Timescapes of Waiting: Spaces of Stasis, Delay and Deferral [1 ed.] 9789004407121, 9789004406957

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Timescapes of Waiting

Spatial Practices An Interdisciplinary Series in Cultural History, Geography and Literature General Editors Christoph Ehland (Universität Paderborn) Editorial Board Christine Berberich (University of Portsmouth) Jonathan Bordo (Trent University) Oliver von Knebel Doeberitz (University of Leipzig) Peter Merriman (Aberystwyth University) Christoph Singer (University of Paderborn) Merle Tönnies (University of Paderborn) Cornelia Wächter (Ruhr-​Universität Bochum) Advisory Board Blake Fitzpartrick (Ryerson University) Flavio Gregori (Ca' Foscari University of Venice) Margaret Olin (Yale University) Ralph Prodzik (University of Würzburg) Andrew Sanders (University of Durham) Mihaela Irimia (University of Bucharest) Founding Editors Robert Burden Stephan Kohl Former Series Editor Chris Thurgar-​Dawson

volume 31 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/​spat

Timescapes of Waiting Spaces of Stasis, Delay and Deferral Edited by

Christoph Singer, Robert Wirth and Olaf Berwald

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration: Stefanie Zofia Schulz, “Riema”, from the photo-​series “Duldung” (Detention), 2015. www.stefaniezofia.de. The Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data is available online at http://​catalog.loc.gov LC record available at http://​lccn.loc.gov/2019942952​

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/​brill-​typeface. issn 1871-​6 89X isbn 978-​9 0-​0 4-​4 0695-​7 (hardback) isbn 978-​9 0-​0 4-​4 0712-​1 (e-​book) Copyright 2019 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-​free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents

Acknowledgements vii List of Illustrations viii Notes on Contributors x



Introduction 1 Christoph Singer, Robert Wirth and Olaf Berwald

1

Waiting in the Antechamber 17 Helmut Puff

2

Waiting for Railways (1830–​1914) 35 Robin Kellermann

3

Waiting for the Man: Deferring and Spatialising Legal and Narrative Delay 58 Richard Hardack

4

Dickens, Reade and Galsworthy on Waiting in Solitary Confinement 79 Cornelia Wächter

5

The Camp as Extra-​Temporal Space in E.C. Osondu’s “Waiting” and Dinaw Mengestu’s “An Honest Exit” 94 Christoph Singer

6

“The Waiting Must End”: Waiting for Im/​Possible Events in Dave Eggers’s A Hologram for the King 108 Kerstin Howaldt

7

Absurd Waiting in Samuel Beckett and Zakes Mda: Wartestellen and Revolutionary Waiting 125 Amanda Lagji

8

Waiting as Resistance: Confined Spaces in Broch and Weiss 140 Olaf Berwald

vi Contents 9

Scotland: A Nation-​State in Waiting 155 Robert Wirth

10

How Long Will Handala Wait? A Ten-​Year-​Old Barefoot Refugee Child on Palestinian Walls 176 Margaret Olin

11

When Boredom Meets Fear: Waiting in Philip Larkin’s “The Building” 198 Elise Brault-​Dreux

12

Waiting in Sickrooms and Victorian Houses: Virginia Woolf’s “On Being Ill” 214 Katrin Röder



Index 233

Acknowledgements First of all, we would like to extend our heartfelt gratitude to the German Research Foundation (dfg), the Universitätsgesellschaft Paderborn and the Dienstleistungsgesellschaft Salzkotten (dgs) for generously funding the conference ‘Waiting as a Cultural Practice’, which provided the basis for this collection of essays. Both the conference and this present volume are the fruit of a long-​standing collaboration between the universities of Paderborn (­Germany) and Kennesaw State, Georgia, (US). We would like to thank Kai-​Friedrich Niermann and the Kunstverein Paderborn for the productive ­cooperation. For their careful proofreading and their astute feedback, we would like to offer our special thanks to our research students Yvonne Jende and Andreas Schwengel at the University of Paderborn and to our teaching assistants ­Caroline Kartina and Giovanni Martino from Kennesaw State. We are naturally beholden to all the authors who kindly agreed to contribute to this volume and who displayed their great patience in ‘waiting’ for the final publication. And, above all, we are particularly indebted to Christoph Ehland, general editor of the Spatial Practice series, for his unstinting support and invaluable encouragement.

Illustrations 2.1

Honoré Daumier, “Une salle d’attente de trosième classe” (presumably 1870s), Winterthur, Sammlung Oskar Reinhart 42 2.2 View of Liverpool Crown Street station. Source: T.T. Bury, Coloured Views on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. London: Ackermann & Co; Plate 8, 1833 46 2.3 Conjectural ground plan of Liverpool Crown Street station 1830s, in Meeks 1956 46 2.4 View of station building in Elberfeld-​Döppersberg (1850s). Historisches Zentrum Wuppertal 49 2.5 Ground plan of Station Elberfeld-​Döppersberg with large waiting rooms left and right to the entrance hall in Berger 1987: 125 49 2.6 Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof, waiting room for i. and ii. Class Zeitschrift für Bauwesen 1891, Sheet 50 51 2.7 Station Dirschau (Prussia), collective waiting room (around 1890), ostbahn.eu 51 2.8 Ground plan of Berlin’s “Stettiner Bahnhof” with marginalised waiting rooms (bottom left) and a provision of a direct link from the entrance (center left) to platforms mediated by a concourse (‘Querbahnsteig’) Source: Zeitschrift für Bauwesen 1903, Blatt 37 54 10.1 Entrance to Dheisheh refugee camp. Photograph: Margaret Olin, 2015 178 10.2 Yazan Gharib, Ahmed Mesleh. Dheisheh refugee camp. Photograph: Margaret Olin, 2014 179 10.3 Separation wall, Bethlehem, Palestine. Photograph: Margaret Olin, 2015 180 10.4 Handala group, mural in Dheisheh refugee camp. Photograph: Margaret Olin, 2015 181 10.5 Ahmed Hmeedat, Naji Al-​Ali, Dheisheh refugee camp. Photograph: Margaret Olin, 2014 183 10.6 Handala Group, mural in Dheisheh refugee camp. Photograph: Margaret Olin, 2015 184 10.7 Paul Klee, Angelus Novus, 1920. Oil transfer and watercolor on paper. Courtesy: The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel. Photo © The Israel Museum, Jerusalem by Elie Posner 185 10.8 Handala figure and child’s copy. Photograph: Margaret Olin, 2015 187 10.9 Child’s drawing. Photograph: Margaret Olin, 2015 188 10.10 Children’s drawings. Photograph: Margaret Olin, 2015 189 10.11 Chid’s drawing inside of mural by Handala group. Photograph: Margaret Olin, 2017 190

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10.12 Group mural showing Handala as an old man. Photograph: Margaret Olin, 2013 191 10.13 Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, Jerusalem. Photograph: Margaret Olin, 2015 192 10.14 A drawing of a cartoon by Naji Al-​Ali on the edges of a mural painted in 2013 by How and Nosm, German street artists living in New York. Bethlehem. Photograph: Margaret Olin, 2016 193 10.15 Israeli & Palestinian combatants for Peace Protest, Fence near Bethlehem, Palestine. Photograph: Dorit Jordan Dotan. 2014 194 10.16 “Je Suis Ali,” Cartoon, Copyright of Khalil Bendib, www.bendib.com; all Rights Reserved, 2015 194 10.17 Dheisheh refugee camp. Photograph: Margaret Olin, 2015 195

Notes on Contributors Olaf Berwald is Professor of German Studies and Department Chair of Foreign Languages at Kennesaw State University, US. His publications include monographs on Melanchthon and on Peter Weiss. He has edited a volume on the works of Max Frisch and co-​edited an essay volume on modernist aesthetics and religion, and a book on creative collaborations  between Latin American and German writers, and he has also written articles exploring modernist writers and literary theory, and Modernism’s indebtedness to post-​Kantian philosophy. Elise Brault-​Dreux is Senior lecturer at the Université Polytechnique des Hauts-​de-​France. She is the author of several articles on the poetry of D.H. Lawrence, T.S. Eliot, Katherine Mansfield and Philip Larkin, and of Le ‘Je’ poétique et ses masques dans la poésie de D.H. Lawrence (2014). She is the co-​editor of No Dialects Please, You’re a Poet –​English Dialects in Poetry from the Late 19th Century to the Present Day. Richard Hardack received his doctorate in English and J.D. from UC Berkeley. A visiting assistant professor for four years at Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges, he has published widely in American Studies and Literatures, including articles in ELH, Callaloo, Biography and Textual Practice. His first book, “Not Altogether Human”: Pantheism and the Dark Nature of the American Renaissance, was published in 2012 by the University of Massachusetts Press, and he is completing two more books, Coming Between Africa and America: Transcendentalism and the Transcendence of Race, from Emerson to Morrison, and New and Improved: The Zero-​Sum Game of Corporate Personhood. He is also project editor for the history of nasa’s Juno Mission to Jupiter. Kerstin Howaldt completed her Magistra Artium in English Philology, Romance Philology and German Literary and Media Studies at the University of Kiel. Since 2015, she is a PhD candidate at the University of Erfurt where she was given a Christoph-​ Martin-​Wieland-​dissertation-​scholarship (2015–​2018). Since October 2018, she is a research associate at the Chair of English Literature. Her PhD project explores the production of eventfulness in 20th century British farce.

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xi

Robin Kellermann is a cultural historian, lecturer and research associate at the University of Technology Berlin, working in the fields of mobility history and the future of transport in the contexts of sustainability and digitalization. In his PhD, he researches the historical evolution of waiting in public transportation by retracing the co-​evolution of physical waiting environments and social practices at train stations (1830–​1930). He is an appointed member of the Executive Committee of the International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility (T2M), book review editor of the Journal of Transport History (jth), and dfg Associate Fellow at the International Graduate Research Program Berlin-​New  York-​Toronto “The World in the City:  Metropolitanism and Globalization from the 19th Century to the Present” at the Center for Metropolitan Studies, TU Berlin. Amanda Lagji is an Assistant Professor of English and World Literature at Pitzer College. Her most recent work appears in Mobilities, Safundi, South Asian Review, Law, Cultures and the Humanities, ARIEL, and African Literature Today. She is currently working on her book project Waiting for Now: Postcolonial Fiction and Colonial Time, which theorizes a ‘temporality of waiting’ across postcolonial fiction. Margaret Olin is a Senior Research Scholar with an appointment in Yale Divinity School as well as in the Department of Religious Studies, the Program in Judaic Studies and the Department of the History of Art. She was a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the departments of Art History, Theory and Criticism, and Visual and Critical Studies from 1986 until her arrival at Yale in 2009. She is the author of Forms of Representation in Alois Riegl’s Theory of Art (Penn State Press, 1992), The Nation Without Art: Examining Modern Discourses in Jewish Art (University of Nebraska, 2001), and co-​editor of Monuments and Memory, Made and Unmade (University of Chicago Press, 2003). Her current research concerns documentary media, Jewish visual culture, and theories of witnessing and commemoration. She is also coeditor of the journal: Images: A Journal of Jewish Art and Visual Culture, published by Brill. Helmut Puff is the Elizabeth L.  Eisenstein Collegiate Professor of History, German, and Women’s Studies at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, US. His teaching and research focus on German literature, history, and culture in the late medieval and early modern periods. He specializes in gender studies, the history of

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sexuality, media history, visual history, and Reformation studies. His publications include Sodomy in Reformation Germany and Switzerland, 1400–​1600 (University of Chicago Press, 2003) and Miniature Monuments: Modeling German History (de Gruyter, 2014). Katrin Röder teaches English literary and cultural studies at the University of Potsdam, Germany. She has published a monograph on the works of Fulke Greville. Her second book investigates conceptions of happiness and of the good life in English novels from the perspective of an aesthetics of existence (Entwürfe des Glücks, Winter 2015). Christoph Singer is an assistant professor in the Department of British Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Paderborn. In 2012 he finished his dissertation on literary representations of shorelines as liminal spaces (Sea Change: The Shore from Shakespeare to Banville. Brill, 2014). In 2015 he published a co-​edited anthology Transitions In Middlebrow Writing, 1880–​1930. Currently, he is working on a book-​project called A History of Solitude: (Post-​)Modernist Narratives of Waiting and Delay. Cornelia Wächter is Assistant Professor (Juniorprofessorin) of British Cultural Studies at the Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. She is the author of Place-​ing the Prison Officer: The ‘Warder’ in the British Literary and Cultural Imagination (Brill/​ Rodopi, 2015)  and co-​editor of Middlebrow and Gender, 1890–​1945 (Brill, 2016) and Complicity and the Politics of Representation (Rowman & Littlefield, forthcoming 2019). She is currently working on a book project on complicity and queer modernism, as well as a shorter monograph on Hellenism in the works of Victoria Cross (Annie Sophie Cory). Robert Wirth is a Research Associate at the Department of English and American Studies of the University of Paderborn, Germany, lecturing in English language and British cultural studies. His primary research interests lie in the field of Scottish literature, politics and culture, with a main focus on the utilisation of history and nostalgia in contemporary political campaigning. Together with Cornelia Wächter he is co-​editor of Complicity and the Politics of Representation (Roman & Littlefield, forthcoming 2019).

Introduction Christoph Singer, Robert Wirth and Olaf Berwald 1

Introduction

Experiences of waiting, delay and deferral are deeply embedded in globalized temporal and spatial frameworks. Despite the experience of waiting being so central to the spatio-​temporal, social and psychological make-​up of everyday life, globalization has so far mostly been examined through the lens of mobility. Mobility does, however, always imply its opposite: stasis. Ingo Berensmeyer, Christoph Ehland and Herbert Grabes, for example, argue with regard to literary expressions of mobility: “On the level of plot, modern narrative literature, at least since the 18th century, is full of vehicular transportation, its glories and its breakdowns” (2012: xv) Wherever there is mobility, there is, by definition, stasis. Even more so, mobility itself can, in fact, be considered a form of immobility; as Bob Dylan reminds us in his song “Not Dark Yet” (1997) from his album Time Out of Mind: “I know it looks like I’m moving, but I’m standing still.” Or, as Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams put it: “We move faster –​capitalism demands it; yet we go nowhere.” (2015: 181) Whenever there is progress, there are also those who are left behind: the more tight-​knit the schedules, logistics, and movements of a given society –​or the more normative the social scripts governing a subject’s biography  –​the bigger the impact on those who slip through these temporal realities. The experience and the representation of existential waiting alerts us to the very cracks and faultlines that spatial regimes produce. Jean-​François Bayart, for instance, argues in his study Global Subjects that when we are “intoxicated by speed, we neglect waiting.” (2007: 290) Spaces of waiting, we would like to propose, can be considered a very specific form of what Marc Augé calls non-​places, and as such they invite closer attention and scrutiny. Augé observes that:  “The world of supermodernity does not exactly match the one in which we believe we live, for we live in a world that we have not yet learned to look at. We have to relearn to think about space.” (2008: 29) Once we look for spaces of waiting and delay, we find them all around us: from bus-stops, terminals, lounges and lobbies to medical and bureaucratic waiting rooms, from refugee camps to detention centres. Disregarding for a moment the socio-​political status of the people who wait there, what all of these spaces have in common is that they rigorously regulate and structure the time of the waiting subject. In doing so, they express

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/​9 789004407121_​0 02

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the underlying hegemonic powers and ideologies at work. Spaces of waiting, in short, are spatial expressions of power. They regulate who has to wait, for how long, and in what way: they establish waiting as a cultural practice that is related to explicit rules as well as implicit conventions. It is particularly at moments when rules and regulations are not clearly or reliably spelled-​out that oppression is facilitated.

2

Surveying the Field

Waiting is all-​pervasive and universal. Despite its ubiquity, it has rarely attracted wider scholarly attention. The sociologist Phillip Vannini argues, for instance, that “[w]‌hereas an immensely vast fictional and academic literature and artistic expression has been dedicated to the concept of time, surprisingly very little attention is reserved to the experience of waiting.” (2002: 193) Philosopher Harold Schweizer –​one of the few go-​to names on the topic –​observes in a similar vein that “Waiting is as resistant to description and analysis as time or boredom. Although central to the idea of narrative from Homer to Hollywood, waiting is a temporal region hardly mapped and badly documented.” (2008: 1) Sociologist David Bissell even goes so far as to identify waiting as the “neglected Achilles heel of modernity” (2007: 277), asserting that even though “waiting through spaces of mobility is an often-​inevitable and frequent experience woven through the fabric of the mobile everyday, [it is] strangely absent from the current and burgeoning mobilities literature” (ibid.). Viewed in this light it makes sense to argue with Sarah Sharma that as “the spatial turn continues to spin, the politics of time does not yet share a documented systemic record akin to that of the politics of space.” (2014: 11) As a consequence, however, we should not disregard space and spatial practices altogether. Such an approach would only augment a perceived dichotomy between space and time even further, rather than help identify the interrelations and reciprocal effects thereof. It may thus be expedient to follow the suggestion of Jon May and Nigel Thrift that we should look closely at the connection between both concepts, especially since “a sense of time is still to some considerable extent shaped by our responses to a series of timetables and rhythms set according to the inter-​ relations of Time and Space in the natural universe, ranging from the diurnal cycle to the rhythms of the seasons, the rhythms of the body to the turning of the tides” (2001: 3, emphasis in the original). This is not to say that waiting has been completely neglected. There seems to be a growing acknowledgement of waiting as a socio-​political theme worthy

Introduction

3

of consideration, inquiry and exploration. In addition to Barry Schwartz’s seminal study on queuing from 1974, useful recent publications on waiting include Jennifer William’s study on the dispossessed (2010), Jeffrey Craig’s work on unemployed youth in (2010), Javier Auyero’s field studies on the unemployed in Argentina called Patients of the State: The Politics of Waiting in Argentina (2012), Sharam Koshravi’s portrayal of Iranian society in Precarious Lives: Waiting and Hope in Iran (2017) and Schweizer’s much-​quoted On Waiting from 2008. More recently, waiting has come into the focus of health-​care: the sociologist Gary Clapton, for example, has carried out research for the British National Health Service on the lived experience with regard to medical waiting rooms. All of these studies seem to contradict May’s and Thrift’s assessment that “there is in fact very little to suggest that the ‘spatial turn’ has progressed beyond the level of metaphor” (2001: 1). At the heart of this growing awareness there lies an increased perception of waiting as the flipside of mobility. Firstly, the plight of millions of refugees worldwide is not only grounded in mobility and movement, but in equal measure related to waiting, delay and deferral. Secondly, the high number of unemployed young people, especially in the south of Europe, who are waiting for a better future poses an urgent socio-​political challenge, resulting in a prolonged period of adolescence termed “waithood” (Honwana 2014, Kremer 2015). It goes without saying that these two e­ xamples –​sometimes –​differ in their causes, their effects and with regard to the subjects afflicted. Nonetheless, these two cases alert us to the paradoxes that modernity produces. In Zygmunt Bauman’s words: “the most fatal result of modernity’s global triumph, is the acute crisis of the ‘human waste’ disposal industry, as each new outpost conquered by capitalist markets adds new thousands or millions to the mass of men and women already deprived of their lands, workshops, and communal safety nets.” (2007: 28, emphasis in the original) 3

Why Waiting Matters

So why does waiting matter? Dismissing waiting as mundane, or, in George Perec’s terms, as ‘infra-​ordinary’ (1997), means neglecting the socio-​political implications inherent in spaces of waiting. For an academic field such as Cultural Studies, which is very much concerned with justice and equality, spaces of waiting ought to be of particular interest. Some of the seminal theorists on space and place have in fact touched upon the link between immobility and powerlessness. For Henri Lefebvre, waiting is an essential feature of everyday and modern life, and as such highlights the blurring boundaries between work

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and leisure. Lefebvre is especially interested in waiting as “compulsive time” (1984: 53), that is, the time the working public spends on their way to and from work, in traffic jams, at bus-stops and intersections. Doreen Massey argues in a similar vein: “[m]‌uch of life for many people, even in the heart of the first world, still consists of waiting in a bus-​shelter with your shopping for a bus that never comes” (1992: 8). Her statement can be read in a literal as well as a figural way. The relationship between social mobility and personal success is often perceived as grounded in spatial mobility. As Margaret Thatcher, for instance, is alleged to have put it:  “If a man finds himself a passenger on a bus having attained the age of twenty-​six, he can account himself a failure in life” (qtd. in Moran 2005: 4). Irrespective of whether this statement can actually be attributed to the UK’s former Prime Minister, it is safe to assert that the Iron Lady’s policies regarding the transformation of public transport in Great Britain displayed an inherent contempt for people relying on public transport. Implicit in Thatcher’s contempt for busses, trains and other forms of public transport is the silent acknowledgement of the fact that any of these means of mobility subject the individual to forces greater than him –​or herself, forces whose powers over the individual find their most symbolic incarnation in the inevitability of waiting. This goes to show that spaces of waiting not only allow an insight into who regulates public spaces, but also serve to expose the ideological intentions that lie behind these regulations. In the case of British public bus transport, it is noteworthy that bus-​shelters are almost completely privatised and, as a consequence, erected and maintained by advertising companies. As Joe Moran argues “[m]‌any of the world’s shelters are now supplied by just two companies, both of which deal with outdoor advertising: Clear Channel Adshel and jcdecaux. […] In Britain, Adshel is the market leader with an 80 per cent market share.” (2005: 5) Bus-stops nowadays often come with free Wi-​Fi and phone-​ charging facilities, thereby accommodating people’s changing waiting habits. Modern technology has, in fact, changed the very nature of waiting, and along with it the spaces in which it has been traditionally performed. Wherever there is a wait nowadays, there seems to be a smartphone on hand to make the wait bearable. At the same time agencies such as the U.S.-​American Customs and Border Protection Agency (cbp) disallow the use of smartphones in customs and immigration areas. What is more, an unwillingness to ‘endure waiting’ is also observable in the virtual realm. A study conducted by the computer scientists Shunmuga Krishnan and Ramesh Sitaraman has confirmed, for instance, that virtual spaces foster impatience. The study analysing online viewing patterns among 6.7  million viewers worldwide found that viewers started abandoning websites if they did not load after two seconds; after five

Introduction

5

seconds the abandonment rate was already as high as 25%, and after 10 seconds at 50%. (2013) The tech-​savvy generation is often accused of being impatient, and of seeking instant gratification. This development is not least influenced by the ever-​ increasing acceleration of technological advances that seek to curb or even abolish waiting-​times. If we accept the adage that ‘time is money’, and, in Luchien Karsten’s reading of Georg Simmel, that the ‘Zeitgeist’ has truly become a ‘Geldgeist’ (cf. 2013: 358), then it comes as no surprise that waiting spaces are also potential commercial spaces. It would seem that the long arm of capitalism allows neither for a temporal break nor for any spatial hiding place from the imperative to consume: wherever groups of people are forced to wait, there is, after all, money to be made. Nonetheless, not wanting to wait comes at a price: we only need to think of the opportunity to purchase tickets to either fast-​track lanes in airports or express-​lanes at tourist sites. Some people even pay others to stand in line or queue on their behalf. In this light “to discuss mobility also means to discuss the practices of resisting mobility (as an emblem of modernization).” (Berensmeyer, Ehland and Grabes 2012: xvi) This hegemonic side of waiting seems indicative of the hidden power structures of modern societies: privileged or wealthy people, who in theory have enough time, money and leisure to wait, are however often the ones who need not necessarily wait. Important people do not wait, they are ‘waited on’ –​in both senses of phrasal verb. The powerless seem to wait more and longer than the powerful. This is one of the principal statements of sociologist Barry Schwartz, who contends that “the relationship between a server and a client may be characterized in terms of organized dependency, for which waiting (under certain conditions provides an accurate index).” (1974: 841). Such an insight may seem intuitive rather than surprising, nonetheless it is important to observe how waiting and the related spaces are being created and how they help to implement a certain behaviour on the side of those who wait. This leads Schwartz to the following conclusion: “Far from being a coincidental by-​ product of power, then, control of time comes into view as one of its essential properties.” (ibid.: 869) Waiting time is often the result of governmental power. Bayart, for instance, argues that “liminal time is bureaucratic, and it secretes bureaucratic imaginings.” (2007: 283) The governance of space-​time, especially by means of having people wait, is a powerful means of control. Pierre Bourdieu maintained that making “people wait” while “delaying without destroying hope” is part of the domination of the dispossessed (2000: 228). To go one step further, we posit that existential waiting is to time as the Panopticon is to space:  a means of (self-​)control that keeps the waiting subject in a state of constant surveillance,

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insecurity, and self-​criticism. Swathes of people in prisons, in detention centres, and in the waiting rooms of unemployment centres are retained in a temporal limbo, outside of social time, but always kept in control. It is then not surprising that Bourdieu’s notion of waiting as a tool that is implemented by an “absolute power” (ibid.) recalls Giorgio Agamben’s concept of the camp. The camp, after all, is the place where absolute power reigns without being bound to a legal system that would restrict it. Hence, Agamben identifies one particular spatial realization of the camp in the so-​called “zones d’attentes in French international airports in which foreigners asking for refugee status are detained [, calling these zones] an apparently innocuous space [that] actually delimits a space in which the normal order is de facto suspended” (1998: 174). Examples such as the detention centre or the camp show us that these spaces are the result of breaks and interruptions of daily life. One could posit that it is particularly when the socially pre-​determined course of quotidian life is interrupted by tragedy, failure or accidents, that spaces of waiting become manifest. The resulting quotidian stories on waiting “provide a critical insight into the everyday sociospatial constitution of power –​not despite but because of their banality” (Secor 2007:  42) To qualify Secor’s statement one should probably speak rather of a perceived banality, because what lies beneath these superficially mundane experiences can be quite existential for those kept in waiting. When the flow of goods and communication is interrupted, when individual biographies are out of sync and quotidian life becomes an aspiration rather than the norm, then living and being in time becomes dreadful. Thus the experience of waiting alerts us to the volatile nature of linear, teleological time. Not having to wait is a privilege that is granted only to a select few. This privilege of being in time, and the painful experience of those who are not, finds powerful expression in Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (2018), a letter that combines its author’s literal immobilization in a prison-​cell with the larger historical immobilization of a whole people: “For years now I have heard the word ‘Wait!’ It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant ‘Never.’ ” (King 1963: 91) King raises a variety of issues with regard to the experience of existential waiting. To be asked to wait induces a drug-​like state with all its connotations of unreality. It keeps the waiting subject sedated in a state of constant hope. And the metaphor of this hope giving birth to “an ill-​formed infant of frustration” (ibid.) stresses that biological time is corrupted, that there is no future for those in waiting. This image also illustrates the relationship between those in power and those who are being ‘impregnated.’ In this letter, King goes on to allude to the different speeds of historical mobility. Asia and Africa “are moving

Introduction

7

with jet-​like speed” (ibid.), they are part of the future, while African-​Americans “creep at horse-​and-​buggy pace” (ibid.) –​signifying an endless past, they are stuck in ‘the waiting room of history’. At the heart of his argument lies another important statement concerning the experience and epistemology of existential waiting. According to King, there is a gulf of understanding between those in waiting and those who have never experienced it: “I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say ‘wait.’ ” (ibid.) What then are the implications of ‘not-​being-​in-​time with others’ as the social anthropologist Shahram Khosravi calls it? (2014: n.p.) When clock time marches on, yet perceived time stops, the waiting subject is left in a socio-​ temporal limbo. The results can be both mundane and existential: experiences of waiting range from waiting for a delayed bus to spending years in a refugee camp. While the former may simply be annoying, the latter can alter biographies and immobilize identities. Yet, a sense of self-​defined mobility is central to identity. Ghassan Hage calls this “existential mobility,” arguing that a “viable life presupposes a form of imaginary mobility, a sense that one is ‘going somewhere’.” Going nowhere, on the other hand, may result in a feeling of “imagined existential stuckedness” (2009: 97). The space of this existential ‘stuckedness’ combines place and time as well as the perception of both in the most interesting ways since, as argued above, spaces of waiting illustrate the temporalization of place. These spaces are passages rather than static places. What Augé, for example, observes with regard to the waiting areas of airports is, in fact, applicable to a number of other waiting places as well: “Since non-​places are there to be passed through, they are measured in units of time. Itineraries do not work without timetables, lists of departure and arrival times in which a corner is always found for a mention of possible delays. They are lived through in the present.” (1995: 84) Augé’s argument is strongly related to the spatial practices of neo-​liberal capitalism and the globalized nature of the late twentieth century and beyond. Nonetheless, his concept does recall descriptions already found in an essay by the German sociologist and cultural critic Siegfried Kracauer from 1922. Kracauer’s work on lobbies and job-​centres in Germany during the early twentieth century is similarly interested in the relationship between power, space, time and ideology. According to Kracauer, waiting rooms expose the ideological framework of a society: “Spatial images are the dreams of society. Wherever the hieroglyphics of any spatial image are deciphered, there the basis of social reality presents itself.” (qtd. in Leach 1997: 57) The German original makes the relationship between space and ideology even clearer: “Wo immer die Hieroglyphe irgendeines Raumbildes entziffert ist, dort bietet sich der Grund der

8

Singer, Wirth and Berwald

sozialen Wirklichkeit dar.” (Kracauer 1990:  186) The German noun Grund is ambiguous on purpose: it could be spatial, if translated as ground/​soil/​foundation, or it could also carry a causal meaning, if translated as ‘reason for’. The waiting room can thus be a site that effectively combines space and ideology, power and waiting. It illustrates how the space (Grund) naturalizes the reason (Grund). For Kracauer, the space of the waiting room becomes an iterative passage: “this space is actually not a room but, at most, a passageway, even though one wiles [sic] away one’s time in it for months on end. I do not know of a spatial location in which the activity is so demoralizing.” (qtd. in Leach 1997: 60) Spaces of waiting may be demoralizing or offer the opportunity for reflection and respite, they may be expressions of subjugation or empowerment, or they may alienate or connect people. While a waiting room may be able to provide a sense of community, more often than not it leaves the waiting subject alone, disoriented and dependent. Leslie Rittenmeyer, Dolores Huffman and Chris Godfrey offer a rather damning description of waiting in the healthcare-​ system when they argue that: “For those who work in healthcare waiting is part of the culture, and is considered routine and normalized. For those who must wait the waiting is personal, fearful, and sometimes tortuous.” (2014: 218) Insightful as their study may be from the perspectives of those in waiting, such a statement also replicates a dichotomy that may be created by health-​ care systems that are running over capacity, yet is often equally felt on the side of those responsible for the patients: administrative staff, nurses and doctors. The frustration and uncertainty, the agonizing sense of time slowly passing, the indeterminacy of the future, the frightful anticipations of what is to be expected in the near future, can lead to outbreaks of aggression on the side of those who have to wait. A  psychological study conducted in Sweden, for instance, states that “nurses reported that patients often gave them a ‘telling off,’ which could include drastic, personal comments about their being ugly, fat, lazy, and so forth.” (qtd. in Akerstrom: 509) The practice of waiting can, conversely, also be used to help Alzheimer’s patients. The Benrath Senior Centre in Düsseldorf, Germany, for instance, erected a replica bus-​stop on their premises in order to prevent their errant patients from trying to go back to their no-​longer existent homes. The patients, whose short-​term memory is impaired while their long-​term memory is still intact, patiently wait at these stops for a bus home that will never arrive, and are then told that the bus will be late and should thus come back inside for a while. By that time, they have likely forgotten that they wanted to go home in the first place. (de Quetteville 2008) This rather curious idea of using waiting-​for-​ a-​bus-​that-​never-​comes is showing encouraging results, and has already been exported to care homes in Britain. (n.a. 2009) It has moreover the benefit that

Introduction

9

the patients do not have to be locked up in wards anymore and is proving cost-​ effective as the police no longer have to search the streets for the confused patients. While these last two examples show that waiting can be both detrimental and beneficial, arguably the various temporalities involved in waiting, as most contributions in this volume illustrate, largely attract negative connotations and associations, as do the spaces in which waiting is performed. You rarely hear someone express delight in having had to wait, for instance. After all, the overarching figuration of waiting as stasis, stagnation, deferral, arrest and immobility is considered to be the very thing that keeps progress, efficiency and development from unfolding. This widespread perception is not least occasioned by what Rolf Dobelli identifies as ‘action bias’, i.e. the human urge to prefer taking action instead of remaining inactive, even if said action is futile or may have detrimental outcomes (2013: 128–​30). And, contrary to the consoling adage that ‘good things come to those who wait’, it is only under exceptional circumstances that waiting can be seen as beneficial to those who wait. Specific circumstances create specific spaces of waiting, all of which are embedded in networks of power and powerlessness, control and passivity. The articles in this collection will approach such spaces of waiting and deferral from a range of academic disciplines and analytical perspective in an attempt to offer a diachronic overview of the issues discussed above. They will offer analyses of these spaces, their impacts, their restrictions, and also point towards their potential for change and subversion. The spaces discussed include antechambers, railway stations, hospitals, queues, camps, detention centres and prisons. The studies also illustrate how entire nations (or potential nation-​ states) can be transformed into anticipatory spaces of either hopeful or apprehensive waiting. What these studies have in common is their approach to space as temporalized place. Following Michel de Certeau’s classic assessment that “space is a practiced place” (1984: 17), we intend to both illustrate how and in what ways such a practised place is equally a temporalized place, and show what reciprocal effects time and temporality may have. It is hardly surprising that every space produces its own temporality; or rather, that a given space may generate a variety of temporalities depending on the respective status of those present. Temporality, space and power form a range of intersections which highlight the power-​structures at play. The various sections in this collection are divided according to the types of waiting-​ spaces they analyse as well as to their conceptual proximity: the first section looks at architectural manifestations of power in the form of antechambers and railway stations; the second discusses institutionalized spaces of waiting within courts and prisons; the third analyses non-​places and imagined spaces

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of waiting in the form of refugee camps and literary spaces depicting waiting for indeterminate futures; the fourth considers waiting spaces of political resistance exemplified by the Scottish independence struggle and Palestinian graffiti art; and the fifth and last section focuses on medical waiting spaces in hospitals and sickrooms. Conceptually, the structure is informed by the following considerations: firstly, who (or what) is the power involved that makes subjects wait? Secondly, is this an absolute power or a power legitimized by democratic or capitalist concerns? Schweizer distinguishes between two modalities of waiting, namely teleological waiting directed towards a particular end and indeterminate, objectless waiting. (11–​2) Are we then confronted with messianic waiting for salvation, Beckettian waiting for an elusive Godot, or does the experience of waiting rather involve Kafkaesque dread and nightmarish qualities? What connects these considerations is their interest in spatio-​temporal manifestations of power. 4

Outline of This Collection

In the opening essay, “Waiting in the Antechamber,” Helmut Puff takes the experiences of waiting that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart describes as his starting point to analyse the architecture of the elites. By discussing the corridors and antechambers in early modern Europe, Puff establishes a temporal map of power that serves to examine both the power structures involved in waiting and the feelings of boredom, discomfort or even dread that these spaces evoke among those waiting to be granted audience with the high and mighty. Puff reads these highly structured and stratified architectural spaces as reifications of hierarchical power imbalances, arguing that antechambers are precursors to various other waiting areas such as those in hospitals, airports, and the ‘salles d’attente’ in railway stations. He thus contributes to a history of waiting that, in his own words, “revolves less around the final truths about time’s essence than the temporal poetics of the everyday.” (31) Robin Kellermann, in his contribution, analyses these railway stations in detail when he delineates the history and development of the modalities of waiting that surfaced alongside the expanding railway systems in Europe. Kellermann’s article offers a diachronic overview of waiting rooms and their social as well as architectonic transformations. These developments, however, go beyond mere considerations of logistics: they, more importantly, highlight the socio-​economic stratifications that went hand-​in-​hand with establishing and implementing waiting rooms.

Introduction

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Richard Hardack is concerned with social spaces that simultaneously represent real as well as symbolic mobility: legal courts. In this regard, Hardack reminds us of how the U.S.-​American legal system in particular is closely tied to the experience of legal delay and deferral. As a result of these temporal disruptions, the implicated subjects remain stranded in legal limbo for months or years on end. Cornelia Wächter approaches these spaces via prison-​literature and analyses relevant works by Charles Dickens, Charles Reade and John Galsworthy, whose critique of the prison system exposes the “unbearable protraction of experienced time in the process of indefinite waiting, deprived of means to alleviate the burden of waiting…” (83) In this regard, she is especially concerned with the representation and the effects of being placed in solitary confinement and argues that “… waiting in solitary confinement might be read as an act of resistance to or subversion of prison discipline, namely as the refusal to participate in the process of ‘normalisation’.” (84) Christoph Singer’s article is concerned with literary representations of a space that can be understood as a prison placed outside the rules and regulations of common law: the camp. Singer is specifically interested in the temporal effects of refugee-​camps, which not only place the waiting subject outwith legal structures, in Giorgio Agamben’s terms, but also, in a sense, out of time. Singer analyses how this experience is represented in two contemporary African short-​stories:  E.C. Osondu’s “Waiting” and Dinah Mengetsu’s “An Honest Exit.” Kerstin Howaldt’s article examines contemporary representations of stasis and powerlessness. Howaldt discusses Dave Egger’s novel A Hologram for the King, a novel that evokes Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka as well as Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. In Eggers’s novel, an American businessman called Alan Clay is forced to spend his time waiting for the Saudi-​Arabian King to appear on the vast construction site in the desert that will soon be a town bearing the King’s name: King Abdullah Economic City. Here it is the fictional Saudi-​ Arabian King that forces an American businessman into perpetual ‘waithood’. Howaldt discusses the spatio-​temporal set-​up of absolute power as presented in this constellation and elaborates on the effects that both space and the (im-​) possibility of an event have on the novel’s protagonist. Her article also illustrates that the spatial effects of absolute power, as presented in Helmut Puff’s article mentioned above, have not changed as much as one may assume. Nonetheless, such literary and cultural expression can also be understood as forms of resistance against the powers-​that-​be. By describing and illustrating the experience of stasis and of being out of time, authors and artists manage to highlight the defiance that may result from being an outcast. To that end,

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Amanda Lagji discusses two plays, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Zakes Mda’s play And the Girls in Their Sunday Dresses. The former is famously one of the most well-​known and influential literary representations of existential waiting. Mda’s play, similar to Dave Egger’s novel mentioned above, “not only nods at Beckett but tips the wink at Kafka” (Gardner 2012: n.p.) Set in the context of Apartheid-​South-​Africa, the play follows two women waiting in line for food. Lagji shows how this experience of waiting is as much an act of resistance as it is a sign of oppression. This notion of waiting as a symbol of resistance also forms the underlying argument in Olaf Berwald’s article, in which he examines representations of waiting as a mode of resistance to systemic violence in late modernist works by two exiled writers, Hermann Broch and Peter Weiss. Berwald provides close readings of key passages in Broch’s hallucinatory lyrical prose and Weiss’s antagonistic dialogue scenes, and makes use of W.R. Bion’s psychoanalytical theory of the “container/​contained,” in order to better understand the waiting patterns of encapsulation and self-​isolation, interwoven with liberation attempts, that sustain the protagonists in Broch’s and Weiss’s works. Waiting is, of course, not only an individual, but very often a shared experience since, especially in the contexts of communal waiting, the notion of space can be understood as literal and figural, both of which are reciprocally intertwined. It is these connections between real and imagined space that will be discussed in this section. Robert Wirth’s contribution hones in on Scotland’s ongoing wait to become a nation-​state. Within the struggle of either retaining or gaining constitutional powers, waiting turns into a decidedly political act –​ a form of resistance that can be both demoralising and empowering. While the wait for the side opposed to Scotland’s secession from the UK takes a Kafkaesque form, the wait for independence displays the rather Beckettian qualities of anticipating a preferable, yet essentially elusive future. Wirth’s analysis of three referenda on the ‘Scottish question’ delineates how political agency has gradually shifted from the parliament in Westminster to the one in Holyrood, illustrates to what end waiting can be politically used as a strategic tool, and demonstrates the ways in which this wait manifests itself spatially in the form of protests, vigils and appropriation of public space. He asserts that waiting should not only be considered immobilising, in specific situations it can also –​if applied over long periods of time –​lead to political empowerment that is occasioned by a correlation of investment of time, effort and patience which over time kindles resistance. Margaret Olin’s article on the Dheisheh refugee-​camp in Palestine takes up these notions of persistently resisting to accept the status quo. Olin shows how the experience of being suspended in time in a camp may lead to the

Introduction

13

creation of very specific myths and narratives. This Olin exemplifies by means of the cartoon figure called Handala which can be found all over the camp’s walls. Handala, the barefoot refugee boy who is always depicted with his back turned, is the personification of a young child who cannot grow up. As such he is reminiscent of Günter Grass’s novel Die Blechtrommel and its protagonist Oskar Matzerath. Where Oskar, however, consciously decided to remain in his childlike state, Handala has no such choice. In Handala’s case, the cartoon figure takes on a life of its own and is transformed into a powerful symbol that is found side-​by-​side with murals of martyrs. Olin shows how the refugees’ waiting, which spans generations, is represented and discussed on the walls of Dheisheh. The fifth and final section of this collection is concerned with spaces of waiting that may be read as a specifically embodied form of waiting: hospitals and sickrooms. Elise Brault-​Dreux offers a close reading of Philip Larkin’s poem “The Building” from 1974. Just like the subjects contained within it, the reader has to wait to find out what purpose this building really serves. The edifice in question, it becomes clear towards the end of the poem, is a hospital, filled with sick and dying patients. To be a ‘patient’, etymologically speaking, implies suffering and pain. Brault-​Dreux shows that what exactly the nameless subjects in Larkin’s poem are suffering from is not only a sense of being trapped in a sick body, but also the related experiences of fear, boredom and an uncertainty of a future to come. The final article by Katrin Röder shares these concerns. Röder’s discussion of Virginia Woolf’s essay “On Being Ill” shows the sick Woolf trying to make sense of being placed in a specific kind of non-​place: the sickroom. Space, identity and waiting are deeply intersected as illustrated by Röder’s analysis. Woolf’s essay is concerned with the experience of being immobilized by an illness. The resulting period of convalescence, that is, waiting for health, is presented not only as a form of spatial immobility but also as a state that puts personal development and communal experiences on stand-​still. As Röder shows, both space and identity are simultaneously being put on hold. All of the contributions stress a central point: to think of space and place independently may often lead to a rather restricted perspective on either of them. What a focus on waiting –​as well as the spaces producing said waiting –​ allows us to do is to get a clearer understanding of the very fault lines that tie space and time together in the first place. The construction of space, as all of these contributions elucidate, is often the result of a socio-​political production of time –​and the production of time is tied to space. Waiting and the sense of duration, insecurity and the related deconstruction of synchronicity illustrates the reciprocal nature and the respective limits of both.

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References



Primary Sources



Secondary Sources

Dylan, Bob (1997): “Not Dark Yet.” Time Out of Mind. Columbia Records. King, Martin Luther (2018): “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” 1963. Why We Can’t Wait. London: Penguin. 85–​109.

Agamben, Giorgio (1998): Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Akerstrom, Malin (1997): “Waiting: A Source of Hostile Interaction in an Emergency Clinic.” Qualitative Health Research 7.4: 504–​20. Augé, Marc (2008): Non-​Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity. 1995. London: ­Verso. Auyero, Javier (2012): Patients of the State: The Politics of Waiting in Argentina. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Bayart, Jean-​François (2007): Global Subjects: A Political Critique of Globalization, Cambridge: Polity Press. Bauman, Zygmunt (2007): Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity Press. Berensmeyer, Ingo, Christoph Ehland and Herbert Grabes (2012): Introduction. Mobility in Literature and Culture, 1500–​1900. Ed. Ingo Berensmeyer, Christoph Ehland, and Herbert Grabes. Tübingen: Narr Verlag. xi-​xxiv. Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature 28. Bissell, David (2007): “Animating Suspension.” Mobilities 2.2: 277–​98. Bourdieu, Pierre (2000): Pascalian Mediations. Stanford: Stanford University Press. De Certeau, Michel (1984): The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Clapton, Gary (2018): “The General Practice Health Waiting Area in Images: Threshold, Borderland, and Place of Transition in the Sense of Self.” Forum: Qualitative Social Research 19.1: 1–​17. Dobelli, Rolf (2013): The Art of Thinking Clearly. Trans. Nicky Griffin. New York: Harper. Gardner, Lyn (2012): “And the Girls in Their Sunday Dresses –​Edinburgh Festival Review.” The Guardian, 22 Aug. 2012. . Accessed 23 Nov. 2018. Hage, Ghassan (2009): Waiting. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Honwana, Alcinda (2014): “ ‘Waithood’: Youth Transitions and Social Change.” Development and Equity: An Interdisciplinary Exploration by Ten Scholars from Africa, Asia and Latin America. Ed. Dick Foecken et al. New York: Brill. 28–​40. Jeffrey, Craig (2010): Timepass: Youth, Class, and the Politics of Waiting in India. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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Karsten, Luchien (2013): Globalisation and Time. London: Routledge. Khosravi, Shahram (2014):  “Waiting.” Migration:  The Compas Anthology. Ed. Bridget Anderson and James Donald. Oxford: compas. n.p. Kracauer, Siegfried (1995): “Those Who Wait.” 1922. The Mass Ornament: The Weimar Essays. Ed. and trans. Thomas Y. Levin. Cambridge, US: Harvard University Press. 129–​42. Kracauer, Siegfried (1990):  “Die Wartenden.” 1922. Siegfried Kracauer:  Aufsätze 1915–​ 1926. Ed. Inka Mülder Bach. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. 160–​9. Kracauer, Siegfried (1997): “On Employment Agencies: The Construction of a Space.” 1930. Rethinking Architecture:  A Reader in Cultural Theory. Ed. Neil Leach. London: Routledge, 57–​62. Kracauer, Siegfried (1990):  “Über Arbeitsnachweise.” 1922. Siegfried Kracauer Schriften: Aufsätze 1927–​31. Ed. Inka Mülder Bach. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. 185–​91. Kremer, William (2015): “Why Young Adults Are Waiting to Grow Up.” BBC World Service, 31 Oct. 2015. . Accessed 25 Nov. 2018. Krishnan, S. Shunmuga and Ramesh K. Sitaraman (2013):  “Video Stream Quality Impacts Viewer Behavior:  Inferring Causality Using Quasi-​Experimental Designs.” IEEE/​ACM Transactions on Networking 21.6: 2001–​14. n.a. (2009): “Alzheimer’s Sufferers Encouraged to Wait at Fake Bus-​Stop to Give ‘Sense of Purpose’.” Mail Online, 26 May 2009. . Accessed 20 Apr. 2018. Lefebvre, Henri (1984): Everyday Life in the Modern World. 1971. Trans. Sacha Rabinovitch. New Brunswick: Transaction Books. May, Jon and Nigel Thrift (2001): Timespace: Geographies of Temporality. London and New York: Routledge. Massey, Doreen (1992): “A Place Called Home?” New Formations 17 (Summer): 3–​15. Moran, Joe (2005): Reading the Everyday. New York: Routledge. de Quetteville, Harry (2008): “Wayward Alzheimer’s Patients Foiled by Fake Bus Stop.” The Telegraph, 3 June 2008. . Accessed 19 Apr. 2018. Perec, George (1997):  Species of Spaces and Other Pieces. Trans. John Sturrock. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Rittenmeyer, Leslie, Dolores Huffman and Chris Godfrey (2014): “The Experience of Patients, Families, and/or Significant Others of Waiting When Engaging with the Healthcare System: A Systematic Qualitative Review. JBI Database Systematic Review Implement Reports 12.8: 193–258. Schwartz, Barry (1974):  “Waiting, Exchange, and Power:  The Distribution of Time in Social Systems.” American Journal of Sociology 79.4: 841–​70. Schweizer, Harold (2008): On Waiting. New York: Routledge.

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Secor, Ann (2007): “Between Longing and Despair: State, Space and Subjectivity in Turkey.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 25: 33–​52. Sharma, Sarah (2014): In the Meantime: Temporality and Cultural Politics. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Srnicek, Nick and Alex Williams (2015):  Inventing the Future:  Postcapitalism and a World Without Work. London: Verso. Vannini, P. (2002): “Waiting Dynamics: Bergson, Virilio, Deleuze, and the Experience of Global Times.” Journal of Mundane Behaviour 3.2: 193–​208. William, Jennifer (2010):  Killing Time:  Waiting Hierarchies in the Twentieth-​Century ­German Novel. Lewisburg: Brucknell University Press.

­c hapter 1

Waiting in the Antechamber Helmut Puff Abstract Waiting stimulates an array of responses in those who wait. From the vantage point of society, waiting coordinates social interactions. In early modern Europe, social stratification manifested itself, among other things, by imposing a wait time on those of a lower status and requiring supplicants to wait for an audience with a person of influence. The buildings of the elites therefore designated particular spaces for those who waited, the so-​called antechambers. This chapter offers a first foray into the architectural, social, and cultural history of this room type from fifteenth-​century Italy, Renaissance France and Spain, to the Holy Roman Empire in the eighteenth-​century. The author traces these rooms’ emergence, their location within palaces or mansions, their proliferation, and their furnishings as well as their social etiquette in order to approximate the actual experience of what it meant to wait. Those who waited in antechambers were bound to increase their awareness of time as well as of their place in the world.

