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Cryptomimesis: The Gothic and Jacques Derrida’s Ghost Writing PDF

175 Pages·2001·1.916 MB·English
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101130_90.fm Page i Friday, September 7, 2001 5:39 PM Cryptomimesis The Gothic and Jacques Derrida’s Ghost Writing In the last thirty years the living-dead, the revenant, the phantom, and the crypt have appeared with increasing frequency in Jacques Derrida’s writings and, for the most part, have gone unaddressed. In Cryptomimesis Jodey Castricano examines the intersection between Derrida’s writing and the Gothic to theorize what she calls Derrida’s “poetics of the crypt.” She develops the theory of cryptomimesis, a term devised to accommodate the convergence of philosophy, psychoanalysis, and certain “Gothic” stylistic, formal, and thematic patterns and motifs in Derrida’s work that give rise to questions regarding writing, read- ing, and interpretation. Using Edgar Allan Poe’s Madeline and Roderick Usher, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Stephen King’s Louis Creed, she illuminates Derrida’s concerns with inheritance, reve- nance, and haunting and reflects on deconstruction as ghost writing. Castricano demonstrates that Derrida’s Specters of Marx owes much to the Gothic insistence on the power of haunting and explores how deconstruction can be thought of as the ghost or deferred prom- ise of Marxism. She traces the movement of the “phantom” throughout Derrida’s other texts, arguing that such writing provides us with an uneasy model of subjectivity because it suggests that “to be” is to be haunted. Castricano claims that cryptomimesis is the model, method, and theory behind Derrida’s insistance that to learn to live we must learn how to talk “with” ghosts. jodey castricano is assistant professor in the Department of English at Wilfrid Laurier University. 101130_90.fm Page ii Friday, September 7, 2001 5:39 PM 101130_90.fm Page iii Friday, September 7, 2001 5:39 PM Cryptomimesis The Gothic and Jacques Derrida’s Ghost Writing jodey castricano McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston · London · Ithaca 101130_90.fm Page iv Friday, September 7, 2001 5:39 PM © McGill-Queen’s University Press 2001 isbn 0-7735-2264-6 (cloth) isbn 0-7735-2279-4 (paper) Legal deposit fourth quarter 2001 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (bpidp) for its activities. It also acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for its publishing program. National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data Castricano, Carla Jodey Cryptomimesis: the gothic and Jacques Derrida’s ghost writing Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-7735-2264-6 (bound) – isbn 0-7735-2279-4 (pbk.) 1. Derrida, Jacques. 2. Deconstruction. 3. Gothic revival (Literature). i. Title. b2430.s484c38 2001 194 c2001-901014-1 Typeset in Sabon 10.5/13 by Caractéra inc., Quebec City 101130_90.fm Page v Friday, September 7, 2001 5:39 PM For my mother, Norine Castricano Yesterday, you may remember, we made each other a promise. I now recall it, but you already sense all the trouble we will have in ordering all these presents: these past presents which consist of the present of a promise, whose opening toward the present to come is not that of an expectation or an anticipation but that of commitment. Jacques Derrida “The Art of Memoires” (47) 101130_90.fm Page vi Friday, September 7, 2001 5:39 PM 101130_91.fm Page vii Friday, September 7, 2001 5:40 PM Contents Acknowledgments ix Convocation 3 The First Partition: Without the Door 5 Cryptomimesis or, the Return of the Living-Dead 31 “‘Darling,’ it said”: Making a Contract with the Dead 54 The Question of the Tomb 83 An Art of Chicanery 109 Inscribing the Wholly Other: No Fixed Address 131 Notes 135 Bibliography 153 Index 163 101130_91.fm Page viii Friday, September 7, 2001 5:40 PM 101130_92.fm Page ix Friday, September 7, 2001 5:40 PM Acknowledgments While I might trace this work back in spirit to a younger self who was fascinated with ghosts, secrets, underground chambers, trap doors, secret passages, and encrypted messages, I can also partially attribute my current theoretical interest in phantoms and haunted spaces to the fact that, when I was nearly ten, my father built a family room in our basement that included a bookcase that, when a concealed latch was released, swung open like a door. One could then walk through the opening which led through a passageway behind a wall. By following this passageway, one could emerge like a phantom through another concealed door on the opposite side of the room. These days, I’m told this house is haunted. This book traces the trajectories of such hauntings. Over the past few years, I have been fortunate to have had the time, the encour- agement, and the financial support to explore what was originally a childhood fascination with all things Gothic and which became a critical analysis of the social and cultural dimensions of haunting where these can be seen to resonate in literary and cultural studies, in philosophy, and psychoanalysis. Research and preparation of this work was originally assisted by a Graduate Fellowship from The University of British Columbia which went towards early specula- tions, and by a Doctoral Fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada which provided the opportunity to make manifest those intimations. More recently, 101130_92.fm Page x Friday, September 7, 2001 5:40 PM x Acknowledgments Wilfrid Laurier University provided further support in the form of a Postdoctoral Fellowship which facilitated the honing of the work, and a Book Preparation Grant which enabled me to bring this project to completion. Thanks, too, are due to Gothic Studies for their permission to reprint from “Cryptomimesis: The Gothic and Jacques Derrida’s Ghost Writing,” an article derived from the manuscript which appeared in the April 2000 special issue of the journal, edited by Steven Bruhm, arising out of the wonderful Fourth Biannual con- ference of the International Gothic Association entitled “Gothic Spirits – Gothic Flesh,” which was held in Halifax in August 1999. Thanks are also due to the institutions that granted permission to use their materials: Quotations from Jonas and Ezekial, words and music by Amy Ray, copyright © 1992 emi virgin songs, inc. and godhap music (All Rights Controlled and Administered by emi virgin songs, inc. All Right Reserved, International Copyright Secured, Used by Permission). Quotations from W.B. Yeats, “The Second Coming” reprinted with the permission of Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., from The Poems of W.B. Yeats: A New Edition, edited by Richard J. Finneran. Copy- right © 1924 by The Macmillan Publishing Company, copyright renewed © 1952 by Bertha Georgie Yeats. I also want to thank Stephen King for his permission to reprint from Pet Sematary and Marsha DeFilippo, Stephen King’s Assistant, for her good humour, patience, and assistance. I am grateful to those who read this manuscript in its various incarnations, and who made invaluable comments: J.C. Smith, for his boundless enthusiasm and generous conversation; Peter Quarter- main for sharing his love of poetics and Michael Zeitlin for his ongo- ing support. Thanks as well to Eric Savoy and Anne Williams for their thorough and thoughtful reading of the manuscript and to Joan McGilvray of McGill-Queen’s University Press for keeping things on track. Thanks are due especially to Lorraine Weir who encouraged the work from its inception, served as a guide, and who asked pro- vocative questions in person and in the margins. I also want to thank Margaret Eady for her generous response to a question that, years ago, opened a door and Nelia Tierney who was not afraid of talking with ghosts. Finally, thanks to Jacqueline Larson, for her keen edi- torial eye, for sharing her insights, and for the love and encourage- ment she offered throughout all the stages of this work.

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