Eric Berlatsky

Bio: Eric Berlatsky is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Postmodernism & Narrative. The author has an hindex of 5, co-authored 8 publications receiving 81 citations.

The Real, the True, and the Told: Postmodern Historical Narrative and the Ethics of Representation

Abstract: J7 Бас Berlatsky's The Real, the True, and the Told: Postmodern Historical Narrative and the Ethics of Representation is a theory-sawy study of the unique interrelationship of history and narration in postmodern novels. Berlatsky's central concern is the postmodern phenomenon of the withdrawal of the real, in this case the relationship between the past and the present. In pursuing this concern Berlatsky asks what the difference between history as event and history as narration is, whether history is "knowable," and what degree of importance should narration be given in searching for a true history. Berlatsky sees a skepticism in postmodern historical fiction that is similar to Hayden White's skepticism "toward narrative's capacity to represent the past" (21). Both postmodern historical fiction and narrative as White conceives it assume the impossibility of accurate representation. This assumption raises ethical questions alluded to in the title of this volume. Drawing upon the ethics of late-period Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas, and the "ethical turn" in the humanities, Berlatsky argues that there is a danger in drawing too close a connection between postmoderni distrust of representation and the ineffable horror of real historical events such as the Holocaust. There is a leveling potential which may render the mundane horrific and the horrific mundane.

Lost in the Gutter: Within and Between Frames in Narrative and Narrative Theory

Abstract: One of the most difficult and confusing of narratological concepts is that of the "narrative frame." While numerous studies refer to and examine the frame, its defin- ition remains somewhat elusive. The central reason for this is the sheer quantity of concepts and ideas to which this singular appellation refers. Internal narrators and narratives, paratexts, advertisements, blurbs, the covers of a book: all of these have been referred to as "frames," in addition to more metaphorical applications. In "Framing in Wuthering Heights," for example, John Matthews looks not only at "em- bedded narratives," but also at the metaphorical frame of the human body, and the general concept of boundaries in order to elucidate how the novel explores "empty middles" and Lacanian psycholinguistic "lack." That is, a look at a more or less ob- jectively identifiable narrative feature (narratives within other narratives) is soon treated figuratively, as "liminality" of both form and content, generating a metaphor- ical slippage that may be productive for understanding the individual novel, but is less so for understanding the concept itself. Indeed, as I will argue, constitutive of the difficulty in pinpointing the term is the link between the literary frame and framing in the visual arts, particularly painting. Some of the earliest discussions of the liter- ary frame attempt to map the typical notion of the picture frame onto literature with problematic and confusing results. In order to address this problem, I divide this essay into two primary parts. First, I discuss the shortcomings of the "picture frame" model, particularly in its con- flation of two distinct concepts: the physical liminality of frames and their capacity to direct interpretation. Through a use of a simple two-axis graph, I illustrate how the conflation of these two functions blurs understanding of the various kinds of frames

"The Swamps of Myth. . . and Empirical Fishing Lines": Historiography, Narrativity, and the "Here and Now" in Graham Swift's Waterland

Abstract: In recent debates over the proper methods to be pursued by practicing historians, the elusive chimera known as postmodernism has been raised consistently as either the key to a new practice of history that would help historians reach their aesthetic and creative potential or as the dangerous relativism that would dissolve the discipline of History altogether.1 “Postmodernist historiography,” or constructivist historicism, has a deep and pervasive tie to narrative and narrative theory, largely because its central figure, Hayden White, is deeply interested in the ways in which the narrative form has affected the possibility of material reference in historical discourse. While constructivist and relativist skepticism towards the possibility of historical objectivity predate White substantially,2 the focus on narrative as a central barrier to objective reference is most archetypically represented by White’s work. Although there have been some amendments to White’s early radical position, his initial narrativism remains a powerful influence upon postmodern historiography, and a source of contention. Narrativism, in brief, is the belief that no “meaning” is inherent to a collection of historical facts and events retained or selected from the past. Rather, the act of narration itself is responsible for any sense of meaning or causality that links historical events together. In his well-

"Everything in the World Has Its Own Color": Detecting Race and Identity in Paul Auster's Ghosts

Abstract: T much of paul auster’s Ghosts, the protagonist detective, Blue, is metaphorically imprisoned in a small room, condemned to the monotony of watching another man, Black, and waiting for him to do something. Eventually, however, Blue begins to break from his routine, leaving his room on occasion because he feels so close to Black that he knows what his counterpart will do even when he is not being watched. Two of Blue’s early adventures expose a blind spot in Blue’s vision, however, a crucial problem for a man whose job it is to watch another. In the first such adventure: “Blue goes to the small grassy yard . . . studying the bronze statue of Henry Ward Beecher. Two slaves are holding on to Beecher’s legs, as though begging him to help them, to make them free at last, and in the brick wall behind there is a porcelain relief of Abraham Lincoln. Blue cannot but feel inspired by these images, and . . . his head fills with noble thoughts of the dignity of man” (189). It is clear in this passage that Blue’s blind spot is race, or in some sense, “color,” despite his name. The statue depicts Beecher as the white hero of the abolitionist movement. The historical truth, however, is more ambivalent, with most accounts of Beecher portraying him not only as an abolitionist, but also as a racist and opportunist whose opposition to slavery was not accompanied by a belief in the social and essential equality of blacks and whites. Indeed, Beecher’s abolitionist

