the poetics of space / gaston bachelard

... by overlaying our memory of the childhood house with daydreams leads us to the ill-defined, vaguely located areas of being where we are seized with astonishment at being.

Thus, on the threshold of our space, before the era of our own time, we hover between awareness of being and loss of being. And the entire reality of memory becomes spectral.

[… fingertip memory. How does the body, not merely the mind, remember the feel of a latch in a long-forsaken childhood home? …]

We live fixations, fixations of happiness. ‘We comfort ourselves by reliving memories of protection.

Of course, thanks to the house, a great many of our memories are housed.

 … to de-socialize our important memories, and attain to the plane of the daydreams that we used to have in the places identified with our solitude .

Memories are motionless, and the more securely they are fixed in space, the sounder they are.

Memories of dreams, however, which only poetic meditation can help us to recapture, are most confused, less clearly drawn.

In point of fact, we are in the unity of image and memory, in the functional composite of imagination and memory. The positivity of psychological history and geography cannot serve as a touchstone for determining the real being of our childhood, for childhood is certainly greater than reality.

It is our consciousness that crystalizes our remote memories.

To inhabit oneirically the house we were born in means more than to inhabit it in memory; it means living in the house that is gone, the way we used to dream in it.

The phenomenology of the daydream can untangle the complex of memory and imagination; it becomes necessarily sensitive to the differentiations of the symbol.

… real images are engravings, for it is the imagination that engraves them in our memories.

Great images have both a history and a pre-history; they are always a blend of memory and legend, with the result that we never experience an image directly.

How suddenly our memories assume a living possibility of being!

Our memories are encumbered by facts.

Amazon Books.

The classic book on how we experience intimate spaces.

"A magical book. . . . A prism through which all worlds from literary creation to housework to aesthetics to carpentry take on enhanced—and enchanted-significances. Every reader of it will never see ordinary spaces in ordinary ways. Instead the reader will see with the soul of the eye, the glint of Gaston Bachelard." —from the foreword by John R. Stilgoe

poetic effects: a relevance theory perspective

Adrian Pilkington

John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2000 - 209 pages

Google Books.


Qualia and Consciousness (p. 169)


Poetic Effects: A Relevance Theory Perspective offers a pragmatic account of the effects achieved by the poetic use of rhetorical tropes and schemes. It contributes to the pragmatics of poetic style by developing work on stylistic effects in relevance theory. It also contributes to literary studies by proposing a new theoretical account of literariness in terms of mental representations and mental processes.The book attempts to define literariness in terms of text-internal linguistic properties, cultural codes or special purpose reading strategies, as well as suggestions that the notion of literariness should be dissolved or rejected. It challenges the accounts of language and verbal communication that underpin such positions and outlines the theory of verbal communication developed within relevance theory that supports an explanatory account of poetic effects and a new account of literariness. This is followed by a broader discussion of philosophical and psychological issues having a bearing on the question of what is expressed non-propositionally in literary communication. The discussion of emotion, qualitative experience and, more specifically, aesthetic experience provides a fuller characterisation of poetic effects and poetic thought. 

the cinema of robert lepage: the poetics of memory

By Aleksandar Dundjerovic
175 pages, Wallflower Press

Google Books.

Chapter One: Film Narrative as Myth ANd Memory

The Cinema of Robert Lepageis the first critical study of one of the most striking artists of Quebecois and Canadian independent filmmaking. The book examines Lepage's creative methods of filmmaking in their cultural and social context and argues that his work cannot be seen separately from his oeuvre as a multidisciplinary artist. Further, this study demonstrates that like Jean Cocteau, Mike Leigh, and Alain Resnais, Lepage is a multifaceted artist who works with a group of actors on very personal themes, building his films, such as Le Confessionnaland Possible Worlds, during months or years of a perpetual rehearsal process; thus it challenges the notions that Lepage should be considered only in the terms of Quebecois film tradition. The author explores such themes with Lepage in a new exclusive and detailed interview.

