‘Anthropologists of our own experience’: Taxonomy and Testimony in The Museum of Innocence and The Virgin Suicides
The narrators of Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides (1991) and Orhan Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence (2008) spend their time obsessively gathering, curating and categorising objects associated with the objects of their affection. Talking about his novel, Pamuk argued that “the desire to gather o...
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Angles
2020
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openedition-oai:revues.org:angles_1932 |
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openedition |
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OpenEdition Journal |
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Anglais |
| format |
Article ou chapitre numérique |
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0/Bibliothèque numérique/ 1/Bibliothèque numérique/OpenEdition Journals/ |
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corps genre sexualité mort objet sujet mémoire mémorial suicide Pamuk Orhan Eugenides Jeffrey body gender sexuality death object subject memory memorial suicide Pamuk Orhan Eugenides Jeffrey |
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corps genre sexualité mort objet sujet mémoire mémorial suicide Pamuk Orhan Eugenides Jeffrey body gender sexuality death object subject memory memorial suicide Pamuk Orhan Eugenides Jeffrey Hayes-Brady, Clare ‘Anthropologists of our own experience’: Taxonomy and Testimony in The Museum of Innocence and The Virgin Suicides |
| description |
The narrators of Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides (1991) and Orhan Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence (2008) spend their time obsessively gathering, curating and categorising objects associated with the objects of their affection. Talking about his novel, Pamuk argued that “the desire to gather objects is central to the human heart”, and in both of these novels, the male narrators react to the deaths of their beloveds by memorialising them in the form of object collections. The collections — one a group of “exhibits” and one a catalogue of the contents of a museum — serve both as a reminder of the beloved(s) and as a narrative aid, and are displayed to the unspecified “You”, the witness of the boys’ investigation in The Virgin Suicides and the museum visitor in The Museum of Innocence. In both cases, the collections are held up for investigation by the reader as proof of the narrator’s love. Both narrators obscure the subjectivity of their beloveds by confining them to the sum of the objects collected, presenting an essentially narcissistic projection of the self on to a muted, virginal other. I argue that the obsessive need for testimony demonstrated by both narrative voices reflects a fundamental incapacity to see the female other as a subject, drawing the reader, as witness, into the position of voyeur. By offering a post-mortem memorialisation of this kind, the narrators appropriate the image of their beloved(s), re-presenting them as objects among objects, albeit still the object of mystery and obsessive fascination. Exploring the use of visual touchstones (fictional in The Virgin Suicides, but real in The Museum of Innocence, which opened in Istanbul in 2009), I take Stanley Cavell’s idea of acknowledgement and Judith Butler’s theory of mournable lives to discuss memory, subjectivity and power in the recollection of the beloved dead. |
| author |
Hayes-Brady, Clare |
| author_facet |
Hayes-Brady, Clare |
| author_sort |
Hayes-Brady, Clare |
| title |
‘Anthropologists of our own experience’: Taxonomy and Testimony in The Museum of Innocence and The Virgin Suicides |
| title_short |
‘Anthropologists of our own experience’: Taxonomy and Testimony in The Museum of Innocence and The Virgin Suicides |
| title_full |
‘Anthropologists of our own experience’: Taxonomy and Testimony in The Museum of Innocence and The Virgin Suicides |
| title_fullStr |
‘Anthropologists of our own experience’: Taxonomy and Testimony in The Museum of Innocence and The Virgin Suicides |
| title_full_unstemmed |
‘Anthropologists of our own experience’: Taxonomy and Testimony in The Museum of Innocence and The Virgin Suicides |
| title_sort |
‘anthropologists of our own experience’: taxonomy and testimony in the museum of innocence and the virgin suicides |
| publisher |
Angles |
| publishDate |
2020 |
| container_title |
URI:https://journals.openedition.org/angles |
| url |
https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://doi.org/10.4000/angles.1932 https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://journals.openedition.org/angles/1932 |
| _version_ |
1877293947357757440 |
| spelling |
