Many of us were struck by the "bad theory" of Proust's chapter from Sodom and Gomorrah in which he elaborates a theory of inversion. Today, as I was writing about a quotation from a Harlequin that reads, "which really explained the whole 'virgin' issue," I was struck by the inverted commas. To these ends, I remembered that Linda Hutcheon at one point commented on this phenomenon, at least indirectly, she writes in The Politics of Postmodernism:
In general terms [postmodernism] takes the form of self-conscious, self-contradictory, self-undermining statement. It is rather like saying something whilst at the same time putting inverted commas around what is being said. The effect is to highlight, or ‘highlight,’ and to subvert, or ‘subvert,’ and the mode is therefore a ‘knowing’ and an ironic – or even ‘ironic’ – one.
This seems interesting to me in light of Proust when confronted by postmodernism (at least in the sense of Hutcheon). We must acknowledge the problems of postmodernism, but, there is something to be said about incorporating postmodernist (literary) theory into Proust. What is the 'inverted' comma but yet another mode of displacing 'knowledge' or 'truth claims' insofar as we almost immediately begin to wonder why the comma is there in the first place...? Are we to invert the inverted comma? (I think this was a question/matter we discussed in class, so I leave this here for whomever has a comment.)
I am also realising that most of my posts are quotations from theory that remind me or Proust, rather than, Proust as theory -- involuntary inversion?
J.A.
No comments:
Post a Comment