Keywords Canaletto  –​Benjamin Franklin  –​Johann Wolfgang von Goethe  –​Louis xiv  –​ ­Leopold Mozart  –​Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart  –​Julius Bernard von Rohr  –​Carl Schmitt  –​ Charlottenburg Castle  –​ Escorial  –​ Florence  –​ France  –​ Geneva  –​ ­Italy  –​ ­Munich  –​ Paris  –​ ­Potsdam  –​ Versailles  –​ Vienna  –​ Warsaw  –​ Weimar  –​ ­antechamber  –​ ­apartment court ordinances  –​ court protocol  –​ Enlightenment  –​ residential ­architecture

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/​9 789004407121_​0 03

18 Puff 1

Introduction

“I had the honour to wait a whole hour” (Mozart 282).1 With biting irony, Wolfgang Amadè Mozart2 recounted what he endured while trying to secure a post as a musician at the French royal court. In a letter of May 1, 1778, Mozart fils shared with his Très cher père (very dear father)3 Leopold the physical discomforts, insults, and boredom petitioners in aristocratic households experienced while waiting for an audition. A patron and friend had equipped the composer with a letter of recommendation. When Mozart contacted the Duc and Duchesse de Chabot, however, he received no response: “[a]‌week passed without any news at all” (Mozart 282). Refusing to give up, he made a house call. On arrival, he “had to wait half an hour in a large, ice-​cold, unheated room that did not even have a fireplace” (ibid.). When the duchess greeted him politely, as is duly noted, Mozart refused to show his musical talent on the only keyboard instrument available. “I’d be only too happy to play something but that it was now impossible,” he pleaded, “as my fingers were numb with cold.” In fact, he “asked her if she’d at least lead me to a room with a hearth and a fire.” Unfazed, the duchess responded: “ ‘Mais oui, Monsieur, vous avez raison!’ (‘Oh yes, Mister, you are absolutely right!’) That was her entire answer.” Still, nothing much ensued. The duchess “sat down and started to draw for a whole hour in the company of some gentlemen, who all sat in a circle around a large table” (ibid.). How the lady of the house and her entourage were able to draw in a supposedly chilly room during a Parisian spring is one of many details Mozart’s narration covers over –​ellipses that one can only surmise the addressee, Leopold, noticed. Our letter writer observes that another hour wasted away, during which he suffered great unease in what he describes as a shivering cold. It is, of course, difficult to know whether the time spans punctuating his account are approximate, factual, or exaggerated. Even though there is no mention of a clock, we know that Mozart owned no fewer than five portable timepieces, as a slightly earlier letter testifies (November 13, 1777): wearing them visibly might prevent great lords from gifting him another, he writes in jest. Putting one’s pocket watch on display was evidently fashionable, especially for men. What is more, in this period, synchronising one’s own time with the nascent scientific standard emerged as “a means of social distinction” among the elites (Sauter 1 The letter’s autograph with a German transcription and an edition is part of the Digital Mozart Edition, http://​dme.mozarteum.at/​DME/​briefe/​letter.php?mid=1011&cat=. 2 This is how he signed this particular letter (cf. ibid). 3 The address is the one Mozart uses in this letter.

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19

2007: 703). That Mozart spent the hours at the Hôtel de Chabot acutely aware of measured time is therefore likely. When the composer realised that his request for better conditions fell on deaf ears, he made do with “that miserable, wretched Pianoforte” (Mozart 282). He played his variations on a minuet by Johann Christian Fischer in C (K. 179), only to interrupt his playing half way through. “The worst,” he writes, was not the miserable instrument. “The worst” was that the duchess and her circle carried on with their drawing while he performed “for the chairs, table and walls,” as he lets his father know: “I had to wait yet another half an hour” (Mozart 282–​3). When the Duc de Chabot finally appeared, he, at last, gave Mozart his undivided attention: “I forgot all about the cold and my headache and, regardless of the wretched piano, played as I play when I’m in a good mood” (Mozart 283) –​a surprising turn that puts narrative closure on his account. In a prolix narration, Mozart thus informs his father of the difficulties he faced when looking for patronage or employment. To build his case for not wanting to wait for an audition again, the same letter lists additional obstacles such as the muck on the streets of the French capital, the cost of crossing the city in a rented coach, and the recent decline in politesse he claims to have observed among the French. Waiting permeates Mozart’s letter like a basso continuo, the bass accompaniment in a piece of eighteenth-​century music. On the first two of the letter’s four pages,4 the word appears no less than five times. Even the ruptures in the epistle’s narrative logic give contour to what Mozart recounts as an excruciating experience. His poignant account of what it meant to be kept in a state of waiting may be as valuable as it is rare. The letter in question reveals a temporal modality that we can safely assume was part and parcel of quotidian life in the ancien régime. For the individual, waiting can be said to be a condition in which time becomes experiential. The putative omnipresence of the experience notwithstanding, waiting has hitherto largely escaped historical investigation. It “is a temporal region hardly mapped and badly documented”, as Harold Schweizer formulates (2008: 1). While the episode in the Hȏtel de Chabot opens a telling window into Mozart’s much discussed psychology, I  want to instead take his epistle as an introduction into structural aspects of waiting experiences in stratified societies.5 Waiting, I contend, ordered social interactions on a variety of levels. What is more, the built environment 4 Anna Maria Mozart, the composer’s mother, then added another message before the letter was sent off to Salzburg. 5 Recently, waiting has found increasing attention (cf. the edited volumes by Hage 2009 and Kazmaier et al. 2016).

20 Puff constituted “a potent tool for political and social engineering” regarding these temporal protocols (Coaldrake 1996: 3).6 As the lament of Mozart’s letter of May 1, 1778, makes clear, for a mere musician the chances of finding open doors in elite households were slim. Not surprisingly, the term honour wafts through his letter. If we follow its thrust, social status is, among other things, measured in time. During the ancien régime, upper echelons had the lower ones wait customarily. Such intervals were markers of social difference. Put differently, rank stood in direct relation to the wait-​time a person of higher rank, as a rule, imposed on others. Occasionally, of course, no such wait was necessary, as legends or historical documents have it, be it because an inferior commanded striking beauty or a highly desirable skill; be it because of the particular largess or need on the part of those who occupied a higher station. Yet these cases may be just that, exceptions. They highlight the systematic nature of waiting in contexts where different social groups routinely interacted. That Mozart’s supreme musical talent failed to bridge the social gap separating him from potential patrons is the sting he noted and reported back home. By the end of the eighteenth century, the social modalities of waiting for an audience, or, in Mozart’s case, an audition already had a venerable history. Protocols mediated between those whose existence depended on others’ favor and those who had, or at least seemed to have, something to give, and therefore were in a position to make others wait. At early modern European courts and in the residences of the elites, audience seekers were assigned a particular space as a matter of course, the so-​called antechambers. An eighteenth-​century encyclopedia defines this room as the “fore-​chamber in a princely palace that leads to the audience room” (Zedler vol. 2, col. 528). These anterooms provided a designated location for residents as well as non-​residents who sought a face-​ to-​face exchange with the owner; servants who accompanied their masters on a visit or carried out a task on their behalf usually were barred from proceeding beyond this space. Importantly, those who bid time in this fashion were not only musicians or commoners. They included diplomats, aristocrats, courtiers, officeholders, petitioners, travelers, and others, though their chances of being received and how long they had to spend time in limbo depended on a host of factors, among them their social status, the nature of their mission, and the goodwill of the 6 With few exceptions, classic accounts on early modern European courts like Norbert Elias’s fail to provide a systematic account of the temporal organisation with regard to courtly life. For a substantial treatment of the complexities of court life with regard to time and space at the imperial court in 17th century Vienna (cf. Hengerer 2004: 195–​260).

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person or persons of distinction they wanted to meet. While general rules of etiquette applied, there were marked differences between individuals as regards the degree of accessibility they permitted others. As a rule, access to the lord or lady of the house needed to be granted, however –​a task that a chamberlain oversaw in the households of the great and mighty. 2

The Rise of the Antechamber

Rooms defined as transitory in both spatial and temporal terms first emerged in the fifteenth century. Great medieval palaces had been divided into parts where formal councils, grand festivities, and banquets took place as well as other parts where the pope or prince withdrew to rest. While the latter chambers were not strictly private in the modern sense of the word, relatively few people had the privilege to enter them (Radke 1994). Architectural features like courts, gates, and stairs contributed to shaping interactions while also defining access. As manuscript illuminations show, the great halls served as a space where supplicants were able to approach rulers, sometimes aided by the support of intermediaries (Wolfthal forthcoming). In this context, the antechamber offered a novel solution to the interconnected demands of aristocratic or ecclesiastic representation, administration, and communication between people of different ranks. Not surprisingly, fifteenth-​century palaces of prominent merchants, ecclesiastical dignitaries, and powerful rulers show evidence for some of the earliest examples of this room type. As a rule, the houses of the great in Renaissance Italy, for instance, featured a ceremonial hall (sala or salone) as well as a chamber (camera). But the wish for spatial intimacy and the need to accommodate different kinds of visitors soon led to extended floor plans. These satellite rooms were distinguished from the former by their smaller size. Such rooms often lacked a clear function. For practical reasons, for instance, they regularly served as a dining hall. Yet they also offered a space to interact with intimates, and were therefore sometimes sumptuously furnished. Significantly, however, the disposition of rooms did not follow a certain order, as it would in the enfilade, the linear progression of rooms in the late seventeenth century and thereafter. Still, the fifteenth-​century Palazzo Medici in Florence (1445–​1447) was a multi-​floor building with self-​contained living quarters for different members of this highly prestigious family. Thanks to floor plans, inventories, and accounts we know that every apartment included an anticamera (Bulst 1990; Kwastek 2011: 174–​81). As in-​between –​or next-​to rooms, these rooms offered spaces to differentiate domestic functions, limit access, or stage different kinds

22 Puff of interactions (Chatenet 2003). By offering a space where audience seekers, petitioners, suppliers, and members of the familia would bide their time, it allowed for making distinctions between people with different claims of access. While the antechamber first appeared in the Louvre and other French chateaux under the reign of King Henri ii (r. 1547–​1559), it was his son, King Henri iii (r. 1574–​1589), who sought to introduce a court protocol that relied on projecting royal authority through spatial arrangements and ceremonial rules. Here, the antechamber gained definition in increasing the spatial distance to the ruler (Chatenet 1992). Initially, however, the rise of the antechamber provoked critical responses. In France, for instance, this novel phenomenon was coded as Italian. The term antichambre in French (from which both the German and English terms derive) was a mid-​sixteenth century loan translation of the Italian anticamera (Boudon and Chatenet 1994: 73–​4). Viewed as a foreign intrusion, the word and what it captured signaled an elevation of the ruler to contemporary critics and thereby a departure from a tradition of giving royal subjects access to their king (Whiteley 1994: 50; Smith 1996). The prefix of the word antechamber derives from the Latin “ante” meaning “in front of” or “before,” whereas in Tuscan it signified “next to.” As the German spelling antichambre as in anti or “against” suggests, however, they also may conjure up a contrast or an opposite.7 Their typically austere furnishings sparked the imagination; they led those who waited to conjecture a world of riches and luxuries beyond the closed doors that they were hoping to see open. This was evidently the case with Mozart. His letter stops short of calling the “large, ice-​cold, unheated room that did not even have a fireplace” an antechamber, though he imagined a heated room somewhere else in the same building. His letter gives voice to an outlook that must have been common among those who waited in designated areas. At any rate, chambers of this kind are harbingers of built receptacles such as salles d’attente in railway stations, waiting areas in hospitals, and waiting at airport gates, even if today those who wait are not necessarily walled off and even if in the case of the antechamber the room organised access to people, not to means of transportation or medical services. Information on these transitional rooms is scarce. Antechambers’ furnishings were such that art historians have had relatively little to say about them. 7 In the middle of the sixteenth century, the word antichambre first appeared in the French language as a translation of the Italian anticamera such as Serlio’s treatise on architecture (cf. Chatenet 2003, passim). German adopted the word from French. It is important to note that the adoption of Italian court style and etiquette in other European countries found a mixed reaction.

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Where we can locate wait rooms in palaces with some degree of certainty, such as in San Lorenzo de El Escorial, one of several residences of the kings of Spain (built 1563–​1584), the spatial sequence of the antechambers and the audience hall conveyed a well-​calculated message about the ruler and his realm. Once a diplomat had left the relatively small room and was shown into the great hall, they encountered a grand space adorned with instruments, maps, and images as well as an impressive view over the wide expanse of Castile (Morterero Simón 1987: 339, 348; Kamen 2010).8 At Versailles, the king and the queen inhabited their respective appartements with their duplicate enfilade of rooms and the requisite anterooms –​a symmetry that was to become a feature of courtly residences across Europe. The antechamber to the apartment of Queen Marie-​Thérèse and the Dauphine between the Salle de Garde and the Salle des Nobles was where King Louis xiv of France and members of the royal family dined together between 1673 and 1690. These festive suppers were public in the sense that commoners could attend, at least if they had connections to the Swiss guards overseeing access and if they wore appropriate clothing upon admission. At these ceremonious occasions, the courtiers stood surrounding the table where the Sun King and his family were seated. The royals were thus able to eavesdrop on their entourage’s comments or conversations; in order for these communications to get heard, one spoke loudly and clearly (Milovanovic 2010: 18). Once the antechamber emerged in the residences of the powerful, it is only logical that, in a socially stratified society, their number multiplied to distinguish between visitors of different status. The Palazzo Ducale (today Palazzo Vecchio), residence of the Grand Duke Cosimo I of Tuscany, featured two anticamere already in the middle of the sixteenth century (Thornton 1991: 294). In early seventeenth-​century Rome, cardinals inhabited apartments with two anterooms (Waddy 1994: 160). In the early eighteenth century, the Hoff-​ Auffwartungs-​Instruction (1717) specified no fewer than six different waiting areas for the Archbishop of Cologne’s residence in Bonn. Nuns, artisans, and burghers were supposed to wait in areas close to the general entrance –​areas that, I suspect, were not walled in. By contrast, nobles waited in rooms that were part of the room sequence leading up to the prince bishop’s more private rooms and located on the piano nobile. In all six spaces, visitors were supposedly grouped into clerics, administrators, military officers, and foreigners. It follows then that social status correlated with spatial proximity

8 The extraordinary status El Escorial has been given as a key to Spanish culture has recently been interrogated and revised (Kamen 2010).

24 Puff to the elector. Interior decorations further enhanced these distinctions. “The closer the antechamber is to the apartment of the ruler, the more magnificent the furnishings,” is how Julius Bernhard von Rohr synthesised the practices at different residences in his introduction to Zeremonialwissenschaft  –​ the science of ceremonies that flourished in the early eighteenth century at the interstices of conduct books, court guides, cameralism, and political thought (1733: 73). This general principle barely masks the considerable wealth of local conditions that even treatises on ceremonies, such as von Rohr’s, failed to capture. In the archbishopric, the complexity of court life became manifest, above all, on the so-​called “gala days” (feasts) or when high-​ranking guests and foreign delegations visited. These occasions aimed to showcase the polity. But they also brought many subjects into relation with the ruler, or at least attempted to, since absenteeism haunted this notion of embodied statehood (Hengerer 2013: 25–​7). As a result, great efforts were therefore taken to promulgate, re-​issue, and update ordinances like the Hoff-​Auffwartungs-​Instruktion (Winterling 1986: 79–​85; Sommer 1997: 73–​89). The antechamber as an architectural vessel was not exclusively a feature of aristocratic residences. Spatial configurations that comprised waiting rooms are also attested for the middling classes in Baroque Rome, for example. In the seventeenth century, well-​off Romans lived in single-​floor apartments (Frommel 1973: 72–​3; Waddy 1994). The extant inventories indicate that the anticamera or, in some cases, anticamere, as a rule, were adorned with paintings and other works of art. By comparison, furniture or chairs were rare; they were brought in from other rooms when needed (Ago 2013: 65–​93). In Paris, antichambres became common in the appartements of the bourgeoisie during the eighteenth century. If we follow the notarial record, they often fulfilled several functions simultaneously, serving as waiting rooms, reception halls, storerooms and entryways, or a combination thereof. Moreover, there was considerable variation as to their décor and the material objects they contained. The inventories mention, for instance, that some antichambres contained gaming tables (Paradailhé-​Galabrun 1991:  55, 65).9 In city states like Geneva, Parisian style apartments held great cachet during the same period, though their size, layout, and distribution were often of a smaller scale. As a result, reception areas for visitors in eighteenth-​century Genevan hôtels particuliers often were modest by comparison to their architectural models; owners occasionally opened 9 A letter by Liselotte of the Palatinate of December 6, 1682 mentions that one of the antechambers in the Château de Versailles also contained King Louis xiv’s billiard table (Liselotte von der Pfalz 39; Graf 2006: 316).

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their most private rooms on festive occasions; and masters mostly lived in close contact with their servants. Yet these urban residences practically never went without one or two antichambres (Winiger-​Labuda 2004: 51–​62). Above examples lend credence to what one of the foremost experts on architecture of his time, Augustin-​Charles Daviler (or d’Aviler), decreed in 1691, namely that apartments minimally had four rooms: a main room, a cabinet (small chamber), and a garderobe (wardrobe), possibly on a different floor, as well as the antechamber and, finally, a staircase leading up to the residential unit (179). Those who commissioned edifices showered great attention on contact zones between residents and visitors. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s mansion in Weimar is a case in point. When he became the owner of the house on the Frauenplan where he had rented before, he meticulously planned the construction of a sprawling stairwell as well as a reception area of several adjoining rooms; he even sacrificed residential space to carry out this grand design (1792–​1795). As a rule, the “prince of poets” received the many people who wanted to see him during a particular time slot, between 11am and noon. A servant would accompany a visitor on his ascent. The passageway featured a total of 33 steps, several turns, and a staircase with a steep incline leading up to the door to the living quarters. Before crossing the threshold to the residential quarters with its welcome message, “Salve” (in form of a wood inlay), one would detect the copy of an ancient sculpture of two young men in an embrace on the upper landing, arguably the most prominent among several works of art that adorned one’s passage (known today as the Prado’s San Ildefonso Group). In the eighteenth century, the youths’ mythological identity was contested. But no matter who one thought they were they figured as emblems of friendship and harmony –​an auspicious sign for the newly arrived. Depending on the newcomer’s rank or the interest Goethe took in the guest, he would impose a wait time or join them immediately. If the initial encounter went well, the host could invite visitors to continue the conversation or show them samples from his art collections. This architectural setting with its sequence of ante-​spaces therefore provided “the opportunity to enact a nuanced welcoming ritual” (Holler and Knebel 2011: 40; Schlief 1965: 214; Wilson 2012: 12–​4, 301–​14). Without a doubt, location, size, and decoration of reception or waiting areas influenced the experiences of those who traversed them or passed time there. Antechambers are therefore prime examples of affective spaces –​an environment that molds one’s mental and physical state (McCormack 2013: 1–​37). Like in Rome, works of visual art were accorded a central role in Weimar. They were part of a carefully designed choreography for those who moved from the doorway to the residential sanctuary, for example. As one advanced through

26 Puff the space, the prints, frescoes, reliefs, and sculptures on display offered themselves to be read as a calling card of the owner, his status, his education, and his collections. The objects may have occasioned reminiscences on the part of the visitor –​reflections that might shorten one’s while, if one was not too nervous to notice –​or provided cues for striking up a conversation with the host. Such spatial and visual arrangements were anything but accidental in a society that turned receiving another person into something of an art form. Occasionally, owners spared no expense to outfit waiting rooms with objects that communicated important messages to their important guests. If we follow Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists (1550), Giovan Maria Benintendi, a Florentine banker, commissioned several of the greatest local painters in 1523 to equip his palazzo’s anticamera with an iconographic programme chosen to convey a well-​calculated message about his pro-​Medici leanings (Beuzelin). Antoine Pesne’s studio adorned an antechamber in the rococo wing of Charlottenburg Castle near Berlin (1740–​1746); the fresco was designed to lessen the woes of those who waited by projecting them into the midst of court life through painted scenes of gallantry between the sexes in a setting that opened the room’s confined space to a trompe l’oeil garden architecture (Ladendorf). In the second half of the eighteenth century, one of Europe’s most sought-​after painters, Bernardo Bellotto, also known as Canaletto, was commissioned to paint cycles of vedute for the second antechamber of the so-​ called Kurfürstenzimmer (Electors’ Chambers) in the Munich residence of the Electors of Bavaria –​the rather modest rococo room, designed in 1763, once again doubled as a dining room –​as well as for the King of Poland’s castle in Warsaw (Thoma 2014: 57–​66). These painted views of populated urban scenes and princely palaces were intended to foster an appreciation of the domains in question and their rulers’ good government among the high-​ranking dignitaries and diplomats who would have had access. By contrast, the Neue Palais in Potsdam (1763–​1769) provided lodgings for King Frederick ii of Prussia and members of his family, though not for his wife –​a marked departure from architectural as well as aristocratic conventions. As a maison de plaisance (Lustschloss) for the summer months, the palace did not accommodate state functions. The antechambers to the various apartments of the king and his guests with their chairs and benches functioned, among other things, as repositories for the king’s extensive collection of paintings (Graf 2012: 296–​8, 302–​3). The rise of the antechamber points to a long-​lasting transformation in the structure and organization of architecture between 1500 and 1800. In edifices of different kinds, aisles, corridors, vestibules, and stairs turned chains of rooms into built spaces increasingly divided between service and circulation units on the one hand and an inner sanctum accessible only to few people on

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the other hand. The owner’s interest in guarding his daily life from possible infringements by servants, subjects, or unwanted visitors was a rationale cited already in the sixteenth century: “purposeful or necessary communication was facilitated while incidental communication was reduced” (Evans 1997: 79). As a result, waiting experiences à la Mozart gained in significance. 3

Waiting as Social Practice

In the early modern period, dilatory architectural elements were formative. They contributed to projecting an aura of authority. In framing and guiding the reception of visitors, they also served as stages of interpersonal communication (Karlsen 2016). Put differently, the layout and furnishings of such spaces shaped social interactions. Only that the temporal order these spatial arrangements imposed on visitors have found little attention in the relevant literature on court society (Graf 2006:  305). For the political theorist Carl Schmitt, the existence of the antechamber and the corridor reminds us that power cannot be reduced to the people who are in power. Rather, power has its own weight: no matter which system of government is in place, questions of access –​via anterooms and corridors –​remain a constant feature; they define politics (Schmitt 1994). It would be erroneous, however, to see the anticamera’s purpose squarely as prohibiting visitors or audience seekers from entry. Rather, this room type assisted the production of social status via spatial layouts and temporal protocols. At any rate, etiquette and tradition militated against denying access to those who waited. Let us remember that the doors to the space where an audience would take place remained closed. Only occasionally, they swung open to invite in an individual or a group. In turn, the lord or lady might pass through the space on his or her way to a function or to church, which provided those who waited with an additional opportunity to interact. Consequently, every actual encounter came across as a favor. As such, it showed and solidified social elevation, at the same time as these ceremonies removed the great and powerful from the hustle and bustle of everyday interactions. Still, with regard to the imperial court in Vienna, one observer remarked that “the number of those who are uplifted (vergnügt) when they return from the antechamber to their lodgings is very small” (Freschot 1705: 77, trans. H. P.). Ordinarily, Joseph I  gave two or three two-​hour-​long official audiences per week. Supplicants customarily added their names to a register ahead of time, usually one day prior to their visit. To increase one’s chances of accomplishing what one desired to achieve, it might also pay off to have a word with the

28 Puff chief chamberlain, who could choose to intervene on one’s behalf with the emperor. On a particular day, the ruler picked names from the list of those in attendance. Envoys and clerics usually were given priority, whereas many others seem to have waited in vain. Given Emperor Leopold’s affable comportment and friendly manner, only three or four audience seekers were admitted on a given day, Casimir Freschot surmises. At the same time, whoever waited repeatedly and over long stretches of time risked to damage his or her honour or be considered a nuisance, thereby reducing his chances of advancement. After having been subjected to an extended waiting period, an officer of the imperial army is said to have started yelling in Italian so that his comments could be heard behind closed doors: “Emperor, call in your officers who die for you, not the clerics who tell you tall tales” (Freschot 1705: 79). This is a reminder that, occasionally, the laughter of courtiers or other noise penetrated the quarters of those whose social status required that they live behind closed doors. Paradoxically, it was precisely the opening up of the imperial antechamber to accommodate more people that created backlogs of visitors in the eighteenth century, as Mark Hengerer observes (Hengerer 2004: 246; cf. Pečar 2003). Anterooms thus gave architectural expression to a hierarchical society; they offered spaces where social differences became manifest. Yet, these rituals on the threshold between ante–​and audience chambers did not simply reflect a rigid hierarchy in a period when everyone knew his or her place. Given the tussle between aristocratic lineage, court offices, and favouritism, distinctions of access had to be negotiated on the basis of court protocol, precedent, and other factors. Put differently, ante-​spaces provided a stage where the vagaries of status were enacted as if they were certain. What the antechamber therefore represented was a tightening of opportunities to interact with a person of station as well as a delay in bringing about an interaction (Schlögl 2004: 190–​1). Thus viewed, the antechamber constituted a key space in a complex social arena. In courtly contexts, waiting amounted to an exercise in practical ethics. Waiting with others required discretion. Sharing one’s intentions all too liberally would possibly have been damaging to one’s intentions. Experts recommended that those who seek an audience first gather information. Court protocol varied, they argued. Familiarity with local customs and the knowledge of the practices of the particular person one intended to petition increased one’s ability to succeed (Von Rohr 1728: 345–​51). Since antechambers as a space offered a means of controlling access, individuals sought out other modes of interaction and other media to compensate for this lack of control. Typically, Mozart first approached his potential benefactors with a letter before appearing in person.

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As a result, knowing the art of how to wait for one’s turn to speak or act was said to be full of rewards. Naturally, practising this art was not confined to particular rooms. At the same time, the antechamber was a space where this art arguably was most in evidence. “Bide your time” is one of the aphorisms in Baltasar Gracián’s Pocket Oracle from 1647  –​a manual divided into small epigrammatic sections of considerable philosophical weight. The Oracle’s influential life as a concise guide to ethical behavior included a seventeenth-​ century French translation that appeared under the title L’homme de cour or “The Courtier” –​the basis for several German translations before and after 1700 (Forssmann 1977: 139–​215). In this particular maxim, readers were instructed that waiting needed to be learned. “First master yourself and then you will master others,” runs the commentary (Gracián 2011: 21). For Gracián, waiting, if rightly practiced, was a silent weapon, clearly differentiated from sheer inactivity. For this weapon to wield its force, the goals, intentions, or sentiments one harboured must remain secret. “Not immediately revealing everything fuels anticipation,” as the Pocket Oracle has it (ibid.: 3). Accordingly, a posture that belies one’s inner readiness through an inscrutable outward appearance makes one’s ability to exercise patience particularly effective. “The crutch of time accomplishes more than the iron club of Hercules,” as the author captures waiting’s promise for those ready to learn the lesson he offers (ibid.: 21). In the theater that is our world –​as Spanish Golden Age authors had it –​unexpected turns offered those who waited artfully opportunities to act. Those who had acquired the necessary skills were evidently at an advantage, it was said. If inwardly prepared, they found themselves in a good position to seize the moment once it had fallen into their laps. 4

Experiencing Waiting

During the century of the Enlightenment, one can hear the clocks ticking in the rooms where those who waited roamed. Time is money, as Benjamin Franklin formulated in 1748 (375). From the vantage point of an industrious society, waiting was time spent unproductively –​time that could and should have been put to better uses. The lack of measurable results therefore was one of several sources of frustration for those kept in this state. It is easy to imagine how Mozart, condemned to idleness in the Hôtel de Chabot, would have preferred to pass the hours differently, be it by composing or drinking coffee –​ meaningful activities, in other words. Deprived of the tools of his trade and discomfited by the long wait, he had to let valuable time simply tick away. Yet, waiting was more than a purely alienating or insufferable experience. What

30 Puff makes this experiential mode so generative is that it may have been neither wholly doleful nor wholly joyful. Waiting, in fact, has multiple sides even when it was experienced, as in Mozart’s case, as above all tedious. Those who found themselves in a position comparable to Mozart’s were destined to recognise conditions beyond their control. At least, potentially, they were reminded of their position in relation to others. At the same time, they were thrown back on themselves. It is this dual focus that makes waiting such a pregnant phenomenon. As a rule, we do not wish to wait. If we follow Gracián, for instance, the ability to wait is a means for realising one’s goals. In other words, waiting is only worth its temporal cost when the desired goal is finally reached. By contrast, waiting for its own sake was and is thought to be undesirable. Nonetheless, entering into the temporally bounded state of those who waited opened up the potential for reflection. There are a number of hints in our letter that Mozart found himself in a state of heightened awareness. He not only recorded in detail the many bodily and mental states he was made to suffer but he also eagerly noted the applause his musical talent earned him. The Duc was not the only one to respond enthusiastically; one also learns that the duchess and her circle expressed their acclaim for Mozart’s playing, though we do not get to hear in what form they did so. In fact, when they applauded they might even have had to put down their drawing utensils, though Mozart does not say. What is more, in a letter that voices tedium over aristocratic philistinism, the composer also developed a best-​case scenario: joy (freüde) in unison emerges as the shibboleth for what, in blissful circumstances, connects the performer with the music connoisseur. It may not be entirely accidental therefore that the second half of Mozart’s letter reports on a musical enterprise conducive to mutually shared enthusiasm through music, the so-​called concerts spirituels. These were concerts held in Paris for a paying audience, though the specifics he shares with his father about the concert he had attended seem to belie their excellence (Mozart). In sum, waiting stimulates retrospection, introspection, prospection, and, possibly, action (Jeffrey 2010). In this sense, waiting may also generate insight, not only frustration, as Mozart presents it and as most of us, if subjected to this state, still do. Put another way, “waiting” is a small-​scale hiatus experience –​a no more and not yet (Koselleck 1989: 64–​5, 144–​57, 349–​75). It orients those who find themselves in this state to what lies beyond the moment. Understood in this way, waiting amounts to a formative state whose end is in sight. It triggers an array of reactions or sensations in the individual waiting while it is also socially willed (Kracauer 1963). Waiting was part and parcel of early modern sociability. Learning how to bide one’s time while hoping for an encounter was an important lesson

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courtiers and others needed to master. And the antechamber as a space with its discomforts formed part of this discipline. Sounding out this experiential mode may have the benefit of leading the debate on time away from the existential themes that have overshadowed its exploration. A history of waiting, to which this chapter seeks to offer a contribution, revolves less around the final truths about time’s essence than the temporal poetics of the everyday. From this vantage point, waiting is one mode among others of how humans become aware of living in time as well as of who they are.

References



Primary Sources



Secondary Sources

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Ago, Renato (2013):  A Gusto for Things:  A History of Objects in Seventeenth-​Century Rome. Trans. Bradford Bouley, Corey Tazzara and Paula Findlen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Beuzelin, Cécile (2015): L’ ‘anticamera’ Benintendi: Morale et politique dans la painture domestique à Florence vers 1523. Florence: Leo S. Olschki. Boudon, Françoise and Monique Chatenet (1994): “Les logis du roi de France au XVIe siècle.” Architecture et vie sociale: L’organisation intérieure des grandes demeures à la

32 Puff fin du moyen âge et à la Renaissance: Actes du colloque tenu à Tours du 6 au 10 juin 1988. Ed. Jean Guillaume. Paris: Picard. 65–​82. Bulst, Wolfger (1990):  “Uso e trasformazione del Palazzo Mediceo fino ai Riccardi.” Palazzo Medici Riccardi. Ed. Guiseppe Cherubini. Florence: Giunti. 98–​129. Chatenet, Monique (2003): “Architecture et cérémonial à la cour de Henri II: L’apparition de l’antichambre.” Henri II et les arts: Actes du colloque international. École du Louvre et musée national de la Renaissance –​Écouen. 25, 26 et 27 septembre 1997. Ed. Hervé Oursel and Julia Fritsch. Paris: École du Louvre. 355–​80. Chatenet, Monique (1992): “Henri III et ‘L’ordre de la cour’: Evolution de l’étiquette à travers les règlements généraux de 1578 et 1585.” Henri III et son temps. Ed. Robert Sauzet. Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrien. 133–​9. Coaldrake, William H. (1996): Architecture and Authority in Japan. London: Routledge. Elias, Norbert (1983): The Court Society, trans. Edmund Jephcott. Oxford: Blackwell. Evans, Robert (1997):  Translations from Drawing to Buildings and Other Essays. London: Architectural Association. Forssmann, Knut (1977): Baltasar Gracian und die deutsche Literatur zwischen Barock und Aufklärung. Phil. Diss., Mainz. Frommel, Christoph Luitpold (1973): Der Römische Palastbau der Hochrenaissance. 3 vols. Tübingen: Ernst Wasmuth. Graf, Henriette (2012):  “Das Neue Palais   –​Funktion und Disposition der Appartements.” Friederisiko: Friedrich der Große, vol. 2: Die Essays. Ed. Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-​Brandenburg. Munich: Hirmer. 294–​303. Graf, Henriette (2006): “Hofzeremoniell, Raumfolgen und Möblierung der Residenz in München um 1700 –​um 1750.” Zeichen und Raum: Ausstellung und höfisches Zeremoniell in den deutschen Schlössern der Frühen Neuzeit. Ed. Peter-​Michael Hahn and Ulrich Schütte. Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag. 303–​24. Hage, Ghassan, ed. (2009): Waiting. Melbourne: University of Melbourne Press. Hengerer, Mark (2013): “Abwesenheit beobachten: Zur Einführung.” Abwesenheit beobachten: Zur Kommunikation auf Distanz in der Frühen Neuzeit. Ed. Mark Hengerer. Münster: Lit. 9–​28. Hengerer, Mark (2004):  Kaiserhof und Adel in der Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts. Constance: Universitätsverlag Konstanz. Holler, Wolfgang and Kristin Knebel, eds. (2011): Goethes Wohnhaus. Weimar: Klassik Stiftung Weimar. Jeffrey, Craig (2010): Timepass: Youth, Class, and the Politics of Waiting in India. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Kamen, Henry (2010): The Escorial: Art and Power in the Renaissance. New Haven: Yale University Press. Karlsen, Anja (2016): Das mitteleuropäische Treppenhaus des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts als Schaubühne repräsentativer Inszenierung. Petersberg: Michael Imhof.

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Kazmaier, Daniel, Julia Kerscher and Xenia Wotschal, eds. (2016): Warten als Kulturmuster. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Koselleck, Reinhart (1989):  Vergangene Zukunft:  Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Kracauer, Siegfried (1963):  “Die Wartenden.” 1922. Das Ornament der Masse:  Essays. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. 106–​18. Kwastek, Katja (2011): Camera: Gemalter und realer Raum der italienischen Frührenaissance. Weimar: vdg. Ladendorf, Heinz (1935):  “Das Vorzimmer des jungen Königs:  Neuentdeckte Wandbilder im Stile Pesnes.” Die Kunst:  Monatshefte für freie und angewandte Kunst 71: 16–​7. McCormack, Derek P. (2013): Refrains for Moving Bodies: Experience and Experiment in Affective Spaces. Durham: Duke University Press. Milovanovic, Nicolas (2010): L’Antichambre du Grand Couvert: Fastes de la table et du décor à Versailles. Paris: Gourcuff Gradenigo. Morterero Simón, Conrado, ed. (1987):  El Escorial:  Octava maravilla del mundo. ­Madrid: Patrimonia Nacional. Paradailhé-​Galabrun, Annik (1991): The Birth of Intimacy: Privacy and Domestic Life in Early Modern Paris. Trans. Jocelyn Phelps. Cambridge: Polity Press. Pečar, Andreas (2003): Die Ökonomie der Ehre: Höfischer Adel am Kaiserhof Karls VI. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Radke, Gary M. (1994): “Form and Function in Thirteenth-​Century Papal Palaces.” Architecture et vie sociale:  L’organisation intérieure des grandes demeures à la fin du moyen âge et à la Renaissance: Actes du colloque tenu à Tours du 6 au 10 juin 1988. Ed. Jean Guillaume. Paris: Picard. 11–​24. Sauter, Michael J. (2007):  “Clockwatchers and Stargazers:  Time Discipline in Early Modern Berlin.” The American Historical Review 112.3: 685–​709. Schlief, Walter (1965): Goethes Diener. Berlin: Aufbau. Schlögl, Rudolf (2004): “Der frühneuzeitliche Hof als Kommunikationsraum. Interaktionstheoretische Perspektiven der Forschung.” Geschichte und Systemtheorie: Exemplarische Fallstudien. Ed. Frank Becker. Frankfurt a. M.: Campus. 185–​225. Schmitt, Carl (1994):  Gespräch über die Macht und den Zugang zum Machthaber: Gespräch über den Neuen Raum. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Schweizer, Harold (2008): On Waiting. London: Routledge. Smith, Pauline M. (1996): The Anti-​Courtier Trend in 16th C. French Literature. Geneva: Droz. Sommer, Dagmar (1997):  “Hofordnungen:  Ordnung ist die Seele des Hofes.ˮ Erdengötter. Fürst und Hofstaat in der Frühen Neuzeit im Spiegel von Marburger Bibliotheks  –​ und Archivbeständen. Ed. Jörg Berns. Universitätsbibliothek Marburg. 72–​92.

34 Puff Thoma, Julia (2014):  “Geschaffen für Dining Room, Antichambre, Galerie:  Auftraggeber und Funktionen von Bellottos Veduten.” Canaletto:  Bernardo Bellotto malt Europe. Ed. Andreas Schumacher. Munich: Hirmer. 46–​71. Thornton, Peter (1991):  The Italian Renaissance Interior, 1400–​1600. New  York:  H. N. ­Adams. Waddy, Patricia (1994): “The Roman Apartment from the Sixteenth to the Seventeenth Century.” Architecture et vie sociale: L’organisation intérieure des grandes demeures à la fin du moyen âge et à la Renaissance: Actes du colloque tenu à Tours du 6 au 10 juin 1988. Ed. Jean Guillaume. Paris: Picard. 155–​66. Whiteley, Mary (1994):  “Royal and Ducal Palaces in France in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries:  Interior, Ceremony and Function.” Architecture et vie sociale:  L’organisation intérieure des grandes demeures à la fin du moyen âge et à la Renaissance: Actes du colloque tenu à Tours du 6 au 10 juin 1988. Ed. Jean Guillaume. Paris: Picard. 47–​63. Wilson, W. Daniel (2012):  Goethe, Männer, Knaben:  Ansichten zur ‚Homosexualität’. Frankfurt a. M.: Insel. Winiger-​Labuda, Anastazja (2004) : “De l’antichambre à l’arrière-​cabinet: L’influence parisienne dans la distribution des maisons genevoises du XVIIIe siècle.ˮ Génève –​ Lyon –​Paris. Relations artistiques, réseaux, influences, voyages. Ed. Leïla el-​Wakil and Pierre Vaisse. Geneva: Georg. 51–​62. Winterling, Aloys (1986): Der Hof der Kurfürsten von Köln 1688–​1794: Eine Fallstudie zur Bedeutung ‘absolutistischer’ Hofhaltung. Bonn: Röhrscheid. Wolfthal, Diane (forthcoming):  “When Did Servants Become Men?” Rivalrous Masculinities: New Directions in Medieval Gender Studies, ed. Ann Marie Rasmussen, J. Christian Straubhaar. Southbend: Notre Dame University Press.

chapter 2

Waiting for Railways (1830–​1914) Robin Kellermann Abstract The triumph of railways starting in early nineteenth century not merely generated a transport revolution, but from a user perspective also demanded for a new transitory mode of anticipating the departure of a train. The comparatively novel situation of ‘systemic waiting’ called for inventive architectural and psychological solutions. By retracing the evolutionary cycles of these solutions, the article reconstructs the characteristics of transport-​related waiting from constructional and perceptual perspectives in order to uncover the historically changing modalities of waiting as one of modernity’s most constitutive temporal phenomena. Touching mainly upon architectural and transport history, a diachronic analysis of waiting rooms of German and English railway stations highlights the constructional and connotative cycles ranging from a ‘waiting imperative’ (mid to end nineteenth century) to the ‘liberalisation’ of static waiting (around 1900) as the result of a co-​evolutionary process.

Keywords Wolfgang Schivelbusch  –​Carol L.V. Meeks  –​Eberhard Wulff  –​transport history  –​ ­mobility –​systemic waiting –​waiting imperative

1

Introduction

Waiting belongs to the greatly overlooked practices of everyday life, and among the many fields enforcing waiting times, transportation certainly accounts for a most prominent generator. As hardly any other sphere, the timetable-​based logic of transportation systems inherently produces spatial, temporal and organisational constraints that cause passengers to be stilled temporarily in situations of waiting before boarding trains, planes, ships or buses. Despite waiting constituting a central mobility practice, the omnipresent phenomenon lacks historical examination, particularly regarding the diachronic analysis of spatial representations. Even though the subjects of waiting

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/​9 789004407121_​0 04

36 Kellermann and immobility have recently seen increasing academic attention in the fields of human geography (Bissell 2007; Bissell and Fuller 2011; Cresswell 2014; Fuller 2014), ethnography (Vannini 2011), literary and cultural studies (Schweizer 2008; Benz 2013; Gräff 2014, Kellermann 2017), mobility studies (Kellermann 2020), transport planning (van Hagen 2011; Fan et al. 2016) and social psychology (Friman 2010), systematic historical examinations of transport-​related waiting remain surprisingly rare (Vozyanov 2014; Mom 2015). This paper will examine the phenomenon through the analytical lens of waiting rooms, which are considered the phenomenon’s most instructive spatial formations. It will aim to provide a better historical understanding of waiting as a constitutive and yet widely unnoticed aspect of transport and architectural history. While conducting an archaeology of waiting rooms, I ask which role waiting, and waiting rooms, played in the organisation of mass transportation. How did architects and engineers plan, position and equip these transitory environments within station buildings and how might passengers have perceived these spaces over time? Waiting rooms can be understood as complex spatial settings serving a multitude of psychological as well as organisational meanings. This chapter will trace evolutionary stages in planning and perceiving waiting rooms through an investigation of pioneering English (Liverpool, Manchester) and influential German (Elberfeld, Berlin Stettiner Bahnhof) railway stations in the period from the early days to the peak of railway travel (1830–​1914). By means of an interpretation of planning discourses, ground plans, illustrations as well as statistical source materials, I will finally argue for a historical co-​evolution of waiting rooms and waiting practices, resulting in the spatial marginalisation and critical reconfiguration of transport-​related waiting around 1900. By combining a socio-​technical with a cultural-​historical approach to the phenomenon of waiting, this paper is framed by the hypothesis that the railways’ systemic logic of synchronising and scheduling not only played a key role in connecting and globalising the world, but also played a key role in creating ‘temporal niches’ of enforced rest and stasis that created a novel mode of ‘systemic waiting’. Hence, the railway age not only imposed the psychological challenge for the mass experience of internalising an increased centrality of clock time, but also opened the unprecedented need to cope with a novel form of short-​term stay. Moreover, it brought about the architectural challenge for designing transitory environments serving to situate and host passengers in rather new intermediary situations. Consequently, besides the iconic speed-​related infrastructures of steam locomotives and railway lines, the expensively decorated waiting rooms of monumental railway stations can be considered equally emblematic for the nineteenth

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century transport revolution. Even more, as moments of deceleration and standstill are inherent to modern aspirations of acceleration (Rosa 2013) waiting rooms are also representative for the very ambiguities of modernity. While from the operational perspective, these waiting rooms were essential shifting zones for synchronising passengers’ time to railway time, from the passenger perspective these spaces gave occasion to a wide range of experiencing and coping with affective responses ranging from joyful anticipation to aggravating irritation. 2

Waiting Passengers: an Architectural and Operational Challenge

When the first railways opened for regular passenger service across Europe and the United States in the 1830s, architects and engineers faced an immediate and unprecedented challenge to create adequate spatial infrastructures for the provision of smooth, safe and reliable access to the new system. In an atmosphere of furiously growing demand for railway travel, stations had to be designed as functionally dense switches between the technical domain of rail and the animated domain of the city. However, finding the right functional and architectural solutions for designing these switches turned out to be a protracted process. As architectural historian Carol L.V. Meeks argues, “Neither of the two preceding modes of transportation –​the canal and the century-​old turnpike system –​had developed special buildings for the use of passengers” (Meeks 1956: 27). Hence, none of the architects and engineers possessed long-​ term experiences in building functional spaces that would allow for the problems of handling and processing huge (and constantly increasing) passenger volumes. Although the main concepts of station building were instantly adapted from the pre-​existing stagecoach system, the majority of first-​generation railway stations soon fell short of matching the previously sufficient demands of coaching inns regarding capacity, safety, functionality, comfort or frequency of service. Compared to its historical ancestors of roadhouses or coaching inns, one of the main novelties of railway stations was the centrality of large-​scale assembling rooms for short-​term stay in which passengers would anticipate the departure. Within the complex catalogue of the various passenger-​related functions that railway stations had to facilitate (ticketing, luggage service, food supply, supplementary communication services etc.), it became particularly necessary to provide capacious spaces for hosting and congregating passengers temporarily before letting them board the train. Such spaces were not least considered necessary, because in most countries, except Great

38 Kellermann Britain, the US or Belgium  –​for reasons of safety, reliability and inexperience in travelling  –​passengers were not allowed to step on the platforms independently or to move around freely in the entirety of the station (Perdonnet 1856; Rasch 1873). Instead, after having purchased tickets and having registered their luggage, millions of passengers, e.g. in Germany, France or Austria, before boarding the train, mandatorily had to gather in the transitory environment of designated and class-​specific waiting rooms. Comparable with today’s operational principle at airports, it was not before a stroke of a bell (some 10–​15 minutes before departure) that passengers were allowed to enter the platform and to finally board the train (Klenke 1844; Schivelbusch 1987). What may seem like a trivial necessity of the railway system (to wait for a train) in fact reflected an operational and experiential novelty. Handling comparably huge passenger volumes in constricted confines within a short time period was only held operationally feasible through strategic retardation of flows. Accordingly, passengers, before boarding the train, found themselves in a rather unfamiliar transient situation of in-​betweenness. However, interim stilling and gathering of passengers became a necessary precondition for organising an efficient, safe and manageable mass transport system, which evidently formed an unparalleled moment in (transport) history. Referring to the very dialectics of mobility and immobility (Adey 2006; Urry 2007), accessibility of flow (riding the train) was facilitated through spatial infrastructures of friction (stations and, therein, waiting rooms). Consequently, waiting rooms, designated environments for interim coagulation of flows, played a key role in the construction of passenger buildings and would soon take up the largest surface area within the entire station building (Radlbeck 1981). Seen from an operational standpoint, these waiting rooms served not just as ‘control rooms’, but, more generally, as transmission zones for synchronising and attuning passengers to the organisational and temporal regime of railways. In this sense, waiting rooms reflected fundamental spaces for disciplining, ordering and conditioning people to become passengers. As a consequence of an operationally established ‘waiting imperative’, the nineteenth century railway boom induced the unprecedented dyadic architectural mission to create both spaces for transfer (vestibules, floors etc.) and spaces to pause, still, hold and (finally) re-​process a huge amount of people in an ordered, regular and class-​specific manner. Concerning waiting rooms, the challenges were to define the appropriate size, to determine their position within the station’s space-​allocation plan and to decide on furnishings, surfaces and interiors. These considerations would also become particularly critical in the context of class-​conscious 19th century societies that could consider the

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de facto democratising character of a collective and egalitarian departure as an assault on social status and existing power relations.1 In fact, the relative architectural novelty of providing the spatiality of large waiting rooms needs to be contextualised against the backdrop of related pre-​ modern structures. Antechambers, coaching inns or little courts equipped with stone benches at gates in front of castles or city walls can be considered similar structures where people had to wait until they were given access to either a monarch, a new horse for onward journey or an area of settlement respectively. Compared to its pre-​modern precursors, waiting rooms in early railway stations can be considered equally transformative and liminal spaces which disciplined its users and reduced their agency. However, I  argue that the differences on pre-​modern waiting situations emerge on a more qualitative, social and referential level. Qualitatively, because waiting passengers at railway stations had to be treated as customers rather than applicants. Socially, because transport-​related waiting was comparably ‘democratic’ in character since, though divided in class-​specific rooms, all had to wait for the same train, and, though divided in class-​specific carriages, all arrived at the same time. Finally, mass transport-​related waiting phenomena showed differences to their pre-​modern ancestors on a referential level, because waiting henceforth referred to a technical system rather than a social power relation or a natural event. By and large, with the advent of timetable-​based railway organisation, the anthropological core modus of waiting changed into another frame of reference that might be termed ‘systemic waiting’, a waiting mode which could be considered less problematic since it was not ostensibly existential, but in fact the anticipation of a means to enlarge or acquire social or cultural capital, to expand personal mobility and space of manoeuvre. Over the course of the nineteenth century, ‘systemic waiting’, performed in the designated spatial setting of waiting rooms (not only in the transport context, but likewise in administrative offices, department stores, public swimming pools etc.), became a standardised mass experience and a constitutive temporal region of modernity. So, given the novelty of the ‘systemic waiting’ experience, why should not

1 One of the first to reflect upon the ‘equalising’ character of a train ride was economist Constantin Pecqueur in the late 1830s: “By causing all classes of society to travel together and thus juxtaposing them into a kind of living mosaic of all the fortunes, positions, characters, manners, customs, and modes of dress that each and every nation has to offer, the railroads quite prodigiously advance the reign of truly fraternal social relations and do more for the sentiments of equality than the most exalted sermons of the tribunes of democracy” (Pecqueur cited in Schivelbusch 1986: 70f).

