An Aesthetics of Injury : The Narrative Wound From Baudelaire to Tarantino

An Aesthetics of Injury exposes wounding as a foundational principle of modernism in literature and film. Theorizing the genre of the narrative wound—texts that aim not only to depict but also to inflict injury—Ian Fleishman reveals harm as an essential aesthetic strategy in ten exemplary authors and filmmakers: Charles Baudelaire, Franz Kafka, Georges Bataille, Jean Genet, Hélène Cixous, Ingeborg Bachmann, Elfriede Jelinek, Werner Schroeter, Michael Haneke, and Quentin Tarantino. Violence in the modernist mode, an ostensible intrusion of raw bodily harm into the artwork, aspires to transcend its own textuality, and yet, as An Aesthetics of Injury establishes, the wound paradoxically remains the essence of inscription. Fleishman thus shows how the wound, once the modernist emblem par excellence of an immediate aesthetic experience, comes to be implicated in a postmodern understanding of reality reduced to ceaseless mediation. In so doing, he demonstrates how what we think of as the most real object, the human body, becomes indistinguishable from its “nonreal” function as text. At stake in this tautological textual model is the heritage of narrative thought: both the narratological workings of these texts (how they tell stories) and the underlying epistemology exposed (whether these narrativists still believe in narrative at all). With fresh and revealing readings of canonical authors and filmmakers seldom treated alongside one another, An Aesthetics of Injury is important reading for scholars working on literary or cinematic modernism and the postmodern, philosophy, narratology, body culture studies, queer and gender studies, trauma studies, and cultural theory. An Aesthetics of Injury exposes wounding as a foundational principle of modernism in literature and film. Theorizing the genre of the narrative wound texts that aim not only to depict but also to inflict injuryIan Fleishman reveals harm as an essential aesthetic strategy in ten exemplary authors and filmmakers: Charles Baudelaire, Franz Kafka, Georges Bataille, Jean Genet, Hlne Cixous, Ingeborg Bachmann, Elfriede Jelinek, Werner Schroeter, Michael Haneke, and Quentin Tarantino. Violence in the modernist mode, an ostensible intrusion of raw bodily harm into the artwork, aspires to transcend its own textuality, and yet, as An Aesthetics of Injury establishes, the wound paradoxically remains the essence of inscription. Fleishman thus shows how the wound, once the modernist emblem par excellence of an immediate aesthetic experience, comes to be implicated in a postmodern understanding of reality reduced to ceaseless mediation. In so doing, he demonstrates how what we think of as the most real object, the human body, becomes indistinguishable from its nonreal function as text. At stake in this tautological textual model is the heritage of narrative thought: both the narratological workings of these texts (how they tell stories) and the underlying epistemology exposed (whether these narrativists still believe in narrative at all). With fresh and revealing readings of canonical authors and filmmakers seldom treated alongside one another, An Aesthetics of Injury is important reading for scholars working on literary or cinematic modernism and the postmodern, philosophy, narratology, body culture studies, queer and gender studies, trauma studies, and cultural theory. An Aesthetics of Injury exposes wounding as a foundational principle of modernism in literature and film. Theorizing the genre of the narrative wound--texts that aim not only to depict but also to inflict injury--Ian Fleishman reveals harm as an essential aesthetic strategy in ten exemplary authors and filmmakers: Charles Baudelaire, Franz Kafka, Georges Bataille, Jean Genet, Hélène Cixous, Ingeborg Bachmann, Elfriede Jelinek, Werner Schroeter, Michael Haneke, and Quentin Tarantino. Violence in the modernist mode, an ostensible intrusion of raw bodily harm into the artwork, aspires to transcend its own textuality, and yet, as An Aesthetics of Injury establishes, the wound paradoxically remains the essence of inscription. Fleishman thus shows how the wound, once the modernist emblem par exellence of an immediate aesthetic experience, comes to be implicated in a postmodern understanding of reality reduced to ceaseless mediation. In so doing, he demonstrates how what we think of as the most real object, the human body, becomes indistinguishable from its "nonreal" function as text. At stake is the heritage of narrative thought: both the narratological workings of these texts (how they tell stories) and the underlying epistemology (whether these narrativists still believe in narrative at all). With fresh and revealing readings of canonical authors and filmmakers seldom treated alongside one another, An Aesthetics of Injury is important for scholars working on literary or cinematic modernism and the postmodern, philosophy, narratology, body culture studies, queer and gender studies, trauma studies, and cultural theory--back cover Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 Introduction 16 Part I. An Aesthetic of Injury 30 Chapter 1. The Literary Wound on Trial: Poetic Decadence and Charles Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil (1857) 32 Chapter 2. “Sinnbild der Wunde”: The Ambivalent Aestheticism of Franz Kafka’s “A Country Doctor” (1917) 63 Chapter 3. Georges Bataille’s Bruise: The Mutilated Writing of Blue of Noon (1927/1935/1957) 87 Part II. The Poetics of Omission 114 Chapter 4. The Textual Orifice: Holes in Jean Genet’s Funeral Rites (1947) 116 Chapter 5. “Ce qui est coupé repousse”: Hélène Cixous’s Souffles (Breaths, 1975) and the Poetics of Omission 137 Part III. The Filmic Cut 150 Chapter 6. The Woman on the Wall: Ingeborg Bachmann’s Malina (1971)—Elfriede Jelinek and Werner Schroeter’s Malina (1991) 152 Chapter 7. The Filmic Cut: Elfriede Jelinek’s The Piano Teacher (1983)—Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher (2001) 179 Conclusion 202 Epilogue: The Final Cut: Quentin Tarantino, or Modernism Dismembered 208 Notes 228 Bibliography 296 Index 314 Introduction. An aesthetic of injury: Decadence and aestheticism -- An aesthetic of injury -- The literary wound on trial: poetic decadence and Baudelaire's Flowers of evil -- "Sinnbild der Wunde": the ambivalent aestheticism of Kafka's A country doctor -- Bataille's bruise: the mutilated writing of The blue of noon (1927/1935/1957) -- The poetics of omission -- The textual orifice: holes in Genet's Funeral rites -- "Ce qui est coupe repousse": Cixous's Breaths (1975) and the poetics of omission -- The woman on the wall: Bachmann's Malina (1971) -- Jelinek's and Schroeter's Malina -- The filmic cut: Jelinek's The piano teacher (1983) -- Haneke's The piano teacher -- Conclusion -- Epilogue: The final cut. Quentin Tarantino, or modernism dismembered. Examines wounding as a foundational principle of modernism in literature and film. Theorizing the genre of the narrative wound - texts that aim not only to depict but also to inflict injury - Ian Fleishman reveals harm as an essential aesthetic strategy in ten exemplary authors and filmmakers.