The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality

Abstract: To raise the question of the nature of narrative is to invite reflection on the very nature of culture and, possibly, even on the nature of humanity itself. So natural is the impulse to narrate, so inevitable is the form of narrative for any report of the way things really happened, that narrativity could appear problematical only in a culture in which it was absent-absent or, as in some domains of contemporary Western intellectual and artistic culture, programmatically refused. As a panglobal fact of culture, narrative and narration are less problems than simply data. As the late (and already profoundly missed) Roland Barthes remarked, narrative "is simply there like life itself. . international, transhistorical, transcultural."' Far from being a problem, then, narrative might well be considered a solution to a problem of general human concern, namely, the problem of how to translate knowing into telling,2 the problem of fashioning human experience into a form assimilable to structures of meaning that are generally human rather than culture-specific. We may not be able fully to comprehend specific thought patterns of another culture, but we have relatively less difficulty understanding a story coming from another culture, however exotic that

Comparative American Identities: Race, Sex, and Nationality in the Modern Text.

Abstract: What constitutes the pervasive cultural assumptions known to us as "America?" Since the American hemisphere actually encompasses a variety of national identities, can it make sense to speak of a unified "American" identity? Can a place for marginalized identities be established within the cultural mainstream? Comparative American Identities maps out a dynamic terrain of "New World" cultural identities, questions and problems. The essays attempt to locate "America" as a cultural and historical site of plurality and division, a discursive space of multiple differences which becomes, paradoxically, the ground for a new notion of American unity.

Vaporwave, or music optimised for abandoned malls

Abstract: In this article I focus on the genre of ‘vaporwave’, using the artist 18 Carat Affair as a case study, to explore the way the genre works as a project that produces, and takes pleasure in, a kind of ‘memory play’. As a genre, vaporwave is a style of music collaged together from a wide variety of largely background musics such as muzak®, 1980s elevator music and new age ambience. Vaporwave's ‘memory play’ is a project that takes remembering as its audio-visual aesthetic. The pleasure of vaporwave is therefore understood as a pleasure of remembering for the sake of the act of remembering itself. To explore this theme, I examine vaporwave's memory play using the terms of Chris Healy's ‘compensatory nostalgia’, as well as the idea of ‘ersatz nostalgia’ as discussed by Arjun Appadurai and Svetlana Boym.

Towards a Critical Sociology of Dominant Ideologies: An Unexpected Reunion between Pierre Bourdieu and Luc Boltanski:

Abstract: This article aims to demonstrate the enduring relevance of Pierre Bourdieu and Luc Boltanski’s ‘La production de l’ideologie dominante’ [‘The production of the dominant ideology’], which was originally published in Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales in 1976. More than three decades later, in 2008, a re-edited version of this study was printed in book format as La production de l’ideologie dominante, which was accompanied by a detailed commentary, written by Luc Boltanski and entitled Rendre la realite inacceptable. A propos de « La production de l’ideologie dominante » [Making Reality Unacceptable. Comments on ‘The production of the dominant ideology’]. In addition to containing revealing personal anecdotes and providing important sociological insights, this commentary offers an insider account of the genesis of one of the most seminal pieces Boltanski co-wrote with his intellectual father, Bourdieu. In the Anglophone literature on contemporary French sociology, however, the theoretical contributions made both in the original study and in Boltanski’s commentary have received little – if any – serious attention. This article aims to fill this gap in the literature, arguing that these two texts can be regarded not only as forceful reminders of the fact that the ‘dominant ideology thesis’ is far from obsolete but also as essential for understanding both the personal and the intellectual underpinnings of the tension-laden relationship between Bourdieu and Boltanski. Furthermore, this article offers a critical overview of the extent to which the unexpected, and partly posthumous, reunion between ‘the master’ (Bourdieu) and his ‘dissident disciple’ (Boltanski) equips us with powerful conceptual tools, which, whilst illustrating the continuing centrality of ‘ideology critique’, permit us to shed new light on key concerns in contemporary sociology and social theory. Finally, the article seeks to push the debate forward by reflecting upon several issues that are not given sufficient attention by Bourdieu and Boltanski in their otherwise original and insightful enquiry into the complexities characterizing the daily production of ideology.