Does Robert Lepage deserve an in-depth study of is cinematic work? A relative newcomer to the world of film, Lepage has, to date, directed four films: Le Confessionnal (1995), Le Polygraphe (1996), Nô (1998) and Possible Worlds (2000). Though not as prolific as some of the directors featured in Wallflower’s Directors’ Cuts series on the salient directors of World Cinema, and better known for his work in theatre, Lepage has, nonetheless, emerged as an auteur with crossover appeal, simultaneously resisting and co-opting the more commercial elements of the film industry. This publication by Aleksandar Dundjerovic, the first book-length study of Lepage’s cinema, is an introduction to the cinematic work of Lepage, and an analysis of his unique place in contemporary creativity. However, the true value of this book relies in the way it shows the crossovers between modern dance, theatre and film, and how one creative process can have an impact on different media.

Dundjerovic explains that, as a theatre director himself, he is intrigued by Lepage’s experimental synthesis of theatrical and cinematic styles, resulting in plays which are enjoyable to cinema audiences and films that are attractive to theatre audiences as well as the usual cinema-goers. In other words, Lepage cares about the audience as well as the critics. In fact, judging from the mixed reviews of his films so candidly acknowledged in this publication, Lepage appears to value the audience and their enjoyment highly, while not caring particularly what the critics write. Entertainment value actually matters to Lepage (the sauna scene in Le Confessionnal is more South Park than art-house and none the worse for it).

This appreciation of the audience is reflected in the book. Lepage’s own comments – gentle, unassuming and often downright funny – are a constant feature of the text. The book ends with Dundjerovic’s in-depth interview with Lepage, providing a generous resource for further commentators. The appended interview also serves as a reference point to Lepage’s creative process, highlighting his method of work. Undergraduates and film-goers alike will be encouraged by Dundjerovic’s unbiased coverage of Lepage’s failures as well as successes. Even more encouraging (to me, anyway) are the accounts of Lepage’s knacks for turning obstacles and limitations to his advantage.

Lepage’s status as an outsider is inseparable from any examination of his work. A Francophone Quebecois formed by the tumultuous events of regional dissent in the 1960s and 1970s, Lepage as a film-maker emerged from a cultural context dominated by the politics of language and identity. In this context, there was (and still is) considerable pressure for regional cinema to reflect the past of a relatively small community for the appreciation of that same community. Lepage succeeded in moving his film narrative beyond this geopolitical limitations and opening up the reading of local cultural references to a global interpretation without abandoning his Quebecois heritage. His films incorporate issues of marginalisation, but always within a framework of themes at once both personal and universal. In this way, Dundjerovic emphasises, Lepage is creating a style of cinema with remarkably wide appeal. Everyone is allowed to have their own unique reading of a Lepage film: I (Irish and Catholic) see remarkable parallels with post-independence Irish literature as well as a dynamic departure from the influence of French cultural colonialism; a friend of mine sees an instance of references to gay cinema, and yet another points out similarities with South Park and an Alanis Morrissette video – all of this within one film.

However, the book is not all fun and games: there is some substantial film and theatre theory to grapple with, and it is tempting to skip through this to the more interesting and intriguing analysis of Lepage’s films. As an illustration of theories in practice, the book is valuable to students of film and theatre; as an example of new theories emerging from new practice, it is inspiring. Though it would be helpful to see the films in question, Dundjerovic succeeds in relating material to the general readership. Ultimately, the essential appeal of Lepage is his cinematic polyvalence and the richness of his imagery. The author succeeds in capturing this spirit. It is only to regret that the quality of the visual images in the book is not such that they can clearly point to Lepage’s cinematic/theatrical visual expressiveness.

Ita O’Keeffe

re-membering the black atlantic: on the poetics and politics of literary memory / lars eckstein

The Atlantic slave trade continues to haunt the cultural memories of Africa, Europe and the Americas. There is a prevailing desire to forget: While victims of the African diaspora tried to flee the sites of trauma, enlightened Westerners preferred to be oblivious to the discomforting complicity between their enlightenment and chattel slavery. Recently, however, fiction writers have ventured to ‘re-member’ the Black Atlantic.

