Abstract
Winchock utilizes Paul Ricoeur’s philosophy of memory and narrative to study the human need to locate identity at the intersection of spatio-temporal narratives. Winchock argues that the highly policed border between apocalypse and Utopia is a fantasy, where Borderland testimonies ‘rooted’ in fragmentation and mobility become tactics of political resistance against disappearance and amnesia. Winchock argues that Paul Auster’s post-apocalyptic novel reveals the importance of testifying to the ‘last things’ cleared away by apocalypse as though it were ‘the first time,’ thus allowing oneself to see the familiar from new and shifting perspectives. It is through these tactical testimonies that the forgotten, erased, and silenced can be recalled and reconfigured in order to produce an ephemeral sense of wholeness.
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Notes
- 1.
Fredric Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (New York: Verso, 2005), 199.
- 2.
Some may critique my seemingly casual usage of generic terminology. Technically, there are some notable differences among Utopian, anti-Utopian, inverted Utopian, dystopian, and post-apocalyptic novels (for a complete description of these types, please see Fredric Jameson’s Archaeologies of the Future—in particular, the chapter entitled “Journey Into Fear”). However, my conflation of terms is intentional in that I believe the separation of these genres has somewhat obscured their shared roots in the binary tension between Utopia and apocalypse.
- 3.
Maya Merlob, “Textuality, Self, and World: The Postmodern Narrative in Paul Auster’s In the Country of Last Things.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 49, no. 1 (2007): 27.
- 4.
Ibid.
- 5.
Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1999), 109.
- 6.
Ibid., 217.
- 7.
Paul Auster, In the Country of Last Things (New York: Penguin, 1987), 85.
- 8.
Ibid., 86.
- 9.
Ibid.
- 10.
Ibid.
- 11.
Auster, Country, 86.
- 12.
Ibid.
- 13.
Ibid., 90.
- 14.
Auster, Country, 90.
- 15.
Ibid., 2.
- 16.
Ibid., 87.
- 17.
Auster, Country, 89.
- 18.
Ibid., 115.
- 19.
Gloria Anzaldúa, Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015), 123.
- 20.
Ibid., 131.
- 21.
This fear of forgetting is manifested in the Borderland between the Utopian fantasy of permanence and its repressed apocalyptic fantasy of annihilation.
- 22.
Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 21.
- 23.
Ibid., 27.
- 24.
Ibid., 417.
- 25.
Laurence J. Kirmayer, “Landscapes of Memory: Trauma , Narrative, and Dissociation” in Tense Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma and Memory, eds. Paul Antze and Michael Lambek (New York: Routledge, 1996), 174.
- 26.
Ric oeur , Memory, 440–41.
- 27.
Ibid., 425.
- 28.
Ibid., 41–42.
- 29.
Ibid., 148.
- 30.
Ibid., 149.
- 31.
Ricoeur, Memory, 149.
- 32.
Anzaldúa , in Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro, personifies this movement out of paralysis through the Aztec god who dismembers his sister, Coyolxauhqui, in order to protect his mother, Coatlicue.
- 33.
Anzaldúa , Luz, 19.
- 34.
Raymond Williams’ explanation of residual, dominant, and emergent ideologies in the hegemonic process can be found in chapter 8 of his book, Marxism and Literature.
- 35.
Hayden White , The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1987): 21.
- 36.
Samuel Hynes, “Personal Narratives and Commemoration,” in War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century, eds. Jay Winter and Emmanuel Sivan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999): 206.
- 37.
Ric oeur , Memory, 180.
- 38.
Ric oeur, Memory, 147.
- 39.
Matti Hyvärinen , “Acting, Thinking, and Telling: Anna Blume’s Dilemma in Paul Auster’s In the Country of Last Things,” Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 4 no. 2 (2006): 62.
- 40.
Ibid., 74.
- 41.
Auster, Country, 142–43.
- 42.
Auster, Country, 143.
- 43.
Ibid.
- 44.
Anzaldúa , Borderlands, 89.
- 45.
Anzaldúa , Luz, 5.
- 46.
Ibid., 6.
- 47.
Ibid., 10.
- 48.
Ibid., 2.
- 49.
Auster, Country, 28.
- 50.
Auster, Country, 146.
- 51.
Ibid., 148
- 52.
James Peacock, Understanding Paul Auster (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2010): 91.
- 53.
Auster, Country, 150.
- 54.
Ibid., 36
- 55.
Ibid., 1.
- 56.
Ibid., 7.
- 57.
Ibid., 183.
- 58.
Ilana Shiloh, Paul Auster and Postmodern Quest: On the Road to Nowhere (New York: Peter Lang, 2002): 154.
- 59.
Katherine Washburn, “A Book at the End of the World: Paul Auster’s In the Country of Last Things,” Review of Contemporary Fiction 14 no.1 (1994): 62.
Bibliography
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———. 2015. Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro. Durham: Duke University Press.
Auster, Paul. 1987. In the Country of Last Things. New York: Penguin.
Hynes, Samuel. 1999. Personal Narratives and Commemoration. In War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century, ed. Jay Winter and Emmanuel Sivan, 205–220. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hyvärinen, Matti. 2006. Acting, Thinking, and Telling: Anna Blume’s Dilemma in Paul Auster’s In the Country of Last Things. Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 4 (2): 59–78.
Jameson, Fredric. 2005. Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. New York: Verso.
Kirmayer, Laurence J. 1996. Landscapes of Memory: Trauma, Narrative, and Dissociation. In Tense Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma and Memory, ed. Paul Antze and Michael Lambek, 173–198. New York: Routledge.
Merlob, Maya. 2007. Textuality, Self, and World: The Postmodern Narrative in Paul Auster’s In the Country of Last Things. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 49 (1): 25–45.
Peacock, James. 2010. Understanding Paul Auster. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.
Ricoeur, Paul. 2004. Memory, History, Forgetting. Trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Shiloh, Ilana. 2002. Paul Auster and Postmodern Quest: On the Road to Nowhere. New York: Peter Lang.
Washburn, Katherine. 1994. A Book at the End of the World: Paul Auster’s In the Country of Last Things. Review of Contemporary Fiction 14 (1): 62–65.
White, Hayden. 1987. The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Williams, Raymond. 1977. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Winchock, D. (2017). Crossing the Utopian/Apocalyptic Border: The Anxiety of Forgetting in Paul Auster’s In the Country of Last Things . In: Elbert Decker, J., Winchock, D. (eds) Borderlands and Liminal Subjects. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67813-9_13
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