40 Kellermann waiting rooms be thought of as equally paradigmatic playgrounds of (transitory) modernity like the hotel, the airport or the department store (Geisthövel and Knoch 2005)? 3

‘Systemic Waiting’ as a (New) Psychological Challenge

Cultural historian Wolfgang Schivelbusch (1986) has influentially examined how the onset of railway travel comprised a radical transformation of time and space. He argues that the rise of railway travel included a psychological need to adopt a supplementary perceptional and visual attitude, which was to cope with the experience of speed. However, what the prevailing focus on speed as representing a key paradigmatic nineteenth century experience fails to acknowledge is the complementary and seemingly mundane experience of awaiting and anticipating the departure for accelerated transfer. Since speed, as shown above, turned out to be not just a technical but also an operational problem, passengers, for means of control, had to be stopped, contained and grouped shortly before being re-​processed for actual departure. As a result of this operational task, the formation of railways was accompanied by a dialectic formation of temporal interstices in which passengers were inevitably bound in a technical apparatus and were exposed to the centrality of clock time. In other words, parallel to the unfamiliar experience of an unprecedented speed of 50 km/​h, I argue that it can be considered a similarly novel experience to be contained for 15–​30 minutes in a designated spatiality of a waiting room, which was framed by the technical environment of the “machine ensemble” (Schivelbusch 1986:  16), controlled and supervised by staff, and which was crowded with often hundreds of people who were unified by their destination but probably unknown to each other. Before the dawn of the railway age, it had not been common to spend time waiting collectively in dedicated transitory environments. Neither the church nor the tavern nor the coaching inn might have been comparable spaces of such transitory short stay or the unavoidable exposure to questions of temporality. To be clear, waiting undeniably is an anthropological fact and has always been experienced as a waiting for harvest, religious salvation or the return of something or someone. However, transport-​related waiting, induced by the railways’ operational obligations of timetables and schedules, did not require to anticipate the abolition of a scarcity or the return of something or someone, but rather reflects the mundane operational necessity of assimilating into a technical apparatus which finally allowed passengers to access and benefit from a new infrastructural system. Compared to other waiting situations, such

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‘systemic waiting’ appears highly situational, shorter, more regular, projectable (schedules) and assisted (staff, announcements). Thus, it may have been perceived as a temporal region of anticipation that sometimes even involved an element of excitement. Despite the less existential characteristics it, nevertheless, must have been psychologically demanding because perception of and reflection about time inevitably became the focus of attention as passengers were given time without actually wanting it. While the ambiguous experience of ‘systemic waiting’ might not have been as shocking or stunning as the experience of new speed levels, the new spatiality of waiting rooms was, however, filled with a mixed atmosphere of irritation and anticipation, since contemporaries’ time-​space consciousness may not have been familiar with such artificial and operationally required settings. In this vein, Schivelbusch points to the fact that travellers soon adopted activities (e.g. reading) for compensating the psychologically demanding condition of travelling in full attention to the outside and inside of a carriage. Reading created an “imaginary surrogate landscape” (ibid.: 64) that allowed to emancipate oneself from railways’ induced heteronomy (sitting stilled, following rules etc.). While the creation of such surrogate landscapes mainly refers to the in-​transit situation, in fact their creation may certainly have also applied to the classical waiting situation before boarding the train. In other words, to be stilled in a designated room probably was as psychologically challenging as the journey itself because the time spent waiting had to be filled with meaning and had to be translated into activities to do something, to kill time or to reduce the possibly negative affective responses of stress, boredom or monotony. In short, the operational necessity of a ‘waiting imperative’ had to be translated into an ‘activity imperative’. 4

The Rise and Fall of Static Waiting: Structural Developments of Station Buildings and the Role of Waiting Rooms (1830–​1914)

Expanding upon Meeks’ suggestion for a chronological conceptualisation of constructing station buildings for passengers (cf. Meeks 1956), this section examines the historical evolution of spatial structures for temporary concentration of passenger flows. Spanning from an early pioneering phase (1830–​1850) via a consolidation phase (1850s), the construction of passenger buildings reached a phase of sophistication (1860–​1890). While the first three phases saw the continuous establishment of a mandatory and rather static ‘waiting imperative’, the increasing influx of modern operational and architectural paradigms as well as customers’ demands and increasing habituation

42 Kellermann

­f igure 2.1  Honoré Daumier, “Une salle d’attente de trosième classe” (presumably 1870s), Winterthur, Sammlung Oskar Reinhart

eventually led to the creation of a transition phase (1880–​1914) which fuelled a changing role and experience of transport-​related waiting phenomena around the turn of the century. However, these evolutionary cycles should of course not be perceived as universally distinct periods of development and replacement. The complex heterogeneous socio-​political, technical and geographical railway landscape of the nineteenth century would not allow for such an oversimplified claim. Instead, each phase provides empirical evidence for an overlapping and intertwined development of station building

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covering early pioneering role models as well as antiquated stragglers. Nonetheless, especially in the case of Germany, the periodization may determine the major shifting zones of both architectural and perceptual cycles of negotiating transport-​induced waiting times. 4.1 Pioneering and Exploration: 1830–​1850 The construction of first passenger buildings across Europe and North America remained provisional, explorative or even improvisational until the late 1840s. This was largely caused by the architects’ and engineers’ lack of experience mentioned previously as well as by contemporary economic uncertainties surrounding the future of the railway in its early days. As a result, the majority of passenger buildings were plain but nevertheless dignified and representative facilities that resembled either the construction of residential buildings (Rasch 1873: 561) or were modelled on structural engineering of coaching inns or tollhouses. Far from the monumentality of late nineteenth century stations, these early stations were very functionally limited, and represented a hybridity of continuity as well as technological progress both by adopting the established principles of the stagecoach system (waggons, staff, terminology) and by inventing new operational and constructional features. For instance, Liverpool’s Crown Street Station, opening for passenger service in 1830, is known to be the world’s first purpose-​built railway station for regular passenger service (Figure 2.2). This railway station not only provided the scene of the world’s first intercity train departure to a purpose-​built terminal station (Liverpool Road Station in Manchester) but also represented a paradigmatic example of the pioneering phase of station building on the verge of an architecturally distinct ‘typos’. The stone-​built two-​storey building was of classical appearance in the style of Georgian rationalism and contained a minimum of service facilities on the ground-​floor level. By situating the building longitudinally to the tracks, and thus imitating the elongated shape of the railway itself, the station building enabled the handling of a historically unprecedented amount of up to 2,500 passengers per day (Singleton 1975). The lateral arrangement allowed for a direct and uninterrupted transition of passenger flows from the building into the carriages, mediated by a strung-​out and roofed porch or terrace, which later should form the unique railway-​specific spatiality of platforms. Even though the station, due to capacity deficits, had been servicing passengers for only six years, the building and its conceptual arrangement (especially the train shed) acted as an early role model in station building and inspired the erection of similar structures across the Channel and the Atlantic, e.g. Nuremberg (1835), Boston (1835), Berlin (1838) or Braunschweig (1838). Furthermore, it demonstrated

44 Kellermann the dominance of English railway engineering throughout the entire first half of the nineteenth century. The primary question arising from an analytical focus on the archaeology of transport-​related waiting is, of course, the question whether this early passenger building already contained facilities or areas designated for waiting. Despite a lack of documentary evidence regarding floor plans or interiors, Liverpool Crown Street station is believed to have featured a semi-​specific spatial structure of waiting rooms. A  conjectural ground plan published by Meeks (Figure 2.2) indicates the existence of two large rooms which probably combined the functions of ticket-​selling and waiting. More precisely, the basic differentiation of these two rooms may have functioned as separate waiting zones for either men or women (typical of the British railway system) and/​or two different classes (first and second). While the station had only one main entrance, the different (waiting) rooms probably had separate exits to the platform, so passengers could access their respective carriages straightforwardly, without crossing each other’s way on the platform. The impression of an early convergence of ‘systemic waiting’ and timetable-​based railway operation is further fed by Thomas Bury’s painting, illustrating a view of Crown Street station in 1833. The painting shows passengers waiting (or arriving) in a spatially informal manner all across the station area, e.g. on and between the tracks. Although passengers cannot be seen waiting inside the building, it can be considered likely that for weather conditions other than those illustrated in the painting there must have been a designated waiting area inside the building that allowed gathering and ‘storing’ a huge share of passengers anticipating the next train ride. An open door at the front end of the platform seems to link the inner parts of the building to the platform, thus indirectly indicating the likely correspondence between one of the two large inner (waiting) rooms with carriages positioned in respective class-​specific order. Beyond the hints in the case of Liverpool, the line’s corresponding terminus station in Manchester, called Liverpool Road Station, is recorded to have definitely contained different class-​specific waiting rooms. (Negrelli 1838) In summary of the pioneering phase of railways, waiting has most probably been an architectural, organisational and not least experiential feature from the very beginning. Waiting rooms, and thus the (social) practice and performance of ‘systemic waiting’, can be traced back to the first appearances of regular timetable-​based railway services. Despite the pioneering phase having produced an explorative set of stations, the inclusion of waiting rooms seems to have quickly become a feature of station planning principles. Only shortly after the Liverpool-​Manchester line was attentively examined, the manuals,

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directives and guidelines for the construction of new passenger buildings show clear evidence for including waiting areas (Förster 1838). However, the character of early transport-​related waiting situations can be considered to be rather informal, hardly spatially differentiated, barely constricted or supervised, socially transcendent, less comfortable than at later stages and probably comparably shorter. Since passengers often received their tickets on other premises than inside the station building previous to the journey (e.g. at inns or hotels in the city centre), passengers, when arriving at the station with cabs and omnibuses, immediately boarded the train without a mandatory passage through or a short-​term stay inside the station building. As seen in Bury’s painting, passengers were floating around freely and in a rather unorganised fashion, which corresponds to contemporary sources indicating massive operational problems due to passengers’ late and chaotic arrivals at the station. Since there was no clear fencing, passengers were able to bypass the building in case of delayed and overhasty arrival and board platforms and carriages in an operationally unintended and unsafe manner. However, the lack of fencing allowed for a waiting situation in a kind of socially transcendent atmosphere in which different classes were not yet fully separated from each other and might still have created (new) liminal spaces or contact points of social exchange and intermingling. Similar to the first generation of railway stations which resembled “products of spontaneity” (Schmitt 1882: 3), the practices of waiting can be considered equally spontaneous, unordered and informal. Moreover, transport-​related ‘systemic waiting’ has most probably been of comparably positive connotation. Rather than being routinised or serene, passengers were excited and often proud to use the new promising technical system for the first (or second) time. In this respect, Meeks points to the fact that e.g. early French railway travellers were waiting “in a gay mood of anticipation” (Meeks 1956: 29). Hence, the waiting experience, far from today’s predominantly negative connotation, rather acted as a means of self-​representation, as an illustration of social status, and, as portrayed in a travel report by the famous Danish poet Hans Christian Andersen, even as a stimulating amplifier for the novelty of the journey (Andersen 1843: 23–​30). Summing up, transport-​induced acceleration and transport-​induced waiting formed a dialectic relationship from the very beginning of modern transport. Illustrating this inherent relationship, the first ever train service from Liverpool to Manchester (15 September 1830)  was already delayed by two hours due to a deadly accident near the midpoint of the line (Kirwan 1831: 19). Consequently, waiting for arrival has a briefly longer history than the first scheduled arrival itself. Forwarding Virilio’s (2007) notion of modernity as the

46 Kellermann

­f igure 2.2  View of Liverpool Crown Street station t.t. bury, coloured views on the liverpool and manchester railway. london: ackermann & co; plate 8, 1833

­f igure 2.3  Conjectural ground plan of Liverpool Crown Street station 1830s, in Meeks 1956

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unintended discovery of systemic ‘crashes’, the evolution of accelerated transport gave birth to the (unintended) ‘production’ and discovery of retardation and delay. 4.2 Consolidation: 1850s Some twenty years after the inauguration of the first regular railway service in England, the triumph of railways seemed unstoppable. After initial economic, political and cultural uncertainties and partially strong resistance by landowners and caters, the railways’ economic benefits eventually prevailed and led to both growing societal acceptance, usage and exploitation. More and more new lines connected older ones and subsequently created a network which self-​enhanced and multiplied an already increasing demand. By 1860, to give an example, all German cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants had been connected with each other (Roth 2005), facilitating the passage of 20 million travellers in Prussia in the year 1859 (Weishaupt 1861: 541). Railway travel, though not yet regularly affordable for all members of society, developed into a widespread mobility experience. The success of railways often led to the substation or expansion of first generation stations by bigger replacements, particularly at terminal stations of major cities. Despite the most optimistic anticipations of passenger volume developments, many railway stations had become inappropriate after only a few years of service. Accordingly, many stations had already witnessed their second or third extensions by the 1860s. As a result of the ever increasing demand, the initial phase of functional pioneering in station building was gradually replaced by more standardised principles. Backed by a growing body of literature comprising handbooks, national comparisons, academic journals and drawing upon a clearer legislative framework, the planning of passenger buildings consolidated into a more structured pattern. Therein, waiting became an even more central operational and thus experiential aspect of rail travel. As all parts of stations extended, waiting rooms grew into waiting halls, and, particularly in the German context, became more comfortable and richly decorated. The previously informal character of ‘systemic waiting’ was subsequently formalised by placing passengers into the enlarged and ordered structure of class-​specific waiting rooms. Compared to the rather informal 1830s, waiting passengers, especially in France, Germany or Austria, were not any longer allowed to step on the platform or cross tracks individually before boarding the train. Hence, from an operational standpoint, waiting became not just formalised and more static but became imperative, causing first reflections about the inconvenience of the operational functionality of storing

48 Kellermann passengers temporarily. French engineer Auguste Perdonnet, addressing the crucial difference between a static and imprisoned waiting imperative in France and the far more liberal handling on English stations in 1856, perceptively recognised the psychological counter-​effects of the operational necessity of waiting: By imprisoning, on the contrary [to England], travelers who wait for convoys in the rooms where the day is only allowed to penetrate through the attic, the companies seem to doubt their strength and have confidence only in the highest walls to enforce their property. They seem to want to hide from all eyes this engine, which is really only formidable for those who do not know it. perdonnet 1856: 30

Beyond the obvious formation of national peculiarities in handling and operating waiting passengers, the consolidation phase of station building can be outlined by the leading idea of protecting the fragile and expensive technology for the compromise of providing more customer-​oriented comfort (e.g. buffets, ladies rooms, smoking rooms), which aimed to compensate for the operational constraint. In short, by the 1850s, architects and railway operators had become increasingly aware of the fact that the offered transport service included placing their customers in an unfamiliar environment. For this reason, passenger buildings, apart from the functional upgrades in comforts and service facilities, had to serve the purpose of calming and relaxing the passenger by architectural means (Schivelbusch 1987: 171–​2; Radlbeck 1981: 13). The upgraded station in the industrial boomtown Elberfeld (later Wuppertal) is exemplary of this consolidation phase, as it is the first large-​city train station on German ground which is seen to reflect a new generation of station planning (Figure 2.4). Characteristic for this second evolutionary step was an often strictly symmetric disposition of rooms which were grouped around a huge vestibule that served as the central means of circulation. Within such a symmetrical layout inspired by classical design vocabulary, the waiting rooms of first and second class  –​strictly separated from third class  –​covered the largest surface area. The floor plan illustrates the fact that, in addition to the buying of tickets and the registering of luggage in the entrance hall, waiting had become the major passenger ‘task’ previous to the journey. Framed by a far more self-​representational branding of station buildings and an increased self-​confidence in the future of railways, waiting, and thus the imperative of filling time meaningfully, had become compulsory and thus a central mobility practice.

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­f igure 2.4  View of station building in Elberfeld-​Döppersberg (1850s) historisches zentrum wuppertal

­f igure 2.5  Ground plan of station Elberfeld-​Döppersberg with large waiting rooms left and right to the entrance hall in Berger 1987: 125

4.3 Sophistication: 1860–​1890 The second half of the nineteenth century saw the most extensive phase in constructing station buildings. Fuelled by the self-​sustaining amalgamation of railways and industrialisation, railways thrived almost across the entire planet. By 1875, the number of annual passengers in Germany increased to 202 million (vdev 1877: 64). The United Kingdom had more than 300 million passengers by 1870 (von Weber 1873: 36). In this atmosphere, particularly the endpoints in major cities advanced to cathedrals of mobility. While functional and symbolic values of station buildings became equally important (Radlbeck 1981), the

50 Kellermann passengers, who in the meantime had become more accustomed to train travel, increasingly demanded better service and comfort, including the provision of faster accessibility and connectivity within and outside the station or the provision of supplementary services. As a result, vestibules, corridors and waiting rooms once again were increased enormously in size and comfort by the planners, albeit keeping the principles of symmetrical layout and class-​specific separation. Owing to both an excessive academic interest and the pressures of growing demand for rail travel, stations became more standardised while new stations were given more headroom for future development. The sophistication of station planning created stronger coherence among the formerly heterogeneous landscape of station buildings and thus finalised a period of about five decades of experimenting (Schmitt 1882). Against the background of a wave of nationalisation of private railway companies all over Europe, Prussia evolved as a leading power in the study of station planning. From the late 1870s onwards, passenger buildings were increasingly considered being ‘process architectures’ (Jany 2013) that facilitated channelling passengers through complex buildings. German architects particularly borrowed conceptual principles of efficient and intersection-​free organisation of operational flows in factories, and thereby followed a dogma of station planning that considered passenger buildings as a “constructional organism” (Wulff 1882: 3) with the obsessive aim of providing an uninterrupted circulation of flows. Within this holistic approach, waiting rooms were metaphorically functionalised as the system’s “stomach” that would store and afterwards ‘excrete’ flows in a most controllable manner. In light of these (modern) developments, the waiting experience in late nineteenth century railway travelling still remained, equally to the previous phase, a central element, albeit with the difference of having become a standardised mass experience. Moreover, waiting in late nineteenth century was being performed in a much more comfortable and service-​oriented environment. While the railways technically matured, experientially they did not. Travelling by rail for most passengers remained an exciting moment that caused passengers to arrive at the station well in advance of departure (Radlbeck 1981). Given the complexities and increased walking distances within the massively grown station buildings, most travellers, departing from major cities, can be thought of having waited rather extensively, maybe comparable to today’s air travel. In brief, the late nineteenth century can be thought of as the heyday of dignified waiting made manifest by a zenith of luxurious interiors and multi-​functional enhancements. While the pioneering phase of railways had still been critically considered to be technically advanced but hardly customer-​oriented (Lichthammer 1842), the late

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­f igure 2.6  Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof, waiting room for i. and ii. Class Zeitschrift für Bauwesen 1891, Sheet 50

­f igure 2.7  Station Dirschau (Prussia), collective waiting room (around 1890) ostbahn.eu

52 Kellermann nineteenth century saw the ultimate combination of technical and service-​ oriented sophistication. Despite the dignity of waiting, there are, however, hints that the perception of waiting had subsequently changed from the “gay mood of anticipation” (Meeks 1956: 29) of the 1830s to a more “impatient and restless” (Rasch 1873: 580) level which induced the need for offers of distraction. One of the main features in the German context of compensating for an obviously increasing nervousness in waiting was the extensive wave of reshaping waiting rooms into restaurants. While the spatial proximity of gastronomic services and railway travelling had created a historical persistence, the late nineteenth century marked its full spatial intersection. Most waiting rooms in larger stations were equipped with tables, chairs and served by waiters, hence marking the characteristic of further commercialising the wait. Highlighting a semantic proximity, the experience of waiting ‘for’ the train was, so to say, progressively enriched by being waited ‘on’. Put differently, Schivelbusch’s imaginary surrogate landscapes increasingly involved not just the consumption of books and journals, but also the consumption of food and beverages, which sometimes was even criticised to the point of imposing a “drinking imperative” (Röll 1913: 309). Hence, the organisational necessity of ‘systemic waiting’ was increasingly accompanied by the formation of waiting economies and thus marked the prevailing practice of commercialising time niches for consumption. 4.4 Banishing the ‘Waiting Imperative’: 1880–​1914 Eberhard Wulff’s influential conceptualisation of station buildings as resembling a “constructional organism” (1882: 3) involved a paradigmatic focus on values of efficiency and expediency. His idea of a strictly purpose-​oriented space allocation plan criticised the flourishing construction of station buildings, especially since the foundation of the German Reich in 1871, for celebrating monumentality for the price of lacking (inner) expediency and the result of “inorganic buildings” (ibid.: 15). While, for instance, colossal vestibules were considered too spacious, waiting rooms were criticised as inadequately small and crowded. Paradoxically, this critical approach led to the incremental marginalisation of the previously established ‘static’ character of waiting in the following years. This happened because Wulff, apart from criticising the inappropriate size of waiting rooms, more importantly criticised the position of waiting rooms that would not follow the principles of uninterrupted and organic circulation of flows from entering the building to boarding the train. Envisioning the continuing increase in numbers of passengers in the context of an industrialising Germany –​1885: 275 million, 1913: 1,7 billion passengers –​Wulff’s idea was to merge the functionality of waiting in one single

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architectural cluster and to group the waiting rooms along the depth of the main hall instead of grouping the rooms left and right to the main hall. The aim of this re-​arrangement was to optimise and accelerate flows and to reduce walking distances from entrance to platform. As shown by the example of Berlin’s Stettiner Bahnhof (Figure 2.8), this modern re-​arrangement meant to break with the aesthetic dogma of symmetric layouts (Figure 2.5), which, for example in the case of a gigantic station building in Frankfurt (1888), had caused long walking distances and passengers’ disorientation. Following these purpose-​oriented principles, waiting rooms in newly built stations between late 1880s and 1914 were, where possible, no longer deployed as gates between vestibule and platform, but were increasingly grouped adjacent to the vestibule. This arrangement, recurrently materialising in stations of medium-​sized German cities after 1900, meant nothing less than the suspension of six decades of ‘establishing’ the waiting imperative and turned waiting more into an optional task. Instead of being ‘stored’ mandatorily, passengers were increasingly freed to enter the platform directly from the vestibule without a required stopover in the waiting rooms. By liberalising waiting from a formerly compulsory element of the mobility practice, waiting rooms were re-​qualified as a means of recreation and quietness in an otherwise busy station ­environment. In short, the process of marginalising the spatially bounded characteristic of waiting started around 1900, indicating a caesura that is operative until today. Banishing the waiting imperative reflected a co-​evolutionary process between planners’ and passengers’ perspectives. On the one hand, passengers were more experienced in rail travel and were finally trusted to find their own way and help themselves. On the other hand, planners and railway operators, due to customisation and routine, recognised that the former need of waiting rooms as shifting zones for synchronising passengers to the organisational regime of railways had become dispensable. As a result, the old shifting zones were replaced by an open concourse, a “self-​adjusting traffic center” (Meeks 1956: 79), which mediated the transition from the city to the technical apparatus more efficiently and merged the combined functions of accessibility and capacity. Though the psychological transition from the city to the technical apparatus of railways remained an element to be taken into consideration, it was now more often dissolved into space and achieved ‘on the move’ (Schivelbusch 1987: 188). Once the waiting rooms had moved to the periphery and were used more sporadically, planners increasingly problematised waiting rooms as a mutation and an unproductive waste of space which could be used differently, e.g. for commercial activities (Goering 1907). In summary, the tendencies of both self-​organisation of passengers and of economically driven ideas of space-​ use coincided around 1900. This

54 Kellermann

­f igure 2.8  Ground plan of Berlin’s “Stettiner Bahnhof” with marginalised waiting rooms (bottom left) and a provision of a direct link from the entrance (center left) to platforms mediated by a concourse (‘Querbahnsteig’) zeitschrift für bauwesen 1903, blatt 37

coincidence can be interpreted as an emblematic shift towards problematising waiting, thus indicating a new wave of social acceleration. Seen through the analytical lens of waiting-​phenomena, the turn of the century marked a transition from stasis to liquefaction, which not only marked the transition into socio-​technical and architectural modernity but also constituted the characteristic of today’s operational principles in rail travel. 5

Conclusion

For the longest part of the nineteenth century, the temporarily stilling of passengers in designated environments was considered an operational precondition for the organisation of mass transportation. While the pioneering phase of railway travelling witnessed rather informal ways of waiting, the following decades saw an increasing level of formalising the wait in ever growing spatially bound compartments, thereby establishing a ‘waiting imperative’. This imperative, serving as a transition zone for synchronising passengers to the technical regime of railways, was subsequently criticised by its users and was compensated by an increasing provision of service and comfort, which satisfied the demand for ‘imaginary surrogate landscapes’, perform “equipped waiting” (Gasparini 1995: 35) and altogether allowed for filling time ‘meaningfully’. However, the end of the century marked a turning point in both negotiating and perceiving the wait; this was represented by a co-​evolutionary atmosphere

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of problematising waiting from different angles. While, on the one hand, planners, inspired by industrial organisation and pressured by dramatically increasing numbers of passengers, obsessively followed the dogma of replacing controllable stasis (waiting rooms) by infrastructures of continuous flow (concourse), passengers, on the other hand, felt enough routinised to navigate individually and increasingly problematised the formerly compulsory task of waiting against the background of an industrialising society that had prioritised and internalised time efficiency. Concluding the evolutionary cycle and shifting modalities of waiting, there is reason to believe that transport-​induced waiting in the early nineteenth century was far more representational or even exciting and thus connoted more positively: it was not before the late nineteenth century that waiting became problematised as to be avoided by any means. Seeking to move beyond the tendency in privileging movement over stasis, this article advocates for a re-​interpretation of modernity through the lens of the era’s unintended and yet massively induced moments of stoppage. I have shown how railways appear at the forefront of both creating and negotiating (architecturally as well as experientially) temporal niches of ‘systemic waiting’. In contrast to pre-​modern waiting experiences, the progress of timetable-​ based railway travel encouraged a new mode of in-​betweenness, which was, however, underlying historical transformations regarding formality, perception or duration. Though waiting has most often been perceived as a stepchild of mobility, uncovering the phenomenon’s perceptional cycles unveils the story of a profound transformation of one of the most emblematic, controversial and influential aspects of modernity.

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Kellermann, Robin (2017): “The Final Countdown”: Ambiguities of Real Time Information Systems ‘Directing’ the Waiting Experience in Public Transport.” Experiencing Networked Urban Mobilities. Ed. Malene Freudendal-​Pedersen, Katrine Hartmann-​ Petersen and Emmy Laura Perez Fjalland. London: Routledge. 19–​26. Meeks, Carol L.V (1956): The Railroad Station: An Architectural History. New Haven: Yale University Press. Mom, Gijs (2015): “The Crisis of Transport History: A Critique, and a Vista.” Mobility in History (T2M Yearbook 2015) 6. Ed. Kyle Shelton,et al.. Oxford: Berghahn. 7–​19. Perdonnet, Auguste (1856): Traité Élémentaire des Chemins de Fer. Paris: Langlois et Leclercq. Radlbeck, Karl (1981): Bahnhof und Empfangsgebäude: die Entwicklung vom Haus zum Verkehrswegekreuz. München. Dissertation. Rasch, J. (1873): “Die Eisenbahn-​Hochbauten auf den Bahnhöfen und ausserhalb derselben.” Handbuch für specielle Eisenbahntechnik 1. Ed. Edmund Heusinger von Waldegg. Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann. Röll, Freiherr von (1913): Enzyklopädie des Eisenbahnwesens 4. Berlin, Wien. Rosa, Hartmut (2013). Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity. New York: Columbia University Press. Roth, Ralf (2005): Das Jahrhundert der Eisenbahn: Die Herrschaft über Raum und Zeit 1800–​1914. Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke. Schivelbusch, Wolfgang (1987): The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century. Berkeley: University of California Press. Schmitt, Eduard (1882): Bahnhöfe und Hochbauten auf Locomotiv-​Eisenbahnen. Leipzig: Verlag von Arthur Felix. ii. Theil. Die Eisenbahn-​Hochbauten. Schweizer, Harold (2008): On Waiting. London: Routledge. Singleton, David (1975): Liverpool and Manchester Railway: A Mile by Mile Guide to the World’s First “Modern” Railway. Skripton: Dalesman Publishing. Urry, John (2003): Global Complexity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Urry, John (2007): Mobilities. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hagen, Mark van (2011): “Waiting experience at train stations”. Delft: Eburon. Vannini, Phillip (2011):  “Mind the Gap:  The Tempo Rubato of Dwelling in Lineups.” Mobilities. 273–​99. Virilio, Paul (2007): The original accident. Polity Press, 2007. Vozyanov, Andrey (2014): “Approaches to Waiting in Mobility Studies: Utilization, Conceptualization, Historicizing.” Mobility in History. 64–​73. Weber, Max Maria von (1873). Schule des Eisenbahnwesens: Geschichte, Technik, Administration und Statistik der Eisenbahnen. Dritte, Vermehrte Auflage, neu Bearbeitet von Eduard Schmitt. Leipzig: Verlagsbuchhandlung von J. J. Weber. Wulff, Eberhard (1882):  Das Eisenbahn-​Empfangs-​Gebäude nach seinen praktischen Anforderungen und seiner künstlerischen Bedeutung. Leipzig: Verlag Karl Scholtze.

­c hapter 3

Waiting for the Man: Deferring and Spatialising Legal and Narrative Delay Richard Hardack Abstract In this essay, I consider the psychological and narratological implications of waiting as a structural component of litigation in the U.S., and how legal narratives address the spaces and times of waiting. Texts such as William Gaddis’ A Frolic of his Own replicate legal delay through narrative delay. I contrast the narratological aspects of legal delays with the presumed pleasures of narrative delays that withhold plot, the resolution of mysteries, and closure. The pace of court cases was ideally suited to Dickens’ mode of serial publication, and some lawyers and writers have similar incentives to make people wait. One can fruitfully treat legal procedure as a form of serialisation, but also ask whether modes of legal analysis will help us better understand narrative deferral. I also address the cultural geography and spatialisation of waiting, and argue that such waiting has a millenarian or eschatological component in law –​waiting for the judgment moment leaves the litigant in purgatory. In many recent texts, the end of waiting, judgment day, ushers in not only the end of time, but the often-​overlooked termination of space –​the end of boundaries.

Keywords Gaddis, William  –​McCarthy, Tom  –​critical theory  –​deferral  –​encyclopedism and encyclopedic texts –​eschatology –​law and literature –​legal discourse –​memorials –​ narrative theory –​repetition –​spatialisation –​trauma –​trial procedure

1

Introduction If we are normal we can guess the time –​we can guess how long ago the lecture began, and also how long we shall have to wait for some desire to be gratified, for example, that the lecture should end. (It is, as a matter of fact, harder for the lecturer to do this: he is in love with what he is saying,

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/​9 789004407121_​0 05

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or should be.) […] The ability to wait for the gratification of a desire is measurably less in children and in old people than in the mature; it is very low in the emotionally disturbed, especially in juvenile delinquents. And as readers we do seem to partake of some of these abnormally acute appetites. We hunger for ends and for crises. ‘Is this the promis’d end?’ we ask with Kent in Lear; if not, we require that it be an image of it. kermode 1979: 55

Listen, we can wait our lives out, Mother! Waiting for something like this … Waiting for something to happen, is not that what people do? What keeps them alive, this waiting? What … even my father, was not he? Waiting for something to happen? to come out of nowhere and change things … and then? […]. Why, they die that way, waiting. gaddis 1994: 65

Literature and law tend to take different approaches to their promised ends –​ verdicts and finales  –​but literary and legal waiting also can bleed into or contaminate each other’s discourses and domains. Both writers and attorneys manipulate postponements in satisfying and exploiting their clients. As dramatised at length in Charles Dickens’ Bleak House (1852–​53) and William Gaddis’ novel A Frolic of His Own (1994), an experiential feature of most litigation is delay and waiting. Discovery (the production of evidence), for example, often could be accurately renamed deferral. But waiting, repetition and postponement also infuse the content of the serialised narrative of Bleak House; by the time we reach Frolic, and the period it at least partly represents, repetition and waiting become embedded aspects of the literary form itself, and emblematic of both its epistemology and ontology. In Gaddis’ work, we are beings defined by waiting, whose masochistic drives also perpetually generate new loops of waiting. In this essay, I explore the relationship between law, deferral, temporal and spatial eschatology, and narrative closure. The passage from Frank Kermode that begins this essay is dated in some ways –​for example, in its implicitly teleological Freudian anthropology, and its supposition that mature adults experience time in a normative way –​but it reminds us that the end, when represented, is always a simulacrum. The final end is the one we wait for and can never experience, and therefore cannot represent per se, it must by definition come after experience and representation. Narrativising a literal and figurative area of contention, some contemporary texts of waiting also perhaps unexpectedly draw on a lineage of European male encyclopedism, in which the pursuit of comprehensive experience seems to trigger an infinite delay that precludes

60 Hardack ever attaining full comprehension. Here, the encyclopedic impulse effectively represents the necessary correlate of a kind of waiting that is predicated on repetition and the obsessive incorporation of data, or what some of the contemporary texts I later address narrate as looping reenactments of reality in its entirety. These works try to map absolute knowledge that, if ever achieved, would represent the end of existence. But, as we will see, they also try to map absolute space, an endeavor that can never be completed. In the first part of this essay, I  will consider the psychological and narratological implications of waiting as an unavoidable structural component of litigation in the U.S., both in temporal and spatial contexts, and how legal narratives address the times and spaces of waiting. Virtually all trials in the U.S. have set procedural delays, which give parties time to obtain discovery and submit calendars, briefs, motions, documents, lists of witnesses, stipulations, and, almost inevitably, requests by one side to exclude all those things. But what most litigants face –​whether waiting for their cases to proceed; for their attorneys to respond to calls; for their sentences to end; or for their settlements to be disbursed –​is some form of being on hold, an extended temporal liminality. Some district courts in the U.S. are notoriously backlogged, meaning that claimants will not have their cases heard for a minimum of a few years (delays that gave rise to several “expedited” courts, which became known as “rocket dockets,” in which litigants could proceed swiftly when filing certain highly-​delimited causes of action that were alleged to have high-​priority public policy ramifications, but in reality primarily involved corporate high-​tech patent cases). In the second part of this essay, I address contemporary narratives of waiting and repetition, as well as the often-​overlooked spatial dimension of waiting. If waiting frequently involves a troubled traversal of time, how do legal and literary narratives treat space? All waiting occurs in a culturally and historically specific framework, and in a specific space. How does the temporal dimension of waiting interact with the spatial? What is the cultural geography of waiting? What would it mean to guess the space of waiting, or to measure space in terms of time or other coordinates? Aside from the Foucauldian notion that space reflects the organisation of power, space also organises narrative, in typically less visible and less acknowledged ways than time. Edward W. Soja reminds us that John Berger “define[d]‌ the postmodern turn against historical determinations and vividly announced the need for an explicitly spatialized narrative” (1989: 22). But narrative must always be spatialised, whether we turn from or toward historical time, and space should be considered another exigent component both of history and narratology. Like measurements of time, spaces of waiting shape narratives of and about law, as well as those narratives the law explicitly and implicitly presents

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about itself. If law is an especially eschatological form of narrative dependent on verdicts and endings, we should also address how the spaces of that eschatology function. What Soja calls the “elusive spatiality of capitalism” is partly materialised and figured in the legislative house, courtroom, and prison, all of which impose constraints of order on a dynamic system (1989:  126). Law as a discourse in the U.S. is focused on time –​for example, procedural deadlines, time allowed for oral argument, time to trial, and the length of sentences. But such legal time is always “spaced out” –​i.e. typically experienced in highly stylised spaces. To get an immediate sense of how space affects trials of various forms, one might broadly compare the venue of a typical U.S. small claims court, whose scale usually reflects the scope of its mission, with the Palace of Justice used for the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals, meant to dispense justice in the war criminals’ own land; those with the seven courtroom “pods” of Bordeaux’ Palais de Justice, whose striking oval shapes are meant to differentiate its legal spaces from other areas of the building and offer a form of transparency to the public; and those settings with the spaces of South Africa’s post-​apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which typically met in religious centers and universities rather than courts. 2

Day Waiting, Die Waiting

In the U.S., courts and prisons represent the prominent legal spaces that subject people to delay and sentence them to “time” –​whether one wins or loses, or is found innocent or guilty –​and they almost hyperbolically combine the temporal and spatial components of waiting. Detainees wait in jail for judges and arraignments, often for prolonged periods; plaintiffs and victims wait for their cases to be heard; many defendants try to delay their cases, then wait for sentencing or the results of appeals; innocent defendants sometimes wait for years for exoneration; attorneys wait for rulings and verdicts. Short adjournments and lengthy postponements are routine aspects of trial. Courts are figurative waiting rooms. A federal district court in Alabama echoed the sentiment of Gaddis’ protagonist that prefaces this essay, citing an article titled “People Die Waiting for Disability Benefits” that lambasted court delay: Douglas Friedman does not flinch when he talks about the frequency of his clients dying before their cases are settled. The Birmingham lawyer for 20  years has represented people seeking Social Security disability benefits. “Our clients routinely die before their cases are settled, because

62 Hardack it takes so long,” he said. “I guess I’ve gotten used to it.” One client committed suicide because she was so distraught by her pain and repeated denials for benefits, he said. Some cases take more than four years to get a final determination [… .] The suicide was an extreme, he said, but people dying […] while the appeals drag on is far too common. […] “[E]‌ventually you lose your job […] then your house, your spouse and your family, in that order, and then you end up on the street. Maroney v. Apfel, 57 F. Supp. 2d 1250, 1267. (N.D. Ala. 1999). In the last line of that article, used as an exhibit in the court proceedings, the author cites an official who operates the programme responsible for the pre-​ trial delays:  “ ‘Our workers are doing a great job moving cases through,’ Ms. Daniels said. Ms. Daniels does not deny that people often die while awaiting benefits.” (ibid.) This language almost paraphrases that of Frolic; Gaddis developed numerous composites of case holdings for his narrative, but many judges also sound as if they’re quoting Gaddis. After researching his novel, Gaddis himself averred that he “would much rather read legal opinions than most fiction” (Smith 1995: 38), a disclaimer that intimates an interesting displacement of character, plot, judgment, waiting and resolution. Friedman’s comments raise the issue of both accidental and structurally intended or ineluctable delay; e.g., no doubt the budget of the benefit administration factors in savings based on delays and deaths, but it’s hard to locate agency and intent in such systems. Is it fair then to differentiate between natural and cultural delays, or are all delays we experience cultural? Perhaps it is better to differentiate between delays that are engineered, or have a human cause, and those that have no human agency attached. The plot of Frolic centers around Oscar Crease, a wealthy history professor who believes a play he wrote was plagiarised to form the basis of a Hollywood movie, produced by the same person who rejected Crease’s submission years before. Crease winds up suing a variety of parties over the play, as well as his insurance company after he is run over by his own car (an image that provides an apt metaphor for the legal system). The slightly injured Crease sits around his estate until his cases proceed, “day after day waiting for this decision” (1994: 240, emphasis added). In fact, a prominent speech tic of Gaddis’ characters, and especially Crease, is to begin sentences by declaiming “No but wait!” (twice on 154); “No wait! Wait what do you mean” (ibid.: 154); “No wait, wait a minute” (ibid.: 475); “No wait a second” (ibid.: twice on 477–​8), and so on; a typical exchange between lawyers reads, “Now wait a minute.” “Why should we wait a minute?” (ibid.: 197). Gaddis’ language suggests that much of Crease’s waiting, like his injury, is self-​inflicted; but once you are inserted into the legal

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system, your primary recourse is to sit and wait. As a Georgia court put it, citing an article about the defendant in the case, “A miserable man sits in his cell day after day waiting and wondering what the verdict will be when the jury passes on his case” Lucas v. State, 74 Ga. App. 682, 685, (1947). Or as the Court of Appeal for the District of Columbia, again sounding like Gaddis, dispassionately observed, For some unexplained and perhaps inexplicable reason, proceedings in this docket then ground to a halt. After three years, [the trade association] Telocator, understandably dismayed that the promised stopgap relief still was unimplemented, withdrew its petition for reconsideration. Two more years passed, however, before the Commission again spoke on the subject. Telocator Network of Am. v. F.C.C., 691 F.2d 525, 529 (D.C. Cir. 1982) emphasis added

The Telocator court’s description of this procedural protraction goes on at length: a popular litigation strategy is to delay proceedings in a time-​sensitive case until you have bankrupted your opponent. In a Mississippi case involving a dispute over what the court colloquially calls a “fishin’ hole,” a judge quotes a James Dickey poem, “Remnant Water” (1973):  “Here in the dry hood I  am watching Alone, in my tribal sweat my people gone my fish rolling Beneath me and I die Waiting will wait out The blank judgment given only In ruination’s suck-​holing” Dycus v. Sillers, 557 So.2d 486, 492 (Miss. 1990). If authors transcribe or adapt legal narratives, judges also quote and adapt literary narratives, but delay has different appeals and poses different obstacles for each discourse. 3

Deferrals and Repetitions

Legal texts are often quintessentially encyclopedic in the literary writer’s imagination –​they prolong, multiply and increase themselves. Like the procedural elements of lawsuits, many encyclopedic texts (which claim to offer all-​ encompassing narratives of ontology and epistemology) digress, splinter, and create (symbolically infinite) loops, deferring closure and ending. Jonathan Swift’s lawyers in Gulliver’s Travels, for example, versed “in the art of proving by words multiplied,” can reverse the truth, but also endlessly replicate their texts, “wherein all their laws were written, which they take special care to multiply[,]‌” growing them like living creatures (1962: 236–​7).

64 Hardack In Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–​64), François Rabelais’ Bridlegoose embodies these laws that “grow by litigation”: he “temporize[s]‌, waiting for a lawsuit to mature and to attain full growth in all its limbs [… .] A lawsuit, when newly born […] is merely a lump of raw and formless flesh […] born limbless in their origins.” Additional laws then “provide a new limb, and from that one springs another,” until the laws (and the texts) extend to infinity (1995: 404–​6). Many seemingly fanciful but actually realistic narratives of the body of law dramatise this premise –​a supposition to which I return –​that each engagement in a litigious transaction is akin to cutting off the head of a hydra, or, in spatial terms, of a fractal: that every motion you file leads not to a resolution, but generates two more motions. In this sense, the law represents an expanding universe, creating new law, legal actions, and space each time you interact with it. The law also precipitates a kind of life-​size reenactment of reality, akin in some respects to the way the encyclopedic male autobiography tries to encapsulate a man’s life, in John Ruskin’s phrase in Praeterita, “from origin to extinction” (2014: 218). Outside the context of most legal cases, we are usually highly-conflicted about endings; if we enjoy a book or a dinner, we do not want it to end, though some part of us does –​such ambivalence is connected to what Sigmund Freud broadly termed the death drive. Each ending is a little ending, and each little ending a little death. Some part of us wishes to merge back into the same non-​individuated or non-​existence that preceded us –​or, in Kermode’s terms, hungers for ends and crises. But any masochistic pleasure associated with such an urge, like the pleasure attendant to endings, is also part of a more Lacanian drive, i.e., something in this case paradoxically defined by repetition or deferral rather than desire. If we wait for something that has already occurred, or that state that preceded our existence, can it relate to an Event –​that is, something radically new? The relevant translation in this context from drive to narratology is not that we seek death itself, or want things simply to end, but that we are compelled to defer and repeat in ways that entangle us in a helix of endings. A slew of recent illustrative narratives in which things ground to a halt, and characters are stuck in a perpetual loop living the same day for eternity nearly ad infinitum, suggest our culture is obsessively replaying a form of traumatic impasse, as emblematised by films and series such as Jacob’s Ladder (1990); Groundhog Day (1993); Dark City (1998); Fifty First Dates (2004); Next (2007); Source Code (2011); Edge of Tomorrow (2014); Westworld (2016); and in some ways the new Twin Peaks series. In these and dozens of other equivalent works, we do not wait for an ending, but experience waiting by endlessly reliving the same failed ending. Groundhog day is the day of grinding to a halt. These texts narrativise not the death drive of a character who wants to die per se, but someone

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caught in a loop eternally trying but unable to commit suicide; ending and immortality are equally uncanny and unendurable to us, and also equally incomprehensible. We grow impatient, anxious, and even confused about whether an ending is a beginning because we cannot conceptualise finality. We want a story to end, but do not, which might help account for the popularity of the serial in many forms –​serialized stories, soap operas, TV seasons –​which turn endings into pauses. Once a work concludes, we might want a sequel, the same thing in a new guise. We might then approach waiting in contemporary texts in terms of a popular culture that celebrates instant gratification, yet is also predicated on producing delay, loops, remakes, and serials rather than “self-​ contained” works. Here, delay itself is essential to fulfillment. Gaddis might acknowledge that legal deferral is a form of both ritualised waiting and repetition. Jonathan Franzen cattily contends that Frolic’s “only aesthetic weakness, really, is that much of it is repetitive, incoherent, and insanely boring” (Franzen 2002: n.p.). The novel offers the legal equivalent of a hospital waiting room (which also appears in the text) –​what is the artist’s objective in making an audience wait without obvious pleasure? Perhaps because it tries to situate waiting as sadomasochistic only within legal instead of narrative discourse, Gaddis’ novel is indeed oddly flat: it completely caricatures its subjects and personae, yet simultaneously comes across as too accurate and realistic, and hence uninteresting. In that sense, it straddles the line Jorge Luis Borges invokes regarding the Quixote –​it might seem an almost magical realist text to those outside the law, but a naturalistic one to those within the legal system. I make that point because Frolic’s imperative, as with Dickens’ Bleak House, is partly (to perform the) procedural; in these texts, if you go into the legal system a young person, you figuratively and sometimes literally come out an old one. In the decades long case of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce at the center of Bleak House, the more you try to resolve a legal action, the more you sink into legal quicksand. Such legal abeyance has a pronounced psychological impact, but writers principally treat it (and not narrative delay) as inherently unjust. In this sense, Gaddis seems to mock the pleasure that readers and viewers might take from suspense and deferral, partly by subjecting them to the delays of the legal domain. Judges often describe delay as absolute and ceaseless, but also as inevitable. Courts typically set back or refuse to hear cases because plaintiffs have failed to exhaust their administrative remedies (exhaustion is a key term here): no irony was attached to a Utah court’s pronouncement that “Plaintiff’s contention that it has no further remedy other than apparently interminable waiting ignores the fact that administrative proceedings now in progress are necessary to fulfill the Department’s obligations under [The National Environmental Policy

66 Hardack Act].” Utah Int’l, Inc. v. Andrus, 488 F. Supp. 962, 974 (D. Utah 1979). Holdings often sound like parodies, or like Gaddis parodying a court. For example, in a Seventh Circuit case involving the notorious and absurdly named serial killer John Wayne Gacy, the court remarked that “The district judge in Free [v. Peters, the actual case name] has asked a magistrate judge to inquire into claims that the defendant misled the court about the provenance of the study. All other proceedings in Free have ground to a halt, and we cannot tell how long it may be before the appeal in that case will be resolved (or even which side will turn out to be the appellant)” (a final comment that acknowledges that cases function more like hamster than karmic wheels). Gacy v.  Welborn, 994 F.2d 305, 309 (7th Cir. 1993). Courts frequently use this same term, “ground to a halt,” or other clichés such as “the wheels of justice grind slowly,” as if to offer a meta-​ commentary regarding the system in which they are implicated.1 If justice delayed is justice denied, the U.S.  legal system is predicated on denying denial, and the legal system tends to occlude analysis of its endemic, institutionalised delays. The legal term “stay” might imply more than intended, as it connotes not temporary interruption, but permanent disruption, and possibly spatial displacement. The jury is still and will always be out. Beyond the ‘vulgar Marxist’ economic incentive to delay legal action, lawyers operate in a system that has complex and disturbing ontological prerequisites and incentives to institute delay. What is particularly ironic in the U.S. is that most people are familiar with the legal system by watching one-​hour (42 minute) TV-​dramas such as L.A. Law (1986–​94) or fake “reality” TV shows such as Judge Judy (1996-​ongoing), which typically introduce, develop and end legal cases in a single episode in a single location –​i.e., they so systematically present narratives that distort temporal and spatial reality that they reflect a kind of cultural pathology. (While network TV dramas tend to resolve complex legal issues quickly, they also perpetuate narrative serialisation indefinitely, both, presumably, to satisfy or addict audiences). Of course, legal delay is hardly unique to the U.S. judicial system. As David Nelken observes of Italy, for example, “Civil cases in 1999 took on average five

1 Hundreds of cases use equivalent terms to describe similar scenarios: “So it is that any real progress in this case ground to a halt long ago.” C & M Props., L.L.C. v. Burbidge (In re C & M Props., L.L.C.), 563 F.3d 1156, 1162 (10th Cir. 2009). Or see In re Mullins, 187 B.R. 523, 529 (Bankr. W.D. Va. 1995) (observing that “after that spurt of activity, the sluggish wheels of justice ground to a halt”), and In re Grand Jury Proceedings (U.S. Steel-​Clairton Works), 525 F.2d 151, 156 (3rd Cir. 1975) (noting that “the lower court’s order has caused the entire federal proceedings against U.S. Steel to grind to a halt”).