This book is concerned with how literature performs as memory. It sets out to chart systematically the ways in which literature and memory intersect, and offers readings of three seminal Black Atlantic novels. Each reading illustrates a particular poetic strategy of accessing the past and presents a distinct political outlook on memory. Novelists may choose to write back to texts, images or music: Caryl Phillips’s Cambridge brings together numerous fragments of slave narratives, travelogues and histories to shape a brilliant montage of long-forgotten texts. David Dabydeen’s A Harlot’s Progress approaches slavery through the gateway of paintings by William Hogarth, Sir Joshua Reynolds and J.M.W. Turner. Toni Morrison’s Beloved, finally, is steeped in black music, from spirituals and blues to the art of John Coltrane. Beyond differences in poetic strategy, moreover, the novels paradigmatically reveal distinct ideologies: their politics of memory variously promote an encompassing transcultural sense of responsibility, an aestheticist ‘creative amnesia’, and the need to preserve a collective ‘black’ identity.

chapter four; toni morrison / beloved
politics of memory / empowering the collective
poetics of memory / the art of musicalisation

chinese-language film: historiography, poetics, politics / ul

From China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong to Singapore and Hollywood, from martial arts films of the early twentieth century to Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon at the turn of the twenty-first century, Chinese-language films have opened new doors to the imaging and construction of national and ethnic identity. This volume, the most comprehensive work to date on Chinese film, explores the manifold dimensions of the subject and highlights areas overlooked in previous studies.
In the essays in this collection leading scholars take up issues and topics covering the entire range of Chinese cinema. Their cross-cultural engagements with individual films, accomplished with an acute sense of chronology and history, tackle questions of issues related to historiography, poetics, aesthetics, genres, and directorial styles; at the same time, they address the economics of film production and consumption as well as the cultural politics of globalization, identity, subjectivity, nationality, citizenship, and gender formation as embodied in filmic texts. They offer insightful, detailed analyses of films by such internationally renowned directors as Zhang Yimou, Hou Hsia-hsien, Ang Lee, Wong Kar-wai, Zhang Yuan, Jia Zhangke, Tsai Ming-liang, Lin Cheng-sheng, Jiang Wen, Ann Hui, Sylvia Chang, Wu Nianzhen, Eric Koo, and others.

Chinese-Language Film makes a significant contribution to international film studies. It will become required reading for all those, whether student, specialist, or general reader, who are interested in Chinese cinema and international film culture or concerned with questions of nationalism, transnationalism, globalization, and multiculturalism.

rites of return: diaspora poetics and the politics of memory / hirsch & miller

The first decade of the twenty-first century witnessed a passionate engagement with the losses of the past. Rites of Return examines the effects of this legacy of historical injustice and documented suffering on the politics of the present. Twenty-four writers, historians, literary and cultural critics, anthropologists and sociologists, visual artists, legal scholars, and curators grapple with our contemporary ethical endeavor to redress enduring inequities and retrieve lost histories. Mapping bold and broad-based responses to past injury across Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America, Australia, the Middle East, and the United States, Rites of Return examines new technologies of genetic and genealogical research, memoirs about lost family histories, the popularity of roots-seeking journeys, organized trauma tourism at sites of atrocity and new Museums of Conscience, and profound connections between social rites and political and legal rights of return. Google Books.

Contributors include: Lila Abu-Lughod, Columbia University; Nadia Abu El-Haj, Barnard College; Elazar Barkan, Columbia University; Svetlana Boym, Harvard University; Saidiya Hartman, Columbia University; Amira Hass, journalist; Jarrod Hayes, University of Michigan; Marianne Hirsch, Columbia University; Eva Hoffman, writer; Margaret Homans, Yale University; Rosanne Kennedy, Australian National University; Daniel Mendelsohn, writer; Susan Meiselas, photographer; Nancy K. Miller, CUNY Graduate Center; Alondra Nelson, Columbia University; Jay Prosser, University of Leeds; Liz Sevchenko, Coalition of Museums of Conscience; Leo Spitzer, Dartmouth College; Marita Sturken New York University; Diana Taylor, New York University; Patricia J. Williams, Columbia University