The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner 2

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The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a
Justified Sinner 2
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Outline

• Justified Sinner and the uncanny
• The said and the unsaid in literary texts
• Gothic terror beyond the Romantic era
• The interest of James Hogg today

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JS and the uncanny

• JH arguably a writer who is interesting because
  rather than in spite of his con-tradictions
• . . . i.e. both non-realist and
  middle-of-the-road
• Beyond this, perhaps the haunting power of this
  curiously contradictory work of fic-tion known as
  JS comes from its present-ation of the uncanny

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JS and the uncanny

• Uncanny a word that comes from the traditions
  of Scottish folklore see Gil-Martin described
  as uncanny in JS, p. 186 used to refer to
  per-sons that appear mischievous or untrustworthy
  and to objects that appear supernatural or
  strange
• . . . subsequently popularized in psychoanalysis
  and related forms of textual analysis through
  Sigmund Freuds essay The Uncanny (1919)

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JS and the uncanny

• Freuds The Uncanny a detailed ac-count of
  phenomena typically referred to as uncanny
• Thus, uncanniness is often manifested in terms
  of a) the appearance of the double b) the
  activity of making the inanimate ani-mate and c)
  the activity more generally of making strange

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JS and the uncanny

• The above key components of the uncan-ny are
  already figured within the text of JS. For
  example . . .
• The figure of the double doubling of the
  Colwans and the Wringhims Gil-Martins ability
  to double as virtually anyone he likes JS a
  curiously doubled text the Editors narrative
  the Confessions proper

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JS and the uncanny

• Making the inanimate animate George Colwan
  brought back from the dead through being doubled
  by Gil-Martin
• Making strange all the inexplicable ev-ents
  recounted by Robert Wringhim, reported by him
  while he is under the devils influence or, I
  was a being in-comprehensible to myself, as
  Robert him-self says at one point (p. 182)

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JS and the uncanny

• In sum, JS comes to us as a powerful evo-cation
  of the uncanny, done almost a hun-dred years
  prior to the Freudian formaliz-ation of the
  uncanny
• The above a way of describing the pec-uliarly
  haunting quality of JS as a Scottish novel of the
  earlier 19C

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The said and the unsaid in literary texts

• The haunting uncanniness of JS is realized in
  terms of both the said and the unsaid about JHs
  text
• The said and the unsaid represent a further
  in-stance of the uncanny doubling of literary
  texts silence acts as the radical otherness
  that shapes the text
• Macherey In order to say anything, there are
  other things which must not be said

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The said and the unsaid in literary texts

• See, for example, CR Thady Quirk (honest,
  loyal) never has a bad word for the Rackrent
  dynasty it is the silences that are doing the
  speaking in his damning Rackrent chronicle
• MP colonialism revealed as the price to be paid
  for the country house way of life through the
  ab-sence of discussion the dead silence of
  the slavery issue in JAs novel

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The said and the unsaid in literary texts

• W Only passing reference to the affair of
  Culloden during Edward and Roses wed-ding
  nuptials discloses an unspeakable English lack
  of moderation at the end of the Jacobite uprising
• F Victor Frankensteins speechlessness of horror
  at what he has done in his labor-atory becomes
  the pretext for the return of Elizabeth into
  his affective life

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The said and the unsaid in literary texts

• And JS . . .?
• JH makes Robert Wringhim speak the diabolical
  presumptuousness of the Calvinist idea of the
  elect in the course of his private memoirs and
  confessions as a justified sinner
• JS I beheld a young man of a mysterious
  ap-pearance coming towards me . . . this was
  the beginning of a series of adventures which has
  puzzled myself, and will puzzle the world when I
  am no more in it (p. 116)

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The said and the unsaid in literary texts

• Roberts confessions (the said) are a con-fession
  about what practically goes without saying (the
  unsaid) in JHs novel, namely that Gil-Martin is
  the devil
• The terrifying nature of the devil (Satan as
  shapeshifter) in JS is suggested in terms of the
  idea that his domain is that of the unsaid he is
  always there in what goes without saying

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The said and the unsaid in literary texts

• The above represents JHs way of making the force
  of evil as present as possible in his fiction
• JH thus turns the paradox of what is absent is
  present because it is absent
• Turning the world upside down like this, along
  the axis of the said and the unsaid, is
  arguably the strongest source of terror for a
  rationalist consciousness in JHs novel

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The said and the unsaid in literary texts

• No wonder this is an uncouth, unpleas-ant
  work extraordinary trash without one
  single attribute of a good and useful book!

