REFRACTED REMEDIATIONPYNCHON’S BRUSSELS AS LIMINAL MILIEU

Dr Christophe Collard

AAS10 – Adaptation and the MetropolisSchool of Advanced Study, University of London (UK)24-25 September 2015

08-11-2022 1Herhaling titel van presentatie

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(MOTTO)

“His office and field skills weren’t the worst in the shop, but he knew that what distinguished him was a keen sympathy for the invisible.”

(Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day)

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W.H. AUDEN ON BRUSSELS

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Its formula escapes you: it has lostThe certainty that constitutes a thing

(‘Brussels in Winter,’ 1938)

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T. PYNCHON, AGAINST THE DAY (2006)

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BXL as liminal milieu

‘double refraction’

(heroic) adapt-ability

Productive dynamic: convergence & analogy

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FRANÇOIS RECANATI (2008)

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Despite being essentially structured, human communication primarily relies on intuitive associations.

adapt-ability as heuristic principle

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DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER (2007)

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“Thermodynamics is explained by statistical mechanics, but perhaps this idea becomes somewhat clearer when turned around, as follows: Statistical mechanics can be bypassed by talking at the level of termodynamics.”

Pynchon:

Quantum-mechanical dimension = literary

Anarchic character

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ANDRÉ HELBO (2006)

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Adaptation:

Reciprocal exchange feeding on complex networks of poly-systemic relations, operators, and operative strategies.

Negotiation grounded in analogies

Equivalence- rather than difference-based

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ICELAND SPAR

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BELGIUM

“little Belgium once again busy at what she does best, tamely offering her battlefield-ready lowlands to boots, hooves, iron wheels, waiting to be first to go under before a future no one in Europe has the clairvoyance to imagine as an exercise for clerks.”

(Pynchon, Against the Day)

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BRUSSELS

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BOLTER & GRUSIN (1999)

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‘mediation of mediation’

Strategic refashioning of pre-existing media under the influence of other media.

‘contamination’ of content

Charismatic strategy

Constructivist cogn. procedure = adaptation

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PIVOTAL BRUSSELS

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Rudi Laermans (1999):

“The city, its inhabitants, and its varied groups of users are too multiple-sided, too heterogeneous, too opaque to be gathered in a single panoptical glance.”

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CONCLUSION(S)

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o Adaptation as ‘generative grammar’ (Stam, 2006) on behalf of its adapt-ability

o Constructivist impetus is emancipating

o Antidote to negativity

o “Brussels is a verb” (Laermans)

o Shared reliance on analogies

“journeys towards otherness” (Johnston, 2004)Brussels voted #1 most traffic-congested city in the world

by US traffic information platform INRIX

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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This research has been funded by the Interuniversity Attraction Poles Programme initiated by the Belgian Science Policy Office

Literature and Media Innovation: The Question of Genre Transformations