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years to go through the first trial stage, and over nine years for both the first and appeal stages (which is essentially a retrial of the facts). […] Once cases are underway lawyers rarely aim at settlements before the case reaches court, in part because delay comes to represent a goal in itself” (12, 18). The delay of gratification can become a form of gratification. In terms of eschatology, and for some the justice that apocalypse is supposed to augur, we wait for an Event or revolutionary transformation whose arrival will also erase what came before and whatever expectations we had. Joseph Kronick contends that “justice constitutes a horizon,” and “the opening and the limit that defines an infinite period of waiting.” ([Derrida, “Force of Law”]) [….] Justice, says Derrida, does not wait. A decision is always structurally finite; it rends time. Therefore, it is impossible to say “in the present that a decision is just (that is, free and responsible), or that someone is a just man –​even less, ‘I am just’.” ([Derrida, “Force of Law”]) In other words, justice cannot be an object of knowledge, nor is it something determined in a present, no more than it can be said to rest in an infinite horizon of expectation. Justice is to come, à venir [….] Literature, in its character as incalculable event, in its suspension or bracketing of its relation to meaning and reference, makes law. derrida 1999: 51

I would argue that the notion of the chance of the Event is part of the experience of interminable waiting. If, for example, as Slavoj Žižek argues, all markets borrow “from the (virtual) future,” we all live on borrowed time, but also wait for a future that can never arrive (1993: 79). In his 2015 novel Satin Island, Tom McCarthy describes our lives between two deaths as the “mere side effects of a technical delay […] an interval” (54). Waiting always involves some version of that interval before the Event. In that context, I treat the legal “economy” as a formal microcosmic component of our entire discursive framework, in which delay perversely defines continuity and life, and resolution represents death. Judgment and the end are beyond narrative, even religious narrative, but not beyond a court case. But after we have acculturated a modernist existentialism –​most prominently from Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett and Jean-​Paul Sartre –​in terms of the ontology of the law, we can wait only for a denouement that can never arrive. In The Trial (1925), Kafka’s protagonist, as Derrida proposes in “Before the Law,” “comes to his end without reaching his end” (Kronick 1999: 51). As Kronick then also observes, the first sentence of Gaddis’ novel is: “Justice? –​You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law” (Gaddis 13). To wait is also often to defer; waiting/​

68 Hardack deferral is here the antithesis of a form of rebirth, or resetting the clock.2 But as Soja might note, we also wait for geographic or spatial justice, which seems to wait always just beyond the horizon (cf. 1989). Of course, in mundane terms, for the lawyer only the clock is always running; billing time is measured not just in six-​minute increments (sometimes less), but through multiple/​simultaneous clocks (the practice of multiple billing that is actually legal). Like death, lawyers always win. To simplify some of the points Kronick –​whose name also sounds appropriately temporal –​makes, legal language often virtually deconstructs itself; e.g., lawyers file motions whose primary effect is to stop all movement, and to delay, freeze, and ossify. The goal is often to make an issue moot (legally irrelevant) –​e.g., to stall legal proceedings when a plaintiff tries to prevent a forest from being razed until after it’s been razed. Waiting for the law also emblematises many aspects of our lack of individual agency in relation to the state, corporations, and other institutions. Rachel Potter proposes that the Kafkaesque legal narrative has become a kind of parable for the individual’s relation to the modern state. In The Trial[,]‌Joseph K’s entanglement in the meshes of a rationalised and bureaucratised law, which is nevertheless cut loose from a knowable form of reason, has been seen as suggestive both of modern state power and modern forms of alienation. Potter 2002: 253

Texts such as Frolic themselves replicate legal delay through narrative delay. But the narratological aspects of legal delay provide little or none of the presumed pleasures of texts that withhold plot, the resolution of mysteries, and closure. In fact, for example, the pace of court cases was ideally suited to Dickens’ mode of serial publication, and some lawyers and writers have similar incentives to make people wait and delay resolution. One can treat legal procedure as a form of serialisation, but also ask whether modes of legal analysis will help us better understand narrative deferral. Such legal waiting often has an implicitly millenarian or eschatological component, and waiting for the judgment moment leaves the litigant in a spatial as well as temporal purgatory. We can conceive of the absence of time only in a place, a purgatory, without time. The spaces

2 “Authentic” (putatively revolutionary or eschatological) waiting is supposed to erase or transform the waiting that came before. Roberto Esposito claims that “The only way for life to defer death is not to preserve [life] as such (perhaps in the immunitary form of negative protection), but rather to be reborn continually in different guises” (2008: 181).

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of stasis or repetition, from courtrooms and jail cells to the figurative spaces of narrative, help frame the process of waiting. Do writers have motivations different from, yet consonant with, those of lawyers or judges in making their constituents wait? Relative to attorneys, writers typically express some form of anxiety about the concept of endings generally (rather than the prospect of a particular holding). If a court issues a published opinion, a holding could be reinterpreted repeatedly, but most cases at least eventually have univocal endings. But even when it seems to offer closure and a definitive ending, a novel is always subject to dialogue and never has any closure –​as both T.S. Eliot and Jorge Luis Borges might emphasise, from opposite ends of the earth (though perhaps not of the political spectrum) –​every text incorporates and revises the last. Waiting again implicates eschatology, here reminding us of the connection between legal judgment and judgment day. If the mundane law can initiate a regime of bureaucratised waiting in controlled spaces, it can also function as a heuristic for staging eschatological space. Claudia Brodsky elaborates that for Immanuel Kant, because time “is not a sensory category […] the spatialisation of time and existence would erase not only existence, but also externality as such” –​i.e., I would suggest, spatialisation can represent a reflexive in-​turning, or a reversal of the “directions” of infinite time and space from outward and expanding to inward and returning, as exemplified by the mise en abyme of the synechdochic or fractal encyclopedic text (2016: 476). In my final section, I address how several emblematic narratives treat the repetition of time as a form of ritualised waiting, and an attempt to reach an ending that will erase the external boundaries of the text. 4

A Long Spatialisation of Space I watched it, utterly fixated. It was a perfect likeness of the van we’d used up at the warehouse. More than perfect: it was identical in make and size and registration, in the faded finish on its sides. [… .] They were waiting; we were waiting; the guard in the van was waiting, and so were its pobbled steps […] the street was waiting: yellow and white lines, kerbs and pavements were all waiting, waiting, waiting while the lift emitted its little electric whine. tom mccarthy 2005: 284–​5

It’s not almost over. Somebody will win, somebody will lose, somebody will appeal and it starts all over again does not it? Is not that what happens? –​ And if it did not? reared up on his own elbow sweeping the space around

70 Hardack them with an arm, space magnified, reflected in the mirrored walls, expanded without bounds through sheets of glass to the floor all light and where no shadow found refuge, all crystal geometry, –​if it did not, Christina? gaddis 1994: 216

The end of waiting, judgment day, ushers in not only the end of time, but the often-​overlooked end of space –​the end of boundaries. Like many encyclopedic novels, some postmodern narratives of waiting and trauma document a terminal shift from time to space. If some legal narratives asymptotically approach an Event, or, to combine discursive terms, an event horizon, some literary texts map periods of waiting onto, or translate them into, space. A Foucauldian analysis of how the discursive locations of power change over time focuses our attention on how spatial coordinates structure literary and legal narratives; or as Igor Stramignoni advocates, we should “consider not only how law is everywhere in space, but also, and somewhat more radically, how space is everywhere in law” (2004: 184). In his influential work on cultural geography, Henri Lefebvre proposed that space is not an empty vessel or void waiting to be filled (1999: 15, 170). As a social construction, space can generate or reflect the social dynamics of waiting or codify a void or absence that is a site of waiting.3 Here, one might differentiate the experience of legal space much the way one differentiates the experience of relative time. Soja advocates developing a “spatialized mentalite” with which to re-​interpret and re-​inhabit our experience, and asserts that “spatiality cannot be completely separated from physical and psychological spaces” (1989: 120). Soja argues that one can differentiate socially-​produced space from material spaces and mental spaces, each of which help construct spatiality, but are not equivalent to it (1989: 120). In other words, space, like waiting, is always literal and figurative, but also positive and negative. The spaces (and doors) of law often represent some lack –​lack of access, resolution, movement, or, in effect, persons behind the door. If, as Žižek contends, even “a lack is spatial, designating a void within a space,” a lack of agency designates a void within the space of law, a suck hole of space (2012: 496). In legal contexts, a lack of agency is often connoted by waiting in and for a space

3 In Jo Guldi’s estimation, (French theory, in particular the work of Foucault, Lefebvre, de Certeau, and Virilio […] newly emphasised the power relations implicit in landscape under general headings like “abstract space,” place, and “symbolic place,” interpreted through new spatial metaphors like “panopticism” (n.d.:  n.p.). Susan Philips notes the staging of courtroom interactions (initial appearances, pleas, bail hearings, etc.) and the location of participants –​who speaks to whom face to face, who stands and sits, and changes of position at each of these junctures –​signify the relationships among the participants (1986: 228–​30).

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as well as a time. It is appropriate that Kronick proposes that justice constitutes a horizon –​that is, a feature of (inaccessible) space we will never reach. Some part of us also hungers for the end of space –​that is, for a form of closure, but also for the exhaustion or final encyclopedic cataloging of space, for that would also put an end to all waiting. Just as each temporal moment is haunted by the spectre of its ending, each space is haunted by its horizon. Spatialisation helps us apprehend the materiality and embodiment of temporality. Theorists who recently have taken the spatial turn often also have focused on embodiment, especially in the context of gender (see Potter 2002; Walsh 2002). Brodsky asserts that [W]‌hile Kant deduced that we cannot imagine things or space, either positively or negatively, without starting from the supposition of ‘space’ in which we can do so […] the efforts of historicist approaches to literature focusing on all things external to literature is [sic] predicated on the reverse assumption: that the external –​material and spatial –​is not an object of, but can itself determine, thought. brodsky 2016: 473, emphasis in the original

To understand some acts of waiting, we might need to spatialise and historicise time, for example by analysing commemorative monuments. Focusing in part on how space can commemorate time, civil rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson told journalist/attorney Jeffrey Toobin, “It’s not as if we have not waited long enough to begin the process for a memorial for lynching. […] in addition to the markers, we needed to be talking about a space, a bigger, deeper, richer space” (2016: 44).4 Addressing such spaces of remembrance and the work of sculptor Maya Lin, Louis Menand observes that The Vietnam Memorial is a piece about death for a culture in which people are constantly being told that life is the only thing that matters [… . these] natural materials shaped in topological contours […] are also refinements on destruction –​just as […] the Vietnam Memorial is made by repairing a tear in the earth louis menand 2002: 277, 280–​8

4 How race affects waiting is a critical issue outside the scope of this paper. A Caltech/​m it study published in 2015, for example, indicates that black voters typically need to wait twice as long as whites to cast their votes. (Stewart: 15) The author observes that “the experience of waiting in a long line influences the judgments that form in voters’ minds about the quality of vote counting throughout the nation” (ibid.:19).

72 Hardack A memorial recreates but alters an aspect of the past, inevitably offering a partial repetition. Using rhetoric close to Gaddis’, and that intercalates waiting with repetition, and repetition with Event, Žižek asks us to “recall Walter Benjamin’s notion of revolution as redemption through repetition,” which Žižek, via Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, frequently iterates as the notion that we can never properly engage something, including revolution, the first time, because it is only by failing and making a wrong decision that we create the possibility for making the right one (2012: 464–​5; 2010: 84). The question becomes whether waiting (as a form of repetition) creates deadlock or the possibility of change and liberation.5 If some public works of art commemorate a period of time in space, some recent texts more pessimistically commemorate and enact periods of open-​ended delay. Tom McCarthy’s Remainder, published in 2005, is in part a Kafkaesque narrativisation of the way the unconscious is structured like a system of bureaucratic law that “spins” in its trauma; and it suggests that delay provides the pleasure of repetition in the service of an unconscious drive. Here, failed revolution denotes damnation through repetition. An anonymous amnesiac post-​traumatic figure who cannot remember who he was or how that person was injured, McCarthy’s protagonist “endlessly repeats” and pre-​enacts events to fill in the space around his central absence (of injury/​self) –​in other words, he defines himself in reference to an injury, which he might not have suffered, that effectively (would have) erased his previous identity. He organises his life to relive a few scenes in static repetition (190, 257). If Crease  –​a wrinkle in time –​infinitely repeats all the plot points of his legal narrative trying to redress his McGuffin of an injury, McCarthy’s protagonist infinitely tries to recreate imagined events to redress his traumatic amnesia. Here, interminable repetitions become a discursive manifestation of a terminal deadlock. Remainder, whose title evokes the Lacanian excess that can never be harmonised or integrated with a consistent identity, unexpectedly rewrites Proust, recreating not just place, but space, the complex coordinates that in this case exigently delimit time. For McCarthy, we are always waiting for remainder. In the passage that opened the final section of this essay, McCarthy’s protagonist orchestrates his surroundings perfectly to recreate space so he can relive time, but everything 5 Here, one might note that one of the primary spaces of capitalism, the franchise, is self-​ replicating and increasingly reflexive. Space that repeats itself recycles or annuls time (which, after David Harvey (The Condition of Postmodernity, 1991) is perhaps another way of describing the effect of some postmodern architecture). Among the primary regulatory spaces of capitalism, the seats of law are often meant to supervene or stand outside the spaces of society; to wait in most legal spaces is then to wait to reenter society.

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is subordinated to and defined by the process of waiting. In this sense, waiting represents the irrational remainder or surplus that also defines the norm, or whatever is non-​waiting. 5

In Search of Lost Space

Patrick Bray contends that at “the familiar beginning of À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu one finds in contradiction to the novel’s title, not a search for lost time, but the frantic search for a lost place” (2012: 193). McCarthy’s protagonist is not just searching for such a lost place, but reconstructing and reenacting it in time, for all space also exists in sequence. In that sense, one could say that he also traverses his trauma by endlessly repeating, across and “through the vertical axis of time (metaphor) and the horizontal axis of space (metonymy)” (Bray 2012: 198). McCarthy might also be narrating what Jim Byatt describes as a peri-​traumatic condensation of time, a lifetime experienced in the moment before/​of death, with all space and time converging to those coordinates. The project of McCarthy’s protagonist is encyclopedic and eschatological, because he seeks to gain complete control over a comprehensive reproduction of space so he can live in it forever as a closed sequence/​space. For McCarthy’s central character, waiting is a function of recreating space or of restaging, much in the manner of Caden Cotard, the obsessive protagonist of Synecdoche New York who tries to stage life itself in an ever-​expanding theater of rigorously controlled (re)enactments of space. Cotard, of course, likely suffers from Cotard’s syndrome, the clinical condition of thinking one is already dead –​of short-​circuiting the wait. Synecdoche interrogates the aforementioned encyclopedic premise that representation can provide a comprehensive replication of space and time. In Remainder, all waiting and movement must be punctiliously orchestrated: “there was no noise at all –​just the massed silence of whole scores of people waiting, like me, infinitely patient” (217). These sites of virtual reenactment are the “spaces” of the text. Like Cotard, McCarthy’s protagonist seems to utilise waiting as a means to engage the infinities of both time and space, in part to force the eschatological component of time to merge with lived time: [O]‌ur gestures were all votive ones, acts of anticipation. […] We sat in silence, waiting. The other re-​enactors in my car looked through the windows, fascinated […] They’d been told that the zone [of re-​enactment] would be wide and demarcated as clearly as the shooting ones had been; that its edges would be blurred. Buffered by side and back streets as they

74 Hardack merged gradually, almost imperceptibly, with real space. They’d been told this –​ but they still looked for some kind of boundary [… . But] I knew there was no edge, that the re-​enactment zone was non-​existent, or that it was infinite, which amounted to the same thing. mccarthy 2005: 282

In other words, he is creating a life-​size map of the world, but his form of spatialisation has destroyed externality as such. Or as Žižek offers, we reach AK [absolute knowledge] not when we ‘know it all,’ but when we reach the point at which there is no longer any external point of reference by means of which we could relativise our own position –​in AK, the very fact that no external limit is discernible, that we do not see the limits of our world, bears witness to our limitation, to our immersion in a world whose horizon we do not perceive. žižek 2014: 244, emphasis added

Every act of waiting implicates an ending, and every ending raises the question of whether any conclusion (of life, the universe, the sub-​atomic spectrum, knowledge, etc.) is final. Even formally unconventional authors such as Gaddis and McCarthy rely on a kind of encyclopedic grid, or a comprehensive part for whole representation of space and time, as we see in a slightly different context in Synecdoche. Waiting can reflect a form of repetition as deadlock, the reenacted failure to reach an Event or a horizon. But any attempt to represent the entire world or one’s entire life from beginning/​cause to end/​effect, like Crease’s attempt to avenge every injury, never catches up to the present, or end time, but generates new injuries. The appropriate horrifying lesson of all Groundhog Days, as Phil Connors (Bill Murray) discovers, is that you cannot commit suicide –​that you can never reach the temporal end. The other lesson is that such dramas must transpire on a kind of No Exit diorama, a delimited small town from which the protagonist –​like Truman Burbank in The Truman Show (1998) –​cannot escape, whose borders he can never traverse. Despite the cloying Hollywood ending in which Phil learns, grows and hugs –​which, ironically in context, is far more implausible than even the film’s actual premise –​the point of such narratives is that you must forever repeat your mistakes in a specific space of waiting, here a recursive geography that materializes a manifestation of eternity: in other words, space in such works repeats itself as much as, and in correlation with, time. Such an outcome overlaps with that of many encyclopedic texts, which endeavor to totalize the time and space of the world, and effectively preclude anything

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new from ever intruding on them, by exhaustively preempting or identifying anything to come as a manifestation of an existing taxonomy. Doomed eschatological efforts to map and conjoin all of time and space and effectively freeze them, these texts thereby often narrativise and themselves become exercises in static waiting. These typically male, compulsive and convulsive attempts to map and codify reality recreate and effectively generate spaces of encyclopedic waiting and deferral, as seen in Flaubert’s Bouvard and Pécuchet (1881), whose titular protagonists set out on a journey to collate everything, only to discover that “they would arrive at the other end of France, having spent their last penny on the journey, and there would find, under different names, the same curé, the same director of education, the same prefect” (1962: 163).6 The original for that pair, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, are forever perplexed by the ever-​receding horizon of their journey, by finding themselves, as chapter titles suggest, in “The Same Adventure Continued”: both are also repeatedly “surprised to find themselves in the same garden they had started from” (Cervantes 1950: 732). McCarthy’s protagonist in some ways reprises and narrowly focuses the spatial quest of Bouvard and Pécuchet, engaging in frenetic motion to freeze space into a controlled and finally static mise en scène. Some repetitions of the same, from Groundhog Day to courts grinding to a halt, are also dramatisations of waiting, and perhaps follow the curvature of space and time –​that is, they are narratives of ultimate reflexivity. If time is round and space is curved, waiting is the designation for a detective story in which we wait to disinter ourselves.

6 I argue in “Going Belly Up” (1996) that encyclopedic attempts to catalog and effectively recreate a comprehensive spatial copy of the world reflect a male epistemology and ontology for a variety of reasons related to male attitudes about procreation, genealogy, totality, and eschatological repetition. In his encyclopedic thought experiments, Borges imagined that the universe, that is the library, was one enormous book that contained all books –​i.e., that erasing the artificial “spatial” borders between books could merge all books, and space, back into a disindividuated or universal singularity. As Alice Balestrino suggests in slightly different contexts, a spatial geography of literature must acknowledge along essentially Einsteinian ground that space and time are not disparate aspects of experience, but form one unhyphenated spacetime; in this sense, many of the authors I address, especially McCarthy, are reintegrating these often separated coordinates. (Borges of course was one of the twentieth century’s primary proponents of “whole for whole” map-​making, e.g. in “On Exactitude in Science” (1946) conjuring cartographers who produce a perfect encyclopedic map of the empire which itself is the size of the empire). As McCarthy’s protagonist in Remainder might attest, if we remove the boundaries between books, they become infinite.

76 Hardack 6

Conclusion

In an omni-​post (post-​modern, post-​human, post-​Holocene, etc.) world, we wait for what’s next, but fear that the Event we waited for is already behind us: we are waiting for and post the past. In his most recent novel, Satin Island, McCarthy intimates that we have generated eschatology as history, a looping digital record of everything that preserves life everywhere except in us: There’s hardly an instant of our lives that is not documented. […] every keystroke is archived. […] Nothing ever goes away… . a new spectre [arises … not] that the Great Report might be unwritable, but … that it had already been written [… . and] once it came into being, [it] would […] have existed always […] But who could read it? […] The worst thing about dying, he told me […] is that there’s no one to tell about it. mccarthy 2015: 122–​3, emphasis in the original

The basic premise of waiting is that something that has not occurred yet might occur; but what happens in narratives and genres in which what we wait for happened long ago, or has already been written? What happens to waiting when the future turns out to be the past, or when we have already passed an apocalyptic threshold?7 In Satin, the principles of controlled reenactment again regulate some characters’ behavior: “[H]‌e made me strike up and hold certain postures. […] He and I kept this up for an eternity. Time seemed to have stopped. […] He was moving too. At first he moved his body and his limbs to show me how to move mine. […] He was, like I said, deeply moved” (149, 152–​3). The end time, the ending of time or eternity, moves deeply into embodied space. Most of these texts feature protagonists who are waiting for something that’s already happened –​for an iterated past, not the future; they document a culture of exhaustion or millenarian belatedness, a culture curving back on itself. Time then seems to stop, by looping back on itself. Driven or influenced by tropes of entropy, these contemporary texts suggest we are waiting not just in/​for time, but space. And the most comprehensive implicit question remains whether space will continue to expand forever, or contract back to the point of the Big Bang –​whether we await not the end of time, but the ruination of suck-​holing that is the end of space. 7 Satin is partly a meditation on 9/​11. Its title is a slant rhyme for Staten Island, whose over-​ determinedly named Fresh Kills garbage landfill plays a role in both Satin and Don DeLillo’s Underworld (1997), which forms a kind of pre 9/​11 bookend for McCarthy’s novel.

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References



Primary Sources



Secondary Sources

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Cervantes, Miguel de (1950): Don Quixote. 1605/​15. Trans. J.M. Cohen. Baltimore: P ­ enguin. Flaubert, Gustave (1976):  Bouvard and Pecuchet. 1881. Trans. A.J. Krailsheimer. New York: Penguin. Gaddis, William (1994): A Frolic of His Own. New York: Simon & Schuster. McCarthy, Tom (2005): Remainder. New York: Vintage. McCarthy, Tom (2015): Satin Island. New York: Knopf. Rabelais, François (1955):  Gargantua and Pantagruel. 1532–​1564. Trans. J.M. Cohen. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Ruskin, John (2014): Praeterita. 1885. New York: Knopf. Swift, Jonathan (1962): Gulliver’s Travels and Other Writings by Jonathan Swift. 1726. Ed. Miriam K. Starkman. New York: Bantam.

Balestrino, Alice (2017): “Alternative Geographies for Alternative Histories: The Diagonal Space in [Michael] Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union.” Paper delivered to the Italian American Studies Association (aisna) Conference, “The U.S. and the World We Inhabit,” 30 Sept. 2017, Milan, Italy. Borges, Jorge Louis. Labyrinths, Ed. Donald Yates and James Irby. New York: New Directions, 1962. Bray, Patrick M. (2012):  The Novel Map:  Space and Subjectivity in Nineteenth-​Century French Fiction. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Brodsky, Claudia (2016):  “Philosophy, Literature, and the Critique of Spatialization.” PMLA 131.2: 469–​79. Byatt, Jim (2012): “Being Dead? Trauma and the Liminal Narrative in J.G. Ballard’s Crash and Tom McCarthy’s Remainder.” Forum for Modern Language Studies 48.3: 245–​59. DeLillo, Don. Underworld. New York: Scribner, 1997. Esposito, Roberto (2008):  Bíos: Biopolitics and Philosophy. Trans. Timothy Campbell. Minneapolis. University of Minnesota Press. Franzen, Jonathan. (2002): “Mr. Difficult: William Gaddis and the Problem of Hard-​to-​ Read Books.” The New Yorker, 30 Sept. 2002. 100–​11. . Accessed 24 Nov. 2017. Guldi, Jo. (n.d.): “What is the Spatial Turn?” . Accessed 24 Nov. 2017. Hardack, Richard (1996): “Going Belly Up: Entries, Entrees, and the Encyclopedic Travel Narrative.” LIT: Literature, Interpretation, Theory 7.3-​4: 131–​51. Harvey, David (1991): The Condition of Postmodernity. Hoboken, New Jersey: Blackwell Publishers.

78 Hardack Kermode, Frank (1979): The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction. London: Oxford University Press. Kronick, Joseph (1999): Derrida and the Future of Literature. Albany: State University of New York Press. Lefebvre, Henri (1999): The Production of Space. 1974. Trans. Donald Nicholson-​Smith. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Martel, James (2011): “Waiting for Justice: Benjamin and Derrida on Sovereignty and Immanence.” Republic of Letters: A Journal for the Study of Knowledge, Politics, and the Arts 2.2: 1–​15. Menand, Louis (2002): American Studies. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Nelken, David (2004): “Using The Concept of Legal Culture.” 29 Austl. J. Leg. Phil. 1: 1–​26. Philips, Susan U. (1986): “Some Functions of Spatial Positioning and Alignment in the Organization of Courtroom Discourse.” Discourse and Institutional Authority: Medicine, Education, and Law. Ed. Sue Fisher and Alexandra Dundas Todd. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. 223–​33. Potter, Rachel (2002): “Waiting at the Entrance to the Law: Modernism, Gender and Democracy.” Textual Practice 14.2: 253–​63. Soja, Edward J. (1989): Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory. New York: Verso. Smith, Dinitia (1995): “Gaddis in the Details.” New York Magazine, 5 Jan. 1995. 34–​40. Stewart iii, Charles (2015):  “Managing Polling Place Resources.” Caltech/​MIT Voting Technology Project. . Accessed 24 Nov. 2017. Stramignoni, Igor (2004): “Francesco’s Devilish Venus: Notations on the Matter of Legal Space.” California Western Law Review 41.1: 147–​240. Telocator Network of America v. F.C.C. (1982). 691 F.2d 525 (D.C. Cir. 1982) . Accessed 10 May 2019. Toobin, Jeffrey (2016): “Justice Delayed.” The New Yorker, 22 Aug. 2016. 38–​47. Walsh, Rebecca (2002): “Where Metaphor Meets Materiality: The Spatialized Subject and the Limits of Locational Feminism.” Exclusions in Feminist Thought: Challenging the Boundaries of Womanhood. Ed. Mary Brewer. Brighton: Sussex Academic. 182–​202. Žižek, Slavoj (1993): Tarrying With the Negative: Kant, Hegel and the Critique of Ideology. Durham: Duke University Press. Žižek, Slavoj (2010): Living in the End Times. New York: Verso. Žižek, Slavoj (2012): Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. London: Verso. Žižek, Slavoj (2014): Absolute Recoil: Towards a New Foundation of Dialectical Materialism. New York: Verso.

chapter 4

Dickens, Reade and Galsworthy on Waiting in Solitary Confinement Cornelia Wächter Abstract The transition from the so-​called ‘old’ to the ‘new prison’ in the mid-​nineteenth century entailed, as Michel Foucault has famously outlined, the move from punishment as spectacle to the creation of “docile bodies” by means of disciplinary techniques. At least in theory, this transition also replaced waiting in prison (to be released, to be publicly humiliated in the pillory, to be transported to a penal colony, to be executed) with imprisonment as punishment and as a reformatory tool. Accordingly, prisoners were precisely not supposed to wait; they were to use their time efficiently to the benefit of society at large –​through work and self-​reformation. Charles Dickens was among the first writers to deploy literature in order to demonstrate that, instead of the intended reformation, solitary confinement bred hypocrisy and unbearable suffering. Waiting in cellular confinement became the antithesis of the intended prison reform  –​not so much in terms of active and deliberate resistance but as a symptom of human suffering and misguided reformatory zeal. This chapter uses waiting as the critical lens through which to analyse narrative criticism of segregation in works by Charles Dickens, Charles Reade and John Galsworthy, and to demonstrate the continuing relevance of these works.

Keywords Charles Dickens –​Charles Reade –​John Galsworthy –​prison –​solitary confinement –​ segregation

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/​9 789004407121_​0 06

80 Wächter 1

Introduction As he went through Cold-​Bath Fields he saw A solitary cell; And the devil was pleased, for it gave him a hint For his prisons in Hell coleridge 1828

Conceptualisations and representations of imprisonment are replete with metaphors of time, most frequently represented by the conceptual metaphors ‘doing time’ and ‘serving time’. This is hardly surprising since the severity of the crime is supposed to determine the length of the prison sentence. In his address to his imprisoned brother, American novelist John Edgar Wideman advances the view that [n]‌o one does time outside of time. A narrow sense of time as a material entity, as a commodity like money that can be spent, earned, lost, owed, or stolen is at the bottom of the twisted logic of incarceration. When a person is convicted of a crime, the state dispossesses that criminal of a given number of days, months, years. Time pays for crime. john edgar wideman 2005: 35

Time, however, is not actually taken away but, on the contrary, expands significantly in prisoners’ experience, and getting through that time can pose an enormous challenge (Cohen and Taylor 1972: 13). In the words of Falder, the central character of John Galsworthy’s play Justice: “A day […] shut up in your cell thinking and brooding as I do, it’s longer than a year outside” (1910: 136). The perception of time is radically altered to the prisoners’ disadvantage, and this is largely due to the fact that prisoners tend to wait:  “[i]‌nmates spend much of their days waiting by grilles, waiting for visits and fretting for letters. […] The majority of prisoners are waiting for their release, but the problem is accentuated for those who are serving indeterminate sentences” (Taylor 1960: 66). This indeterminacy also exacerbates the experience of waiting prior to the prison sentence. The justice system seizes control over much of the individual’s spatiotemporal perspective at the moment of the court summons or arrest. Piper Kerman, for example, reports in her prison memoir Orange Is the New Black: My Time in a Women’s Prison (2010) that when she was finally sentenced to fifteen months in a federal prison and heard family and friends crying, she “was so exhausted by waiting that [she] was eager to get it over with as quickly as possible. […] But the wait continued, this time for [her] prison assignment” (30). Waiting was so difficult to bear that Kerman preferred to start

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her prison sentence –​yet another, much more sustained, period of waiting. In fact, imprisonment itself may be called “the exemplary symbol of waiting, of being stuck in a space and for a time not of our choosing” (Armstrong 2015: 1). The effects of the loss of control over one’s own time become all the more severe in solitary confinement. The latter, also called segregation or cellular confinement, is a type of imprisonment in which inmates spend between twenty-​two and twenty-​four hours a day in their cell, separated from other prisoners and with only limited contact to prison staff (Shalev 2008: 2). When maintained for a long period of time, this type of confinement “can cause severe psychiatric harm” (Grassian 2006: 327). More generally, it usually causes considerable mental distress and adversely affects an inmate’s health, sometimes even permanently (Shalev and Edgar 2015:  1). Tellingly, Lisa Guenther opens her monograph on solitary confinement with the words:  “There are many ways to destroy a person, but one of the simplest and most devastating is through prolonged solitary confinement” (2013: xi). Steven Czifra, who spent eight years in a Security Housing Unit, i.e. in segregation, even goes so far as to assert that “we […] know without a doubt that long-​term solitary confinement is torture” (qtd. in Reiter 2016: 62). This form of imprisonment, as Sharon Shalev reminds us, “is one of the oldest and most enduring prison practices” (2008: 2). It was put to strategic, ubiquitous and purportedly ‘reformatory’ use with the emergence of the ‘new prison’ in the mid-​nineteenth century and found its extreme form in the ‘Separate System’ that kept prisoners in constant and complete isolation. The adverse effects of segregation for an inmate’s health were soon observed and widely discussed, and literary authors were among the fiercest critics of the new system. Nevertheless, this type of imprisonment continues to exist today. In fact, the past decades “have seen a marked increase in the use of strict and often prolonged solitary confinement across the world: in the context of the ‘war on terror’; as disciplinary punishment; with pre-​trial detainees, the mentally ill and former death-​row prisoners; and, in the so-​called ‘supermax’ prisons” (Nowak 2008: n.p.). The present chapter discusses how Charles Dickens, Charles Reade and John Galsworthy make use of literature’s capacity for raising empathy in order to facilitate prison reform and demonstrates the continuing topicality of these authors’ criticism of solitary confinement. 2

Historical Background

Even though imprisonment may be the textbook symbol of waiting, waiting is not at all what prisoners are supposed to be doing in solitary confinement. In the

82 Wächter words of David Garland: “Like all habitual patterns of social action, the structures of modern punishment have created a sense of their own inevitability and of the necessary rightness of the status quo” (1990: 3), and imprisonment serving the twofold aim of punishment and rehabilitation is at the very heart of this status quo. Up until the early nineteenth century, however, this was by no means the case. Inmates did indeed largely wait in prison: wait for their trial, then wait for whipping, stocks, pillory, deportation –​or for their execution. Imprisonment as punishment was virtually non-​existent, and attempts at normalisation via imprisonment existed only rudimentarily, most notably in the form of forced labour in the Houses of Correction, which were intended for vagrants and beggars, not felons. By the end of the eighteenth century, the American colonies were no longer available for transportation, i.e. banishment as punishment; what has come to be known as the Bloody Code led to so many executions that the bloodthirst of the public often turned into disgust and objection to capital punishment, and different reformers deplored the state of the prisons. The latter were particularly concerned with moral and medical contagion among prisoners. Dismal sanitary conditions caused diseases to spread, and petty criminals were thought to be ‘contaminated’ by the criminal energy and knowledge of ‘professional criminals’. With the emergence of the ‘new prison’, or the modern penitentiary, prisoners’ self-​reform and rehabilitation (or ‘normalisation’) became the objective, and cellular confinement was supposed to be the key facilitator in this process. Carefully separated from other inmates and always potentially observed by the disciplining gaze of prison personnel, the prisoners were supposed to ‘self-​discipline’, and to render their bodies docile in Foucauldian terms. To quote Reade’s narrator, the prison became “a penal hospital for diseased and contagious souls” (1990: 23) or “an adult school of manners, morals, religion, grammar, writing and cobbling” (ibid.: 22). Soon, however, serious doubts about the new model arose (Henriques 1972:  84), not least because it had been abused for simple punishment by magistrates and had failed to effect the promised mass reformation of criminals and instead affected them negatively (ibid.). In his travelogue “American Notes” of 1842, Dickens, for instance, very much in line with later Foucauldian thinking, severely criticises the shift from a direct targeting of the body to disciplinary techniques of punishment:1 I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain, to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body:  and because its 1 “American Notes”, as Philip Collins points out in Dickens and Crime, “constitutes Dickens’s main claim to a respectable place in penological history” (1994: 117).

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ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye and sense of touch as scars upon the flesh; because its wounds are not upon the surface, and it extorts few cries that human ears can hear; therefore I the more denounce it, as a secret punishment which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay. dickens 1898: 42

All three authors under discussion here attempt to ‘rouse humanity’ so as to arrest the deployment of these insidious disciplinary techniques, and in particular the use of solitary confinement. The unbearable protraction of experienced time in the process of indefinite waiting, deprived of means to alleviate the burden of waiting, is at the heart of their critique. Dickens, Reade and Galsworthy unmask the futility of disciplinary techniques in bringing about rehabilitation, and they narratively render visible the scars these techniques leave. 3

Waiting in Carceral Spacetime

In order to discuss the three authors’ criticism of the effects of waiting in solitary confinement, I follow Dominique Moran (2012) in combining insights of carceral geographers, largely in the tradition of Michel Foucault and Michel de Certeau, with work by prison sociologists and criminologists working on time. Accordingly, I am going to read carceral space and time as interrelated SpaceTime, since, especially in experiential terms, time and space are inextricable interlinked in the prison context. As Foucault has famously averred, the ‘panoptic practices’ that characterise discipline, besides the notorious surveillance as a “microscope of conduct [or] an apparatus of observation, recording and training” (1995: 173), are also characterised by the rule of the time-​table. Moreover, panopticism constitutes “a triumph of place over time” because “[t]‌o be able to see […] is also to be able to predict, to run ahead of time by reading a space” (de Certeau 1984: 36). Azrini Wahidin therefore speaks of time-​discipline, which is enacted through the compulsory time-​tabling of a prisoner’s location which on the one hand is used to structure the operational needs of the prison, yet on the other can be used as a form of disciplining anyone who 2 It is important to note here that Dickens was not opposed to the modern penitentiary per se but to the so-​called ‘Separate System’ that kept the prisoners in perfect isolation. Dickens advocated the ‘Silent System’ instead, which was more punitive in other respects but reserved segregation to evenings and night time.

84 Wächter is out of sync with prison time. The artificial, abstract construction of penal time inscribes, governs and penetrates into the intimate bodily functions; the biological functions of sleeping, waking and using the toilet become regimented by the prison order of time. wahidin 2006: 6.2

Waiting forms an integral part of time-​discipline in that “the distribution of waiting time coincides with the distribution of power” since “waiting limits productive uses of time and in so doing generates distinct social and personal costs” (Schwartz 1975: 5). As noted above, prisoners, whose time has been declared forfeited by the imposition of the spatiotemporal prison sentence, are constantly left waiting. The institutional place of the prison governs time and movement –​curtails space and structures time –​while the individual trapped inside needs to ‘make do’, needs to wait for and seize opportunities, so as to create personal spaces (de Certeau 1984: xix, 37). Wahidin asserts that “[i]‌n as much as prison is an oppressive institution, the positivity of power creates prison as a site of resistance (albeit with externally determined boundaries)” (2006: 6.2). Carceral geographers have increasingly been interested in such displays of resistance and individuality on the part of the inmates (e.g. Baer; Dirsuweit; Moran 2016; Turner and Peters 2017; Ugelvik 2014). Viewed in such a light, waiting in solitary confinement might be read as an act of resistance to or even subversion of prison discipline, namely as the refusal to participate in the process of ‘normalisation’. Indeed, as I am going to illustrate, Dickens, Reade and Galsworthy were all very much concerned with prisoners’ ways of ‘making do’ within spatiotemporal confinement. In 1842, Dickens visits the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, which was built in 1829 as “the world’s first true ‘penitentiary” (Eastern State Penitentiary n.d.: n.p.) and served as a model for prisons around the world, including Pentonville in London. The first prisoner whom Dickens encounters is nearing the end of his sentence. The man still proclaims his innocence –​but the fact that this is his second prison term suggests to the reader that he is dishonest. His cell is full of objects he has imaginatively created out of whatever was available to him. It is an example of what de Certeau calls “poetic ways of ‘making do’ (bricolage)” (1984: xv). The prisoner has created a space of his own within the institutional place of his cell, but it soon becomes apparent that these are only “contrivances to while away the time” and desperate attempts to alleviate the pain of separation from his wife (Dickens 1889: 5). When the prison official asks the inmate: “But you are resigned now?”, he answers in the affirmative. This assertion, however, is accompanied by “a sigh that seemed quite reckless in its hopelessness”, and he adds that “[t]ime is very long gentlemen, within these four walls”

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(ibid.). Consequently, his spatial tactics are expressive of temporal tactics –​of dealing with time. From his profession of innocence alone it becomes apparent that the inmate Dickens describes is by no means working on his self-​reform –​ he is waiting. And his contrivances can be read as manifestations of what Giovanni Gasparini calls “equipped waiting” or waiting “filled with substitute meanings” (1995: 31). Unlike in the situations Gasparini describes, such as queuing or waiting at the doctor’s, being “equipped” for waiting becomes absolutely vital in prison. Sociologist Rik Scarce calls ‘doing time’ an “Act of Survival” (title) and observes that “[i]nmates must alter the meaning of hour, day, month, and year for self-​preservation and to maintain social stability, whether they serve sentences that are long or short. They control time through a host of cognitive feats, […] and through actions and activities that make time pass more quickly” (2002: 303). All of these can be regarded as spatiotemporal tactics. Reade narratively explores the possible, even likely consequences of depriving a human being of all means of distraction other than those provided by the inmate’s own mind. The narrator gives a detailed account of Tom Robinson’s experience in the utterly dark punishment cell, in which the latter faces “three mortal enemies: solitude, silence and privation of all employment” (Reade 1990: 27). Thus, when Robinson is about to be taken to ‘the hole’ for the second time, he begs: “Leave me my reason. You have robbed me of everything else. For pity’s sake leave me my reason” (ibid.: 56). Left in the hole with only his frugal meal, “he ate his pittance very slowly, two mouthfuls a minute. ‘I will be an hour eating it,’ said he, ‘and then an hour will have passed’ ” (ibid.: 58). In Scarce’s terms, Robinson uses a cognitive feat as a tactic to regain a degree of control over time, albeit with little success:  “He thought he was an hour eating it, but in reality he was scarce twenty minutes. The blackness seemed to smother him” (Reade 1900: 58). In the end, on the brink of madness, Robinson’s suffering is alleviated by the new chaplain who communicates with him through the closed door. In Reade’s novel, this humane intervention by the chaplain is what instigates the desired penitence of the prisoner –​not at all the cellular confinement, be it in Robinson’s regular cell or in the punishment cell. Dickens in particular emphasises that even ostensible reformation might actually be symptomatic of a veiled display of prisoners’ tactics. In “American Notes”, for instance, he observes how especially the more experienced prisoners have learned to play the system. As far as moral improvement or ‘normalisation’ are concerned, this means hypocrisy. Thus, Dickens describes a hardened criminal as follows: This fellow, upon the slightest encouragement, would have mingled with his professional recollections the most detestable cant; but I  am very

86 Wächter much mistaken if he could have surpassed the unmitigated hypocrisy with which he declared that he blessed the day on which he came into that prison, and that he never would commit another robbery as long as he lived. dickens 1898: 122

The issue of hypocrisy as endemic to the system is taken up again in David Copperfield (1850), where the novel’s villains, Uriah Heep and Mr Littimer –​ already well-​versed in the art of deception –​thrive in their new environment. In the context of solitary confinement, ironically, work in line with prison policy might be used as a means for equipped waiting or as a spatiotemporal tactic. Dickens imagines that upon first being locked into his cell, a prisoner will “[throw] himself upon the bed, and [lie] there abandoned to despair. Gradually, the insupportable solitude and barrenness of the place rouse him from this stupor, and when the trap in his grated door is opened, he humbly begs and prays for work. ‘Give me some work to do, or I shall go raving mad!’ ” (Dickens 1889: 7, emphasis added). Reade similarly has Robinson, a criminal well experienced in the old prison system –​which had rather been “a finishing school of felony and petty larceny” (1990: 23) –​beg for work as soon as he finds himself in one of the new prisons: “I think if you do not give me something to do I shall go out of my mind soon, sir” (ibid.: 25, emphasis added). At a later point, Reade’s narrator explains the significance of employment to prisoners as follows: “That little bit of labor and wholesome thought, whose paltry and childish details I half blush to have given you, were yet due to my story, for they took a man out of himself, checked the self-​devouring process, and helped elastic nature to recover herself this bout” (ibid.: 27, emphasis added). Even the most menial labour can serve to fill interstitial time with substitute meanings and to distract from the observation of clock time, since the latter expands endlessly in embodied time and leaves the inmate to his own desperate thoughts. Nevertheless, even though work may alleviate the situation, Dickens and Galsworthy emphasise that it does not counter the effects of segregation. At one point, Galsworthy presents an ironic take on prisoners’ need for occupation or “equipment” for waiting: an experienced prisoner who is close to being discharged is caught with a makeshift saw, even though he is only too well aware of the futility of attempting escape. When asked by the Governor why he had constructed the saw, Moaney states: “It passed the time” and complains that work in prison “do not occupy the mind” (1910:  142). He goes on to explain: “I’ve got another six weeks to do in here, alone. I can not do it and think o’ nothing. I must have something to interest me” (ibid.). Work does not suffice to keep the mind busy enough to be able to bear sustained confinement. Dickens

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describes that “[t]‌he weary days pass on with solemn pace, like mourners at a funeral” (ibid.:  8). This is representative of the pervasiveness of the tomb metaphor in prison literature (Fludernik 1999: 54) and indicates that even the most successful tactics cannot alter the fact that experienced time expands so significantly that release appears out of reach, even for those with shorter sentences. At the same time, lifetime outside is irretrievably lost. What needs to be taken into account is “the temporality of imprisonment from the perspective of prisoners’ being-​towards-​death” (Jamieson and Grounds 2005:  53). While time for the prisoners may be ‘entombed’, life goes on outside. To quote Sarah Armstrong, “[p]rison waiting may be experienced as particularly burdensome because it stops time (for the prisoner) while the rest of the world moves on […]” (2015: 2). As Megan Comfort stresses in Doing Time Together (2007), prisoners are not the only ones suffering as an effect of ‘stolen’ time; loved ones may also be waiting for the prisoner’s release. In Justice, Galsworthy depicts a case in which the lover, Ruth, wants to wait for the prisoner, Falder, but her situation does not allow her to do so. The couple’s plan had been to elope together in order for Ruth to escape her abusive husband, but now, as a woman stigmatised for having left her husband, Ruth has virtually no choice but to strategically seek refuge with another man. In this case, time not only moves on outside, events move in the wrong direction without the prisoner standing the least chance of stopping them, without him being able to intervene. Galsworthy thus ties his criticism of solitary confinement and the stigmatisation of prisoners to women’s confinement in unhappy or even dangerous marriages and their corresponding stigmatisation. What Galsworthy also contributes to the discussion is the fact that it is not only the prisoners themselves who are desperately waiting for their own discharge –​but their loved ones as well. It is also their relationships with the prisoners which are violently interrupted and put in suspense. Their lives outside move on, irrespective of the potentially dire need for the presence of the other. To return to the issue of solitary confinement in particular, Dickens concludes his speculative account of a prisoner’s experience by stating that prisoners under the Separate System must experience “an anguish so acute and so tremendous, that all imagination of it must fall far short of the reality” (1898: 9). In the accounts of all three authors, mental illness lurks in the cells virtually bare of any means of distraction or devoid of suitable “equipment” for waiting. And indeed, “[t]‌he most serious blow to the separate system was the growing evidence of mental disorders brought about by separate confinement” (Henriques 1972:  86). According to psychiatrist Stuart Grassian, “[t] he paradigmatic psychiatric disturbance was an agitated confusional state

88 Wächter which, in more severe cases, had the characteristics of a florid delirium, characterized by severe confusional, paranoid, and hallucinatory features, and also by intense agitation and random, impulsive, often self-​directed violence” (2006: 328). He emphasises that this also affected individuals who had had no prior mental health issues and exacerbated the situation of those that did (ibid.: 328–​9). While not all prisoners displayed symptoms of mental illness, “such confinement almost inevitably imposed significant psychological pain during the period of isolated confinement and often significantly impaired the inmate’s capacity to adapt successfully to the broader prison environment” (ibid.: 329). By the time Galsworthy wrote Justice in 1910, twenty-​four-​hour segregation had largely been reduced to the first phase of a prison sentence, but up to nine months were still the standard for some crimes (Gindin 1987: 203). In the words of the prison chaplain in Justice: “It’s just at this period that we are able to make some impression on them […]” (1910: 139). This ‘impression’ is, again, intended to lay the groundwork for the prisoner’s ‘normalisation’. But it takes no more than this short spell, as the play eloquently argues, to destroy a prisoner –​even with reading and work provided. Act iii, Scene 3 is entirely wordless and ends with Falder, the prisoner at the heart of the story, joining the other prisoners (invisible but audible to him) in desperately beating against their cell doors. Leo Schalit goes so far as to say that Galsworthy gives us “one of the simplest but most terrible scenes ever played on the stage” (1929: 7). To leave no doubt as to the effects of cellular confinement, Galsworthy lets Falder commit suicide immediately upon his second arrest, arguing in explanation of his choice of ending that “only by going beyond the re-​arrest to the pure emotion of something elemental could the full value be extracted” (qtd. in Nightingale 1984: xiii). Winston Churchill, who had himself been a prisoner in the Boer War and had only just become Home Secretary, was famously moved by the play (Jenkins 2001: 180), and within months had reduced the length of solitary confinement to three months for ‘recidivists’, or reoffenders, and one month for all others. Among his substantial reforms were, moreover, occasional lectures and concerts for the prisoners (Pelling 1989: 132). Accordingly, more means of “equipped waiting” were placed at the disposal of the inmates –​more means of filling interstitial time with substitute meaning. As noted above, scholars working in the field of carceral geography have paid close attention to uses of tactics by inmates so as to create personal spaces. They have theorised “these practices as in some way representing an exertion of a form of control over space, in tension with the theorization of prison space as regulated by Foucauldian disciplinary power” (Moran 2012: 313). As the texts under discussion here have shown, such tactics may encompass far

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more than movements in space or the decoration of a prison cell; we can also observe tactical uses of time, which, to quote Moran, “create a sense of control over the passage of time” (2012: 313). Waiting in defiance of the institution’s normalising objectives, and attendant attempts at making that waiting more bearable, can certainly be read as such displays of agency. Reading Dickens’s, Reade’s and Galsworthy’s depictions of prisoners’ use of tactics in celebratory terms, however, would run counter to the emphasis the authors place in their narratives, and that emphasis is unambiguously on the desperation that gives rise to prisoners’ attempts at gaining what limited control they can over SpaceTime in prison. Moreover, all three authors stress to what extent these attempts serve one purpose only: that of distracting from the pains of stolen time; from the pains of waiting. Thus, it is imperative to keep in mind that too ready a focus on inmates’ agency in the context of solitary confinement entails the danger of watering down or euphemising their suffering and the manifest danger to their health. 4

Solitary Confinement Today

Nowadays, solitary confinement in the Western world is largely reserved as punishment for inmates who violate prison rules, for prisoners who are at risk of self-​harm, who are a risk to others or need protection from others, or for those who are suffering from mental or physical illness (Scharff Smith 2006: 442; Shalev and Edgar 2015: 1).3 Nevertheless, the past decades have seen a dramatic and widespread increase in the use of solitary confinement across the world (Nowak 2008). England and Wales may not be at the forefront of this development, but in 2014 their prison system still had a total of 1,586 segregation cells; and in the first three months of that year, almost ten per cent of the prison population had spent at least one night in solitary confinement, with time spans ranging from a few hours to more than eighty-​four days (Shalev and Edgar 2015: v). More worryingly, the average time spent in solitary confinement in Close Supervision Centres (csc) was forty months (ibid.: 13). In terms of the effects of solitary confinement, Dickens’s, Reade’s and Galsworthy’s criticism retains regrettable topicality. As Lisa Guenther points out: “While penal codes, theories of criminal justice, and psychological terminology have all changed over time, the symptoms of solitary confinement have remained strikingly consistent [and are] experienced by an overwhelming 3 For exceptions, see Scharff Smith 2006: 442.

