3 Dreams and thresholds
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Michiko Oki
Abstract
This chapter discusses the representation of the threshold in René Magritte’s series of door paintings (1933–62), Franz Kafka’s parable ‘Before the Law’ (1905) and Luis Buñuel’s film The Exterminating Angel (1962). With reference to the Surrealist approach to the dream as a means of subverting ‘normality’, I explore the allegorical engagement of these figures with the notion of the threshold, which signals the violence of normative power in contemporary society. Both Magritte and Kafka’s doors are open, free to pass, yet strangely emanating a sense of inaccessibility, which is more blatantly expressed in Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel – a story about people trapped in an unlocked house. I will discuss whether these nightmarish representations of open yet inaccessible doors can be understood as a criticism of the violence of normative power, as articulated in Agamben (1999)’s and Derrida (1992)’s interpretations of Kafka’s ‘Before the Law’. Both Agamben and Derrida argue that the law fundamentally belongs to the literary space of narration, revolving around ambiguous relations between reality and story, anomy and nomos. At the origin of the law, for them, is the fictionality that makes possible the normalisation of life by narrating the universal out of the singular. I demonstrate how the conceptualisation of the threshold by Magritte, Kafka and Buñuel illuminates the literary space of the law/norm that is fictitious yet actual in legitimising reality, challenging the normalised perception of reality through a subversive use of the dream and dreamlike imagery.
Abstract
This chapter discusses the representation of the threshold in René Magritte’s series of door paintings (1933–62), Franz Kafka’s parable ‘Before the Law’ (1905) and Luis Buñuel’s film The Exterminating Angel (1962). With reference to the Surrealist approach to the dream as a means of subverting ‘normality’, I explore the allegorical engagement of these figures with the notion of the threshold, which signals the violence of normative power in contemporary society. Both Magritte and Kafka’s doors are open, free to pass, yet strangely emanating a sense of inaccessibility, which is more blatantly expressed in Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel – a story about people trapped in an unlocked house. I will discuss whether these nightmarish representations of open yet inaccessible doors can be understood as a criticism of the violence of normative power, as articulated in Agamben (1999)’s and Derrida (1992)’s interpretations of Kafka’s ‘Before the Law’. Both Agamben and Derrida argue that the law fundamentally belongs to the literary space of narration, revolving around ambiguous relations between reality and story, anomy and nomos. At the origin of the law, for them, is the fictionality that makes possible the normalisation of life by narrating the universal out of the singular. I demonstrate how the conceptualisation of the threshold by Magritte, Kafka and Buñuel illuminates the literary space of the law/norm that is fictitious yet actual in legitimising reality, challenging the normalised perception of reality through a subversive use of the dream and dreamlike imagery.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- List of figures vii
- List of contributors viii
- Foreword xiii
- Acknowledgements xviii
- Introduction 1
- I Dream images 17
- 1 Dream images, psychoanalysis and atrocity 19
- 2 Dreaming and collecting dreams in occupied France 39
- 3 Dreams and thresholds 60
- 4 Condemned to oblivion 79
- ii Dreams as sites of resistance 97
- 5 Traumatic dreams as sites of witness and resistance in the life and work of Ingeborg Bachmann 99
- 6 The Third Reich of Dreams 120
- 7 Living and resisting intersectional oppression through ballroom 139
- 8 Dreams, justice and spectrality in Rêver peutêtre (Perchance to Dream) by Jean-Claude Grumberg 160
- III Violent states 179
- 9 Dreams, repetition and the real in Marie NDiaye’s Ladivine 181
- 10 Dreaming the unthinkable 199
- 11 ‘My hell dream’ 220
- 12 Shit, blood and sperm 238
- Afterword 258
- Index 263
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- List of figures vii
- List of contributors viii
- Foreword xiii
- Acknowledgements xviii
- Introduction 1
- I Dream images 17
- 1 Dream images, psychoanalysis and atrocity 19
- 2 Dreaming and collecting dreams in occupied France 39
- 3 Dreams and thresholds 60
- 4 Condemned to oblivion 79
- ii Dreams as sites of resistance 97
- 5 Traumatic dreams as sites of witness and resistance in the life and work of Ingeborg Bachmann 99
- 6 The Third Reich of Dreams 120
- 7 Living and resisting intersectional oppression through ballroom 139
- 8 Dreams, justice and spectrality in Rêver peutêtre (Perchance to Dream) by Jean-Claude Grumberg 160
- III Violent states 179
- 9 Dreams, repetition and the real in Marie NDiaye’s Ladivine 181
- 10 Dreaming the unthinkable 199
- 11 ‘My hell dream’ 220
- 12 Shit, blood and sperm 238
- Afterword 258
- Index 263
