Failing to Place Confrontation: The Car as “Void” in Jump
Whereas moments of miscommunication stud the collection Jump, this article proposes to read five such misfiring encounters between whites and non-whites, in “What Were You Dreaming?” “Comrades,” “Keeping Fit,” “The Moment Before the Gun Went Off,” and “Spoils,” through a close examination of the spa...
Gardado en:
| Publicado en: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ces, |
|---|---|
| Autor Principal: | |
| Formato: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Idioma: | Anglais |
| Publicado: |
Commonwealth Essays and Studies
2019
|
| Acceso en liña: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Résumé: | Whereas moments of miscommunication stud the collection Jump, this article proposes to read five such misfiring encounters between whites and non-whites, in “What Were You Dreaming?” “Comrades,” “Keeping Fit,” “The Moment Before the Gun Went Off,” and “Spoils,” through a close examination of the spatial configurations where a confrontation can happen (and fail). In all five short stories the situation of racial inequality is mediated through banal elements: the car, food/drink, and the delivering of a testimony. I will connect these elements to the unresolved opposition cast by Agamben between bios, the political life, and zoe, the biological life. I argue that in these confrontation scenes the “others” are excluded through their very inclusion, but that they are also recognized as a political presence in the privileged site of vehicles functioning in the text as correlatives of what Agamben describes as a “void” in social spaces. |
|---|