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Gothic terror beyond the Romantic era

• Realism and nineteenth-century fiction a story
  of realisms hegemonic triumph
• What then becomes of the Gothic as real-isms
  Other?
• Gothicism duly persists as the haunting bad
  dream of realist consciousness and of bourgeois
  culture

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Gothic terror beyond the Romantic era

• . . . as the unsaid that goes without say-ing
  in the realist said
• . . . as the uncanny double of realism itself,
  always threatening as such realisms pos-ition of
  dominance through a symbolic re-turn of the
  repressed
• See, for example, Marx and Engels, The Communist
  Manifesto (1848)

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Gothic terror beyond the Romantic era

• KM FE A spectre is haunting Europe the
  spectre of Communism (Selected Works, p. 35)
• KM FE Modern bourgeois society . . . is like
  the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control
  the powers of the nether world whom he has called
  up by his spells (p. 40)
• . . . here, for bourgeois vs proletarian read
  real-ism vs Gothicism (see further Jacques
  Derrida, Specters of Marx (1994))

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Gothic terror beyond the Romantic era

• Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897) the vampire the
  figure who has no spectre (reflection or
  sha-dow), and thus is unrepressed has no
  super-ego thereby allowing Lucy Westenra, e.g.,
  to live out others bourgeois sexual fantasies
• Compare Roger Hough, dir., Twins of Evil (1971)
  a post-Victorian or modernist Gothic
• (Vampires whether pre- or post-Victorian
  are never a pain in the neck (!), since their
  bite brings about a sexual awakening . . .)

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Gothic terror beyond the Romantic era

• Angela We live in Gothic times Carter, The
  Bloody Chamber (1979) a collection of short
  stories presenting a return of the repressed of
  the adult (violent, sexual) sub-texts of
  childrens fairy tales
• . . . from the Brothers Grimm to Carter
  represents a movement from the Romantic to the
  postmodern Goth-ic
• (Compare the Gothics return of the repressed
  regarding the undead, in the following
  postmodern novel Jane Austen and Seth
  Grahame-Smith, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
  It is a truth universally acknowledged that a
  zombie in possession of brains must be in want of
  more brains.)

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Gothic terror beyond the Romantic era

• See also Al-Qaeda in the war on terror (George
  W. Bush, 2003) the language of the war on
  terror implies a replay of the pre-existing
  strug-gle of realist orthodoxy vs Gothic terror
• Faisal Devji, Al-Qaeda, Spectre of
  Globalis-ation, Soundings, 32 (2006)
  Al-Qaeda func-tions as the dark side of
  Americas own democ-racy, as inseparable from it
  as its evil twin (p. 27)
• . . . note the suggestion of Al-Qaeda as
  Ameri-cas uncanny double in a clash of
  fundamental-isms

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Gothic terror beyond the Romantic era

• Thus, realism and Gothicism exist in a
  di-alectical relationship with one another
• What always makes the Gothic appear threatening
  to realism is its appearance as the uncanny
  double of realism itself
• The uncanny names the haunting power of the
  Gothics threat to realism in their on-going
  class struggle, their genre war

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The interest of James Hogg today

• JH as a novelist remains interesting, arguably,
  because rather than in spite of his
  contradictions
• The non-realist in him allows the uncanny to find
  an extraordinarily potent expression of itself
  through the idea of a devil, a Satanic
  shapeshif-ter, who is always there in what goes
  without saying, and is made all the more present
  by be-ing absent and unsaid
• Thus, the Satanic Gil-Martin is easily a more
  frightening prospect than, say, the familiar
  stage or pantomime devil of the 19C

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The interest of James Hogg today

• At the same time, JH appears middle-of-the-road
  in terms of his portrayal of sym-pathetic
  characters e.g. the George Col-wans as
  ordinary, fallible, conciliatory
• See George Colwan after his wedding-night row
  with his wife, Rabina for my part, I fear I
  have behaved very ill and I must endeavour to
  make amends (p. 7)

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The interest of James Hogg today

• The Editor, taking sides with George ag-ainst
  Rabina in this particular dispute, says against
  the cant of the bigot or the hypocrite, no
  reasoning can aught avail (p. 5)
• JS appears a novel that throws its weight behind
  the cause of good sense against bigotry and
  hypocrisy, especially within Calvinist doctrine

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The interest of James Hogg today

• Here, the Calvinist saved as well as the
  damn-ed implies a form of fanaticism or
  extremism that JH determines to speak against
  with his novel
• Thus, JS now seems precisely the sort of text
  that speaks to present-day forms of fanaticism
  and extremism
• Somewhat in spite of itself, the novel makes us
  see the attractions involved in going to extremes
  (thereby going over into the Gothics uncanny
  doubling of reality), even as it asserts a code
  of moderation as heroic

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The interest of James Hogg today

• For JS read against the fanaticism of a mid-20C
  totalitarian age (Nazism, Stalin-ism, etc.) see
  André Gides Introduction to a 1947 French
  translation of JHs text
• . . . the text is read as a post-war caution-ary
  tale about the evils of extremism a re-alist
  antipathy to extremism finds its voice in Gide

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The interest of James Hogg today

• A new age of fanaticism appears in the late 20C/
  early 21C Islamic Jihad (holy war, as opposed
  to spiritual struggle), September 11th and
  after, the Wests war on terror, a clash of
  fundamen-talisms . . .
• Thus, JS as an anti-extremist novel Wring-hims
  confessions become a confession of his evil
  comes to speak directly to our own times

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The interest of James Hogg today

• What does it say in this regard?
• It advocates a policy of making amends in-stead
  of making war
• Here, the dialectic of realism and the Go-thic is
  resolved in such a way as to expose the terrible
  sameness of opposing sides within todays new age
  of war

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The interest of James Hogg today

• As Devji has suggested, an equivalence of
  terror appears the only form in which the two
  Al-Qaeda and America might come together and
  even communicate with one another (p. 27)
• In sum, all please form an orderly queue for the
  asylum!