90 Wächter proportion of those who have undergone solitary confinement” (2013: xi). In more obviously accusatory terms, Grassian asserts that [i]‌t is both tragic and highly disturbing that the lessons of the nineteenth century experience with solitary confinement are today being so completely ignored by those responsible for addressing the housing and the mental health needs in the prison setting. For, indeed, the psychiatric harm caused by solitary confinement had become exceedingly apparent well over one hundred years ago. grassian 2006: 329

In England and Wales, a comprehensive study of fifteen prisons, including fourteen segregation units and four close supervision centres, showed that segregation units are still “characterised by social isolation, inactivity and increased control of prisoners” (Shalev and Edgar 2015: vi). As far as daily exercise is concerned, it was found that in most of the prisons that were visited exercise time was generally “well short of the 60 minutes stated in the European Prison Rules and the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Mandela Rules)” (ibid.). Hence, prisoners in segregation still have little means of equipped waiting. Shalev and Edgar speak of “the much-​neglected area of purposeful activities for prisoners” (ibid.:  viii, emphasis added). It is thus hardly surprising that more than fifty percent of the population in the survey displayed at least three of the typical symptom caused by solitary confinement (ibid.: vi). For that reason, Shalve and Edgar recommend that every segregation unit should offer prisoners options to fill their time with meaningful occupations, to increase the frequency and quality of contact to further reduce time spent in solitary confinement (ibid.: ix). More than a hundred years later, this sounds disconcertingly similar to the prison-​reform aims that were partly inspired by Galsworthy’s Justice and are already present in Dickens’s and Reade’s work: the demand that solitary confinement should be drastically reduced, if not abolished, and that prisoner should be given further and more meaningful ways of dealing with their (waiting) time.

References



Primary Sources

Behan, Brendan (1991): Confessions of an Irish Rebel. 1965. London: Random. Dickens, Charles (1898): “American Notes.” 1842. American Notes and Pictures from Italy. London: Chapman. 1–​305.

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Dickens, Charles (1991): David Copperfield. 1850. London: Everyman. Galsworthy, John (1910): Justice: A Tragedy in Four Acts. London: Duckworth. Kerman, Piper (2010):  Orange Is the New Black:  My Year in a Women’s Prison. New York: Spiegel & Grau. Reade, Charles (1900): It Is Never too Late to Mend. 1856. London: Collins.



Secondary Sources

Armstrong, Sarah (2015): “The Cell and the Corridor: Imprisonment as Waiting, and Waiting as Mobile.” Time & Society 0.0: 1–​22. Baer, Leonard D. (2005):  “Visual Imprints on the Prison Landscape:  A Study on the Decorations in Prison Cells.” Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 96.2: 209–​17. Certeau, Michel de (1984): The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cohen, Stanley, and Laurie Taylor (1972): Psychological Survival: The Experience of Long-​ Term Imprisonment. Harmondsworth: Pelican. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1828): “The Devil’s Thoughts.” 1799. The Poetical Works of S. T. Coleridge. Vol. ii. London: Pickering. 89–​92. Collins, Philip (1994): Dickens and Crime. 1962. 3rd ed. Houndmills: Macmillan. Comfort, Megan (2007): Doing Time Together: Love and Family in the Shadow of the Prison. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dirsuweit, Teresa (1999): “Carceral Spaces in South Africa: A Case Study of Institutional Power, Sexuality and Transgression in a Women’s Prison.” Geoforum 30.1: 71–​83. Eastern State Penitentiary. . Accessed 24 Jan. 2017. Fludernik, Monika (1999): “Carceral Topography: Spatiality and Liminality in the Literary Prison.” Textual Practice 13.1: 43–​77. Foucault, Michel (1995):  Discipline and Punish:  The Birth of the Prison. 1975. 2nd ed. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage. Garland, David (1990): Punishment and Modern Society. Oxford: Clarendon. Gasparini, Giovanni (1995): “On Waiting.” Time & Society 4.1: 29–​45. Gindin, James (1987):  John Galsworthy’s Life and Art:  An Alien’s Fortress. Houndmills: Macmillan. Guenther, Lisa (2013): “Introduction: A Critical Phenomenology of Solitary Confinement.” Solitary Confinement: Social Death and Its Afterlives. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. xi–​xxx. Grassian, Stuart (2006): “Psychiatric Effects of Solitary Confinement.” Journal of Law & Policy 22: 327–​83. Hansen, Adam (2009): “ ‘Now, Now, the Door Was Down’: Dickens and Excarceration, 1841–​2.” Stones of Law, Bricks of Shame: Narrating Imprisonment in the Victorian Age. Ed. Jan Alber and Frank Lauterbach. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 89–​111.

92 Wächter Henriques, U. R. Q. (1972): “The Rise and Decline of the Separate System of Prison Discipline.” Past & Present 54: 61–​93. Jamieson, Ruth, and Adrian Grounds (2005):  “Release and Adjustment:  Perspectives from Studies of Wrongly Convicted and Politically Motivated Prisoners.” The ­Effects of Imprisonment. Ed. Alison Liebling and Maruna Shadd. New York: Routledge, 33–​65. Jenkins, Roy (2001): Churchill. Houndmills: Macmillan. McGowen, Randall (1998):  “The Well-​Ordered Prison:  England, 1780–​1865.” The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society. Ed. Norval ­Morris and David J. Rothman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 71–​99. Moran, Dominique (2012): “ ‘Doing Time’ in Carceral Space: TimeSpace and Carceral Geography.” Geografiska Annaler 94.4:  305–​16. . Accessed 5 Sept. Moran, Dominique (2015). Carceral Geography: Spaces and Practices of Incarceration. London: Routledge. Moran, Dominique, Nick Gill and Deirdre Conlon, eds. (2013): Carceral Spaces: Mobility and Agency in Imprisonment and Migrant Detention. London: Routledge. Nightingale, Benedict (1984): “Introduction.” Galsworthy: Five Plays. London: Methuen. vii-​xxvii. Nowak, Manfred (2008). Preface. A Sourcebook on Solitary Confinement by Sharon Shalev. London:  Mannheim Centre for Criminology. . Accessed 8 Sept. 2016. Pelling, Henry (1989): Winston Churchill. 1974. 2nd ed. Houndmills: Macmillan. Reiter, Keramet (2016): 23/​7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-​Term Solitary Confinement. New Haven: Yale University Press. Scarce, Rik (2002): “Doing Time as an Act of Survival.” Symbolic Interaction 25.3: 303–​21. Schalit, Leo (1929): John Galsworthy: A Survey. New York: Haskell. Scharff Smith, Peter (2006): “The Effects of Solitary Confinement on Prison Inmates: A Brief History and Review of the Literature.” Crime and Justice 34.1: 441–​528. Schwartz, Barry (1975): Queuing and Waiting: Studies in the Social Organization of Access and Delay. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Shalev, Sharon (2008):  A Sourcebook on Solitary Confinement. London:  Mannheim Centre for Criminology. . Accessed 8 Sept. 2016. Shalev, Sharon, and Kimmett Edgar (2015): Deep Custody: Segregation Units and Close Supervision Centres in England and Wales. Prison Reform Trust. Centre for Criminology. Oxford: University of Oxford. . Accessed 7 Sept. 2016. Taylor, A. J.  W. (1960):  “Effects of Imprisonment.” The British Journal of Criminology 1.1: 64–​9.

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Turner, Jennifer, and Kimberley Peters, eds. (2017):  Carceral Mobilities: Interrogating Movement in Incarceration. London: Routledge, 2017. Routledge Studies in Human Geography. Ugelvik, Thomas (2014): Power and Resistance in Prison: Doing Time, Doing Freedom. London: Palgrave. Wahidin, Azrini (2006): “Time and the Prison Experience.” Sociological Research Online 11.1: . Accessed 24 Nov. 2018. Wideman, John Edgar (2005): Brothers and Keepers. Boston: Mariner.

chapter 5

The Camp as Extra-​Temporal Space in E.C. Osondu’s “Waiting” and Dinaw Mengestu’s “An Honest Exit” Christoph Singer Abstract Intra-​and international migration results in the creation of a variety of spaces relegated to structure, process or hinder the mobility of refugees and migrants alike. While migration is often perceived as a primarily mobile event, these spaces do hint at another dimension of life refugees have to endure on a constant basis: indefinite waiting in liminal spaces such as refugee camps or office buildings. These spaces not only create their own temporalities, but they are also found in a sort of legal limbo where rights and responsibilities of those in waiting and those who enforce this waiting become increasingly unclear. This chapter will discuss the representation of such spaces in short stories by E.C. Osondu and Dinaw Mengestu. The theoretical framework will be provided by Marc Augé’s concept of the non-​place and Giorgio Agamben’s conept of the camp.

Keywords Giorgio Agamben  –​Marc Augé  –​E. C.  Osondu  –​Dinaw Mengetsu  –​non-​place  –​ ­migration –​ refugee camps –​ the camp

1

Introduction

“Here in the camp, we wait and wait then wait some more. It is the only thing we do.” (Osondu 2010: 2) This quotation from the short story “Waiting” by the Nigerian author E.C. Osondu points to a reality of migrants and refugees that is often overlooked: indefinite waiting. The spaces these refugees inhabit, such as camps, transit-​zones or detention centres become passages with a highly idiosyncratic set of temporalities. While the experience of waiting seems universal, it can be existential for refugees who, as Jean-​François Bayart argues, are often “waiting in a permanent state of stand-​by.” (2007: 271) Sharam Khosravi

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/​9 789004407121_​0 07

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confirms: “Large numbers of displaced people –​undocumented migrants, refugees and asylum seekers –​spend extended periods waiting in camps, in transit lands, or in search of papers. Lack of information on how long they have to wait, or what exactly they have to do to get their permits, makes their lives unpredictable and uncertain.” (2014: n.p.) The realities of migration, as I will discuss in the following chapter, are naturally complex. E.C. Osondu’s short story “Waiting” e.g. contrasts the common perception of refugees as highly mobile, self-​dependent and as members of large groups by presenting the life in a refugee-​camp from the perspective of a young boy called Orlando. I will analyze the notion of the camp as a space of indefinite waiting, a space that puts biographies and personal identities on hold, and leaves the waiting subject in a state of intentional indistinction. After a short representation of the (im-​)mobilities of migration I will analyse the spatial representation of the camp in E.C. Osondu’s short story “Waiting” with references to Dinaw Mengestu’s short story “An Honest Exit”, both of which were published in 2010. My discussion is based on the claim that the camp is a legal limbo which undermines the possibilities of biographical story-​telling, while simultaneously generating an increased need to create a narrative identity. The camp will be read as a space where identities and their narratological emplotment are constantly on the brink of collapsing. I will regard the depicted spaces with Giorgio Agamben (1998) as “spaces of exception”, spaces that are placed outside of the legal frameworks of respective nation-​states: “If this is true, if the essence of the camp consist in the materialization of the state of exception and in the subsequent creation of a space in which bare life and the juridical rule enter into a threshold of indistinction, then we must admit that we find ourselves virtually in the presence of a camp every time such a structure is created, independent of the kinds of crime that are committed there and whatever its denomination and specific topography.” (1995: 174) 2

Fleeing Is Waiting: Migration and Immobility

Migration, as already indicated, is not merely a process of mobility. It is also one of repeated periods of waiting: waiting for papers, waiting for admission, waiting for release, waiting for news from friends and family, and so forth. Hence, the majority of refugees are unable to travel in uninterrupted and straightforward movement. A refugee’s journey rather consists of a series of interruptions, detours, returns, and a number of failed attempts. The images from Lampedusa, Ceuta or the Greek borders or the “jungle” in Calais with its

96 Singer thousands of stranded subjects are a testament of the volatile journeys refugees have to undergo. At times the refugee is absolutely dependent on her or his own physical and mental strength. At other times the refugee is absolutely dependent on the decisions of somebody else, decisions which will decide the refugee’s fate. So, while a refugee’s movement is certainly connected to high mobility, this mobility comes at the cost of having to endure extended periods of immobilization and waiting in zones de l’attente, at borders, before bureaucratic offices, or inside detention centres. This aspect of stasis is often overlooked in public discourse, which is highly problematic given the rising number of populations on the move. The problem with a one-​sided analytical focus on mobility lies in its myopic nature. This “primacy of the mobile”, as e.g. sociologist David Bissell (2007: 3) argues, is often misleading. Bissell believes that “such thinking has the effect of quiescing time, in effect to silence it, leaving little or no epistemological space for animating an alternative model of subjectivity.” (ibid.) And this quiescing of time, I would like to argue, also limits the potential reading of space and place and their inherent power-​dynamics. Thus, the spaces refugees are forced to inhabit for extended stretches of time can be read, with Marc Augé, as non-​places, especially since Augé’s concept never loses sight of temporality: What reigns there is actuality, the urgency of the present moment. Since non-​places are there to be passed through, they are measured in units of time. Itineraries do not work without timetables, lists of departure and arrival times in which a corner is always found for a mention of possible delays. They are lived through in the present. augé 1995: 84

For the refugee, in consequence, the perception of time and of space can be perceived as unstructured, the experience of duration unbearable, and the future uncertain. This sense of uncertainty is often the result of bureaucracy. Bayart argues:  “liminal time is bureaucratic, and it secretes bureaucratic imaginings” (2007:  283), a quotation that recalls Walter Benjamin’s statement that the “more life is regulated by administration, the more people will have to learn to wait.” (Ehn and Löfgren 2010: 35) Yet, the idea of ‘learning to wait’ sounds rather cynical considering that it places the responsibility to a large extent on the waiting subject rather than the systemic powers that make the subject wait in the first place. A refugee waiting in a camp is obviously not comparable to a passenger waiting for a bus. In fact, chronic waiting can have rather

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severe psychological effects. Research by Khosravi, e.g., shows that the “ambiguity about the duration of waiting generates a sense of uncertainty, shame, depression and anxiety. This can result in sleep disorders and psychosomatic pain. Dread, angst or guilt are all components of the experience of waiting.” (2014: n.p.) On the other hand, as expressed in Mengetsu’s short story, learning to wait is almost a necessity for survival: “A man who has no patience here is better off in Hell.” (2010: n.p.) 3

E.C. Osondu, “Waiting”: the Camp from Indistinction to Imagination

E.C. Osondu’s short story “Waiting”, which won the 2008 Caine Prize for African Literature, expresses a number of these aspects, most notably the experience of living in an ambiguous space with highly unpredictable temporalities. The short story is told by a first-​person narrator who is called Orlando Zaki. Orlando is a young boy who lives in an African refugee camp. Neither his age nor the camp’s location are further specified. Mentions of boy soldiers and the Youth Brigade, of local food like dawa, or names like Tsofo do allow some placement in Africa. Yet, all in all, Osondu’s short story seems to express a sense of displacement that not only affects the perception of space but also the perception of time and self. In his account, Orlando depicts the daily struggles of himself and his friends, the fights for food and water. He introduces his conversations with Sister Nora, and discusses the role of the Red Cross which runs this place. The story is very much aware of its own inter-​textuality, that is to say the role of writing and story-​telling is constantly reflected upon, as Orlando indicates: “She [Sister Nora] says I have a gift for telling stories. This is why she thinks I will become a writer one day.” (Osondu 2010: 2) As quoted above, life in the camp, despite the daily struggle and fights, is a life of being suspended in waiting: Here in the camp, we wait and wait then wait some more. It is the only thing we do. We wait for the food trucks to come and then we form a straight line and then we wait a few minutes for the line to scatter, then we wait for the fight to begin, and then we fight and struggle and bite and kick and curse and tear and grab and run. And then we begin to watch the road and wait to see if the water trucks are coming, we waµtch for the dust trail, and then we go and fetch our containers and start waiting and then the trucks come […]. Today we are waiting for the photographer to come and take our pictures. (ibid.)

98 Singer Life in the camp is structured, on the one hand, by iterative activities, a continual change of intense waiting and action. While Orlando knows what to expect –​the arrival of the food trucks, the water trucks or the photographer –​he and his friends never know when these anticipated events will happen. This leaves Orlando and his friends in a state of constant uncertainty. When the expected forth-​coming, avenir in Bourdieu’s sense, cannot be reliably extrapolated from the present, and time becomes unstructured, the waiting subject is caught in a state of being that has variously been called ‘long waiting’ by Nadine Benz (2013), ‘existential waiting’ by Ghassan Hage (2009), or ‘chronic waiting’ by Craig Jeffrey (2008). Jeffrey explains: But when people are catapulted out of their everyday lives, or when quotidian life radically alters for the worse, the sense of being caught up in a predictable and engaging set of activities that produce known forth-​comings can break down and the present can come to weigh on the minds of the individual subject as a type of ‘curse’ or ‘burden’. jeffrey 2008: 955

So, whereas iterative actions can provide a calming sense of routine, such certainty is nowhere provided in the camp’s daily rhythms. The resulting sense of an overbearing present is reminiscent of Marc Augé’s definition of the non-​ place where “[e]‌verything proceeds as if space had been trapped by time, as if there were no history other than the last forty-​eight hours of news, as if each individual history were drawing its motives, its words and images, from the inexhaustible stock of an unending history in the present.” (1995: 85) The idea of the present as a curse is further expressed in the short story by putting the narration in the present tense. With exception of some flashbacks and memories, everything is told in the present tense. The effect is twofold. Firstly, the narrative present tense supports this sense of uncertainty concerning the anticipated future in the story itself. Secondly, if we follow Käthe Hamburger’s argument that the epic praeteritum expresses a sense of fictionality, then the present tense of Osondu’s short story may be understood as a more realistic mode. Additionally, this use of the present tense can be regarded as an attempt at foregrounding the temporalities at hand. Monika Fludernik, e.g., argues that a “[p]‌resent-​tense narrative therefore also radically blurs the line between external and internal events.” (1996: 254) In choosing this narrative approach for “Waiting”, Osondu’s short story “Waiting” stands in line with other waiting-​plots such J.M. Coetzee’s novel Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) or Samuel Beckett’s Malone Dies (1951). Besides the aforementioned acts of iterative waiting, the children in the camp are waiting for their communal telos to manifest:  as Orlando states,

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“Today we are waiting for the photographer to come and take our pictures.” (Osondu 2010: 3) The Red Cross sends these pictures to Western adults in the hope that some of these children will be adopted. The childrens’ hope for adoption is less a hope to find a new family, but more a longing to be transferred to a new space such as London, Paris, Orlando, and Acapulco. This wait for a future outside the camp, however, is only of a superficially iterative nature. The photographer may repeatedly visit the camp, but the time for the children is slowly running out. A  boy called Acapulco, Orlando states, “had been in the camp before me. He was one of the oldest people in the camp.” (Osondu 2010: 5) The older he gets, the smaller his chances are of finding a new home. The camp, in Giorgio Agamben’s words, represents a space where old dichotomies upon which nation-​states rely are contested, blurred and ultimately deconstructed:  “If refugees (whose number has continued to grow in our century, to the point of including a significant part of humanity today) represent such a disquieting element in the order of the modern nation-​state, this is above all because by breaking the continuity between man and citizen, nativity and nationality, they put the originary fiction of modern sovereignty in crisis.” (1995: 132) Osondu’s short story represents a number of similar dis-​continuities. For one, the line between individual and group becomes increasingly blurred. This narrative approach would stand in line with the short story’s allegorical nature. As hinted at above, neither the exact setting nor the exact time of the story is identified. Most characters, with the exception of Sister Nora and the Red Cross, remain nameless. The protagonists remain as nameless as the camp they live in. This is not to say that they are devoid of individuality, still it is remarkable to note that Orlando hardly ever refers to himself in the first-​person singular. The camp, it seems, creates a shared and communal identity, despite the repeated fights and quarrels. Consequently, Orlando Zaki relates his story by using “We” more than forty times. This is not to say that Orlando is completely immersed in the larger group. He does long for solitude and actually seeks a space for his own. At the story’s end “he slipped away quietly.” (Osondu 2010: 10) The names used for the children an equally a sign of displacement rather than identification. It seems that the camp is a place where the experience of waiting places the waiting children in an almost paradoxical limbo. The children are devoid of any names, a past and of a future. The reasons for this vary. When it comes to naming the children, all of them are re-​named after cities, federal states or countries. Whereas the family name indicates the city, town or village of the kid’s origin, his or her new first name refers to a place outside of Africa. The narrator introduces himself with his name in his camp right from the beginning: “My name is Orlando Zaki. Orlando is taken from Orlando,

100 Singer Florida, which is what is written on the T-​shirt given to me by the Red Cross. Zaki is the name of the town where I was found and from which I was brought to this refugee camp.” (Osondu 2010: 1) If a name, generally speaking, designates a subject in any conceivable present, his name in the camp, however, splits the waiting children between two spaces and the respective temporalities: a past from which they had to flee, Zaki, and a future towards which they aspire, Orlando. While this first passage is mostly written in the passive voice, as if to support the dependency of the children on others, the T-​shirts and the names they assign do express a certain hierarchy. “Orlando”, “Paris”, and “London” signify a higher position in the camp’s social stratification, other names like “Lousy” are less popular. In consequence, the shirts also express one’s assertiveness and prowess in fighting for them: “We struggle and fight for them and count ourselves lucky that we get anything at all.” (Osondu 2010: 1) By extension, these shirts represent the little agency the children have left in their dire situation. For them, the shirts almost seem predictions of a possible future to come: “Some people are lucky: London had a T-​Shirt that said ‘London’ and is now in London. He’s been adopted over there. Maybe I will find a family in Orlando, Florida, that will adopt me.” (Osondu 2010: 2) For the time being, Orlando Zaki is situated between these two places, neither here nor there. In that sense, the name he is given in the camp, seems to be quite fitting of the legal structure of a camp itself. In a sense, present, past and future are imagined in spatial terms. Whereas the present is imagined as inside, the future is quite literarily on the outside. This theme of an idealized, imagined destination, the almost mythical imagination of London and Paris, is hardly surprising and a recurrent theme in the this or similar short stories. In Dinaw Mengestu’s short story “An Honest Exit”, published in The New Yorker in 2010, even the detention camps are, for instance, imagined to be heavenly spaces that provide all the material luxuries the refugees lack in their home countries: When you get to Europe, this is what you are going to do. You are going to be arrested. You will tell them that you want political asylum and they will take you to a jail that looks like Heaven. They will give you food and clothes and even a bed to sleep in. You may never want to leave –​that’s how good it will feel. mengestu 2010: n.p.

Despite the security, the food and the clothes, there are two experiences that destroy that supposedly utopian place:  repetition and waiting. The detention

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centres turn out to be a limbo outside of space and time: “He spent six months in a detention camp on an island off the coast of Italy. […] Contrary to what Abrahim had told him, there was nothing even remotely heavenly about where he was held: one large whitewashed room with cots every ten inches and bars over the windows. The guards often yelled at him and the other prisoners. […] “Speak,” the guards commanded, and he did so dozens of times in the course of several days, even though there was no humour left in it for anyone.” (Mengestu 2010: n.p.) Thus, the notion of the ‘good place’ in this short story becomes a floating signifier, wherein one supposed paradise is constantly substituted by another. After having accrued too much temporal debt by waiting for their arrival in the promised land, the refugees are depicted as being unable to accept the possibility that their dreams and wishes may not come true. They keep searching for the spaces they have imagined in their minds: For most, that place was London; for some it was Paris, and for a smaller but bolder few it was America. That faith had carried them this far, and even though it was weakening, and needed constant readjustment (“Rome is not what I thought it would be. France will surely be better”), it persisted out of sheer necessity. mengetsu 2010: n.p.

This idea of waiting for this ideal space to manifest, has discernible repercussions for those in waiting. The unwillingness to adapt to the realities at hand, to accept that these imaginary spaces will never realize leaves many of the short story’s characters in a perpetual limbo of anticipation and of perpetual disappointment: “By the time my father finally made it to London, eighteen months later, he had begun to think of all the men he met as variations of Abrahim, all of them crippled and deformed by their dreams.” (ibid.: 81) The anticipation of a future outside the camp, leads to coercion into a disciplined behaviour and the assumption of a kind of identity that the children assume is expected from them. In Osondu’s short story, the children see their only chance at leaving the camp in being adopted. To that end, they have their pictures taken, which hopefully will tempt somebody to accept them in their homes. These foreigners are then mostly imagined in spatial terms: “Everyone in America knows how to swim; all the houses have swimming pools.” (Osondu 2010: 4) Based on their imaginations, the children present themselves in a way they assume is expected from them: “I will pose with the dog in my photograph that they are sending to America because white people love dogs.” (ibid.) The characters are constantly torn between the place they are stuck in and the place they want to go to, this displacement is not only of a spatial nature

102 Singer but also concerns their identity. In “An Honest Exit” the narrator’s father is quoted as asking his friend whether he plans to leave anytime soon: “ ‘I already have,’ Abrahim said. ‘A long time ago. My entire family is already in Khartoum. I’m just waiting for my body to join them.” This idea of namelessness and indistinction is further supported by the fact that the narrator’s gender in “An Honest Exile” is never explicitly mentioned. While the name Orlando seems to indicate a male person, recalling Shakespeare’s As You Like It (1603), it may also recall Virginia Woolf’s Orlando (1928), a protagonist whose gender politics are central to the novel’s plot. While such a discussion of literary references in a text on African children-​refugees may seem misplaced, it is important to note the short story’s repeated use of intertextuality. Not only does Orlando himself imagine London based on one novel he is given to read, but the short story’s general structure appropriates a number of features from one of the classic set-​texts on waiting. Implicitly “Waiting” refers to Charles Dicken’s novel Oliver Twist (1838) and explicitly to Samuel Beckett’s tragi-​comedy Waiting for Godot (1953). Sister Nora gives both to Orlando, whom she recognizes to be a good story-​teller. Charles Dicken’s Victorian novel has a curious effect on Orlando as well as on the reader of “Waiting”. On the one hand, the novel is intended to offer a sense of identification for Orlando. He eagerly reads the book about “a poor boy living in England in the olden days who asked for more from his chief cook.” (Osondu 2010: 10). On the other hand, another function is to highlight a possible lack of identification on the reader’s side. An extra-​textual reader of Osondu’s short story may first perceive the reference to Oliver Twist as standing in line with the novel’s main themes: children in poverty and absolute dependency. In doing so the timeless space of the camp is aligned with Victorian London. Yet, intra-​textually speaking, Charles Dickens’ London does not seem all too bad for Orlando. Rather than allowing a sense of identification, Oliver Twist only supports the short story’s expressed myth of London as being a utopian rather than a dystopian place. Orlando realizes upon examining the novel’s illustrations that the “boy in the book, he did not look so poor to me. The boys in the book all wore coats and caps, and they were even served. We had to fight […]” (Osondu 2010: 10). 4

Intertextuality and the Importance of Story Telling

The other intertextual reference that structures the short story on a number of levels is Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot: “The first book she [Sister Nora] gave me to read was Waiting for Godot.” (Osondu 2010: 2). Beckett’s play is of

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course the master-​text on dependent waiting and on the resulting immobility. This play by Beckett was and is open to as many interpretations and readings as hardly any other play in contemporary drama. Devoid of a dramaturgical structure, lacking the classical Aristotelian attributes, rife with repetitions, parallelisms, redundancies, and inconsistencies, it seems to deny the reader or any hints that would allow a conclusive interpretation of any sort. Beckett’s play is a powerful allegory on being outside of time, hence it is no surprise that Waiting for Godot has always been especially resonant in the context of migration and refugees. As such, the play is often referred in said context. For example, in an article about Jordanian refugees, the bbc quotes Assad Abdul Rahman saying: “We are not waiting for Godot. Return to Palestine is legal, it is practical, it is a sacred duty. It is something that will happen –​one day.” (Moss 2007: n.p.) The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs –​in short: ocha –​released a report on Uganda called “Waiting for Godot in Gulu”. A famous refugee from Iran, Mehran Karimi Nasseri, lived for 18 months at the airport Charles De Gaulle in Paris. His story has been turned into a Hollywood film by Stephen Spielberg, with Tom Hanks in the lead. Yet, there’s also a lesser known documentary on the subject entitled “Waiting for Godot at De Gaulle”, released in 2000. In 2008, Pierre Temkine published his study on Beckett’s play entitled Warten auf Godot: Das Absurde und die Geschichte. Temkine’s interpretation tries to answer a question asked by Berthold Brecht, who wondered:  “Wo waren Wladimir und Estragon eigentlich im 2.  Weltkrieg?”  –​“Where were Vladimir and Estragon during World War ii?” Temkine and his father, a former French schoolteacher, who attended the first production of Waiting for Godot in 1953, offer an interpretation of Vladimir and Estragon as refugees. For them, it is the spatial cues in the play that seem to especially allow for such a rather specific interpretation: the Eiffel Tower, La Rogquette, Roussillon, the Durance, the Vaucluse. (cf. Temkine 2009: 14) Temkine’s interpretation uses textual, historical, and biographical elements and comes to the conclusion that Vladimir and Estragon where initially intended to be two Jews fleeing from Nazi-​occupied Paris. Temkine claims that Beckett’s play is set in 1943 on a street in the southern French Alps on the way to Italy. Didi and Gogo, in Temkine’s interpretation, have to flee Paris and are forced to go into hiding. Consequently, they also have to change their names and to pretend to know nobody and nothing. The dubious Godot they are waiting for, and on whom they seem absolutely dependent, is a smuggler who is powerful enough to smuggle them out of the country. Consequently, the little boy is a messenger between the smuggler and the refugees, which, according to Temkine, was common practice in people smuggling.

104 Singer Temkine, however, is of course aware that Waiting for Godot, even in its textual form, is not a stable entity that would allow such an all-​encompassing interpretation. After all, Beckett constantly adapted and changed the script. Temkine also stresses that Beckett asked the translators of Waiting for Godot to change the specific place names mentioned in the original French version. As a consequence, the translator of the German version, Elmar Tophoven, substituted rather than translated the Vaucluse with the Breisgau, Roussillon with Dürkweiler, and the vintner Bonnelly turns into Guttmann. While Temkine’s interpretation is not implausible, it is important to highlight its attempt at emplotment via spaces. Here the different space-​names are connected to form a narrative that is based on their direction –​from Paris to the Vaucluse –​and their respective historicity. As such, this reading imbues the play with a sense of mobility and narrative development that is not provided by the text itself. This is not to argue that the interpretation of Vladimir and Estragon as refugees is misguided. As made clear, the play itself has turned into an expressive metaphor in this regard. Yet, I would like to claim that it is the very dissolution of space and time –​and the resulting openness and lack of status –​that contains its critical power, a critical power that is replicated on a number of levels in Osondu’s short story. In Osondu’s short story, a similar sense of displacement is expressed via the mentioning of Waiting for Godot. The story either established or points out a number of differences between both texts. The setting is in both cases vague when it comes to space and time. While Waiting for Godot is placed on a “country road with a sole tree”, “Waiting” recalls that setting. Orlando wants to “go and join my friend under the only tree still standing in the camp.” (Osondu 2010: 3). Another similarity is to be found in the character constellation. Orlando and his friend Acapulco are quite similar to Vladimir and Estragon when it comes to their respective character traits. Orlando is similar to Vladimir as he appears to be slightly higher in the couple’s hierarchy. He is also the one presented as the more intellectual character. Acapulco, like Estragon, on the other hand, is lovable, street-​smart, but most notably, seems to be the one that has experienced traumatic violence in the past. Yet, despite their differences or because of their differences, both appear to be very dependent on each other. And the reasons are similar to those found in Waiting for Godot: they need each other, not only to console and to support one another. They also need each other to pass the time which, in a Beckettian way, is mostly achieved by means of story-​telling. In a space where the future is absolutely uncertain and unpredictable, and where the past is often repressed or clouded, story-​telling is one of the few ways to place oneself in the here and now and to provide a sense of identity. Where the names are unstable .

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signifiers –​ Orlando Zaki, Vladimir/​Didi, Estragon/​Gogo –​ story-​telling allows to break the iterative spell of the camp. Most notably, however, all of these characters wait for others to help them: the Red Cross to bring food and water, the photographer to take their photos for potential parents willing to adopt them, for a message from their families left behind, for the eventual possibility to leave the camp, to be sent to another place. Yet, while waiting, telling stories is the only way to maintain a sense of reality. Moreover, Osondu’s short story recalls Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians not only in its depiction of existential waiting and the related importance of story-​telling, but also in its attempt to present an allegory, that on the intra-​ textual level attempts to reduce allegorical readings. Sister Nora, Orlando says “likes to speak in parables like Jesus.” (Osondu 2010: 2). In this regard, Sister Nora is a quite puzzling character. On the one hand, she teaches Orlando that “it is good to ask questions, that if you ask questions you will never get lost.” (ibid.: 4) On the other hand, the reading she suggests to Orlando comes with interpretation. Sister Nora introduces Waiting for Godot, according to Orlando, by stating that “the people in the book are waiting for God to come and help them” (ibid.: 2). Yet, as she herself must be fully aware, help rarely arrives when it is expected or anticipated. While the higher powers are not necessarily represented by a God, the powers that be are just as unpredictable. In Pierre Bourdieu’s words: “Absolute power is the power to make oneself unpredictable and deny other people any reasonable anticipation, to place them in total uncertainty by offering no scope to their capacity to predict. […] The all-​powerful is he who does not wait but who makes others wait.” (Bourdieu 2000: 228) In both short stories, “Waiting” and an “Honest Exit”, this all-​powerful force is not only identified with the local political actors, rebels, armies and so forth. It is the extension of Western powers that –​beyond everything else –​appears to govern the direction of events. In “Waiting” this is metonymically expressed by the Red Cross itself. Not even Sister Nora dares to interfere with their politics as Orlando states:  “It was the first time I  had seen her refuse to find a solution to any problem. She explained that she did not work for the Red Cross and was their guest like me.” (Osondu 2010: 10) This description of the power structures in the camp is again reminiscent of Agamben’s notion of the camp as a place that “[…] delimits a space in which the normal order is de facto suspended and in which whether or not atrocities are committed depends non on law but on the civility and ethical sense of the police who temporarily act as sovereign.” (Agamben 1998: 174) The idea of a larger power-​structure hiding in the background and only intervening when it is convenient is also expressed in Mengetsu’s story. In an

106 Singer “Honest Exit”, a rebel uprising is only stopped because it risks the international flow of goods: “But do you think any of those big countries were going to risk losing this beautiful port? By the end of tonight all the foreign ships will be back. Their governments will tell them that it’s safe.” (Mengetsu 2010: n.p.) 5

Conclusion

As mentioned above, Sister Nora proposes a reading of Waiting for Godot that presupposes that Vladimir and Estragon are waiting for God to come and to help them. Whether this is a sign of Sister Nora’s own steadfast faith, or actually the sign of doubt, is hard to say. After all, one can assume that she has read the play, and is fully aware that God never arrives. Then again, in a camp where the helpers are a constant source of disappointment or fear, her reading is more pessimistic in assuming that only a God can help. She is only able or willing to help so much. If Sister Nora still has some residual belief in divine intervention, Orlando himself does not share such a belief. When Acapulco claims that “God is not asleep”, Orlando does not respond and merely says “nothing”. (Osondu 2010: 5) In this reading, Orlando’s stance recalls a text published by Osondu in 2007, one year before “Waiting”. This text, which feels like an amalgam of short story and poem, is called “Waiting for the Gods to Die”. Here, Osondu depicts a community whose Gods are about to die, and with bring with their deaths the whole community to a standstill. While the land and animals are slowly dying, many members of the community decide to abandon their homes and leave. Only one man decides to remain. His is an exercise in waiting in place, an exercise rewarded with the eventual return of this God’s health and his very own apotheosis: “And when he became too frail he lay down beside them and became one of them.” (Osondu 2017) What these stories share is their interest in the effect of immobility in a period of desired movement. The spatial stasis is represented as translating not only a social immobility but a sense of ‘stuckedness’ that structures the narrative identity of those in waiting. Time comes to a stand-​still and temporal non-​linearity translates into the creation of subjects that are literally placed on the outside.

References



Primary Sources

Beckett, Samuel (2006): Waiting for Godot. 1953. London: Faber & Faber. The Complete Dramatic Works.

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Beckett, Samuel (2009): Malone Dies. 1951. London: Faber & Faber. Osondu, E.C. (2007):  “Waiting for the Gods to Die.” Pif Magazine 116. . Accessed 13 Nov. 2018. Osondu, E.C. (2010): “Waiting.” Voice of America. London: Granta Publications. 1–​10. Mengestu, Dinaw (2010): “An Honest Exit.” The New Yorker, 12 July 2010. . Accessed 24 Nov. 2018.



Secondary Sources

Agamben, Giorgio (1998). Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. 1995. Trans. Daniel Heller-​Roazen. Stanford: Standford University Press. Augé, Marc. (1995): Non-​Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity. Trans. John Howe. London: Verso. Bayart, Jean-​François (2007): Global Subjects: A Political Critique of Globalization, Cambridge: Polity Press. Benz, Nadine (2013): (Erzählte) Zeit des Wartens: Semantiken und Narrative eines temporalen Phänomens. Göttingen: V&R Unipress. Bourdieu, Pierre (2000): Pascalian Mediations. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bissell, David (2007): “Animating Suspension.” Mobilities 2.2: 277–​98. Ehn, Billy and Orvar Löfgren (2010): The Secret World of Doing Nothing. Berkeley: University of California Press. Fludernik, Monika (1996): Towards a Natural Narratology. Abingdon: Routledge. Hage, Ghassan (2009): Introduction. Waiting. Ed. Ghassan Hage. Carlton: Melbourne University Press: 1–​12. Jeffrey, Craig (2008): “Waiting.” Society and Space 26: 954–​8. Khosravi, Shahram (2014):  “Waiting.” Migration:  The Compas Anthology. Ed. Bridget Anderson and James Donald. Oxford: compas. n.p. Moss, Paul (2007): “Jordan’s Refugees Long Return.” BBC News, 9 June 2017. . Accessed 13 Nov. 2018. Temkine, Pierre and Valentin Temkine, et. al. (2009): Warten auf Godot: Das Absurde und die Geschichte. Berlin: Matthes & Seitz.

chapter 6

“The Waiting Must End”: Waiting for Im/​Possible Events in Dave Eggers’s A Hologram for the King Kerstin Howaldt Abstract The paper argues that in Dave Eggers’s A Hologram for the King the temporal phenomenon of ‘waiting’ and the conception of space effectively work together in deconstructing the novelistic production of eventfulness. The novel conceptualises several spaces, yet the paradoxical idea of ‘awaiting eventfulness’ deprives even those spaces of their eventful status that per se enable the realisation of an event. Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s approach to eventfulness and Gilles Deleuze’s theoretisation of space’s potentiality, a close reading of selected passages seeks to reveal the entanglement of waiting, space and eventfulness in Eggers’s novel.

Keywords Dave Eggers –​Gilles Deleuze –​Jacques Derrida –​eventfulness –​exhaustion –​smooth/​ striated space –​waiting

1

Introduction

Reviewers of Dave Egger’s A Hologram for the King (2012) have readily highlighted the text’s relation to Samuel Beckett’s work, calling it a “Beckettian masterpiece” (Martin 2013: n.p.) or “a tightly controlled parable […] that approaches Beckett in its absurdist despair” (The New York Times Book Review 2012: n.p.). Indeed, the novel’s plot immediately suggests an affinity with Godot: Alan Clay, a former salesman, travels to Saudi Arabia in order to give a holographic presentation to the King in ‘King Abdullah’s Economic City’ (abbreviated kaec). His employer, an IT company called Reliant, hopes to win the contract to supply the up-​and-​coming city with information technology. The novel describes several days when Alan and his team wait for King Abdullah to arrive. His potential arrival is suspended each day for different reasons, and it is constantly

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/​9 789004407121_​0 08

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emphasised that “[the King’s] schedule changed quickly and often” (Eggers 2012: 19) so that “it could be any day, it could be any time” (ibid.: 20) that the King potentially arrives. Although the novel is written from a third-​person perspective, it exclusively remains focalised through its protagonist. The reader follows Alan’s point of view throughout the entire novel and shares his perception of the events as well as his focus on the waiting plot. This main narrative line, which centres on waiting for the King’s arrival, is contrasted with several episodic ‘asides’ depicting the various experiences Alan undergoes while waiting for the King: amongst other things, he starts love affairs with two women, witnesses a revolt and participates in a wolf hunt that nearly ends in disaster. As if that were not enough, the novel’s Beckettian heritage is made explicit in the epigraph. Here, Eggers cites Waiting for Godot: “It is not every day that we are needed.” (2012:  n.p.) Thereby, he references the novel’s adherence to the theme of waiting. In Beckett’s play, Vladimir’s assertion is framed as follows: “Let us do something while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. […] Let us make the most of it, before it is too late!” (2006a: 74) In fact, the idea that one has to ‘do something’ also haunts Eggers’s protagonist Alan Clay. The assumption that there must be a chance to act, to realise what might be perceived as eventful, not only plays upon Alan’s perception of himself as a potential agent, but also remains connected to the theme of waiting throughout the entire novel. As Harold Schweizer puts it, “[l]‌iterary texts […] allow the luxury of sustaining and delaying waiting when in ordinary lives such waiting would have long called for an expedient, pragmatic closure” (2008: 66). Yet, “sustaining and delaying waiting” in fictional texts highly influences the texts’ narrative production of eventfulness. Negotiated as the ultimate, singular, all-​changing event, King Abdullah’s arrival is deconstructed by awaiting it. The novel invokes the idea that whatever happens has already been anticipated, quasi-​acted out before in the protagonist’s imagination. The constant foretelling degrades the event’s actual taking place to an even more trivial instance than the wishful thinking preceding it. A Hologram’s ending extends Beckett’s idea of the ‘perhaps’, revealing that the awaited event has not even been worth awaiting it, rendering the whole period and idea of waiting entirely ­meaningless. In contrast to reviews focusing on the novel’s Beckettian heritage, academic research takes into account its depiction of space. Sigrun Meinig states that “Eggers’s […] A Hologram for the King offers a poignant example of how the phenomenological dimension and thus ‘how people are in the world’ becomes palatable in novelistic portrayal of space” (2014:  108). Yet, her phenomenological reading does not ascribe an active role to space. Instead, space seems to frame the plot, devoid of any potentiality to influence the same. Stephan

110 Howaldt Besser and Yra van Dijk likewise ascribe the novel’s negotiation of globalisation1 to spatiality. They surmise that Eggers’s ‘fiction of globalisation’ (2017: 111) uses “spatial tropes and imaginaries to transform the essentially neo-​colonial plot that the male protagonist[] [has] in mind for [his] business trips to the Middle East into unsettling stories of growing alienation and the failure of Western masculinity” (ibid.: 112). The significance of ‘waiting’ as a theoretical phenomenon in its own right, however, is neglected in both Meinig’s and Besser/​van Dijk’s articles; thus, the latter only mention in passing Alan’s “infinitely extended stay in the Saudi desert” (2017: 122, emphasis added). In my reading, I seek to analyse how the novel’s spaces play an active role in making events im/​possible. Drawing on theoretical approaches by Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze, the paper will further clarify how waiting in A Hologram for the King exhausts the ‘impossible possibility’ of eventfulness that is enabled by space.2 2

Entanglements of ‘Waiting’, ‘Im/​Possible Events’ and ‘Space’

In his monograph On Waiting, Schweizer concludes that there are two different traditions of waiting: a waiting that is directed towards an end (2008: 11) and a waiting that is indeterminate and objectless (ibid.: 12). Yet, waiting –​despite its apparent passiveness –​always has to be interpreted in the sense of awaiting someone or something. Waiting is as a more or less active process that is directed towards the idea that something might take place, be it a concrete thing or a person potentially arriving. Waiting implies the desire for a change 1 Current criticism often accounts for the political aspect of Eggers’s work, particularly for its depiction of globalisation. John Masterson, for instance, sees “personal and political end-​ times dominate Eggers’s oeuvre” (2016: 722–​23). 2 As for Eggers’s other novels, these are rather connected to constant movement, i.e. unlike A Hologram they do not focus on ‘waiting’ and standstill. For example, Eggers’s latest novel Heroes of the Frontier (2016) features a road trip which must be considered an ‘anti-​waiting’ story. Its much-​discussed forerunner, the dystopian novel The Circle (2014), reveals that eventfulness is no longer connected to the physical movement of the characters. Mainly set on the campus of a social-​media company, the novel deals with the constant ‘overload’ of events afflicting people attached to the new media. Similarly, one of Eggers’s earlier novels, Zeitoun (2009), is devoted to the protagonist’s tireless and active exploration of the flooded streets of New Orleans. These novels orchestrate rather traditional patterns of suspense, keeping readers in line. Although some are set in confined spatial surroundings, none of them depicts a passive protagonist who spends his time ‘waiting for something to happen’. An exception in Eggers’s oeuvre, A Hologram expects the reader to both witness and bear the resulting boredom.

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of state, and therefore it is commonly connected to the idea of eventfulness. Many critics have thus relied on this intuitive connection between waiting and eventfulness. Andrea Erwig, for example, talking about the Odyssey, remarks that Penelope is waiting for a future event to happen which cannot be actively brought about by her (cf. 2015: 500). Also, Nadine Benz concludes that someone who waits faces the arrival of a person or an event (cf. 2013: 13) while Schweizer constitutes that each event is “signifying the end of waiting” (2008: 55) and that there even is a “time to let events unfold” (ibid.: 69). In contrast to this wide-​spread association of waiting with eventfulness, the present paper will attempt to reconsider the term ‘eventfulness’, assuming that the juxtaposition of genuine eventfulness and waiting constitutes a paradox. Taking into account genuine eventfulness, my argument follows Derrida’s idea that an event has to appear impossible,3 i.e. it must be unpredictable and thus can neither be foreseen nor foretold: “If all that arises is what is already possible, and so capable of being anticipated and expected, that is not an event. The event is possible only coming from the impossible” (2005: 74). Yet, Derrida’s ‘impossible’ is haunted by a fundamental notion of the possible: ‘impossible’, as François Raffoul argues, “does not mean: that which cannot be, but rather:  that which happens outside of the anticipating conditions of possibility of the egological subject, outside of the horizons of expectation proposed by the subject” (2008: 286). Similarly, Daniel Smith points out that “[t]‌here is no space, even outside our horizon or horizons in general, where an event can be fully and presently inscribed as a possibility in advance of its happening” (2015: 390). An event must per se appear possible, but not in the sense of it being possible and hence imaginable for someone in advance. The notion of ‘being possible’ can only emerge retrospectively on behalf of those afflicted by the genuine event and is rather a ‘having been possible’, thus appearing as a 3 Derrida’s complex –​somewhat contradictory –​negotiation of the im/​possible undeniably bears traces of Martin Heidegger’s work. Derrida, as François Raffoul puts it, “finds […] access to his own thinking of the impossible in Heidegger’s thought of the event, of Ereignis and of death” (2008:  275). The aporetic thinking of the im/​possible pervades several concepts of Derrida’s work: hospitality, the gift, and the event, to name but a few. Derrida’s “expression, ‘possibility of the impossible,’ happens to be borrowed from Heidegger, and precisely from his thinking of death in Being and Time, which is defined by the German thinker ‘as the possibility of the impossibility of existence in general’ ” (Raffoul 2008:  274). Closely linked to Derrida’s critical reflection of Heidegger’s approach to the ‘possibility of the impossible’ is Derrida’s overall idea to define the event ex negativo, i.e. his take on the event is rather related to the question of what is not an event. Fittingly, Daniel Smith notes: “The determinations that Derrida gives to this concept are predominantly negative:  He speaks of its ‘unappropriability, unforeseeability, absolute surprise, incomprehension, risk of misunderstanding, unanticipatable novelty, pure singularity, [and] absence of horizon’ ” (2015: 388).

112 Howaldt belated notion of the event. Inevitably linked to this im/​possible is the event’s manifestation as exceptional instance: For there to be an event, it has to be possible, of course, but also there has to be an interruption that is exceptional, absolutely singular, in the regime of possibility; it must not be reducible to explication, unfolding, or the putting into action of a possibility. The event, if there is such a thing, is not the actualization of a possibility, a straightforward putting into action, a realization, an effectuation, the teleological accomplishment of a capacity, the process of a dynamic dependent on ‘conditions of possibility.’ daniel 2005: 91

An event has to be “absolutely singular”, and it has to present an “exceptional interruption” of an ongoing process. Thus, Schweizer’s intuitive idea that there is a “time to let events unfold” (2008: 69) heavily contradicts Derrida’s remark that the event “must not be reducible to explication, unfolding or the putting into action of a possibility”. The way the novel treats the arrival of the King reveals the impossibility of waiting for an event, meaning that it is impossible to negotiate an awaited event as genuinely eventful, because the teleological direction inherent in waiting –​as exemplified by Alan’s direction towards the arrival4 –​undermines the idea of the event’s unpredictability. In that the King’s arrival is repeatedly postponed and remains in a logic state of the ‘what-​if’, the rupture of genuine eventfulness is denied in the main waiting plot.5 Or, to put it differently: the arrival is negotiated as a possible event, thus annihilating its status as genuine event. As far as the entanglement of waiting and eventfulness is concerned, Derrida notes that “there can be an event only […] when one can no longer wait for it, when the coming of what happens interrupts the waiting” (2007: 443). A Hologram, however, focusing on the event not as an interruption, but as the teleologically awaited end of waiting, stages the opposite. Yet, metafictional reflections on the construction of these quasi-​events are nowhere to be found in the novel. Instead, the King’s visit is discussed in terms of its seemingly eventful status:  the characters, for example, “worry about 4 Derrida frequently talks about the event as absolute arrivant which, however, “must not be merely an invited guest, someone I’m prepared to welcome, whom I have the ability to welcome” (2007: 451). 5 Due to the text’s focus on the seemingly eventful status of the waiting plot where Alan awaits what does not happen, the things that genuinely happen in the novel are simultaneously denied any form of rupture and only granted the status of episodic interludes.

