' in the works
of Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, Arendt, Foucault and Derrida.
Dr Elizabeth Cowie is Reader in Film Studies at the University of Kent at
Canterbury. She is the author of Representing the Woman: cinema and
psychoanalysis (Macmillan, 1997), and co-edited, with Parveen Adams, The
Woman in Question (Verso, 1990). Most recently she has published essays in
Stephen Neale and Murray Smith (eds), Contemporary Hollywood Cinema
(Routledge, 1998) and Jane Gaines and Michael Renov (eds), Collecting Visible
Evidence (University of Minnesota Press, 1999).
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