openedition-oai:revues.org:angles_1932 https://doi.org/10.4000/angles.1932 urn:doi:10.4000/angles.1932 en https://journals.openedition.org/angles/1932 2020-07-16T02:00:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess article info:eu-repo/semantics/article urn:handle:20.500.13089/9n0m https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ‘Anthropologists of our own experience’: Taxonomy and Testimony in The Museum of Innocence and The Virgin Suicides Angles Société des Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur info:eu-repo/semantics/reference/issn/2274-2042 URI:https://journals.openedition.org/angles Hayes-Brady, Clare corps genre sexualité mort objet sujet mémoire mémorial suicide Pamuk Orhan Eugenides Jeffrey body gender sexuality death object subject memory memorial suicide Pamuk Orhan Eugenides Jeffrey The narrators of Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides (1991) and Orhan Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence (2008) spend their time obsessively gathering, curating and categorising objects associated with the objects of their affection. Talking about his novel, Pamuk argued that “the desire to gather objects is central to the human heart”, and in both of these novels, the male narrators react to the deaths of their beloveds by memorialising them in the form of object collections. The collections — one a group of “exhibits” and one a catalogue of the contents of a museum — serve both as a reminder of the beloved(s) and as a narrative aid, and are displayed to the unspecified “You”, the witness of the boys’ investigation in The Virgin Suicides and the museum visitor in The Museum of Innocence. In both cases, the collections are held up for investigation by the reader as proof of the narrator’s love. Both narrators obscure the subjectivity of their beloveds by confining them to the sum of the objects collected, presenting an essentially narcissistic projection of the self on to a muted, virginal other. I argue that the obsessive need for testimony demonstrated by both narrative voices reflects a fundamental incapacity to see the female other as a subject, drawing the reader, as witness, into the position of voyeur. By offering a post-mortem memorialisation of this kind, the narrators appropriate the image of their beloved(s), re-presenting them as objects among objects, albeit still the object of mystery and obsessive fascination. Exploring the use of visual touchstones (fictional in The Virgin Suicides, but real in The Museum of Innocence, which opened in Istanbul in 2009), I take Stanley Cavell’s idea of acknowledgement and Judith Butler’s theory of mournable lives to discuss memory, subjectivity and power in the recollection of the beloved dead. Les narrateurs du roman de Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides (1991), et du roman de Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence (2008), passent leur temps à réunir, classer et exposer des objets en lien avec des êtres aimés. En parlant de son roman, Pamuk a dit que « le désir de réunir des objets est au centre du cœur humain ». Dans les deux romans, les narrateurs masculins réagissent à la mort de leurs aimées en les mémorialisant à travers des collections d’objets. Ces collections, l’un constituant un ensemble d’« expositions », l’autre un catalogue d’objets dans un musée, permettent de se souvenir de l’être aimé et servent de soutien narratif ; elles sont exposées au regard d’une personne non spécifiée (« You »), témoin de l’enquête des garçons dans The Virgin Suicides, et un visiteur du musée dans The Museum of Innocence. Dans les deux cas, les collections sont données au lecteur pour qu’il les étudie comme autant de preuves de l’amour du narrateur. Les deux narrateurs obvient la subjectivité de leurs aimées en les réduisant à un ensemble d’objets collectés, présentant une projection d’un Moi essentiellement narcissique sur un Autre virginal réduit au silence. Cette contribution montre que le besoin obsessif de témoigner de la part des voix narratives reflète une incapacité fondamentale de percevoir l’autre féminin comme un sujet, invitant le lecteur, comme témoin, à adopter la position d’un voyeur. En proposant ces mémorialisations post-mortem, les narrateurs s’approprient une image de leur aimée, et les représentent comme objets au sein d’objets, même si elles demeurent néanmoins un objet mystérieux, provoquant une fascination qui les obsède. En explorant des points de référence visuels (fictionnels dans The Virgin Suicides, réels dans The Museum of Innocence, qui a ouvert à Istanbul en 2009), cet article s’appuie sur la notion de reconnaissance (« acknowledgment ») développée par Stanley Cavell et la théorie de Judith Butler sur les vies dont on peut porter le deuil, afin d’analyser les questions de mémoire, de subjectivité et du pouvoir du ressouvenir des êtres aimés disparus. |