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[a]‌sudden arrival” (Eggers 2012: 128). The proclamation of the arrival’s suddenness stands in stark contrast to the teleological direction that actually forestalls it. The novel’s affirmative and sometimes naïve adherence to linearity ties in with Schweizer’s notion that, in waiting, time is perceived as a line that does not move (cf. 2008:  2). Solely focused on the potential outcome of waiting, Alan barely notices what actually happens around him. Instead, he clings to the im/​possible arrival of the King. The possibility that the King will arrive is not only constantly discussed by the characters but also invoked by the fact that his non-​arrival is repeatedly noted. On the second day, Alan’s driver Yousef tells him that “[t]here is no way the King is coming today” (2012: 116), while on the fourth day of their stay, Alan muses that “[it] was the first day, then, that the King might actually visit kaec” (2012: 155). Yet, a couple of days later he is told that “the King will not be here today” (ibid.: 217). Constantly mentioning the potential event turns it into a repetitive instance that lacks the genuine event’s singularity. Waiting, however, must not only come into view regarding its relation to the event but likewise must be connected to the novel’s portrayal of space. A Hologram for the King establishes different spaces which conceptualise the possibilities for an event to take place. By way of example, this article will focus on two spaces that highly differ in how they pave the way for the aesthetic negotiation of waiting and eventfulness. Waiting for the King’s arrival is related to the confined space of a tent, and in the course of the action, nearly becomes autotelic. Waiting for the wolf to appear in the hunting scene, by contrast, is connected to an unlimited space in the Arabian mountains. The difference between the confined, internal space and the vast, untamed space relates to the concepts of “smooth” and “striated” space as developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus.6 Here, they state: “In striated space, lines or trajectories tend to be subordinated to points: one goes from one point to another. In the smooth, it is the opposite: the points are subordinated to the trajectory” (2014: 556). Striated spaces are fixed and determined, and they contrast with smooth spaces’ changeability. Regarding the spaces’ relation to 6 Deleuze and Guattari’s criticism of psychoanalysis not only reflects on the political dimensions of the event but likewise explores how literary genres are oriented towards the question of ‘what happens.’ In “1874: Three Novellas, or, ‘What happened’ ” they state: “It is not very difficult to determine the essence of the ‘novella’ as a literary genre: Everything is organized around the question, ‘What happened? Whatever could have happened?’ The tale is the opposite of the novella, because it is an altogether different question that the reader asks with bated breath: What is going to happen? Something is always going to happen, come to pass. Something always happens in the novel also, but the novel integrates elements of the novella and the tale into the variation of its perpetual living present (duration)” (2014: 225–​26).

114 Howaldt eventfulness, only smooth space can be considered a space where events might happen: “[…] smooth space is directional rather than dimensional or metric. Smooth space is filled by events or haecceities, far more than by formed and perceived things. […] It is haptic rather than optical perception” (ibid.: 557). Thus, striated space appears as the spatial equivalent of waiting’s temporality: it is imbued with expectations –​a quasi-​prepared space. Both time and space are directed towards something that happens, and the state of ‘being prepared’ –​found in (a)waiting’s directionality and space’s striation –​makes the event impossible. Spaces inevitably connected to waiting exhaust the idea of sudden arrivals and hardly offer potentialities for the genuine event to happen. Hence, a mere ‘being (in) space’ does not suffice to make events possible –​ or, as Deleuze has it, to possibilitate7 those events. Deleuze’s emphasis on the active role of space dates back to his essay “The Exhausted” where he claims that space makes the realisation of events possible. He states that “[s]‌pace enjoys potentialities as long as it makes the realization of events possible: it precedes realization, then, and potentiality itself belongs to the possible” (1995: 10–​1). The space, as Deleuze puts it, “must always be any-​space-​whatever […], disused, unassigned, although entirely geometrically determined […]” (ibid.: 10, emphasis added).8 Spatial potentialities allow for events to happen, whereby the idea that something takes (its) place is “a double possibility. It is the possibility that an event that is itself possible is realized in the space under consideration. The possibility that something realizes itself and the possibility that some place realizes it” (ibid.: 13, emphasis in the original). However, even spaces that offer potentialities are not necessarily eventful. Deleuze ascribes this non-​eventfulness to the idea of “exhaustion”. The exhausted, “exhausts himself in exhausting the possible, and vice versa. He exhausts that which is not realized through the possible” (ibid.: 3). The possibilities that space offers are made impossible9 by the characters inhabiting 7 ‘To possibiliate’ –​used in the English translation of Deleuze’s essay (French “L’épuisé”) –​is a translation of the French verb possibiliser and must be considered a term that not only refers to the idea of realising potentialities that are given but also includes space’s ability to create new possibilities. 8 Talking about the room in Beckett’s Ghost Trio (2006b), for example, Deleuze constitutes that it is “a space with three potentialities, the door to the east, the window to the north, the pallet to the west” (1995: 15). 9 Exhaustion, however, is not the same as tiredness: “The tired has only exhausted realization, while the exhausted exhausts all of the possible. The tired can no longer realize, but the exhausted can no longer possibilitate” (Deleuze 1995: 3). Tiredness thus describes a state following the possible realising of an event, while exhaustion per se makes it impossible to even create possibilities.

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these spaces, thereby creating eventless texts. Yet, smooth and striated spaces differ fundamentally in the way they relate to the idea of exhaustion. Striated spaces –​as I will show in my reading of the ‘tent as a waiting room’ –​are per se exhaustible spaces. They are determined spaces which are “necessarily delimited, closed on at least one side” (Deleuze and Guattari 2014: 552). Smooth spaces, by contrast, which are “amorphous, nonformal space[s]” (ibid.: 554, emphasis in the original), are constantly changing and are thus capable of both possibilitating and realising events. In a nutshell, spaces offer potentialities for events to take place, but on their part these possibilities10 can be exhausted if they are (repeatedly) not realised but constantly invoked –​and herein lies the connection to both waiting and anticipation. Awaiting the event makes it impossible in a double-​sense:  not only does it negate the event’s unpredictability, it also offers time to exhaust the potentialities of space. 3

Waiting in Eventful/​Less Spaces: A Hologram for the King

The tent as a waiting room must be considered both part of the striated space of the city-​to-​be and a striated space in itself. Meinig states that the tent “signifies the globalization of the economy” (2014: 109). She adds that Alan “cannot make sense of the buildings in [this landscape]” (ibid.: 109). According to her reading, Alan’s problems stem from his dislocation and his longing for a “space where his experience is immediately understandable to him” (ibid.). I propose that it is not the dislocation but instead the exact location within the confined 10

Drawing on theoretical texts by Derrida and Deleuze, the present paper acknowledges that their conceptions of the event contradict each other in parts. For instance, a significant difference is expressed in their respective understanding of the im/​possible. For Derrida, the possible can only be perceived and conceptualised a posteriori, whereas for Deleuze, the possible is constantly present in advance as a potentiality that refuses to manifest itself. Deleuze’s “diffuse treatment of the event” (Adkins 2012: 510) has inspired both Alain Badiou’s critical reading of Deleuze and Badiou’s own  –​overtly political  –​ concept of the event. Looking at Badiou’s ‘event’ proves to be interesting with regard to both Derrida’s and Deleuze’s approach to it. Comparing Deleuze’s and Badiou’s respective treatment of ‘the new’, Brent Adkins states: “For Badiou the new must be ex nihilo, miraculous, in order to be new. Otherwise, it is not an event but a retrenchment of the state of the situation. For Deleuze, the bar is not so high. Any and every change in intensity is something new, a point at which difference is produced” (2012: 514). Hence, Badiou’s far more radical thinking of the event as something absolutely unanticipatable is closer to Derrida’s elusive concept of the same than to Deleuze’s notion of rising and falling intensities.

116 Howaldt space of the tent that leads to the novel’s seeming lack of suspense. Arriving at a checkpoint leading to the city, Alan concludes: “It was as if someone had built a road through unrepentant desert, and then erected a gate somewhere in the middle, to imply the end of one thing and the beginning of another” (2012: 40). The gate to the city as well as the city itself are presented as fixed targets structuring Alan’s and Yousef’s journey. Alan’s notion that the gate appears to “imply the end of one thing and the beginning of another” can easily be connected to the concept of striated space where “one [line] goes from one point to another” (Deleuze and Guattari 2014:  556). This impression is reinforced when, after passing the gate, Alan and Yousef take another road which “straightened out and again cut through desert without feature of form” on which they “drove another mile toward the sea, until the trees appeared again” (Eggers 2012: 42). The description of streets that cut through a desert –​otherwise described as “unrepentant” –​voices a taming, i.e. the striating of nature. The trees, which are the first (artificially erected) objects of the city-​to-​be that come into view, represent another fixed point of the striated space, connected to the gate by the feature –​and formless roads the only purpose of which lies in connecting the city’s micro-​spaces. While driving to kaec, Yousef describes it as a place where there is “nothing happening”. Alan, by contrast, ascribes potentiality to the city-​space. Yousef’s remark that “[t]‌here is nothing there” is answered by Alan’s “Not yet” (2012: 37). Yousef’s utterances clearly connect the event and the space to nothingness, while Alan’s line of argument follows a temporal pattern and relies on the fact that waiting will change the space. Yousef, however, even when following Alan’s temporal approach, clarifies that “[i]t won’t happen”, because “[i]t’s already dead” (2012: 37–​8, emphasis added). While Alan relies on the fact that events will take place, will eventually claim their place, Yousef conceptualises a space that had already been exhausted before it began to exist. Exhaustion, as Deleuze has it, is not bound to time. Hence, one is “exhausted before birth, before self-​realization or realizing anything whatsoever” (1995: 3). Alan’s future-​ oriented model of the possible contrasts with Yousef’s model of an exhausted space that could never and will never possibilitate events. The tent itself is introduced to the reader when Alan phones his colleague Cayley on their first day to tell her he will be late. Not knowing that his team is waiting in a tent, Alan concludes from the sound of her voice that “[t]‌he space sounded cavernous. He pictured a dark and hollow place, three young people holding candles, waiting for him and his lantern” (Eggers 2012: 8). The description of the tent as “cavernous” and “hollow place” already hints at the fact that it is an empty but restricted space that hardly offers potentialities. What is more, the tent immediately appears as a space where one cannot do

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anything but wait (“waiting for him and his lantern”). When Alan first enters the tent, his auditory impression is visually confirmed: In the tent, Alan saw no one. The space was vast and empty, smelling of sweat and plastic. The floor was covered with Persian rugs, dozens of them overlapping. About thirty folding chairs were spread around as if there had been a wedding here and the guests had just left. […] In a far corner of the tent, shadowy and crouching, he could make out three figures, each staring into the green screens of their laptops. (ibid.: 55) The tent obviously does not possess any windows, hence everything in it appears “shadowy”, and Alan cannot clearly identify his colleagues but only “make out three figures”. It is a closed space that does not offer the possibility of sudden arrivals.11 The folding chairs raising the impression that “the guests had just left” echo Yousef’s claim that “[i]‌t’s already dead” (Eggers 2012: 38) and thereby once more clarify the differentiation between exhaustion and mere tiredness. The tent’s only potentiality is its door –​a door that per se only allows for horizontal arrivals which ties in with Derrida’s approach to what cannot be an event: “[T]he event as event, as absolute surprise, must fall on me. Why? Because if it does not fall on me, it means that I see it coming, that there’s an horizon of expectation. Horizontally, I see it coming, I fore-​see it […]” (2007: 451). Already on the second day, this potentiality is exhausted. The team is confronted with a note that reads as follows:  “Reliant: welcome back to the King Abdullah Economic City. King Abdullah welcomes you. Please make yourselves at home and we will be in contact after the lunch hour” (Eggers 2012: 89, italics in the original). Interestingly, the roles of the ‘welcomed guest’ and the one who ‘welcomes’ him/​her are reversed. The King, doubly deferred  –​the welcome happens in absentia and has been written in his name, not by him –​welcomes Reliant. Alan’s crew tries to keep moving in the space where “all was the same” and which has no potentiality but its door (2012: 90). Alan’s team members “went back to the various corners of the tent and to their screens. Alan stood in the middle of the tent, unsure of exactly what to do with himself. […] He retreated to the remaining corner, sat down, and did nothing” (2012: 99). On the third day, the team “were now on the far side, away from the water, in the darkness, looking into their screens” (2012:  128). Apart from the 11

The impression that the door offers the only potentiality of the tent is reinforced by the characters’ constant mentioning that the Wi-​Fi is not working (cf. Eggers 2012: 56, 90, 96, “still waiting on the wi-​fi”: 128). Hence, any other surprising instance is excluded. Instead, the novel stages a feeling of being entirely cut off from the outside world.

118 Howaldt characters’ aimless movements in the confined space of the tent, “everything seemed exactly as it had been the day before” (2012: 128). The emphasis on the constant sameness of the tent’s interior supports the idea of an ever-​ exhausted space that lacks an impulse from the outside to possibilitate events. Even when preparations are made and things appear to move –​“In the tent, young people darted around, arranging chairs, tapping down speakers, testing the microphones” (Eggers 215) –​the hope that the awaited event, i.e. the King’s arrival, will take place is immediately destroyed. A man who “stood in the doorway, as if reluctant to invade their personal space” (Eggers 2012: 216) tells them that the King will not come (cf. 2012: 217).12 Here, Deleuze’s idea of exhausting the potential event and Derrida’s claim of the impossibility of its repetition overlap. The tent’s only potentiality –​already depotentialised by the appearance of the note –​is repeatedly not realised, i.e. exhausted. Denying and postponing the arrival once more not only forestalls the actual arrival, what is more, this very arrival now may only appear as a repetition of its various deferrals. Waiting in the tent, however, is very different to the waiting that is depicted in the hunting scene. Here, Eggers’s novel explores the intricate line between eventless –​and eventfulness by staging a clash of potential and actual eventfulness. After Alan realises that ‘nothing happens’ in kaec and that the King will not arrive within the following days, he decides to spend a few days with Yousef and his friends in the mountains where Yousef’s family owns a house. Eventually, Yousef proposes that they might go to a farm nearby and spend the night hunting wolves. The wolf hunt, in contrast to kaec, is connected to potential eventfulness from the very beginning. Not only does Yousef describe it as a “big event” (Eggers 2012: 271), Alan also “had not heard a more intriguing invitation in years” (Eggers 2012: 265). The word “intriguing” orchestrates the idea of something unexpected or potentially open. The hunting site’s space likewise offers the potentiality for staging genuine events, and as such depicts a paramount example of smooth space. The movement that leads to the site is not linear but vertical, and the roads, which in kaec “cut through the desert” (Eggers 2012: 42), now are “a mess and got worse as they rose higher through the mountains” (ibid.:  269). The environment’s verticality immediately tells of its ability to possibilitate events, and it is 12

The enigmatic figure that arrives and on its part denies the arrival of the awaited person orchestrates another reference to Beckett, where these messenger figures cannot only be found in Waiting for Godot but also in the television play Ghost Trio. In the latter, the messenger f­ igure –​like the King’s representative and the note pinned to the door in Eggers’s novel –​remains on the doorstep.

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reminiscent of Derrida’s demand to “insist on the verticality of [the arrivant’s] coming, because surprise can only come from the high” (2007: 451). The hunting site itself is “a cluster of boulders, low and smooth” (Eggers 2012: 269). The aspect of non-​linearity is reinforced by the idea of the “cluster” (de)structuring the site, and its chaos is contrasts with Alan’s naïve tracking of his waiting plot. . Unlike the artificially erected gates and buildings in kaec, the mountain area consists of boulders announcing the contingency of the site’s formation. The description of the boulders as “smooth” ties in with the Deleuze’s and Guattari’s claim that smooth space “is haptic rather than optical perception” (2014:  557). The hunters are situated outside of a pen; hence they are in a vast and unlimited space which is open in all directions. Alan describes the space as being “without any obstacles” (Eggers 2012: 270). While in the tent, Alan and his crew remained crouched in the corners, the “hunting party spread itself out around the perimeter of the pen” (Eggers 2012: 270). The team’s crouched position differs fundamentally from the spread-​out position of the hunting party. The potentialities appear endless, the space’s directions can hardly be counted or fixed and therefore –​in contrast to the confined space of the tent –​seem to be inexhaustible. The site appears as a genuine opposite of what Deleuze describes as the “entirely geometrically determined” (1995: 10) space of exhaustion. It’s inexhaustibility and its ability to possibilitate are echoed in a talk between Yousef and Alan that accompanies the waiting for the wolf. Yousef asks Alan hypothetical questions, such as “would [you] have fought in World War ii?” or “Alan, would you fight for us?” (Eggers 2012: 273). Their conversation centres on what might happen, could happen or should happen. Paralleling the waiting, this dialogue voices the possible also with regard to their present situation. However, bearing in mind that any ‘saying of the event’ is a foretelling reveals that the killing of a wolf can no longer be considered a genuine event in the very moment its possibility is invoked in speech. When Alan ponders on the potential killing of an animal, imagining every detail of it, this becomes even more obvious: Alan did not want to kill any animal. He dreaded the moment when the wolf, hit by a bullet, would jerk, stagger about, and, immobilized, be filled with lead. He dreaded hearing its labored breathing as they stood around it, waiting for it to die. But it seemed unlikely that any animal, however stupid or desperate, would enter the pen under these circumstances, with so many people nearby, such bright light. eggers 2012: 270

120 Howaldt Alan treats the wolf’s killing as he treats the King’s potential arrival, i.e. as something which can be awaited, because its occurrence is possible. However, the realisation of the arrival as a genuine event is impossible, “the saying of the event […] lacks, in a certain manner, a priori, the event’s singularity, simply because it comes after and it loses the singularity in generality” (2007: 446). Besides Alan repeatedly invoking the event, the text stages a near-​event that additionally anticipates the wolf’s arrival. Hence, a short moment of tension is established just to be destroyed immediately: “Down below, movement. Alan lifted his rifle and pressed his cheek to the smooth wood. But it was just one of the sheep” (Eggers 2012: 276). The desired event, the arrival of the wolf, refuses to take place although its probability is constantly invoked. The desperate state of waiting changes Alan’s attitude towards what could or should be done: […] a good part of him wanted to shoot that sheep. He harbored no ill will toward the animal, and he’d get in trouble for shooting it, but then again, he had a gun and had been waiting for forty minutes. Just waiting, watching. If he shot it, it would be something that had happened. The gun wants to be fired. The waiting must end. eggers 2012: 276, emphasis added

Alan’s remark that shooting the sheep “would be something that happened” underlines his longing to produce what would be perceived as genuinely eventful. Simultaneously, saying that it “happened” again undermines the idea of eventfulness. In his longing for any event to come, in his constant imagining of what he thinks has to happen, Alan manages to depotentialise, to exhaust even a space that is limitless in potentialities. As stated above, Derrida agrees with Deleuze, acknowledging that ‘being possible’ is a necessary condition of the event. By repeatedly re-​imagining the wolf’s killing, the conditional ‘if’ of its arrival turns into a temporal ‘when’. Alan’s concession that “[t]‌he waiting must end” serves as a prime example of the idea that the arrival is no longer singular but a temporal “actualization of a possibility”. Alan, who “felt that with the wind came the strange but absolute certainty that he would kill the wolf” (Eggers 2012: 277), finally manages to turn any possible arrival into an arrival that has to take place. The novel then maintains its eventless suspense: “Suddenly, movement below. A figure swept into his sight. It was large, dark, quick. Alan’s finger touched his trigger. His barrel was steady. The figure emerged, and Alan saw the head of a wolf. It was time” (ibid.: 278). Evidently, the text here makes recourse to what is implied in its epigraph. Alan perceives this as ‘his moment’, as his chance to ‘do something, while he has the chance’ and to compensate for all the things he failed to do during the preceding years. In other words: the text

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stages that Alan perceives this moment as the possibility to realize a genuine event. In using phrases like “Alan saw the head of a wolf” (emphasis added) the text clarifies that the pulling of the trigger is the product of Alan’s strong desire to make it happen. After he pulls the trigger, Alan realizes that “[i]t was a boy. The shepherd. There was a fraction of a second wherein Alan knew that the bullet might hit the boy, might kill the boy. He waited. […] But the boy did not fall. He was not hit. He waved” (Eggers 2012: 278). The limitless potentialities triggered by an apparently inexhaustible space succeed in indeed realising an event. In contrast to the arrival of a wolf, the boy’s intrusion into the pen is neither predicted nor foreseeable. It is singular in its occurrence and reveals smooth space’s potentiality for genuine events to arrive –​regardless of waiting. Nevertheless, the wolf-​hunting passage does not constitute a turning point in A Hologram, and thereby it unveils the novel’s complex relation to the staging of eventfulness. Even though the space seems to elude the directionality of waiting by possibilitating and realising an event, this event paradoxically does not create a rupture within the storyline, thus lacking one of the genuine event’s most important preconditions. After the shooting, Alan repeatedly notes that he “had almost done this” (Eggers 2012: 279, emphasis added). Although it ends his friendship with Yousef, Alan treats the shooting as near-​ event. The actual event is degraded, forced to return to the realm of potentiality. The reader, still limited to Alan’s perspective, is deprived of the notion of eventfulness by the novel’s refusal to integrate the arrival of this event into its narrative structure. Denying its rupture, the intrusion of an actual event into Alan’s life does not distract him from obsessively focusing on the King’s arrival. 4

Conclusion: the Arrival as Non-​Event

While Beckett’s enigmatic figure Godot fails to materialise, the King in Eggers’s novel finally arrives. After A Hologram has centred on waiting for the potential arrival of the King for hundreds of pages, the actual arrival is described in a short, laconic way: THE KING DID VISIT the King Abdullah Economic City, eleven days later. […] Alan and the young people were ready. The King sat down on a throne-​like chair, brought that day, and his group sat on the white couches. Brad and Rachel and Cayley began the presentation, which went off flawlessly. […] When it was over, King Abdullah clapped gently but said nothing. There were no follow-​up questions. Neither he nor anyone from his entourage spoke to anyone from Reliant, though Alan positioned

122 Howaldt himself near the door in case anyone wanted to discuss the proposal. No one did. eggers 2012: 327–​8

Whereas Schweizer concludes that “the importance of the object of waiting […] is always infinitely surpassed by the movement of waiting” (2008:  46–​7), the novel’s ending confirms that an event which has been imagined over and over again loses its status as a genuine event, even if the incidence finally takes place. The summarising, non-​dialogic style of the above-​cited passage refuses to dedicate too much narrative space to the arrival. Consequently, it turns into another instance of saying the event, which is situated on the same level as its various predictions and imaginings. Fittingly, the King’s arrival remains trapped in the confined, striated space of the tent. Alan’s intuition to position himself near the door once more references the protagonist’s recurring desire to establish eventfulness, which inevitably makes impossible the latter. Positioned next to the room’s sole –​actually already depotentialised –​potentiality, he seeks to extend the duration of what he still thinks of as an all-​changing instance. When Alan is later informed that a Chinese firm won the contract that Reliant had hoped for, he decides to stay in Saudi Arabia, still hoping for his chance to do something, still charged with seeking potential eventfulness: “He was not being sent away, after all, and he could not go home yet, not empty handed like this. So he would stay. He had to. Otherwise who would be there when the King came again?” (Eggers 2012: 331). The novel’s final words clarify that the text not only infinitely suspends the idea of eventfulness but also that the preceding, first arrival of the King has not precipitated the rupture desired by Alan. Whereas this non-​event only prolongs the novel’s state of potentiality, the genuine event that happens during the hunt is denied the rupture it offers. Though A Hologram constantly appears to provide ways out of this paradox –​the wolf hunt only being the most obvious ­example –​it has its protagonist cling to the King’s arrival as the only noteworthy event. Both the long period of the King’s non-​arrival and its final staging as non-​event then create the impression of an entirely eventless plot. The text reveals that the awaited arrival, the awaited arrivant, the awaited event constitutes not an impossible possibility but simply an impossibility.

References



Primary Sources

Beckett, Samuel (2006a): Waiting for Godot: The Complete Dramatic Works. 1953. London: Faber & Faber. 7–​88.

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Beckett, Samuel (2006b): Ghost Trio: The Complete Dramatic Works. 1975. London: Faber & Faber. 405–​14. Eggers, Dave (2009): Zeitoun. New York: Vintage. Eggers, Dave (2012): A Hologram for the King. New York: Vintage. Eggers, Dave (2014): The Circle. London: Penguin. Eggers, Dave (2016): Heroes of the Frontier. New York: Knopf.



Secondary Sources

Adkins, Brent (2012): “Deleuze and Badiou on the Nature of Events.” Philosophy Compass. 7.8: 507–​16. Benz, Nadine (2013): (Erzählte) Zeit des Wartens: Semantiken und Narrative eines temporalen Phänomens. Göttingen: V&R. Besser, Stephan and Yra van Dijk (2017): “Kafka on the Gulf: Male Identity, Space, and Globalization in Dave Eggers’s A Hologram for the King and Arnon Grunberg’s The Man without Illness.” Comparative Literature (CL)  69.1: 111–​28. Deleuze, Gilles (1995):  “The Exhausted.” 1992. Trans. Anthony Uhlmann. SubStance 24.3: 3–​28. Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari (2014): A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia. 1980. Trans. Brian Massumi. London et al.: Bloomsbury Academic. Bloomsbury Revelations. Derrida, Jacques (2005): “As If It Were Possible, ‘Within Such Limits’.” Paper Machine. Trans. Rachel Bowlby. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 73–​99. Derrida, Jacques (2007): “A Certain Impossible Possibility of Saying the Event.” Trans. Gila Walker. Critical Inquiry 33.2: 441–​61. Eds. of the New York Times Book Review (2012): “10 Best Books of 2012.” The New York Times, 30 Nov. 2012. . Accessed 26 Sept. 2017. Erwig, Andrea (2015): “Poetologien des Wartens. Robert Musils Die Vollendung der Liebe und der ‘waiting plot’ um 1900.” Zeiten erzählen. Ansätze –​Aspekte –​Analysen. Ed. Antonius Weixler and Lukas Werner. Berlin: de Gruyter. 499–​525. Narratologia 48. Martin, Tim (2013): “Review of A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers.” The Telegraph, 3 Feb. 2013. . Accessed 26 Sept. 2017. Masterson, John (2016):  “Floods, Fortresses, and Cabin Fever:  Worlding ‘Domeland’ Security in Dave Eggers’s Zeitoun and The Circle.” American Literary History 28.4: 721–​39. Meinig, Sigrun (2014): “Empathizing with the Experience of Cultural Change: Reflections on Contemporary Fiction at Work.” Rethinking Empathy through Literature. Ed. Meghan Marie Hammond and Sue J. Kim. London and New York: Routledge. 107–​18.

124 Howaldt Raffoul, François (2008): “Derrida and the Ethics of the Im-​possible.” Research in Phenomenology 38: 270–​90. Schweizer, Harold (2008): On Waiting. London and New York: Routledge. Smith, Daniel (2015): “An Event Worthy of the Name, a Name Worthy of the Event.” Journal of Speculative Philosophy 29.3: 387–​94.

­c hapter 7

Absurd Waiting in Samuel Beckett and Zakes Mda: Wartestellen and Revolutionary Waiting Amanda Lagji Abstract This essay contrasts several staged iterations of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, first performed in 1953, with the 1988 postcolonial exploration of Godot’s themes by Zakes Mda in his play And the Girls in Their Sunday Dresses. First, I discuss Beckett’s Wartestellen (‘waiting points’) and his use of space to suggest that waiting is a universal condition of human existence. I then turn to the famous San Quentin State prison performance in 1957 and the 1980 production in Cape Town, South Africa –​a juxtaposition that draws out in new contexts the themes of liberation, imprisonment, uncertainty, and anxiety. Mda’s play goes further than mere description of waiting as an existential mode by staging the awakening of revolutionary consciousness made possible by and wrested from the very act of waiting in line.

Keywords Zakes Mda –​Samuel Beckett –​revolutionary waiting –​queuing –​theatre studies

1

Introduction

Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is perhaps the best-​known representation of the temporal experience of waiting to grace the theatrical stage. Across two acts, the play depicts two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, as they await Godot’s arrival. The eponymous Godot, a young boy reassures them, “would not come this evening but surely tomorrow.” (1994: I.1437–​8) Vladimir and Estragon’s language games and antics, as well as encounters with Pozzo and Lucky, help to pass the time. Stretched out indefinitely, with the promise of Godot’s arrival indefinitely deferred, waiting time becomes their antagonist. The first encounter with Lucky and Pozzo in Act i, Vladimir notes, “passed the time.” (1994: I.1329) Estragon replies, “It would have passed in any case”, but Vladimir rejoins, “Yes

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/​9 789004407121_​0 09

126 Lagji but not so rapidly.” (1994:  I.1331) Their strategies to manage and to organise their waiting time permits them to posit the progression of time in the face of an otherwise undifferentiated, uncertain future. The theatrical stage is a particularly powerful venue for exploring the relationship between space and time. As Jonathan Boulter writes regarding Godot specifically, we might say for plays in general:  “Drama would allow [Beckett] to map the trajectories of real, concrete, characters in the real space and time of performance.” (2008: 28) The revised text of Godot, edited by Dougald McMillan and James Knowlson, draws from productions that Beckett himself directed and supervised, and stresses Beckett’s understanding of the reciprocal relationship between space and time. Within his production notebooks, Beckett marked twelve moments as a Wartestelle, “literally a ‘waiting point’ [designed to plunge] the spectator immediately into an atmosphere of ‘waiting’ which is the main subject as well as the fundamental characteristic of the play.” (Beckett et al. 1994: xiii) A list of the sixteen potential Wartestellen Beckett identified can be found in the Schiller production notebooks, produced in facsimile and transcribed by McMillan and Knowlson. (Beckett et al. 1994: 325–​7) Years after Godot was first published and performed (1952 and 1953 respectively), Beckett continued to alter the text and its production to emphasise the Wartestelle, suggesting that as he became more involved in the realisation of the play in actual performances, Wartestellen were effective means of underscoring the function of time and space in the play’s theorisation of waiting time. Whereas the 1952 version of Godot opened with Estragon alone on the stage, the Schiller-​Theatre, Berlin, and San Quentin productions that constitute the later revised text alter the opening scene significantly. The play instead opens with both Vladimir and Estragon on stage, still and silent. As Knowlson explains: “[t]‌his waiting motif […] is therefore given concrete form in this new opening.” (Beckett et al. 1994: xiii.) Other alterations Beckett made involved revising the play to include four different musical tunes. Originally, the four musical moments were intended to be variations on the ‘dog tune’ in Act ii. Instead, Beckett incorporated “four different tunes [to] make a typically balanced set of similarities and contrasts.” (McMillan 1994: 53) The musical forms mimic the temporal form of waiting, in that Act ii “does not produce a musical resolution.” (ibid.: 54) These themes of uncertainty and indefinite waiting without resolution resonated with the San Quentin audience of prisoners in particular, for whom the play was performed by the San Francisco Actor’s Workshop in 1957. To prepare the inmates for the unusual play they were about to watch, director Herbert Blau advised them to understand the play as a piece of jazz music; and in fact, Beckett’s play can be “understood like the different themes in a symphony, which gain meaning by their simultaneous interaction.” (Esslin 2004: 45)

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This chapter will proceed in this same spirit, juxtaposing several staged iterations of Godot with the 1988 postcolonial exploration of Godot’s themes by South African writer Zakes Mda in his play And the Girls in Their Sunday Dresses. The following section will discuss Godot’s use of space to articulate waiting as a universal condition of the absurdity of human existence. I will then address the San Quentin Prison performance in 1957, as well as subsequent prison performances by Sidney Homan’s drama classes during the 1980s. These prison productions foreground waiting as a temporal modality of occupying imprisoned space, which the inmate-​spectators intuitively understand in their own experiences of ‘doing time’. The 1980 production of Godot in Cape Town, South Africa, explicitly stages the politics of space and time in the institutionalisation of apartheid, and I argue that this production crystallises a relationship between universal waiting theorised by Beckett and the postcolonial waiting inflected by specific, local histories. Finally, I will turn to Mda’s play, and briefly discuss his relationship to the theatre of the absurd and Beckett before analysing the contours of waiting staged in And the Girls in Their Sunday Dresses. Unlike the absurd, despairing waiting that pervades Godot, Mda’s play dramatises the revolutionary potential that inheres in the social practice of waiting, or as Harold Schweizer puts it, waiting spaces can offer “a meditative temporal space in which one might have unexpected intuitions and fortuitous insights.” (Schweizer 2008: 2) 2

Doing Time: Imprisoning Godot

Not until lines 152–​3 does Beckett reveal to the audience the reasons that Vladimir and Estragon tarry on their country road. Estragon suggests, “Let’s go”, but Vladimir counters that they cannot, because “We’re waiting for Godot.” (1994: I.150–​3) Yet both characters are uncertain that where they have arrived is the correct place, at the designated time. The following exchange epitomises the uncertainty that permeates the rest of the play: Vladimir: […] What are you insinuating? That we’ve come to the wrong place? Estragon: He should be here. Vladimir: He did not say for sure he’d come. Estragon: And if he does not come? Vladimir: We’ll come back tomorrow. Estragon: And then the day after tomorrow. Vladimir: Possibly. beckett et al. 1994: I.169–​75

128 Lagji Combined with the play’s generic setting –​“A country road. A tree. [A stone.]” (ibid.: I.1) –​the audience can only be certain that “the play’s spatial and temporal contexts […] take place after: after a time in which significant and meaningful action could have occurred […] after familiar categories, such indeed as time itself, have become redundant or defunct.” (Boulter 2008: 27, emphasis in the original) If waiting, as Peter Bishop argues with regard to waiting rooms, “involves a radical interpenetration between time and spatiality” (Bishop 2013: 137), then the instability of space in Godot (are the tramps in the same location in Act I as they are in Act ii?) contributes to the instability of waiting time in the play as well. (Zaller 1991: 28) For many critics, Godot epitomises the anxiety characteristic of the 1950s. (Boulter 2008: 2) Martin Esslin’s 1961 Theatre of the Absurd not only coined its titular phrase, but also was one of the first extensive studies of Beckett’s play to situate it as part of a larger theatrical school. The word “absurd”, Esslin notes, “originally means ‘out of harmony’, in a musical context” (Esslin 2004: 23), and the theatre of the absurd arose out “of deep disillusionment, even despair, over the collapse of so many certainties about the world”, resulting in “the consequent questioning of the very bases of human existence.” (Esslin 1991: 43) Waiting exemplifies this disillusionment. As spectators, we join Vladimir and Estragon, uncertain about whether Godot will come, unsure what his arrival would entail, and resigned with Estragon that, in any case, there is “Nothing to be done.” (Beckett et al. 1994: I.8) Compelled by reasons never revealed to the audience, Vladimir and Estragon will wait for Godot indefinitely. In Beckett, form and content are unified to suggest “the illusion of meaningful activity in mechanical time and place.” (Gordon 2002: 127) Beckett’s own stage directions demonstrate that the characters’ movements occur predominantly on the periphery of the stage, rather than at its centre. (ibid.: 141) Ultimately, this movement reinforces “the absence of meaning in personal and cosmic terms” and that “[t]‌here is nothing to be done in one’s imprisonment in space.” (Gordon 2002: 141–​2) Throughout the play, Godot’s characters –​Pozzo and Lucky included –​“manoeuvre through stage space to pass the time.” (Cohn 1994: 16) It is no wonder, then, that the prisoners at San Quentin identified so strongly with the play, as they too passed time in a restricted space. Martin Esslin describes the 1957 San Quentin production of Godot in great detail. Concerned that the inmates would not grasp the “ ‘highly obscure, intellectual’ ” play, Blau encouraged the inmates of the maximum security prison to “ ‘listen for whatever one may find in it’ ”, as one would with jazz music. (Esslin 2004: 19) Perhaps to accentuate this point, a jazz band played as the inmates entered the makeshift theatre in the cafeteria. (Adams 2009) Jacob Adams’s 2009 documentary, The Impossible Itself, revisits the 1957 San Quentin Prison production through interviews with members of the cast and audience alike.

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The documentary recounts Blau’s misgivings about the production, which were shared by the prison psychiatrist, though for different reasons; the prison warden had been warned by the prison psychiatrist that the play might be too traumatic for the inmates. (Adams 2009) To their great surprise, the audience responded enthusiastically, emotionally, and intellectually to Godot. In his interview in The Impossible Itself, John Keith Irwin, who was a professor, former inmate, and leading expert on the American prison system, observes that the temporal experience of waiting maps onto the prison experience perfectly, and is especially similar to the experience of waiting for parole. According to Irwin, inmates often do not understand the parole process, and prisoners speculate on the best strategy to attain it. The outcome of the process –​who gets parole, and who is denied –​takes on the form of unpredictable absurdity. Intuitively, the inmates understood silence, pressure, waiting, and the struggle to mobilise their imaginations to manage the waiting time. Inspired by Vladimir and Estragon’s strategies for giving shape and purpose to the temporality of waiting, the inmates asked the warden for permission to organize their own drama group within the prison. One of the participants, Rich Cluchey, went on to work closely with Beckett and became “one of the foremost interpreters of his work in English throughout the world.” (Bradby 2001: 104) The temporality of waiting resonated with the inmates’ experiences of prison, and the characters Pozzo and Lucky represented power dynamics with which they were intimately familiar. Pozzo and Lucky’s entrance is indicated in advance by the sound of a whip in Act I. (Beckett et al. 1994: I.443) Lucky appears with a rope around his neck, pulling Pozzo and carrying a coat, picnic basket, and stool. (ibid.:  I.449–​54) Assuming the roles of master and slave, Pozzo chastises and commands Lucky, whose obedience culminates in Lucky’s ‘think speech’. The speech, ostensibly nonsensical in its grammatical irregularity and stream-​of-​consciousness connections, nevertheless creates meaning through its suggestive refrains. The repeated phrases and words include “time will tell”, “doubt”, “reasons unknown”, and “nothing.” (ibid.: I.1139–​ 93) At San Quentin, this emotional climax was met with applause, such that the actors paused their performance. (Adams 2009) Cluchey explicates the parallels between this scene and prison-​life: He’s packing the bosses [sic] bags like a good powder monkey. And look man, the dude’s got that sucker at the end of his cane. Suddenly there was no confusion about the Warden’s role and my own convict dog boy’s ass. I too had a lifetime rope around my neck. Everybody in the audience reacted. Waiting, the play was about waiting! qtd. in bradby 2001: 103

130 Lagji When Pozzo and Lucky enter the stage again in Act ii, the master and slave dynamic is reified even as their roles are reversed. In contrast to Act i, a mute Lucky now leads a blind Pozzo. (Beckett et al. 1994: ii.2310) The prisoners of San Quentin, Esslin speculates, were not only “confronted with their own experience of time, waiting, hope and despair,” but they also “recognized the truth about their own human relationships in the sadomasochistic interdependence of Pozzo and Lucky.” (Esslin 2004: 70, emphasis in the original) Godot’s ability to resonate with a prison audience was not limited to the San Quentin event alone. In fact, Sidney Homan recounts in “Waiting for Godot: Inmates as Students and –​Then –​Teachers” (1991) that his theatre company performed the play for the inmates at Florida State Prison in the 1980s. Just as at San Quentin, the prisoners interrupted the play, but this time, the inmates shouted questions and comments at the actors. Homan remembers, [H]‌ere was an audience, these men waiting, who demanded to be part of the production, who took what we said so seriously that they could not remain silent. We were actually performing two plays, the one scripted by Beckett and a complementary one, this extension of the text fashioned by our unique audience. homan 1991: 157

After the performance, the prisoners rushed toward stage –​flouting bed-​check and angering the guards –​in order to discuss the play. Homan went on to perform Godot in several other prisons across the state of Florida, each additional performance “duplicat[ing] that original one at Florida State.” (1991: 157) The prisoners, according to Homan, “now identified Godot with some aspect of their own prison life.” (ibid.) Beckett’s own thoughts about staging and production support this connection between play and prison. In one of his notebooks, Beckett likens Vladimir and Estragon’s movements to being imprisoned in a cage. (Knowlson 1987: 52) By incorporating Beckett’s insights, we can understand the play’s themes of circularity and futility in terms of imprisonment. Knowlson notes that the symbolism of the cage was almost made explicit in one production, when Beckett’s production notebook revealed that he “contemplated having ‘the faint shadow of bars on the stage floor.’ ” (ibid.: 51–​2) When coupled with its production history, Godot depicts both waiting and imprisonment to be universal elements of the human experience. According to Esslin’s theorisation of the theatre of the absurd, Godot “mirrors and reflects the preoccupations and anxieties, the emotions and thinking of many of their contemporaries in the Western world.” (2004: 22, emphasis added)

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Subsequent productions of Godot across the globe belie Esslin’s now-​dated sentiment, restricting Godot’s relevance to the “West.” The 1980 production of Godot in Cape Town, South Africa, for example, stresses the play’s imbrication of waiting space and time, especially given that the background of apartheid shaped each aspect of the performance. Attempts to rigidly control space –​the hallmark of the apartheid regime –​resonated with audiences in South Africa, a country where the temporal experience of waiting was particularly poignant. Vincent Crapanzano’s 1985 anthropological study, Waiting: The Whites of South Africa, argues that the country during the 1980s was “caught in a deadened time of waiting.” (xxii) From his interviews, Crapanzano concludes that the discourse of apartheid produces “social entrapment –​with the way in which a people’s understanding of themselves, their world, their past, and their future limits their possibility.” (ibid.) The temporality of waiting strains against an uncertain future, and the experience of waiting is stratified across racial lines in South Africa. For whites, fear attends their experience of waiting, whereas “for most Blacks, however great their poverty or despair, waiting is illuminated by hope […]” (ibid.) Although the temporality of waiting could foment action, resistance, and cautious hope among some segments of South Africa’s population, whites were “caught in the peculiar, the paralytic, time of waiting.” (ibid.: 42) For these reasons, the themes of waiting and imprisonment were pertinent to the contemporary South African social climate, but the production of Godot in South Africa needed to wrestle directly with the apartheid institutionalisation of separateness. Beckett had requested that Godot, as well as his other plays, be produced only in multiracial theatres. (Bradby 2001: 169) Cape Town’s Space Theatre, as well as the University of Cape Town’s Baxter Theatre, were some of the “few theatres which managed to maintain a consistent multiracial policy.” (ibid.) For this production, director Donald Howarth cast black actors in the roles of Vladimir and Estragon, and white actors as Lucky and Pozzo. According to Bradby, Howarth’s production “made no attempt to localise the play in South Africa,” (ibid.: 169) but I would argue that the casting directly evokes the South African context. By casting white actors in the roles of Lucky and Pozzo, embodying the internalised dynamics of master and slave, the South African production framed the themes of waiting and imprisonment with the absurdity of apartheid’s insistence on racial separateness. This same cast then took the play to Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, where, Mel Gussow notes, “the play assume[d]‌different tonalities” due to its “multiracial South African cast.” (1994: 61) At this point, Howarth eschewed any semblance of ignoring the particular in favour of the universal, and chose to stage Godot “on a hilly landscape rather than on the usual open plain,” offering “a tangible Godot.” (ibid.: 62)

132 Lagji From San Quentin to Cape Town and finally to New Haven, the play’s “universal” setting became anchored in particular places through the staged performance, amplifying the themes of waiting and imprisonment. Zakes Mda’s 1988 play, And the Girls in Their Sunday Dresses, offers a different take on Beckett’s iconic play, revising the plot to feature two women –​The Woman and The Lady  –​waiting in line for aid rice in Lesotho. Although Mda disavows the influence of Samuel Beckett on his art (Bell 2009: 24), the similarities between Girls and Godot are striking. The Lady and the Woman are Estragon and Vladimir’s counterparts, waiting for rice while the latter pair waits for Godot. In both plays, the characters endure waiting over the course of several days. Whereas time meaninglessly passes in Godot, the experience of waiting in Girls ignites the revolutionary consciousness of both characters. The absurdity of waiting is here politicised, drawing attention to the various structures and practices that mandate their waiting. Perhaps most significantly, both acts of Godot conclude with Vladimir and Estragon alternately proposing, “Yes, let’s go” while the stage directions indicate that neither character moves. (Beckett et al. 1994: I.1568–​71, ii.2899–​901) But in Girls, the characters commit to abandoning their waiting together, and the stage directions read, “Lights fade to black as the two women go out.” (Mda 1993: 37) In order to analyse the political and social dimensions of Mda’s rejoinder to Beckett’s Godot, the following section first contextualises Mda’s commitments in relation to South-​ African-​theatre traditions before turning to queue theory to examine the play’s formulation of waiting as a potentially revolutionary, conscious-​raising temporality. 3

Revolutionary Waiting in Girls Lady: [determined]: I was never an onlooker. I am all action. When the revolution comes I want to carry a gun. I do not sit on the sidelines and darn socks for the fighters. Woman: It is here already. Lady: Well, I have not seen much of it. I am still waiting for it, and when it comes… Woman: You do not wait for a revolution. You make it happen. Mda 1993: Scene 4

The epigraph above is taken from the play’s final pages, and marks the moment when the Lady and the Woman reach an understanding –​not only of each other, but also of their positions as women, citizens of Lesotho, and inhabitants of

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greater Southern Africa more generally. The play is set in Lesotho, a sovereign kingdom surrounded by South Africa, where Mda lived with his family in exile from the age of sixteen because of his father’s political activities against the apartheid government. By the time Girls was staged at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1988, the end of apartheid could be imagined even as the violence of the struggle intensified. The same year the play was produced, Nelson Mandela was moved from Robben Island to Victor Verster Prison, from high –​to low-​ security imprisonment. Rather than wait for the revolution to present itself, the Woman suggests that the revolution has already arrived because ordinary people have worked, and are working, to make it happen. The revolution Mda has in mind, however, is more than the achievement of black-​majority rule in his native South Africa. The Woman’s insistence that they ought to wait no longer, that they must make the revolution happen, echoes the rhetoric of refusing to wait heralded in independence speeches across the African continent in the 1950s and 1960s. Set in Lesotho, which had already achieved independence from Great Britain in 1966, the play’s rhetoric of refusing to wait extends beyond a singular independence moment to suggest a more expansive revolution –​ for political independence, and also for socio-​economic independence for Lesotho and the larger Southern African region. In his introduction to the play, Bhekizizwe Peterson emphasizes this greater frame of reference when he argues, Mda turns his attention to the problems of dependency in Lesotho and, in the process, subtly calls into question a number of nationalist assumptions […]. While the play is set in Lesotho, it gestures constantly toward Lesotho’s socio-​economic dependency on South Africa. bhekizizwe 1993: xix

The play’s two characters, the Woman and the Lady, have been waiting in line for food-​aid rice for days when the curtain rises. Over the course of the play’s four scenes, we learn that well-​connected wholesalers and distributers do not have to wait, but can get rice immediately “to sell it in their shops. At a very high price.” (Mda 1993:14) The rice itself comes from abroad for distribution, but the aid is not distributed equally or efficiently. In a pantomime, the Woman and the Lady act out the continuous deferral of acquiring the rice, based on the bureaucratic procedures; they will go to a window and fill out a form, then get in another line to pay, then get in another line to have their papers stamped, and then they will present papers to “the Right Honourable the Keeper of the Stores” who “will assign a person with whom you’ll go to choose your bag of

