"We need to rediscover the living body" : Gabriel Josipovici's metamodern project in Goldberg: Variations

Vol.46,No.2(2020)

Magdalena Sawa

https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2020-2-15

Stable URL (handle):
http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/143218

PDF
Abstract
In the epilogue to the 2002 edition of The Politics of Postmodernism, Linda Hutcheon proclaims the end of postmodernism. Emerging in its place is a new "structure of feeling," conceived by Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker as metamodernism. Characterised by an oscillating in-betweenness or a dialectical movement between conflicting positions which are neither fully affirmed nor completely negated, the cultural paradigm of metamodernism is situated between genuine commitment and ironic detachment, between hope and melancholy, empathy and apathy, unity and plurality, totality and fragmentation, purity and ambiguity. The aim of the present article is to show that Gabriel Josipovici's novel Goldberg: Variations (2002) endorses this incipient metamodern sensibility by advocating the embodied nature of the creative process. Elaborate techniques of intermediality, the ontological instability of narrative levels and extensive metafiction are employed by the author to propound a more human perspective on literature and art in general.

Keywords:
metamodernism; affect; body; Gabriel Josipovici; Goldberg: Variations

Pages:
261–279
References

van den Akker, Robin, et al. (eds.) (2017) Metamodernism: Historicity, Affect, and Depth After Postmodernism. London and New York: Rowman and Littlefield.

van den Akker, Robin and Timotheus Vermeulen (2017) Periodising the 2000's, or, the Emergence of Metamodernism. In: van den Akker, Robin et al. (eds.) Metamodernism: Historicity, Affect, and Depth After Postmodernism. London and New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1–23.

Altman, Janet Gurkin (1982) Epistolarity: Approaches to Form. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.

Barthes, Roland (1989) Sade, Fourier, Loyola. Translated by Richard Miller. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Barton, David and Nigel Hall (eds.) (1999) Letter Writing as a Social Practice. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Best, Victoria (2015) The mind of the modern: An interview with Gabriel Josipovici. NC Magazine 6 (12), n. pag. Accessed on August 28, 2017. http://numerocinqmagazine.com

Booth, Wayne C. (1983) The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Boswell, Marshall (2003) Understanding David Foster Wallace. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.

Brinkema, Eugenie (2014) The Forms of the Affects. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Curran, Ronald (1983) Review of Writing and the Body by Gabriel Josipovici. World Literature Today 57 (4), 693.

Decker, William Merrill (1998) Epistolary Practice: Writing in America Before Telecommunication. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press.

Dreifuss-Kattan, Esther (2016) Art and Mourning. London and New York: Routledge.

Fludernik, Monika (2000) Echoes and Mirrorings: Gabriel Josipovici's Creative Oeuvre. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.

Gibbons, Alison (2017a) Metamodern Affect. In: van den Akker, Robin et al. (eds.) Metamodernism: Historicity, Affect, and Depth After Postmodernism. London and New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 83–86.

Gibbons, Alison (2017b) Contemporary Autofiction and Metamodern Affect. In: van den Akker, Robin et al. (eds.) Metamodernism: Historicity, Affect, and Depth After Postmodernism. London and New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 117–130.

Harker, John W. (1988) Literary Communication: The Author, the Reader, the Text. The Journal of Aesthetic Education 22 (2), 5–14. | DOI 10.2307/3333119

Hermans, Hubert J. M. and Thorsten Gieser (2012) History, main tenets and core concepts of dialogical self theory. In: Hermans, Hubert J. M. and Thorsten Gieser (eds.) Handbook of Dialogical Self Theory. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1–22.

Hutcheon, Linda (2002) The Politics of Postmodernism. London and New York: Routledge.

Iser, Wolfgang (1978) The Act of Reading. London and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Jameson, Fredric (1991) Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. London and New York: Verso.

Josipovici, Gabriel (1982) Writing and the Body. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Josipovici, Gabriel (1987) Lessons of Modernism and Other Essays. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

Josipovici, Gabriel (1992) Text and Voice. Manchester: Carcanet.

Josipovici, Gabriel (1996) Touch. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Josipovici, Gabriel (1999) On Trust: Art and the Temptation of Suspicion. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Josipovici, Gabriel (2002) Goldberg: Variations. Manchester: Carcanet.

Josipovici, Gabriel (2010) What Ever Happened to Modernism? New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Konstantinou, Lee (2017) Four faces of postirony. In: van den Akker, Robin et al. (eds.) Metamodernism: Historicity, Affect, and Depth After Postmodernism. London and New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 87–102.

MacArthur, Elizabeth Jane (1990) Extravagant Narratives: Closure and Dynamics in the Epistolary Form. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Maiese, Michelle (2011) Embodiment, Emotion, and Cognition. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Massumi, Brian (2002) Parables for the Virtual. Durham and London: Durham University Press.

Pernot, Dominique (2014) Metaleptic variations. LISA 12 (2), n. pag. Accessed on May 17, 2018. http://journals.openedition.org/lisa/5843

Ryan, Marie-Laure (2011) Meaning, intent, and the implied author. Style 45 (1), 29–47.

Saltz, Jerry (2010) Sincerity and irony hug it out. New York Magazine 24 May.

Scrivner, Lee (2014) Becoming Insomniac: How Sleeplessness Alarmed Modernity. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Sell, Roger D. (2000) Literature as Communication. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Vermeluen, Timotheus and Robin van den Akker (2010) Notes on metamodernism. Journal of Aesthetics and Culture 2, 1–14.

Wolf, Werner (2003) The role of music in Gabriel Josipovici's Goldberg: Variations. Style 37 (3), 294–317.

Ziolkowski, Theodore (2010) Literary variations on Bach's Goldberg. The Modern Language Review 105 (3), 625–640.

Metrics

0

Crossref logo

1

22

Views

0

PDF views

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

PDF