134 Lagji rice.” (ibid.: 36) The play concludes with the women deciding to abandon their wait, embracing one another as a “Sister woman” (ibid.: 37). The revolution that Mda’s characters advocate for, then, is more than just political. It is also gendered and socio-​economic in nature. Mda’s focus on the struggle of ordinary people –​in Girls, the everywoman (as opposed to “everyman”), nonspecific names “the Woman” and “the Lady” highlight this point –​is consistent across his dramatic plays and adheres to the principles of Theatre for Development. In contrast to the prevailing Theatre of Resistance tradition in South Africa, which centred on the struggle to dismantle apartheid, Mda “instead focused on the problems likely to confront the ordinary masses of South Africa.” (Uwah and Muller 2003: 155) Critics have connected an earlier Mda play, We Shall Sing for the Fatherland (1979), to Beckett and the Theatre of the Absurd, but Mda’s art draws on these traditions only insofar as they contribute to his aim of criticising “in theatrical form the social evils and injustice of apartheid.” (Liu 2003: 124) Despite the aesthetic and ideological differences of those traditions –​both Fatherland and Girls are committed to depicting social and political conditions in order to effect change –​we can observe several thematic echoes, as well as explicit intertextual references between Girls and Godot. Girls’s stage directions do not particularise the setting, but rather specify props:  a chair, a food parcel, makeup, and an old lizard bag (Mda 1993: 4). Like Godot, Girls “is staged realistically but the lack of a conventional set […] counteracts any visual temptation of illusion.” (Duggan 1999: 5) And just as Estragon and Vladimir are plagued by memory loss, the Woman boasts, “I do not live in the past. What happened happened and I remember it only in so far as it is a lesson learnt never to be repeated.” (Mda 1993: 26) As we will see, throughout Girls the echoes of Godot are refashioned to support a politically-​engaged purpose; whereas Godot’s memory loss might speak to the uncertainty of personal identity and persistence in time, in Girls memory loss is mobilized so that “[u]‌nnecessary harping on the past” can be avoided in favour of “focus[ing] on the future.” (Ebewo 2009: 33) Significantly, Beckett’s two waiting men become two waiting women in Mda’s Girls, but like Vladimir and Estragon, the two women are dependent on one another. Beckett’s production notebooks indicate that Vladimir and Estragon move “restlessly towards and away” from one another, dramatising “the ambivalent nature of the tramps’ relationship (perhaps of any human relationship in Beckett’s eyes)” (Beckett et  al. 1994:  xvii-​xviii). In Girls, the links are more material, but no less essential, because the Lady has brought her “chair of patience” for them to share, and the Woman has food (Mda 1993: 37). As the Lady summarises, “I just want you to understand that hands clean each other. You need my chair, I need your food. I do not want you to think I am stranded

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or something.” (ibid.: 5) When the Lady later wonders aloud, “Why did I sit with you here?”, the Woman clarifies for her and the audience simultaneously, “We did not have a choice. We are in a queue.” (ibid.: 16) The kinds of circular movements Vladimir and Estragon enact in the productions of Godot directed by Beckett are not possible in a queue. The road of Godot is a queue in Girls, and the anxiety of keeping one’s place in line functions to restrict mobility even further while the women wait. The ordinary experience of waiting in line evokes a familiar kind of waiting for spectators. The queue spatially shapes the temporal experience of waiting in relation to scarcity, exerting a coercive power to keep those who wait ‘in line’, literally and figuratively speaking: [T]‌he greater the scarcity of a service, and the more inelastic the demand for that service, the less a server is compelled to reduce the waiting time of clients. Urgency of need thus minimizes the probability of ‘balking,’ that is, refusing to enter the queue, and ‘reneging,’ or abandoning the queue […]. Waiting is patterned by the distribution of power in a social system. schwartz 1974: 843

The Lady and the Woman address the circumstances that condition their willingness to wait. Even though the food was donated by foreign governments and meant to be distributed as free aid, the government depot sells it at a profit. The Lady naively asserts, “Nobody forced you to come here, you know that,” but the Woman counters that the food aid “helps to keep them where they are –​poor.” (Mda 1993: 14) As they wait, the larger economic disparities not only within Lesotho but also between the global North and South are revealed as the socioeconomic arrangements that pattern their waiting. Theoretically, the queue is a ‘democratic space’, where “the powerful, wealthy, able-​bodied and physically strong cannot easily employ these attributes to get a jump on others.” (Wexler 2015: 166) However, as the play’s large trucks approach, cut in line, and take the aid rice to resell at a profit, the rich and powerful are able to manipulate queues in their favour. Indeed, the rich enjoy a “relative immunity from waiting […] because they have the resources to refuse to wait; that is, because they can often afford to go elsewhere for faster service or cause others, such as servants or employees, to wait in their places.” (Schwartz 1974: 849) The experiences of waiting, in Girls as well as Mda’s other plays, draw attention to the governmental and institutional structures that withhold desired objects or outcomes for the characters. As Peterson notes in his introduction to an edited collection of Mda’s plays, “They [all of Mda’s

136 Lagji characters] are either on the road or waiting at some impersonal social or governmental space,” producing a “thread of being caught between two worlds –​ oppression and liberation.” (Peterson 1993: x) Waiting is not just empty time, especially in a queue; waiting can increase the value of the service or product that the queued person awaits. Schwartz notes that those who wait the longest tend to value what they receive the most. But this only means that the subjective value of the service […] is positively modified in the very act of waiting, even though waiting itself is not desired, or, more precisely, simply because it is not desired. schwartz 1974: 858

In this way, Beckett’s Godot is an exemplar of the relationship between value and waiting, because according to Schwartz, Godot’s “efficacy lies in no concrete, substantive achievement but in the pure fact that he is waited for.” (1974: 861) While the women in Mda’s play eventually do renege and abandon the queue, it is not because the subjective value of the rice has somehow diminished during their time of protracted waiting. Instead, their growing comradery encourages them to see their oppression as a shared condition whose transformation similarly requires communal action. The power and value of this realisation, their commitment to no longer wait for the revolution but rather to “make it happen”, suggests that the queue’s social and power dynamics do not flow simply from the waiter to the awaited. Instead, the queue can be a space where interactions and dialogues between waiters can upend the dependency on the awaited. Neither queue theory nor the kind of waiting depicted in Godot can adequately theorise the qualitative differences of waiting in Girls. Mark Wexler’s critique of queue theory, on the other hand, suggests the concept of flexitime to account for precisely this kind of difference. “Rather than lost time,” he proposes, “waiting is now treated as a form of flexitime. In flexitime those experiencing reduced mobility can multi-​task, time shift and rather than turn to relative strangers imbedded in wait, elect to connect with others (Haythornthwaite 2005).” (Wexler 2015:  171) The physicality of queue space underscores the shared condition of waiting; as Javier Auyero observes in the context of Argentinian bureaucracy and waiting lists, the “subjective experience of waiting” shared by Argentinians “reveals acts of cognition that are, simultaneously, acts of recognition of the established political order.” (Auyero 2012:  9) In Girls, we see the Woman and the Lady using their waiting time in precisely this way; they discuss how to play the government’s “waiting game” (Mda 1993: 10),

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their shared histories as “victims of a social order” that denies social mobility (ibid.: 20), and the exploitation that structures their everyday lives. (ibid.: 33) Waiting can be “absurd (as experienced by Vladimir and Estragon) or as gripping and full of suspense”, but ultimately what accounts for this difference is “what social meaning is attributed to [waiting].” (Wexler 2015:  171) Through this social time of waiting, the Woman and the Lady are able to identify the oppressive politics of patience, awakening their social and revolutionary consciousness: The Woman: Everything. When they violate you, you wait. You patiently wait until such time that they come around to doing something about it. […] But we should demand a change and be willing to suffer for it, rather than suffer in silence as we have been doing here. Tell me, why are we still here? Why are we still waiting? We are even fighting over the use of the chair. Because we are waiting. Life passes by and we are onlookers. We are like the sedated who slept through a revolution. mda 1993: 33

The Woman’s outburst marks the play’s climactic epiphany, preparing the characters to leave the queue definitively. The Lady is the first to declare her intention not only to go home, but also to leave her “chair of patience” behind. (ibid.: 37) When the Lady delivers the play’s final line, “Let’s go then,” the stage directions indicate –​in the most significant departure from Godot –​ “Lights fade to black as the two women go out.” (ibid.: 37) 4

Conclusion

Ato Quayson points out in his book Oxford Street, Accra that Beckett’s Waiting for Godot still resonates within the “urban contexts of Lagos, Accra, and elsewhere in Africa,” as “the poor and unemployed wait while cobbling together the means of such accounting.” (Quayson 2014: 248) Nearly three decades after its initial performance, And the Girls in Their Sunday Dresses captures the way that the temporality of waiting structures the inequalities between citizen and state, man and woman, the poor and the wealthy in postcolonial Lesotho. Mda’s play goes further than mere description of waiting as an existential mode by staging the awakening of revolutionary consciousness made possible by and wrested from the very act of waiting in line. Layering these various performances of Waiting for Godot, including Mda’s adaptation of the play’s characters and themes, produces a palimpsest of

138 Lagji waiting as a modality of time shaped by various factors: socioeconomic and geographical positionalities, gender, race, and class. The notion of waiting as an everyman, absurd condition staged in Godot is reworked in Mda’s play to reveal the various contingencies that affect why, for how long, and for what exactly we are willing to wait. Like a refrain that becomes more powerful with each rendition, the themes of liberation and imprisonment become more and more pronounced with each performance of Godot, from prisons to the apartheid state. In Mda’s hands, the liberating potential that inheres in the social practice of waiting is fully realised as the women agree to refuse to wait any longer, and to leave. And they do.

References



Primary Sources



Secondary Sources

Beckett, Samuel et al. (1994): Waiting for Godot: With a Revised Text. New York: Grove Press. The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett v.1. Mda, Zakes (1993): And the Girls in Their Sunday Dresses: Four Works. Johannesburg, South Africa: Witwatersrand University Press.

Adams, Jacob, dir. (2009): The Impossible Itself. Podunc Pictures. Auyero, Javier (2012):  Patients of the State:  The Politics of Waiting in Argentina. Durham: Duke University Press. Bell, David (2009):  “A Theatre for Democracy.” Ways of Writing:  Critical Essays on Zakes Mda. Ed. David Bell and J. U. Jacobs. Scottsville, South Africa: University of KwaZulu-​Natal Press. 15–​37. Bishop, Peter (2013):  “Surveying ‘The Waiting Room.’ ” Architectural Theory Review 18.2: 135–​49. Boulter, Jonathan (2008): Beckett: A Guide for the Perplexed. London and New York: Continuum. Guides for the Perplexed Series. Bradby, David (2001): Beckett: Waiting for Godot. Cambridge, U.K.  and New York: Cambridge University Press. Plays in Production. Cohn, Ruby, ed. (1994):  Samuel Beckett:  Waiting for Godot:  A Casebook. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Casebook Series. Crapanzano, Vincent (1985):  Waiting:  The Whites of South Africa. New  York:  Random House. Duggan, Carolyn (1999): “Strategies in Staging: Theatre Technique in the Plays of Zakes Mda.” African Theatre in Development. Ed. Martin Banham et al. Oxford: James Curry; Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1–​12. African Theatre 1.

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Ebewo, Patrick (2009): “Satire: A Shifting Paradigm in Zakes Mda’s Dramaturgy.” English Academy Review: Southern African Journal of English Studies 26.2: 25–​37. Esslin, Martin (1991): “Beckett and the ‘Theatre of the Absurd.’ ” Approaches to Teaching Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Ed. June Schlueter and Enoch Brater. New York: Modern Language Association of America. 42–​7. Approaches to Teaching World Literature 34. Esslin, Martin (2004): The Theatre of the Absurd. New York: Vintage Books. Gordon, Lois G. (2002): Reading Godot. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press. Gussow, Mel (1994):  Samuel Beckett:  Waiting for Godot:  A Casebook. Ed. Ruby Cohn. Basingstoke: Macmillan. 60–​2. Casebook Series. Homan, Sidney (1991): “Waiting for Godot: Inmates as Students-​and-​Then-​Teachers.” Approaches to Teaching Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Ed. June Schlueter and Enoch Brater. New York: Modern Language Association of America. 156–​62. Approaches to Teaching World Literature 34. Knowlson, James (1987) “Beckett as Director: The Manuscript Production Notebooks and Critical Interpretation.” Modern Drama 30.4: 451–​65. Knowlson, James (1994): “Beckett’s Production Notebooks.” Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot: A Casebook. Ed. Ruby Cohn. Basingstoke: Macmillan. 48–​52. Casebook Series. Liu, Yao-​Kun (2003): “Zakes Mda’s ‘We Shall Sing for the Fatherland’: An Illustration of African Life Using European Dramatic Modes.” English in Africa 30.1: 123–​34. McMillan, Dougald (1994): “The Music in ‘Waiting for Godot.’ ” Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot: A Casebook. Ed. Ruby Cohn. Basingstoke: Macmillan. 53–​6. Casebook Series. Peterson, Bhekizizwe (1993): Introduction. And the Girls in Their Sunday Dresses: Four Works. Johannesburg, South Africa: Witwatersrand University Press. vii-​xxiv. Quayson, Ato (2014): Oxford Street, Accra: City Life and the Itineraries of Transnationalism. Durham: Duke University Press. Schwartz, Barry (1974):  “Waiting, Exchange, and Power:  The Distribution of Time in Social Systems.” American Journal of Sociology 79.4: 841–​70. Schweizer, Harold (2008): On Waiting. London and New York: Routledge. Uwah, Chijioke and Roy Muller (2003): “The Development of Dramatic Symbolism and Satire in the Plays of Zakes Mda on the Realities of South Africa’s Political Situation.” Acta Academica 35.1: 154–​66. Wexler, Mark N. (2015): “Re-​Thinking Queue Culture: The Commodification of Thick Time.” International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 35.3/​4: 165–​181. Zaller, Robert (1991): “The Waiting Game: Temporal Strategies in Waiting for Godot and Endgame.” Boulevard 5: 12–​35.

chapter 8

Waiting as Resistance: Confined Spaces in Broch and Weiss Olaf Berwald Abstract This essay explores the spatial psychodynamics of attempting to escape from suffocating power structures, as displayed in various scenes of waiting in Hermann Broch’s novel Der Tod des Vergil (The Death of Virgil), in Peter Weiss’s plays Marat/​Sade and Hölderlin, and in his novel Die Ästhetik des Widerstands (The Aesthetics of Resistance). Drawing on methodological reflections by F.W.J. Schelling and Wilfred R.  Bion, this chapter examines how the protagonists in Broch and Weiss endure, stage, and attempt to disentangle themselves from mise-​en-​abîmes of encapsulation by all-​encompassing power structures.

Keywords Wilfred R. Bion –​Hermann Broch –​Peter Weiss –​power relations –​spatial dynamics of suffocation

1

Introduction

“Waiting is a form of violence.” (Waldrop 2016: 194) If we take this line from Keith Waldrop’s poem “Standard Candles,” which appeared in his collection Analogies of Escape (1997), at face value, an unsettling question ensues: if we consider waiting to be a mode of aggression, or define it as a continuous act of violence, will we be able to tell victim and perpetrator apart? Is waiting akin to a wound that we sustain, dress, reopen, and cover up again, a wound that in turn helps us sustain our lives, albeit at the cost of near-​paralysis? We can also conceive of waiting as a mode of “Widerstand” (resistance), a term whose fecund ambivalence usefully destabilizes one-​dimensional illusions of epistemic control. Evoking at once phenomena in movement and stagnation, “resistance” denotes not only a political movement or liberation fight, but also a range of

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/​9 789004407121_​0 10

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avoidance techniques unconsciously designed to sabotage the fulfillment of desires, and to preclude dialogic reciprocity, as Sigmund Freud outlines in his lecture “Widerstand und Verdrängung” (“Resistance and Displacement”) from his Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse, which he presented in 1916 and 1917. (2009) This essay examines literary scenes of waiting, whose settings include prisons, insane asylums, and a deathbed in the interior of a ship. Literary scholarship can benefit from taking a transdisciplinary look at historical studies of the interplay between incarceration, waiting, and surveillance, such as Griffith’s stimulating recent monograph, Carceral Fantasies (Griffith 2016). The protagonists of the works to be discussed in what follows are situated in conflicted spatial dynamics of encapsulation and containment. They are, to use a playful terminology offered by British psychoanalyst Wilfred R. Bion, simultaneously “contained” and “container.” In his essay volume Attention and Interpretation (1970), Bion posits that “[…] an object is placed into a container in such a way that either the container or the contained object is destroyed.” (Bion 2004: 95) He further elaborates on a struggle to the death, so to speak, between “container” and “contained.” Bion argues, “The container can squeeze everything out of the contained; or the ‘pressure’ may be exerted by the contained so that the container disintegrates. […] containment –​I use the word with its military implication of one force containing another […]” (2004: 107, 112) In a seminar given in Los Angeles in 1967, Bion, whose patients included Samuel Beckett, focuses on language as a danger to itself, as a medium that instantaneously suffocates the very life experiences it is supposed to preserve and express. According to Bion, language is always in the process of depriving itself of lived meaning:  “[…] the life is squeezed out of the contained object. I’m talking about a live, emotional experience. I’m able to put it into the container of the English language, and the English language as it stands is so powerful and so rigid that it simply takes in the meaning that I’m trying to put into it and squeezes the life out of it, and what you get at the end of this is meaningless jargon.” (2013: 46–​7) This essay will try to keep Bion’s skeptical mantra in mind, that every terminology can become a suffocating threat to anything that it proclaims to elucidate, a warning whose rich literary and philosophical history includes passages in F.W.J. Schelling’s and Friedrich Hölderlin’s works. In what follows, I  will discuss representations of the spatial psychodynamics of waiting as a mode of resistance to and, one might argue, as a manifestation of, systemic violence in works by two exiled late modernist writers, Austrian novelist and essayist Hermann Broch (1886–​1951), who spent the later part of his life in the United States, and German playwright and novelist Peter Weiss (1916–​1982),

142 Berwald who settled in Sweden. In particular, this essay will focus on Broch’s stream-​ of-​consciousness novel Der Tod des Vergil (1945, The Death of Virgil), and on Weiss’s plays Marat/​Sade (1963–​65) and Hölderlin (1970–​72). The protagonists of the works under discussion are fictionalized versions of historical figures, mostly writers, who embody existential conflicts between political engagement (and its constant risk of becoming in turn instrumentalized by old and new dictatorial regimes) on the one hand, and unrestrained explorations of the unconscious on the other. Far from being able to reconcile this apparent dichotomy, Broch’s and Weiss’s protagonists inhabit a fertile connective tissue. They try to carve out breathing space within the semi-​permeable membranes that keep political engagement and hallucinatory dreamscapes in mutually nourishing yet challenging dialogue. 2

Waiting in Broch’s The Death of Virgil

The narrator in Hermann Broch’s novel trilogy Die Schlafwandler (1930–​32, The Sleepwalkers) describes waiting as corporeal and emotional torture that is permeating us from the inside: “Waiting is like barbed wire that is tensed inside us.”1 (1994:  544) Confined to his deathbed in a ship’s interior, the Roman poet Virgil, the protagonist in Broch’s novel Der Tod des Vergil, awaits his death while returning to Rome. Contemplating the interplay of art and ethics, Virgil undergoes a series of hallucinatory visions of encapsulation and intermittent liberation. When Virgil is awake, he is engaged in conversations with his lifelong friend, Caesar Augustus. Virgil tries to resist the emperor’s persuasive attempts at obtaining his unfinished Aeneid manuscript that Virgil wants to have burned. After all, the ambitious emperor intends to use the reluctant Virgil’s masterpiece as propaganda material because it includes passages that celebrate the mythic origins of the Roman Empire. In continuous palinodic variations on his fear of, and longing for, the uncontrollable dissolution of boundaries between him and his dream visions, Broch’s Virgil finds himself inescapably positioned within a haunting spatial dialectic of inside/​outside, of being “contained in the dream and containing the dream.”2 (trans. Untermeyer, 1995a: 207) The latent violence of this dialectic prestructures even what might seem momentary experiences of a mystical union, for example toward the end of the novel, “the more he penetrated into the 1 “Warten ist wie gespannter Stacheldraht im Innern” (trans. O.B.). 2 “[…] eingeschlossen in den Traum und den Traum in sich einschließend […]” (Broch 1995b: 197).

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flooding sound and was penetrated by it.”3 (trans. Untermeyer, 1995a: 481) Virgil is expecting his death in the ship’s interior as a continuous interplay of immanence and transcendence, “waiting, waiting with great patience, patience that lasted a long, unbearably long time.”4 (trans. Untermeyer, 1995a:  108) Constantly enduring feelings of encapsulation and self-​abandonment, Virgil undergoes occasional ecstatic moments of release from the boundaries of fear-​ driven selfhood: “It was an undirected waiting, as undirected as the radiation, but for all that directed to the waiter, the dreamer; it was a sort of invitation to him to make a final attempt, a last creative effort to get outside of the dream, outside of fate, outside of chance, outside of form, outside of himself.”5 (trans. Untermeyer, 1995a, 206–​7) (1995b: 196) At times, Virgil clings to starkly ambivalent regressive fantasies of becoming an embryo again, “nakedly imprisoned in its first enfoldment […] embedded in the stream of creation”6 (trans. Untermeyer, 1995a: 44). Many passages in Broch’s novel read like a fugue of haunting visions in which Virgil experiences, in spiraling superimposed variations, dream visions of the shifting architectures of waiting. Sometimes Virgil has nightmares of being buried alive, “flooded with images […] in a standstill of horror […] a horror-​ cramp of tranced prostration in which he would lie, constrained by his coffin, constrained by his grave, stretched out for the immobile journey, he alone, without support, […] surrounded by the imperturbable, stony slabs of the sepulcher which would open for no resurrection.”7 (trans. Untermeyer, 1995a: 169) Helplessly exposed to “[s]‌omething unknown, fearful, ghastly, assailing him simultaneously from within and without […]”8, Virgil is acutely aware of the 3 “[…] je mehr er in den flutenden Klang eindrang und von ihm durchdrungen wurde […]” (Broch 1995b: 454). 4 “[…] warten, mit großer Geduld warten, und es dauerte lange, unerträglich lange” (Broch 1995b: 103). 5 “Ein richtungsloses Warten war es, richtungslos wie die Strahlung, und es richtete sich trotzdem an den Wartenden selber, richtete sich an den Träumer, war gleichsam Aufforderung an ihn, daß er mit einer letzten Anstrengung, mit einer letzten Schöpfungsanstrengung sich außerhalb des Traumes stelle, außerhalb des Schicksals, außerhalb des Zufalls, außerhalb der Form, außerhalb seiner selbst” (Broch 1995b: 196). 6 “nackt einverkerkert in seine erste Geborgenheit […] eingebettet im Strom der Geschöpflichkeit […]” (Broch 1995b: 44). 7 “[…] bilddurchströmt […] im Grauensstillstand […] der Grauenskrampf scheintoter Hingeworfenheit, in der er sarg-​umfangen, grab-​umfangen liegen wird, hingestreckt zur stillstehenden Fahrt, er einsam und ohne Beistand […] umgeben von den unerschütterlich steinernen Gruftplatten, die sich zu keiner Auferstehung mehr öffnen werden” (Broch 1995b: 162). 8 “Etwas Fürchterliches, das ihn von außen und von innen zugleich anpackte […]” (Broch 1995b: 8).

144 Berwald need to break free from his suffocating condition, “he knew he had to escape the breath-​lack of the narrow-​walled and shut-​in room,”9 (trans. Untermeyer, Broch 1995a: 94–​5) The third-​person, and simultaneously internal, narrator in The Death of Virgil obsessively reiterates a psychologically charged and spatially indicative compound in the passive voice, “hinein gehalten” (“being held into,” being offered up as if in the course of a sacrificial ritual) in order to accentuate the dying protagonist’s seemingly inescapable immobilization, “held into the limited space of his own ego, within the spatial boundaries of the world […] held in the constriction of every kind of rigidity, he himself rigid […] it was within this sphere that he was held, confined within it”10 (trans. Untermeyer, 1995a: 124–​ 25) “Hinein gehalten,: “being delivered” as if by a midwife, or being offered as a sacrifice, and forced to enter a wound or abyss is the recurrent verb that is employed by Broch’s Virgil to articulate his fear of an apparent death: “[…] held into the empty space of horror, oh, he was held into the horror and at the same time filled with horror […] always however within the undimension of horror, because it was the inescapable, the ever-​present, the never-​forsaken prison of the leaden trance of death […] he was held into the undimension of a trance-​ death.”11 (trans. Untermeyer, 1995a: 163–​14) Virgil’s intermittent awareness of the need to break through his paralyzing self-​encapsulation remains itself locked in states of intense but momentary rage that never translate into steps toward change, “sensible of the confinement, aware that in it lay the cause of all rigidity, the cause for all holding of the breath, he felt on all sides a force at work to shatter this constriction.”12 (trans. Untermeyer, 1995a: 125) The following passage from Der Tod des Vergil exemplifies not only the sustained intensity of Broch’s scenarios of visual violence and internalized spatial

9 10 11

12

“[…] er wußte, daß er der Unatembarkeit des starrumwandeten geschlossenen Raumes zu entrinnen hatte […]” (Broch 1995b: 89–​90). “[…] hineingehalten […] in den Grenzraum seines Ichs, hineingehalten in den Grenzraum der Welt […] hineingehalten in alle Räume der Erstarrung, erstarrt er selber […] in dieses war er hineingehalten, von diesem war er eingeschlossen […]” (Broch 1995b: 118–​19). “[…] hineingehalten in den Leerheitsraum des Grauens, oh, er war hineingehalten in das Grauen und zugleich vom Grauen erfüllt […] immer aber in der Unräumlichkeit des Grauens, weil es der unentrinnbare, der immer vorhandene, der niemals verlassene Kerker bleiernen Scheintodes ist […] er war hineingehalten in den Unraum des Scheintodes […]” (Broch 1995b: 156–​157). “Und fühlend die Eingeschlossenheit, fühlend in ihr den Grund aller Erstarrung, den Grund aller Atem-​Erstarrung, fühlte er ringsum die Zersprengungsgewalt, die sich gegen das Einschließende richtete […]” (Broch1995b: 118–​9).

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confinement, but also showcases the limitations and confines within which even the most ambitious translation projects have to operate. Untermeyer’s translation does not come close to the original text’s performative plasticity. By trying to provide literal renderings of the original text’s inventive play with compound nouns and adjectives, her version often halts the flow and deprives the prose of breathing space: […] stonier the compulsion of the glance, pushed near like a wall of silence […] the glance-​widening gaze of terror which approached the lifeless middle; and the ego, caught and encircled by the middle, caught between the glance-​walls, forced into the indiscrimination of inner and outer worlds […] annulled, absorbed and crushed by immensity with its doleful emptiness […] the ego, too, was dissolved, dissolved and frozen into the glance of the surrounding threat, the glance-​threatened ego having long since become no more than a blank stare; the threat-​subjected ego was compressed to the last trace of its existence, was annihilated to the un-​space where it was inchoate and unthinking […] unresistingly delivered to the clasp of emptiness […] trans. untermeyer, 1995a: 160–​113

Alternating between, and often merging, lyrical segments, philosophical reflections, and dialogue scenes, Broch’s genre-​exploding novel presents a dying poet’s urgent attempts at reconciling existential conflicts between art and ethics. Composed in an eerily incantatory yet at the same time hyper-​reflective diagnostic style, Der Tod des Vergil encourages the reader to join a multisensory experiment. Broch’s novel invites each reader’s physical voice to explore liberation at work while working through the text’s “content” (e.g., traumatic fear and isolation, conflicts between art and power). In other words, Broch’s opus magnum is a novel continuously at play, inspiringly unfinishable, and starting

13

(“[…] steinerner die Blickeinschließung, herangeschoben als Schweigenswand […] der blickwachsende Blick des Grauens, der sich der toten Mitte näherte, und das Ich, umfangen von der Mitte, eingekreist in ihr, eingepreßt zwischen den Blickwänden, gepreßt in die Ununterscheidbarkeit des Innen und Außen […] aufgesaugt und erdrückt von der Grenzenlosigkeit und ihrer trauernden Leere […] das Ich, aufgelöst und einverstarrt in den Blick des ringsum Drohenden, das blickbedrohte Ich, längst selber nur noch starrender Blick, das drohungsunterworfene Ich, es ward auf den letzten Rest seiner Wesenheit zusammengepreßt, ward vernichtet zum Unraum seiner Unerschaffenheit und seines Undenkens […] regungslos ausgeliefert der Leerheitsumschlingung […]”) (Broch 1995b: 152–​3).

146 Berwald afresh with each new solitary and dialogic reading that engages the reader physically as well as mentally and emotionally. 3

Voices from the Asylum in Weiss’s Marat/​Sade

Waiting as a conflicted palimpsest that consists of superimposed political, psychological, and aesthetic layers of encapsulation is also put into creative praxis in Peter Weiss’s drama, Die Verfolgung und Ermordung Jean Paul Marats dargestellt durch die Schauspielgruppe des Hospizes zu Charenton unter Anleitung des Herrn de Sade (1963–​65, The Persecution and Assassination of Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade), which premiered in Berlin in 1964. Peter Brook’s productions of the play in London (1964) and New York (1965), as well as his film version (1966), garnered worldwide success. Blending two seemingly irreconcilable approaches into theater, Weiss’s play is indebted as much to Brecht’s political drama as it is to Artaud’s corporeal “theater of cruelty.” (Sontag 2013; Berwald 2003: 33–​8) Weiss’s Marat/​Sade play-​within-​a-​play operates with a compelling integration of historical facts: while imprisoned in a mental hospital in Charenton, Sade (1740–​1814) was allowed to compose and direct his own theater plays, using his fellow inmates as actors. Aristocratic audiences frequented the theater performances at the mental institution and prison. The many works written by the historical Sade during his confinement at Charenton do not include a play on Marat. But Sade gave a funeral speech at Marat’s grave, and Weiss did not make up the mise-​en-​abîme configuration of mental institutions and prisons becoming a stage. As Anne Coudreuse points out in her recent monograph, Sade, Écrivain Polymorphe, stage directions in the historical Sade’s Charenton plays routinely suggest that their settings are prisons or dungeons.14 In his Sade edition, Brochier describes the historical Sade tasking other inmates in Charenton with producing handwritten copies of his theater pieces (“[…] Sade donne aux maladies ses manuscrits à copier.” (Sade 1970: 9)15 Weiss’s play-​within-​a-​play operates with the fictional implication that Sade is its author and director. Weiss has Sade depict Marat (1743–​93) as 14 15

“À l’acte iii de L’Égarement de l’infortune, ‘le théâtre représente une prison’ […] Dans Fanni ou les effets du désespoir, ‘le théâtre représente un cachot […]’.” (Coudreuse 2015: 73). Farina’s recent edition of Sade’s letters and journal entries from his time at Charenton give a vivid picture of his creative work while he was an inmate at the institution (Sade 2016: 276–​91).

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a revolutionary who feverishly composes pamphlets while being confined to a bathtub due to a debilitating skin disease, until he is stabbed to death by Charlotte Corday.16 Interspersed with scenes of intense physicality that were applauded by Susan Sontag in her essay “Marat/​Weiss/​Artaud” (1965), Weiss’s Marat/​Sade play mainly consists of dialogues between Sade and Marat about the inescapability of violence and the desirability but impossibility of radical political change. (Sontag 2013; Berwald 2003: 33–​8) As Carl Pietzcker points out, the psychodynamics presented in the play also extend to the audience, which itself adds another layer to the play within a play (Pietzcker 1991: 211). Despite the seemingly agonistic nature of their discourse, Marat’s and Sade’s voices and convictions are inextricably interwoven with one another, and the play can even be read as a scenic exploration of the same person’s internal conflict. It is therefore not of primary importance, and rather a distraction, to speculate to what degree Sade’s or Marat’s expressed views reflect Weiss’s own. (Sontag 2013; Berwald 2003: 36, 38; Schmidt 2016: 58–​9). The play is an exercise in fruitful ambivalence, in not offering one-​dimensional, amputated versions of the incarcerated yet anarchic mind-​in-​waiting. Readers of the play have to visualize the scenic contrasts between proclaimed worldviews and the positioning and immobility of the speaking bodies on stage staging speaking bodies. For example, sitting in a bathtub throughout the play, Marat whose fictional actor is a Charenton inmate directed by Sade, tries in vain to convince Sade of the moral imperative to “pull oneself out” from underneath oppression: Against Nature’s silence I use action /​In the vast indifference I invent a meaning /​I do not watch unmoved I intervene /​and say that this and this are wrong /​and I work to alter them and improve them /​The important thing /​is to pull yourself up by your own hair /​to turn yourself inside out17 trans. skelton and mitchell, Weiss 1965: 35

16

17

An intriguing research horizon that lies outside the scope of this essay would include close and comparative readings of plays around 1800 that revolve around Charlotte Corday (1768–​93), including dramas by Heinrich Zschokke and Engel Christine Westphalen. (Zschokke 1794; Westphalen 1804; Koser 2016: 39–​76). “Gegen das Schweigen der Natur /​stelle ich eine Tätigkeit /​In der großen Gleichgültigkeit /​ erfinde ich einen Sinn /​Anstatt reglos zuzusehn /​greife ich ein /​und ernenne gewisse Dinge für falsch /​und arbeite daran sie zu verändern und zu verbessern /​Es kommt darauf an /​sich am eigenen Haar in die Höhe zu ziehn /​sich selbst von innen nach außen zu stülpen” (Weiss 2004: 36).

148 Berwald Giving Marat an unflinching reality check, but not completely without compassion, Sade responds: “You lie in your bath /​as if you were in the pink water of the womb /​You swim all huddled up /​alone with your ideas about the world /​which no longer fit the world outside”18 (trans. Skelton and Mitchell 1965: 42). While consistently arguing against Marat’s faith in the possibility of a political and economic revolution, Sade expresses a modicum of solidarity with him, sharing how he himself came to embrace an ideology that focuses exclusively on the biological level of human life void of any potential to hold up enlightenment values: “Marat /​as I sat there in the Bastille /​for thirteen long years /​I learned /​that this is a world of bodies /​[…] /​In that loneliness /​ marooned in a stone sea”19 (trans. Skelton and Mitchell 1965: 98) In a key passage of the play, Sade reminds his alter ego of the correlations between psychological liberation and political change, claiming that the former has to take priority over the latter: “Marat /​these cells of the inner self /​ are worse than the deepest stone dungeon /​and as long as they are locked /​all your revolution remains /​only a prison mutiny /​to be put down /​by corrupted fellow-​prisoners.”20 (trans. Skelton and Mitchell 1965: 99) Arguably the most radical voice in the play is Jacques Roux (1752–​94). Tellingly he is constrained by a strait jacket throughout the play. The whole Marat/​Sade play presents vertiginous constellations of waiting. Nameless asylum inmates are allowed to pass time by acting and directing a play, whose protagonists are also locked into passivity while impatiently plotting for radical change. Another Weiss play that includes an institutionalized protagonist in agonizing waiting mode who is temporarily constrained by a strait jacket is Hölderlin (1970–​72), which reimagines the life and works of German poet and philosopher Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–​1843), and premiered in Stuttgart in 1971. (Berwald 2003: 45–​58) Enduring (or simulating, this remains open in the play) a mental illness, the protagonist in Weiss’s play Hölderlin is eventually confined to a mental institution in Tübingen, and later lives in private care just a few steps from the insane hospital in a tower building by the river Neckar. The 18 19 20

“Du liegst in deiner Wanne /​wie im rosigen Wasser der Gebärmutter /​Zusammengekrümmt schwimmst du /​allein mit deinen Vorstellungen von der Welt /​die den Ereignissen draußen nicht mehr entsprechen” (Weiss 2004: 43). “Marat /​als ich in der Zitadelle lag /​dreizehn Jahre lang /​da habe ich gelernt /​daß dies eine Welt von Leibern ist /​[…] /​In diesem Alleinsein /​mitten in einem Meer von Mauern” (Weiss 2004: 104). “Marat /​diese Gefängnisse des Innern /​sind schlimmer als die tiefsten steinernen Verliese /​und solange sie nicht geöffnet werden /​bleibt all euer Aufruhr /​nur eine Gefängnisrevolte /​die niedergeschlagen wird /​von bestochenen Mitgefangenen” (Weiss 2004: 105).

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stage directions read like a haunting prose poem that delineates a scene of immobilized waiting as a torture method: “Hölderlin seated on a raised platform. He is laced into a straitjacket and wears a leather mask, which makes him unrecognizable. An attendant holds him tightly by the jacket’s cord.”21 (trans. Swan and Weber 2010: 161) The hospital director’s intake interview with Hölderlin turns into an aggressive political interrogation which offers a direct link between Hölderlin and Marat/​Sade: when asked about his recent journey through France, Hölderlin responds: “I found at the bottom of the stairs /​the narrow room where /​Marat’s bathtub still stands in which /​he was sitting when Corday /​thrust the knife into his chest”22 (trans. Swan and Weber, Weiss 2010: 165–​6). Not unlike Broch’s Virgil, Weiss’s Hölderlin experiences his life as a suffocating state of embeddedness and being buried alive. When asked about his tutoring work for the family of a German Consul in Bordeaux, Hölderlin refers to this phase of his life as being enclosed “in my marble tomb”23 (trans. Swan and Weber 2010: 164). The play presents scenes from different phases of Hölderlin’s life, including lively discussions with his fellow students Hegel and Schelling (based on the historical Hölderlin’s biography), and with a young journalist by the name of Marx (a scene invented by Weiss). Insisting on the dire need for radical aesthetic and economic change, Hölderlin outlines the spatial trauma of waiting while being deprived of breathing and moving space, and the need to break free from unbearable political and economic constrictions:  “There is /​surrounding us /​a nameless toiling /​a laboring that longs /​at last to cast /​that which smothers it like clay /​chokes off every view /​stifles every cry for help /​ to a blind groan /​To fight one’s way out from under /​to scrape off the mould /​ to find the hand /​reaching up beside you /​and then /​to clear a way /​for this /​ one needs /​a universal /​language”24 (trans. Swan and Weber 2010: 74–​5, idiosyncratic spelling in original; Berwald 2003: 45–​58). In the final scene of the play, Hölderlin becomes a utopian narrator who talks about himself in the third person. He articulates the acute need for a 21 22 23 24

“Hölderlin auf einem hohen Podium sitzend. Er ist in eine Zwangsjacke gebunden und trägt eine lederne Maske vor dem Gesicht, die ihn unkenntlich macht. Ein Krankenwärter hält ihn am Strick der Jacke fest” (Weiss 1991: 225). “Fand dann […] /​am Ende der Treppen die enge Cammer /​wo vom Marat noch steht die Wanne /​drinn er gesessen als Corday /​ihms Messer in die Brust gehaut” (Weiss 1991, 229). “in meiner MarmorGrufft” (Weiss 1991: 227). “Da ist ein nahmenloses Mühn /​ringsum /​will endlich von sich werfen /​was es erdrükt wie Lehm /​was jeden Blik erstikt /​und jeden HilfeRuf zum blinden /​Stöhnen macht /​ Sich da heraus zu graben /​den Moder abzustreifen /​die Hand zu finden /​die sich neben

150 Berwald community of “living voices” in order to overcome society’s suffocating conditions, and to end waiting in crippling isolation, “to do battle with all /​that’s stale and ossified and dull /​and that by using threats and violence /​would squeeze the very air out of our existence /​Never again will he vanish in silent separation /​but will enter the circle of living voices alive again”25 (trans. Swan and Weber 2010: 207–​8). As the German poet and novelist Peter Härtling (1933–​2017) points out, experiencing and comprehending the historical Hölderlin’s poetry can be positively impacted by a dynamic physical and spatial experience of the reading process: “I learned to comprehend Hölderlin’s sentences, his spacious verses, by reading them while walking.”26 (trans. O.B.) In his biographical novel, Hölderlin (1976), Härtling highlights the geographical irony and constricting cruelty of Hölderlin’s return to Tübingen where he had started out as a student, and his delivery to its insane asylum: “Three men have to drag him from the cart into the asylum. The seizures have weakened him. The world has become alien to him and is shrinking to the old grid square that he used to be familiar with: The Bursa Alley where the asylum is located and that leads to the university abbey, the market square, the abbey cathedral, the castle, the outer ward, the alleyways near the Neckar, the Neckar gate.”27 (trans. O.B.) Waiting as a mode of resistance in the face of suffocating psychological, political, and physical conditions is also explored in the third volume of Weiss’s novel trilogy, The Aesthetics of Resistance (Die Ästhetik des Widerstands (1981)), one of the major novels of late European modernism, a work whose protagonists are resistance fighters against the Franco and Hitler regimes. The following passage offers echoes of Broch’s spatial dialectic of internalized horror discussed earlier: “Time and again, the screes had to be removed in order to make room for tiny amounts of space to move and breathe. We did not allow

25

26 27

dir emporstrekt /​und dann /​sich einen Weg zu bahnen /​dazu bedarf es einer /​universalen /​Sprache” (Weiss 1991: 156). “[…] bekämpfend alles was verbraucht und schaal /​erloschen und versteinert uns bedrängt /​und was mit Zwang und Drohung unsern Athemzug beengt /​Nie mehr will er in stiller Abgeschiedenheit vergehn /​sondern als Lebender im Krais lebendger Stimmen stehn” (Weiss 1991: 260). “Ich habe die Sätze, die weiträumigen Verse Hölderlins verstehen gelernt, indem ich sie im Gehen las” (Härtling 2010, 34). “Drei Männer müssen ihn aus dem Wagen in die Klinik schleppen. Die Anfälle haben ihn geschwächt. Die ihm fremd gewordene Welt schrumpft auf das alte, ihm ehemals vertraute Planquadrat: Die Bursagasse, an der die Klinik steht und die zum Stift führt, der Markt, die Stiftskirche, das Schloß, der Zwinger, die Gassen am Neckar, das Neckartor” (Härtling 1994: 584).

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ourselves to consider any of this meaningless every time the avalanches returned and the ground was trembling, because that would have meant that the obliterating force had already entered and permeated us.”28 (trans. O.B.; for a discussion of Weiss’s trilogy, see Berwald 2003: 107–​29) In the same volume of Die Ästhetik des Widerstands, the social psychologist and activist Max Hodann (1894–​1946), a mentor of the narrator-​protagonist (and of the novel’s author), insists that “the sinister and uncanny is not identical with horrifying visions that impose infinite variations on cruelty” on individuals. Instead, he maintains that it rather consists in the all-​encompassing structure of society, its seemingly unalterable, “unapproachable order that barely expresses anything particularly disturbing, that is unassumingly and routinely at work, determining everything that, branching out in all directions, eventually chokes us to death and annihilates us”29 (Weiss 2005: 912). It merits mentioning that Reinhard Jirgl inserted a passage into his novel, Nichts von euch auf Erden (2012) that is almost identical with the one quoted above from Weiss if we bracket the orthographic idiosyncrasies that Jirgl applies to all his novels. Jirgl writes: Because what is by far the worst is not the infinite sequence of terrifying events, the chain of nightmares that become realities and that mechanically produce monstrosities in ceaseless variations that have not been seen before. What is by far the worst is the plinth, the firm foundation on which these cruelties can erect themselves. The unchangeable order […] That which is resting and frozen into the whole cruel way things are. What is the nightmarish compared to the unalterable order and the human urge to belong the this very same order […]”30

28

“Immer wieder mußten die Halden des Schutts beiseite geräumt, winzige Bewegungsräume geschaffen werden, und dies durfte, wenn die Lawinen zurückrollten, der Boden erzitterte, nie sinnlos erscheinen, denn dann wäre das Vernichtende schon in dich eingedrungen […]” (Weiss 2005: 914). 29 “[…] das Unheimliche sei nicht in den Schreckensgesichten zu sehn, diese könnten sich, in unendlicher Folge, bis zu immer unvorstellbarer werdenden Grausamkeiten variieren lassen, das Unheimliche sei vielmehr das ein für alle Mal Feststehende, diese riesige, unnahbare Ordnung, die kaum etwas Beunruhigendes von sich gibt, die einfach nur da ist, mit Selbstverständlichkeit fortwirkt und all das bestimmt, was uns dann schließlich, auf weit verzweigten Umwegen, erwürgt und vernichtet” (Weiss 2005: 912). 30 “Denn das-​Allerschlimmste, das ist nicht die unendliche Folge von Schrecknissen, die Kette der Alpträume die zu Wirklichkeiten werden & in immerweiteren Variationen mechanisch Ungeheuerlichkeiten hervorbringen von noch niemals zuvor gesehenen

152 Berwald Rather than belaboring the point that Jirgl clearly incorporates a passage from Weiss almost verbatim into his novel, one might want to inquire why today’s social realities are still locked in an apparent mimesis of the conditions presented by Weiss in the 1970s and 1980s. Scholars have just recently begun to examine some aspects of the spatial dynamics that at once sustain and destabilize Weiss’s often ekphrastic narrative (Groscurth 2014:  56–​78). One of the minor protagonists in Weiss’s novel, the Swedish novelist Karen Boje (1900–​41), asserts “that poetry has an inherent power that, at least for a few moments, is capable of overcoming and outliving external reality’s constricting, choking, murdering order and structure.”31 (trans. O.B.) While Boje and Hodann escape the cruel constrictions of enforced waiting by ending their own lives, their voices in Weiss’s novel generate breathing space for the reader. Reading in its emphatic, unsettling dimension is a radical form of waiting. Broch’s and Weiss’s lyrical, theatrical and prose voices attest to literature’s power to activate our senses and rethink what it could mean to think freely.

References



Primary Sources

Broch, Hermann (1994):  Kommentierte Werkausgabe 1:  Die Schlafwandler. Eine Romantrilogie. Ed. Paul Michael Lützeler. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Broch, Hermann (1995a):  The Death of Virgil. 1945. Trans. Jean Starr Untermeyer. New York: Vintage. Broch, Hermann (1995b): Kommentierte Werkausgabe 4: Der Tod des Vergil. Roman. Ed. Paul Michael Lützeler. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Döblin, Alfred (2013): Gesammelte Werke 7: Die beiden Freundinnen und ihr Giftmord. Ed. Christina Althen. Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer. Härtling, Peter (1994): Hölderlin. P.H.: Gesammelte Werke 5. Ed. Klaus Siblewski. Hamburg: Luchterhand.

31

Grausamkeiten  –​:  Das-​Allerschlimmste ist Dersockel, der fest=stehende Grund, auf Dem diese Grausamkeiten sich errichten können:  Die 1=für=Allemal fest=stehende=Ordnung […] Das Ruhende, das Eingefrorene in allem grausamen So=Sein… ..!?Was ist Das-​ Grauenhafte gegen Die-​unverrückbare-​Ordnung… .. mitsamt Dem-​menschlichen-​Drang… ..zu Ebendieser=Ordnung dazuzugehören […]” (Jirgl 2012: 354). “[…] daß die Poesie eine Kraft besitze, die, wenigstens für einige Augenblicke, den einschnürenden, würgenden, tötenden Ordnungen der Außenwelt überlegen sei.” (Weiss 2005: 888).

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Härtling, Peter (2010): Leicht geworden für Gedankenflüge: 77 Zettel. Stuttgart: Radius. Jirgl, Reinhard (2012): Nichts von euch auf Erden. Munich: Hanser. Sade, Donatien Alphonse François de (1970): Oeuvres Complètes XXXIV: Le Théatre de Sade III. Paris: Pauvert. Sade, Donatien Alphonse François de (2016):  Sade et ses femmes:  Correspondence et journal. Ed. Marie-​Paule Farina. Paris: Bourin. Waldrop, Keith (2016): Selected Poems . Oakland, CA: Omnidawn. Weiss, Peter (1965): The Persecution and Assassination of Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade. Trans. Geoffrey Skelton and Adrian Mitchell. London and New York: Boyars. Weiss, Peter (1991): Hölderlin, in P.W.: Werke in sechs Bänden. Dramen 3. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. 109–​260. Weiss, Peter (2004): Die Verfolgung und Ermordung Jean Paul Marats dargestellt durch die Schauspielgruppe des Hospizes zu Charenton unter Anleitung des Herrn de Sade. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Weiss, Peter (2005): Die Ästhetik des Widerstands. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Weiss, Peter (2010): Hölderlin. Trans. Jon Swan and Carl Weber. London, New York and Calcutta: Seagull. Westphalen, Engel Christine (1804):  Charlotte Corday:  Tragödie in fünf Akten mit Chören. Hamburg: Hoffmann. Zschokke, Heinrich (1794): Charlotte Corday oder die Rebellion von Calvados: Ein republikanisches Trauerspiel in vier Akten (Aus den Zeiten der französischen Revolution). In Iamben. Stettin: Kaffke.



Secondary Sources

Berwald, Olaf (2003): An Introduction to the Works of Peter Weiss. Rochester, NY: Camden House. Bion, Wilfred R. (2004): Attention and Interpretation. 1970. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Bion, Wilfred R. (2013): Los Angeles Seminars and Supervision. Ed. Joseph Aguayo and Barnet D. Malin. London: Karnac. Coudreuse, Anne (2015): Sade, Écrivain Polymorphe. Paris: Champion. Frank, Joseph (1952): “Spatial Form in Modern Literature.” Critiques and Essays in Modern Fiction: 1920–​1951. Ed. J.W. Aldridge. New York: Ronald. 5–​66. Freud, Sigmund (2009):  “XIX. Vorlesung:  Widerstand und Verdrängung.” Sigmund Freud: Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse. Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer. 275–​89. Griffiths, Alison (2016):  Carceral Fantasies:  Cinema and Prison in Early Twentieth-​ Century America. New York: Columbia University Press. Groscurth, Steffen (2014): Fluchtpunkte widerständiger Ästhetik: Zur Entstehung von Peter Weiss’ ästhetischer Theorie. Berlin: de Gruyter.

154 Berwald Heizmann, Jürgen (2003): “A Farewell to Art: Poetic Reflection in Broch’s Der Tod des Vergil.” Hermann Broch: Visionary in Exile. The 2001 Yale Symposium. Ed. Paul Michael Lützeler et al. Rochester, NY: Camden House. 187–​200. Heizmann, Jürgen (2016): “Der Tod des Vergil.” Hermann-​Broch-​Handbuch. Ed. Michael Kessler and Paul Michel Lützeler. Berlin: de Gruyter. 167–​97. Koser, Julie (2016): Armed Ambiguity: Women Warriors in German Literature and Culture in the Age of Goethe. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Mitchell, W.J.T. (1980): “Spatial Form in Literature: Toward a General Theory.” Critical Inquiry 6.3: 539–​67. Mitchell, W.J.T. (1989):  “Space, Ideology and Literary Representation.” Poetics Today: Arts and Literature I 10.1: 91–​102. Paik, Peter Yoonsuk (2003): “Poetry as Perjury: The End of Art in Broch’s Der Tod des Vergil and Celan’s Atemwende.” Hermann Broch: Visionary in Exile. The 2001 Yale Symposium. Ed. Paul Michael Lützeler et al. Rochester, NY: Camden House. 201–​16. Pietzcker, Carl (1991):  Lesend interpretieren. Zur psychoanalytischen Deutung literarischer Texte. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Pizer, John D. (2011): Imagining the Age of Goethe in German Literature, 1970–​2010. Rochester, NY: Camden House. Schmidt, Werner (2016):  Peter Weiss. Leben eines kritischen Intellektuellen. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Sontag, Susan (2013):  “Marat/​Sade/​Artaud.” Susan Sontag:  Essays of the 1960s & 70s: Against Interpretation. Styles of Radical Will. On Photography. Illness as Metaphor. Uncollected Essays. Ed. David Rieff. New York: Library of America. 157–​67. Waldrop, Keith (1997). Analogies of Escape. Providence, Rhode Island: Burning Deck.

chapter 9

Scotland: A Nation-​State in Waiting Robert Wirth Abstract The stateless nation of Scotland appears to be arrested in a peculiar, liminal ‘in-​between time’. Thus far, three referenda on Scotland’s constitutional relationship with the UK have been held: with the result of ever more powers being devolved from Westminster to Holyrood. The most recent decision in 2014 has once again failed to settle the matter conclusively; and it would now seem that the current uncertainties surrounding the Brexit negotiations will prolong the wait for the foreseeable future. Within this period of constitutional limbo, the patience, persistence and perseverance of the people of Scotland is continually being tested, and the prospect of a neverendum –​an endless cycle of attempts to answer the Scottish question –​appears increasingly daunting. This chapter delineates the role that ‘waiting’ plays in the Scottish independence debate from the 60s up until the present day and seeks to determine in what way the cultural practices of waiting can take on particular significance in decision-​making within the political realm. Touching upon both temporal and spatial considerations, it will show that long periods of waiting can potentially lend legitimacy to a cause as well as shift the boundaries of agency. It will also address the questions of whether prolonged periods of stasis and ‘waiting in the wings’ can be counterproductive to achieving a desired telos, and will seek to ascertain whether this period of active inactivity in Scotland can or should be considered time wasted or time well-​spent.

Keywords Scottish National Party ( –​snp –​ ) –​ Yes-​Scotland –​ Better Together –​ Scottish/​­British nationalism  –​ independence referenda  –​ devolution  –​ agency  –​ strategic/​tactical ­waiting –​ liminality

1

Introduction

For Scotland the struggle to attain independence is still ongoing; and the process of arriving at full statehood and self-​determination is, at its core, a story

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/​9 789004407121_​0 11

156 Wirth of waiting. For the nationalist cause, it has been a long evolution of steadily gaining and negotiating agency, and of retrieving the powers transferred to Westminster in the Acts of Union. For the unionist side, it has been a long and wearisome process of recurrently conceding powers to placate nationalist interests in Scotland and thus of waiting for a conclusive resolution to ‘the Scottish Question’1. John P. Manoussakis holds that “[i]‌nsofar as one can have anything to expect, there is waiting.” (2017: 23) Expectations and aspirations are certainly abundant on both sides of the debate on Scotland’s future, with the one side eagerly waiting for their utopian vision of full self-​governance to be realised, and the other anxiously awaiting and dreading a cataclysmic ‘break-​up of Britain’. As recently as 2014 a referendum was held to end the wait for good and to decide on Scotland’s constitutional future once and for all (or at least for a generation); but, in spite of the victory for the unionist side, it appears that the matter has not been settled conclusively and the wait for a decisive verdict is still very much on –​especially after the divergent votes on leaving the EU2 and their possible repercussions have once again dramatically changed the rules of engagement and the parameters of waiting. 2

If at First You Do Not Succeed, Try, Try and Try Again

Of course, Scotland’s endeavours to gain or re-​regain independence are not a new phenomenon; they date back many centuries. Legend has it that in the First War of Scottish Independence, 1296–​1328, the Scottish King Robert the Bruce, after having lost six consecutive battles to ‘King Edward’s armies’, was downhearted and hiding in a cave when he observed a spider3 persistently trying to swing upwards to a ledge. The spider only succeeded after having tried six times, or so the story goes. Thus inspired, The Bruce was encouraged to try

1 According to James Mitchell, “There is little agreement on what the question is, far less its answer. It has involved a shifting mix of linked issues. These have included questions of national identity; Scotland’s constitutional status and structures of government; party politics; and everyday public policy concerns” (2014: 4). 2 In Scotland and Northern Ireland, a majority of the electorate voted to remain; in England and Wales there was a majority in favour of Brexit. 3 Interestingly, in the lead up to the 2014 referendum, the spider symbol was added to the Scotland football strip. After sixteen long and painful years of failing to qualify for a major tournament, the Scottish national team also tried calling upon Bruce’s persistence and spirit (so far unsuccessfully, I may add).

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again and –​having gained agency throughout his wait –​went on to win the day at Bannockburn in 1314.4 But, as Roy Williamson’s unofficial Scottish national anthem reminds us every time Scotland’s rugby and football teams play, ‘these days are past now /​ and in the past /​they must remain’. The modern struggle for Scottish devolution, independence and statehood proper is, effectively, a phenomenon of the second part of the twentieth and the first part of the twenty-​first century, and this is the time frame that will be focussed upon here. The perseverance and determination of the respective nationalist movements in Scotland appear to be analogous to Bruce’s. They, too, have been trying and trying again and again, all the while shifting the parameters of power and agency from London (back) to Edinburgh, while actively “waiting in the wings [for] the better life that /​ never seems to come” (Morgan 1991: 41). Harold Schweizer acknowledges that waiting is often “assigned to the poor and powerless so as to ritualistically reinforce political and social demarcations.” (2005: 779) However, the process of waiting itself, especially when coupled with a seemingly insatiable desire for power, collective patience, and determination, can be a means of gradually regaining agency. Waiting can indeed be empowering, or as Robert Crawford put it: “whereas Ireland seized back its independence through revolution, Scotland simply waited.” (2013: 96) 3

Good (or Bad) Things Come to Those Who Wait

Scottish nationalist ‘waiting’ is chiefly teleological: the telos being to mature as a country, to come-​of-​age as a nation, to gain self-​determination and to re-​gain agency, and, in essence, to move on from being a mere stateless nation ruled from afar. Giovanni Gasparini observes in this regard: “Several modern ideologies or movements propose radical social or political change centred around the idea of revolution and the experience of waiting: the present makes sense only in that it refers to waiting for the future” (1995: 38–​9). For unionists, or British nationalists, waiting with regard to Scotland’s endeavour to secede from the UK (or to break it up) has largely been a strategic instrument, in the sense of waiting for the problem to go away and dissolve, both inactively waiting for the wind of independence to blow over, and actively, yet reluctantly, making 4 The legend of the Brucian spider was immortalised by nineteenth-​century poets such as Bernard Barton and Eliza Cook; and still today most schoolchildren in Scotland will be familiar with the story of Bruce and the spider and the proverbial advice: ‘If at first you do not succeed, try, try and try again!’

158 Wirth concessions by devolving powers, appeasing and assuaging Scottish nationalist demands in order to uphold the Union. Liam Stockdale points out that “state sovereignty is fundamentally concerned with the governance of time, since its normative logic relating to the stabilizing benefits of spatial control is necessarily dependent upon the exercise of a degree of temporal control that ensures the sovereign entity’s endurance through time.” (2013: 25, emphasis in the original). Determining and controlling the parameters of waiting, and the wish to complete the process of waiting, thus lie at the heart of both the pursuit of and the deterrence of Scottish independence. Ever since the Acts of Union in 1706 and 1707, when the ‘Parcel of Rogues in a Nation’ to use Robert Burns’ often-​quoted and somewhat biased lines, ‘was bought and sold for English gold’, Scotland has been stuck in an “unsettled in-​ between time [in which] anything or nothing can happen.” (Kärrholm and Sandin 2011:  1) Notwithstanding the ‘loss’ of its own, separate parliament in what Tom Nairn has called “a peculiarly patrician bargain between two ruling classes” (1981: 129), Scotland thrived and continued to be a distinct nation, albeit one subsumed into the British state. It retained its own education system, its own legal system, and its own church, the holy trinity of nationhood, as it is commonly referred to (cf. Davidson 2000: 51–​4). Scotland’s was “a nationality which resigned statehood but preserved an extraordinary amount of institutional and psychological baggage normally associated with independence –​a decapitated national state, as it were, rather than an ordinary ‘assimilated’ nationality.” (Nairn 1981: 129) Over time, it also managed to further develop its own banal nationalism (cf. Billig 2013) alongside a British one and went on to become an imagined community (cf. Anderson 1991) that was compatible with and, in fact, highly active and complicit in Britain’s imperial endeavours. It was only when the British Empire showed signs of disintegrating that Scotland, the dormant sister-​nation on the periphery, awoke from slumber, became obstreperous, and got serious about ‘be[ing] the nation[-​state] again’. Krishan Kumar put it succinctly when he asked: “If you have tied yourself to a star, what happens when the star drops out of the heavens?” (2003: 34–​5) 4

‘Ever Tried. Ever Failed. …’5

The 1960s and 1970s saw a lively interest in more political self-​determination within Scotland and expectant waiting for devolution of powers had begun. 5 The headings from subchapters three, four and five are taken from Samuel Beckett’s “Westward Ho”: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better” (1992: 101).

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While nationalism had long been an aspect of the political landscape in Scotland, it had never had serious governmental consideration during any part of the mid twentieth century. This was not going to be the case during the 1970s and onwards, when the electoral success of the Scottish National Party (snp) would cause devolution to become an active consideration of all political parties. leith and soule 2012: 32

Substantial oil finds in the North Sea in the 1960s, Winnie Ewing’s surprise by-​election win for the snp in Hamilton in 1967, and the snp’s ensuing 1974 election gains all led to ensuring “that the idea of Scottish independence was firmly on the political agenda, and the concept of Scottish national identity as an organising political principle was no longer marginal.” (ibid.) The Labour government under James Callaghan had only obtained a narrow majority of three in the 1974 election and had lost that majority in a series of by-​elections by 1977. Thus dependent on the votes of the eleven snp and three Plaid Cymru MPs, the government allowed a referendum on whether the Scotland Act of 1978 should be enacted. The act stipulated that a Scottish Assembly with very little legislative powers be established and “the Government fixed the Referendum date for 1 March 1979 and shortly thereafter published regulations for the conduct of the referendum.” (Wilson 2009: 187) The sequence here, of course, speaks volumes. While support garnered by nationalists was instrumental in bringing about the referendum on a Scottish Assembly, the power to determine when and, most importantly, in what way the referendum was conducted lay in the hands of the UK government at that time, based in faraway London. An amendment to the Scotland Act of 1978, made by Labour MP George Cunningham, thus scuppered any chance of success for the advocates of a devolved parliament.6 In short, everybody who did not cast a vote effectively voted against devolution. The referendum of 1979 is, therefore, commonly regarded as an unfair referendum, rigged by a Westminster government who were unwilling to make meaningful concessions; the notion of having been cheated in that referendum is still a major grievance for Scottish nationalists even today.

6 Labour had added the crucial requirement that the approval rate in the referendum had to lie above 40% of Scotland’s total registered electorate, rather than be decided by a majority (cf. Marr 2013: 161–​62). With a turnout of 63.8%, an overall majority in favour of a Scottish Assembly represented only 32.9% of the registered electorate, 30.8% voted no (cf. Wilson 2009: 190).

160 Wirth In the end, the wait was unsuccessful for all parties involved, save for the Tories. Following the referendum, the Conservatives –​now interestingly backed by the snp, Liberals and Ulster Unionists –​tabled a motion of no confidence in the Labour government. In the subsequent general election, at the end of March 1979, Margaret Thatcher defeated Callaghan, and the snp only managed to hold on to two of its previously eleven seats in the House of Commons (cf. Leith and Soule 2012: 26). In the immediate wake of these defeats, the nationalist momentum essentially came to a standstill. Internal conflicts about what future path to adopt temporarily immobilised the snp in particular, and it was largely left to the Campaign for a Scottish Assembly (csa) to “keep alight […] the torch of devolution” (Devine 2006: 607). However, “[f]‌or the most part of the 1980s [this group, established right after the 1979 referendum,] virtually remained a voice crying in the wilderness” (ibid.). The nationalist fervour in general, however, was gradually re-​kindled throughout the 80s by an unlikely and unwitting ally: Margaret Thatcher. Her policies of privatising the heavy industries, of breaking up the unions, and of introducing the poll tax within Scotland a year prior to its introduction in England, inadvertently boosted support for self-​determination in Scotland  –​especially amongst the working classes  –​resulting in the late Charles Kennedy ironically calling her ‘the greatest of all Scottish nationalists’ (cf. ibid.: 600–​6). Thatcher’s unyielding ‘iron’ stance with regard to Scotland thus added positive urgency to the wait for more self-​governance. 5

‘… No Matter. Try Again. …’

So, in keeping with Bruce’s maxim: ‘if at first you do not succeed, try, try and try again’, the csa set up a cross-​party committee comprising prominent Scots “from the churches, trade unions, business and the universities” (ibid.: 607) to bring about a Scottish Constitutional Convention (scc) who eventually drew up the Claim of Right for Scotland in 1988. The Claim held that it was “right of the Scottish people to determine the form of Government best suited to their needs.” (Priddy 2016:  3) What is remarkable is that the snp refused to sign the Claim, as they only saw full independence as a worthwhile option at the time. In spite of the snp’s initial reluctance to sign –​owing partially also to party-​political motives –​the Claim certainly voiced a widespread desire for devolution and fundamentally helped pave the way for the devolution blueprint ‘Scotland’s Parliament, Scotland’s Right’ in 1995, and eventually for the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh in 1999. This renewed interest in devolution and the call for more powers for Scotland at the time, however, coincided with –​and was the result of –​what some

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have called a new Scottish literary renaissance. The impact that writers had at the time was ubiquitous. In his seminal work Intending Scotland, Craig Cairns states that “Scotland discovered that remaking its culture was the best way of intending a nation” (2009: 73). The works of Alasdair Gray, Edwin Morgan, Liz Lochhead, James Kelman, Ian Rankin and Irvine Welsh, to name but a few, all contributed to re-​imagining the Scottish nation along new lines. Crawford has called some of the books of the time “votes for a Scottish democracy” (2014: 185) and Duncan McLean stressed the importance the writers and the arts played in the ‘active wait’ in bringing about the Scottish parliament as follows: When the politicians were faffing about, infighting, backhanding etc. from 1979 to 1998 [sic] and basically doing bugger all to provide some kind of self-​determination for the people of Scotland, it was the writers (not alone amongst the artists, but possibly leading from the front) who articulated a sense of Scottish identity, of Scottish values, of Scottish concerns. They were not necessarily leading the people in doing all this: they just shared the population’s taking-​for granted of Scotland’s right for more self-​determination, and wrote with that assumption in mind. And gradually the politicians started to catch up. There’s been a parliament of novels for years. The parliament of politicians is years behind. mclean 1999: 74, qtd. in leishman 2006

In fact, in the 90s, Scottish national identity was stable and flourishing, while an all-​encompassing narrative of Britishness was becoming increasingly problematic and turning into an empty signifier, despite New Labour’s eventual attempts to resurrect some form of meaningful Britishness by trying to make Britain ‘cool’ again. After a wait of 18 years following the 1979 referendum, another referendum on devolution was granted by the Labour government under Tony Blair in 1997. The Yes-​campaign, styling itself ‘Scotland forward’, was made up of Labour, the Greens, the Liberal Democrats, and eventually the snp who endorsed “limited self-​government on offer while still adhering to the ultimate objective of full independence.” (bbc 1997) There were, however, conflicting motives involved for backing a yes vote: while Labour’s Donald Dewar perceived of devolution as a means to bind the Union closer together, the snp’s Alex Salmond saw devolution as a mere stepping stone to dissolving that Union. In the referendum, two questions were put to the Scottish public: the first one was whether there should be a Scottish parliament and the second one was whether a Scottish parliament should, then, have tax-​varying powers. Both questions posed in the referendum were answered with a resounding yes and a

162 Wirth Scottish parliament was established in 1999.7 The time frame for when the new parliament would convene, as well as the specific powers to be devolved, was still mainly determined by the government in Westminster: the parameters of waiting, once again regulated from London. However, lessons from the 1979 referendum had been learned and the inclusion of the scc in the process was crucial in sustaining the appearance that the policies and stipulations were not forced upon the Scottish people in a top-​down fashion from Westminster, but rather arrived at in a more consensual agreement. Agency had strategically been conceded by Westminster, albeit not without ulterior motives, and had been gained by the pro-​devolutionists in Scotland. While the Labour party –​especially Donald Dewar –​and the scc are commonly credited with the achievement of establishing a Scottish Parliament, the Democracy for Scotland Vigil held from 1992 to 1997 also played an active role at the literal ‘grass-​roots’ level and is particularly interesting with regard to waiting together in a strategic space. Their strategy was one of ‘active inactivity’ that lasted for over five years. Camped outside the designated new parliament site at the bottom of Calton Hill in Edinburgh, the Vigil waited for an entirety of 1,980 days to achieve their goal, literally counting the days until the establishment of a new, Scottish parliament was decided. In the words of Robert Murray’s “Democracy for Scotland” (1997) song, they waited Wi a fire in their hearts, determination in their banes, And they went tae Scotland’s capital, and kindled a wee flame, And it burned wi a licht that said ‘Democracy’. Well it burned a wee bit stronger with each passing day, […] The campaign stuck it out through all the twists and bends, And the Vigil did its bit, in the fight that never ends.”8 The appraisal of this particular wait as being conducive to achieving a desired goal, however, points towards two significant axioms that are applicable to the wider context of waiting for independence or secession. For the one side:  the

7 Nathalie Duclos points out that one of the reasons why the 1997 referendum was successful was that it was “pre-​legislative and aimed at gathering the Scottish […] people’s opinions on general principles” (2006: 153), whereas the 1979 referendum “had been post-​legislative and had concerned the precise devolution projects contained in the 1978 Scotland Act” (ibid.). 8 This degree of tenacious patience displayed by the Democracy for Scotland Vigil, which was mainly made up of snp members, has in the meantime been mythologised; a cairn was erected on Calton Hill in 1998 to commemorate the success of that valiant and heroic wait.

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longer the wait lasts –​becoming ‘a wee bit stronger with each passing day’ –​the more legitimacy is added to the raison d’être of the wait, all the while fuelling grievances of being denied the desired goal. Conversely, for the other side: the longer the wait goes on, the bigger the impatience and frustration becomes for it to end and the matter of secession to be solved for good. Whether this wait, in fact, can be ended at all by devolution is, however, questionable. “Devolution, it has frequently been pointed out, is a process, and not an event, and in the case of devolution in the United Kingdom there is every reason to suppose the process will be never ending.” (King 2007: 212) Moreover, this process of devolution, as it turned out, did not have the effect originally intended by Westminster. Tom Nairn has called “Devolution [nothing more than] a recipe for forestalling and taming emergent political expression, by simultaneously conserving and re-​imagining British-​state traditions and culture.” (2008: 78) Instead of placating the nationalists, the process of devolution has, in fact, spurred calls for complete Scottish independence. Neil Kay states that “the re-​creation of the Scottish parliament [,]‌despite some prognostications, has failed to kill Scottish independence stone dead.” (2008: 103) Having been given an inch, the nationalist movement now wanted to take the whole mile, and the Scottish parliament9 acted as a vehicle in which to ‘pro-​actively wait’ and gain even further agency.10 6

‘… Fail Again. Fail Better.’

Of course, for the snp, devolution has always been regarded only as a stepping stone in the long process of attaining full independence. After having won the Holyrood elections of 2007 by a narrow margin and the 2011 election with a landslide victory11 (Tierney 2013:  360–​1), the snp felt it had the mandate to ‘try again’ for more powers and enter negotiations with Westminster to hold a referendum on Scottish independence. In the Edinburgh Agreement of 2012, 9 10

11

The building of which involved another wait of five years until 2004. For some, however, the granting of a parliament came at a high cost: one added grievance that was not assuaged by the granting of a parliament is the question of ownership of the oilfields around Scotland. The Scottish Adjacent Waters Boundaries Order of 1999, for example, moved the maritime border between England and Scotland northwards, giving the impression that England had effectively ‘stolen’ Scotland’s oil. There is a sense among Scottish nationalists that they have been ‘sold down the river’ and the issue of Scotland’s marine territory still remains unresolved. What makes this election win even more significant is the fact that the snp achieved an outright parliamentary majority in spite of the Additional Member System stipulated in the Scotland Act, which had been designed to discourage just such a scenario.

164 Wirth David Cameron and Alex Salmond agreed upon holding an in-​out referendum on the 18th of September 2014. In the run-​up to that day, Scotland and the whole of the UK, had arrived at, what Kärrholm and Sandin call, a “pre-​settled in-​ between time”, i.e. a time in which the “[t]‌emporal endpoint is rule-​governed, but above individual control” (2011: 6). The wording of the referendum question was to be decided by the Scottish Parliament and then reviewed by the Electoral Commission, who changed the initial –​somewhat leading –​question proposed by the snp government from ‘Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country’ to ‘Should Scotland be an independent country Yes/​ No’. Devolution-​Max was not an option on the ballot paper: the wait was to be ended, and not prolonged. This time round, the parameters of how long the electorate had to wait to cast a vote were mainly determined by the side wanting to secede. Alex Salmond claimed that “ ‘[t]‌his has to be a referendum which is built in Scotland, which is made in Scotland and goes through the Scottish parliament. […]’ ” (Carrell and Watt 2012)12 In spite of this greater degree of agency, the referendum was lost by the Yes-​campaign13, yet this time they succeeded in failing somewhat better. There is a wide consensus that the Yes-​campaign won the debate, but lost the referendum. Better Together still managed to convince, and some embittered voices even say ‘scare’ (cf. Pike 2016), about 55% of the eligible Scottish electorate into staying in the Union. The much-​anticipated vote on Scotland’s constitutional future was awaited both enthusiastically and anxiously:  throughout the long-​drawn-​out debate leading up to the Indyref, hopeful yearning for a bright, independent future collided with resolute defending of the status quo and also coincided with a nerve-​wracking dread of unpredictable consequences to come. According to John Rundell, “ ‘We all wait for futures –​yet not for the same ones, nor in the same way, nor at the same tempo. [W]aiting for the future has multiple, clashing and even overlapping effects, affects and modalities.’ ” (Hage 2009: 1). In this clash of nationalisms, two separate imagined communities within Scotland resolutely fought and tensely waited for different futures. For the Better Together campaign, it was a rather Kafkaesque waiting that was, to quote

12 13

Alex Salmond strategically set the date for the referendum right after Scotland was going to host both the Ryder Cup and the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and, of course, in a year that would see the 700-​year commemoration of the Battle of Bannockburn. While spearheaded by the snp, Yes Scotland was nevertheless a heterogeneous umbrella organisation including the Scottish Socialist Party, the Scottish Green Party, a faction of the Labour party (Labour for Independence), as well as many grass-​roots and non-​ partisan movements (cf. Thiec 2015).

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Gasparini, “completely pervaded by a sort of indefinite and distressed sense of waiting in anticipation of a painful event” (1995: 39). George Galloway, for instance, prophesied “havoc throughout the land” (Dearden 2014) in the case of a Yes win, and George Robertson conjured up a dire doomsday scenario when he said that “ ‘[i]‌t would be cataclysmic for Scotland to become independent, it would aid the forces of darkness, it would threaten the stability of the western world’ ” (Riley-​Smith 2014). For the Yes-​campaign, the future was rosier, and their waiting took a rather Beckettian form, with independence simultaneously and elusively capable of representing their Godot, their realisation of a leftist utopia, their ‘be-​all and end-​all’. This wait is also reflected in various literary representations of the time. It is certainly no coincidence that, for example, the author Alasdair Gray starts off his contribution to the independence debate, Independence: An Argument for Home Rule (2014), in a waiting room, or that Alan Spence in his Beckettian play, No Nothing (2015), has iconic trade union leader Jimmy Reid and the poet Edwin Morgan flyte it out and meditate on a post-​referendum Scotland while waiting in an antechamber to the afterlife. Nor is it a coincidence that James Robertson’s episodic saga of Scottish nationalism, paradoxically entitled And the Land Lay Still (2010), spans six decades of political and social change. It vividly encapsulates the various moods and facets that the wait for Scottish independence has taken thus far. Waiting, furthermore, entailed a strategic element in the debate: Gasparini claims, for example, that “Waiting may even turn out to be a resource managed or directed by waiting actors, since it can allow them to temporize and procrastinate over a decision in order to gain time in a given situation. In this particular sense, waiting is linked to control over uncertainty and may become a notable element which enables the accomplishment of a strategic design” (1995: 41–​2). The Yes-​campaign, on the one hand, was often accused of using the excuse that they had to wait for independence first in order to commit to certain policy decisions. The currency question, for instance, was shelved in that manner when Alex Salmond did not produce a plan B to using the pound; the issue of a seamless continuation within the EU was similarly deferred. The accusation of “presenting independence as a magic wand to solve all of Scotland’s social ills” (Brooks and Carrell 2014) was vehemently contested, however, and, in contrast to Better Together, the Yes-​campaign did publish a detailed White Paper entitled Scotland’s Future. The Pro-​UK side, on the other hand, were largely biding their time and strategically waited with their promise of relinquishing more devolved powers until the very last minute. Eleventh-​hour interventions made by Gordon Brown, and especially the infamous ‘Vow’ signed by Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband and David Cameron were all reactionary instead of proactive. A host of Westminster MPs, for example, waited until the

166 Wirth last minute before descending upon Scotland in what was generally perceived as a somewhat desperate measure to save the Union, and were met with resistance, some serious, some less so: walking up Buchanan Street in Glasgow, Westminster Labour politicians, for instance, were followed around by a Yes activist on a rickshaw-​bike playing the “Imperial March (Darth Vader’s theme)” from the Star Wars14 franchise and calling on the people of Glasgow to bow down to their imperial masters. (cf. Simons 2014) There were, in fact, many other contested spaces in which the wait for referendum day was performed. To a large extent, of course, the battle over supremacy of the respective brand image was fought out in cyberspace –​on social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram, in the Twittersphere and the blogosphere, and in the comments sections of numerous online newspapers. Offline, however, the collective anticipation of the event was just as ubiquitous and tangible throughout the country: flagpoles and lampposts, shop windows and house windows, hillsides and fields, landmarks and buildings, streets and squares, all serving as potential canvasses on which to boost either the Yes or the No message. With a plethora of media-​effective tactics, campaigners managed to occupy, besiege and appropriate various public spaces for their purposes, all the while collectively waiting for their respective outcomes. Rovisco and Corpus Ong remind us that: “As the protestors gain control over [the] public space, streets and squares are transformed into a stage for political and cultural performances, which unfold not only before local [but also] international audiences, and which have social and political effects.” (2016: 6) The collective wait for the referendum, in fact, often had an atmosphere of a performance or spectacle. Throughout the summer of 2014, the city of Glasgow, in particular, became the focal point of the two campaigns, with the Commonwealth Games being hosted there, with protests against media bias being conducted in front of the bbc Scotland headquarters, and with constant gatherings round the statue of Devolutionist Donald Dewar at the Buchanan Street steps. Above all, however, it was Glasgow’s George Square –​which was rebranded as ‘Freedom Square’ by Yes supporters –​that increasingly became the main rallying point on which to protest, canvass, picket, debate, sing, make speeches and, indeed, just wait. On a daily basis in the lead-​up to the 18th of September, the square that houses the City Chambers, as well as numerous British reifications of an imperial past, attracted more and more people willing to share in the experience of waiting. In many regards reminiscent of the Occupy movement on

14

Yes supporters, in fact, recurrently styled themselves as ‘the Rebels’ fighting the nasty ‘Empire’, fancying themselves as the underdogs, and as the victims of repression.

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New York’s Wall Street, the Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong, Egypt’s Tahir Square protests, to name but a few, this decidedly British space was appropriated predominantly by the Yes side in order to voice resistance against the powers that be. It would seem that there is a human tendency to wait collectively. In Scotland, for example ‘waiting for the bells’ at Hogmanay is a traditional practice that unites friend and foe. There is, in waiting, also an element of acceptance of what fate may have in store. The Scottish proverbial saying ‘whit’s fur ye’ll no go by ye’ can in a way be comforting. In times of personal or national danger people tend to gather in public spaces to wait for news –​bad or good –​and to comfort anyone in distress. Sharing the waiting experience can alleviate suffering, yet can also be empowering. This act of collective agency is aptly illustrated by the American performance poet Faith Wilding. In her poem “Waiting With” (2008) she conceives of the practice of waiting as shared rather than solitary, active rather than passive, which can be politically empowering: Wait-​with, an act of political love Wait-​with, an action Wait-​with, a meditation Wait-​with, open space between actions Wait-​with, a space of resistance, […] Wait-​with as our work 7

‘Make Use of Time, Let Not Advantage Slip’15

Winston Churchill, echoing Robert the Bruce, famously claimed that ‘Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm’, and enthusiasm for independence in Scotland seems extraordinarily resilient. Referring to Scotland’s profoundly changed post-​devolution generation, Irvine Welsh observed that “The smartest of them have always seen independence as a process, not an event, and having come so unexpectedly close, they would not be going into a depressive hungover funk. They’ll be keen for a rematch, and they’ll get it soon.” (2014) It would thus seem that all the referendum has done for the pro-​Union side is buy some time, and in so doing, offer a mere reprieve. What looked like success for the Pro-​UK side in 2014 is now increasingly turning into a pyrrhic victory. Already in the immediate aftermath of the 15

Taken from William Shakespeare’s “Venus and Adonis.” (2016 [1593], l.129).

168 Wirth September referendum, membership numbers of pro-​independence parties soared; and for many independence supporters, the implementation of the findings by the Smith Commission, set up to honour the Vow for more fiscal autonomy, has fallen exceedingly short. Furthermore, attempts to provide an answer to the West-​Lothian Question by means of ‘English Votes for English Laws’ have been perceived as being retaliatory towards Scotland and represent “another nail in the coffin of the Union.” (Macwirter 2015) In light of the snp winning an unprecedented 56 out of 59 possible Scottish seats in the Westminster elections on May 7th of 2015, and in view of the Holyrood elections on May 5th 2016 returning the snp to power for the third time in a row, albeit no longer with an overall majority, the likelihood of a second referendum being called gradually increased. The momentous UK referendum on leaving the EU in June 2016, which saw divergent votes for England (and Wales) and Scotland (and Northern Ireland), has once again put the question of another referendum on Scottish independence ‘back on the table’. Over 60 % of the Scottish electorate voted to remain in the EU and with an impending ‘hard’ Brexit proposed by Theresa May on the horizon, an Indyref 2 now seems inevitable –​contrary to Alex Salmond’s initial claims in 2014 of the referendum being a ‘once in a generation’ decision. The wait for another referendum on Scottish independence is back on with a vengeance.16 Notwithstanding all those ‘conducive’ developments, the new First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was reluctant to call a referendum. It increasingly appeared that it was no longer a question of ‘if’, but rather of ‘when’. Sturgeon said that she would be the one to decide when to hold a new referendum (cf. Cramb 16

Similar to the Democracy for Scotland Vigil (1992–​1995), the practice of instrumentalising collective physical, watchful waiting –​as a tool for achieving an intended political goal –​was once again applied in late November 2015, when pro-​independence campers camped out on the public space outside the Holyrood parliament, the site best-​suited to garnering maximum media attention. The so-​called Indy Camp Live was organised by a group calling themselves People’s Voice. Just like the vigil for devolution, this group was –​according to Moira William, one of the camp’s organisers –​equally willing “to stay for five years [,]‌prepared to camp in any weather, and to do it for however long it takes.” (Sim 2015) The underlying supposition, of course, being: the more difficult the wait is –​ here heroically braving the elements in wintry Edinburgh –​the more worthwhile the goal must be. This unwavering resolution and dedication to the cause was also expressed on some of the signs and posters displayed: there was a sign urging the campers, amongst other things, to “Patience –​Rome was not built in a day” (Stanton 2016). This patience, however, was neither shared nor shown by the powers that be:  after failing to honour an initial eviction notice, and after losing their appeal, the campers were evicted by the authorities after only 343 days –​this wait being cut short not quite as heroically as the original vigil (Carrell 2016).

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2016). Some would say she was stalling, playing for time, and waiting for the moment she could be sure that she would actually win a second referendum. Even among her own ranks there were voices calling for her not to boldly rush into a second referendum without the necessary popular support. Quoting the film Braveheart, the snp’s Kenny MacAskill, for example, urged her to “ ‘Hold’ [, stating that] ‘It’s about timing and tactics.’ ” (Johnson 2016) There is, of course, always the danger of waiting too long to call a new referendum, as Tom Devine has pointed out with regard to the Canadian Quebec referendum: There is a salutary warning from Canada for those who favour another referendum on Scottish independence. In 1995 Quebec came even closer to winning independence than Scotland did in 2014. The majority against was a mere 0.6 per cent of total votes cast, with the Yes campaign polling 49.4 per cent overall. This very narrow victory for the status quo was not, however, the prelude to an increased or even continued momentum for independence. Instead, the impetus for another vote began to wane over time. There has not been another referendum since. devine 2016

Despite Devine here overlooking the fact that the 1995 referendum in Quebec was, actually, the second one to be held, his main point still holds: waiting for too long can be counterproductive. Or, as Victor McDade from the Glaswegian comedy series Still Game puts it: ‘He who hingeth aboot getteth hee-​haw.’ Not waiting long enough, of course, may also be detrimental to a cause, as the crisis that Catalonia is presently undergoing shows. Nicola Sturgeon was always cautiously evasive on determining a fixed date for another referendum, calling it everything from ‘likely’, to ‘very likely’, to even ‘more likely’, and to the recent ‘highly likely’. Having ‘cried wolf’ this often, she was eventually forced to deliver on her promise. By submitting the document Scotland’s Place in Europe on the 20th of December 2016 to Westminster, the Scottish government put the onus on Theresa May. Failure to resolve the question of a differentiated treatment for Scotland regarding the single market and freedom of movement will be used by the pro-​independence advocates as a further lever to garner support for a second referendum. At the time of writing this essay, article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty to trigger the Brexit negotiations with the EU has been invoked, and already it is becoming obvious that the Scottish government undoubtedly wants to exploit it to their ends. Prime Minister May has so far managed to avoid a war on two fronts and it looks as if we will only see a further Scottish referendum post-​Brexit. What Gerry Hassan said about Pro-​UK supporters in the 2014 campaign, however, still holds true

170 Wirth today:  “They are fighting a battle which they would prefer not to, at a time not of their choosing, and when their political opponents are mobilised and galvanised.” (2016) The task of defending the Union has, moreover, been made even more difficult by the fact that many arguments against the secession of Scotland in the 2014 referendum have become void, as they were used by the Brexit campaign in order to convince the people to leave the EU. 8

Hurry Up and Wait

We are now still placed in the unique position of “waiting for the mutual mess-​ up” (2016), as Paul Anderson and Soeren Keil have called the stalemate between May and Sturgeon. On the 13th of March 2017, Sturgeon, in fact, strategically called the referendum, before article 50 was passed and granted Royal assent. She proposed that it be held at either the end of 2018 or the start of 2019, once again strategically pre-​empting the finalisation of the two-​year Brexit negotiations between the UK and the EU. While Scotland’s First Minister may have believed she had the mandate, she did not hold the legal power to hold another referendum; that perhaps thankless privilege still lies with the government in Westminster. Alex Bell points out that: To hold any referendum requires Downing Street’s say so –​it would grant a Section 30 of the 1998 Scotland Act, making it legal. It has become popular to say that May could not refuse a request by the Scottish parliament for a vote. Whether that is true, May could determine the timing, question and context –​all of which were controlled by the Scottish government the last time round. There are two ways this battle could continue:  May blocks another referendum and the Scottish government uses this to stoke resentment, or she allows one at her own timing, and this also fuels political anger. alex bell 2017

However, having placed Theresa May in this catch-​22 situation, Sturgeon definitely held the trump cards, and by denying Scotland a second referendum pre-​Brexit, May has once again reinforced the notion in Scotland that the real power lies elsewhere. I would, nonetheless, argue, that the Scottish government has more of a say than ever before on when and how to hold another referendum. The long process of waiting for independence has gradually shifted agency away from Westminster and into the hands of the Scottish government. Theresa May was successfully placed between the devil and the deep

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blue sea; the integrity of the UK is at stake once more and the arguments for continued union have been gradually eroded by her own party’s arguments for leaving the EU. The Scottish nationalists can now argue with the changed constellations within the Scottish political scene as well as the changed situation post-​Brexit. In his speech made at the Scottish Independence Convention in November 2017, former First Minister Salmond said that “The British state has never been weaker” and that “there are many more who are waiting to be inspired.” (Reid) It would appear that they can now ‘make use of time’ to ‘hurry up and wait’. 9

Conclusion

Viewed from a pro-​independence perspective, the long wait has been a process of growing up as a nation, a process that repeatedly has tried to leave behind this interstitial time  –​somewhen betwixt and between. Within this liminal temporality of sorts, the three referenda on Scotland’s future so far could, in a sense, be considered rites of passage, that is, stages of initiation in the process towards the post-​liminal stage of full statehood (cf. Turner). The No-​side also wants to end this period of waiting and wants the matter to be settled once and for all, obviously in their favour. However, it has been shown that most concessions made so far with regard to devolving powers have had the opposite effect and have paradoxically encouraged demand for even further devolution and independence. It would therefore seem that to simply ‘wait it out’ until the nightmare is over is not really working too well for unionists, but exceedingly well for the Scottish nationalists. So, the movement for independence is once again becoming inspired by Bruce’s spider to try and try again, possibly breaking the cycle of the seemingly endless referenda. In 2017, Scottish novelist, playwright and independence supporter Alan Bissett puts the persistent wait delineated above in a nutshell: We’ve tried devolution, we’ve tried voting against Tory govts (sic), we’ve tried voting No to independence, we’ve tried sending snp MPs to Westminster, we’ve tried electing to remain in the EU. We’re still incapable of steering the UK in any direction other than the one which the English electorate wants to go towards. So what next? Right after the 2014 referendum, the playwright David Greig advised his countrymen on his blog front-​step: “We must behave like independent citizens of an independent country in waiting.” For the time being, Scotland remains a

172 Wirth nation-​state in waiting; but what exactly will happen next, who knows, we’ll just have to wait and see.

References



Primary Sources



Secondary Sources

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Anderson, Benedict (1991):  Imagined Communities:  Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. 1983. London: Verso. Anderson, Paul and Soeren Keil (2016): “Waiting for the Mutual ‘Mess-​Up’ –​Reassessing the Theresa May –​Nicola Sturgeon Relationship.” 26 Oct. 2016. . Accessed 2 Feb. 2017. bbc (1997): “Scotland Referendum.” 15 Jan. 2017. . Accessed 30 Jan. 2017. Bell, Alex (2017): “Who Will Blink First: Theresa May or Nicola Sturgeon?” The Guardian, 9 Mar. 2017. . Accessed 10 Mar. 2017. Billig, Michael (2013): Banal Nationalism. 1995. London: Sage. Bissett, Alan (2017): “Scottish Independence: The Brass Tacks.” Facebook. 2 Mar. 2017. . Accessed 3 Mar. 2017. Brooks, Libby and Severin Carrell (2014): “Scottish Independence: Everything You Need to Know About the Vote.” The Guardian, 9 Sept. 2014. . Accessed 10 Sept. 2014. Carrell, Severin (2016): “Scottish Independence Protesters Ordered to Close Holyrood Camp.” The Guardian, 27 July 2016. . Accessed 27 July 2016.

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Carrell, Severin and Nicolas Watt (2012): “Scottish Independence: Alex Salmond Sets Poll Date –​and Defies London.” The Guardian, 10 Feb. 2012. . Accessed 3 Feb. 2017. Craig, Cairns (2009): Intending Scotland: Explorations in Scottish Culture since the Enlightenment. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Cramb, Auslan (2016):  “Sturgeon:  I Will Decide Timing of a Second Independence Referendum.” The Telegraph, 24 Apr. 2016. . Accessed 28 Dec. 2016. Crawford, Robert (2014): Bannockburns: Scottish Independence and Literary Imagination 1314–​2014. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Crawford, Robert (2013): On Glasgow and Edinburgh. London: Harvard University Press. Davidson, Neil (2000): The Origins of Scottish Nationhood. London: Pluto. Dearden, Lizzie (2014): “Scottish Independence: George Galloway Claims Yes Vote Will Spark ‘Havoc Throughout the Land’.” The Independent, 27 June 2014. . Accessed 28 June 2014. Devine, T.M. (2006): The Scottish Nation 1700–​2007. London: Penguin. Devine, T.M. (2016): “How Waiting Too Long for Another Vote on Independence Can Be a Recipe for Failure for Nationalists.” 2 Mar. 2016. . Accessed 2 Feb. 2017. Duclos, Natalie (2006):  “The 1997 Devolution Referendums in Scotland and Wales.” Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique 14.1: 151–​264. . Accessed 13 Feb. 2017. Gasparini, Giovanni (1995): “On Waiting.” Time & Society 4.1: 29–​45. Gray, Alasdair (2014): Independence: An Argument for Home Rule. Edinburgh: Canongate. Greig, David (2014): “Back to Work.” 24 Sept. 2014. . Accessed 22 Sept. 2016. Hage, Ghassan (2009):  “Introduction.” Waiting. Carlton:  Melbourne University Press. 1–​12. Hassan, Gerry (2014): “Why Better Together Are Slowly Losing the Argument and Scotland.” 18 Apr. 2014. . Accessed 18 Apr. 2016. Johnson, Simon (2016): “Kenny MacAskill Warns Nicola Sturgeon Against ‘Headlong Rush’ to Second Referendum.” The Telegraph, 21 Sept. 2016. . Accessed 15 Oct. 2016.

174 Wirth Kärrholm, Mattias and Gunnar Sandin (2011): “Waiting Places as Temporal Interstices and Agents of Change.” Trans 18. . Accessed 15 Jan. 2017. Kay, Neil (2008): “The Fish, The Ferry, and The Black Crude Reality.” A Nation Again: Why Independence Will Be Good for Scotland (and England too). Ed. Paul Henderson Scott. Edinburgh: Luath. 85–​108. King, Anthony (2007): The British Constitution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kumar, Krishan (2003): The Making of English Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Leishman, David (2006): “A Parliament of Novels: The Politics of Scottish Fiction 1979–​ 1999.” Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique 14.1: 123–​36. . Accessed 21 Jan. 2017. Leith, Murray and Daniel Soule (2012): Political Discourse and National Identity in Scotland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Macwirter, Ian (2015): “EVEL Is not About Scotland. It’s About Locking Labour out of Power in the UK.” The Independent, 23 Oct. 2015. . Accessed 30 Oct. 2017. Marr, Andrew (2013): The Battle for Scotland. London: Penguin. Manoussakis, John P. (2017): The Ethics of Time: A Phenomenology and Hermeneutics of Change. London: Bloomsbury. Mitchell, James (2014): The Scottish Question. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nairn, Tom (1981): The Break-​Up of Britain: Crisis and Neo-​Nationalism. 1977. ­London: Verso. Nairn, Tom (2008): “Timed Out: Great Britain to Little England?” A Nation Again: Why Independence Will Be Good for Scotland (and England too). Ed. Paul Henderson Scott. Edinburgh: Luath. 73–​84. Pike, Joe (2016):  Project Fear:  How an Unlikely Alliance Left a Kingdom United but a Country Divided. London: Biteback. Reid, Anna (2017): “Alex Salmond to Issue Rallying Cry to the Yes Movement at SIC Build2.” The National. 4 Nov. 2017. . Accessed 14 Nov. 2017. Riley-​Smith, Ben (2014): “Scottish Independence ‘Would be Cataclysmic for the World’, Ex-​Nato Head Warns.” The Telegraph, 8 Apr. 2014. . Accessed 23 Jan. 2017. Robertson, James (2010). And the Land Lay Still. London: Penguin. Schweizer, Harold (2005): “On Waiting.” University of Toronto Quarterly 74.3: 777–​92.

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Sim, Philip (2015): “Independence Campaigners Pitch up for Holyrood Vigil.” BBC News, 30 Nov. 2015. . Accessed 10 Nov. 2017. Spence, Alan (2015): No Nothing. Aberdeen University Press. Stanton, Aimee (2016). “These Independence Activists Are Camping Outside the Scottish Parliament Until Scotland Is Free.” Vice. 11 Jan. 2016. . 8 Nov. 2017. Stockdale, Liam P.D. (2013): Governing the Future, Mastering Time: Temporality, Sovereignty, and the Pre-​emptive Politics of (In)security. Ph.D. Thesis McMaster University. . Accessed 2 Jan. 2017. Thiec, Annie (2015): “ ‘Yes Scotland’: More than a Party Political Campaign, a National Movement Fostering a New Active Citizenship.” Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique 20.2. n.p. . 2 Jan. 2017. Tierney, Stephen (2013):  “Legal Issues Surrounding the Referendum on Independence for Scotland.” European Constitutional Law Review 9: 359–​90. . Accessed 2 Jan. 2017. Turner, Victor (1967): “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage.” The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. 93–​111. New York: Cornell University Press. Simons, Ned (2014): “Scottish Independence: Darth Vader Music Chases Labour MPs Around Glasgow.” The Huffington Post, 11 Sept. 2014. 8 Oct. 2017. Welsh, Irvine (2014): “This Glorious Failure Could yet Be Scotland’s Finest Hour.” The Guardian, 20 Sept. 2014. . Accessed 7 Feb. 2017. Wilson, Gordon (2009): SNP: The Turbulent Years 1960–​1990: A History of the Scottish National Party. Stirling: Scots Independent.

chapter 10

How Long Will Handala Wait? A Ten-​Year-​Old Barefoot Refugee Child on Palestinian Walls Margaret Olin Abstract This article on the Dheisheh refugee-​camp in Palestine shows how the experience of being suspended in time in a camp may lead to the creation of very specific myths and narratives. This article shows how the refugees’ waiting, which spans generations, is represented and discussed on the walls of Dheisheh. This is exemplified by means of a cartoon figure called Handala which can be found all over the camp’s walls. Handala, the barefoot refugee boy who is always depicted with his back turned, is the personification of a young child that cannot grow up. Often depicted alongside murals of martyrs, the cartoon figure takes on a life of its own and is transformed into a powerful symbol.

Keywords Al-​Ali –​ Dheisheh –​ Grass –​ Handala –​ Klee –​ Palestine –​ refugees –​ camp –​ murals

1

Introduction

Does one remain a refugee one’s entire lifetime? One might think that the time spent as a refugee is supposed to represent a pause in one’s life, a way station, or “wait” station on the road to the future. It is a moment when refugees just “mark time,” as we say in English, until they can enter another country, return to their native country, or just leave one place, possibly a refugee camp, and go to another place where each refugee can settle down to begin her own life among new people. Sometimes, however, this momentary pause can take a long time. At Dheisheh refugee camp in Palestine, for example, refugees have been waiting since 1949, when the camp was founded on an area of .309 square kilometers for refugees from villages in East Jerusalem and Hebron. At first, Dheisheh consisted

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/​9 789004407121_​0 12

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of tents, but the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinians in the Near East (unrwa) later replaced them with concrete houses. As of 2007, Dheisheh, by then heavily built up with multi-​story houses and narrow streets, was home to nearly 13,000 registered inhabitants (cf. United Nations Camp Profile). Barriers around the camp that were erected after Israel’s occupation of the West Bank began in 1967, and a checkpoint that governed the entrance to the camp remained in place until 1995, when Israeli soldiers left as a result of the Oslo Accords. Like Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, the camp’s checkpoint is now a memorial. But the camp is independent of Bethlehem, the West Bank city on the outskirts of which it is located. Rather, it remains under the supervision of the unrwa. There are many signs of its status: besides a prominent “UN” atop a building at the entrance, a mural topped with a large key behind the checkpoint memorialises over 60 villages left behind by residents of Dheisheh who, in 1948, fled the territory that is now Israel. Their names are written on the memorial, along with, in both English and Arabic, the text of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 (Article 11), which was adopted in 1948 and states the right of return. By 2016, only a small proportion of the residents of the camp were born before its foundation. One could say that most of the people in the camp were born waiting. But what does waiting mean when it lasts this long? One might assume that waiting is immobilising and prevents change. But in fact, the status of waiting needs constant reinforcement. Even people in a doctor’s waiting room might reinforce their status by reminding the receptionist of their presence. The special kind of waiting that lasts an entire lifetime or more must also constantly reassert itself even as people live –​and sometimes die –​through it. The camp must maintain a strongly symbolic element in order continually to reinforce the identity of its inhabitants as people who come from and continue to belong elsewhere, as well as reinforce the status of the camp as a temporary holding place. Consider, for example, the entrance plaza of the camp, or rather the fact that the camp still seems to have an entrance (Figure 10.1). Most urban neighbourhoods in modern cities do not generally have an entrance plaza. Ethnic enclaves can be an exception to this. Many of them, especially Chinatowns, have characteristic gates or arches over the street where the neighbourhood seems to begin, for instance. Most of these were constructed in the middle of the twentieth century and intended to function as entrances, to distinguish these neighborhoods from the rest of each city and to declare them places made by immigrants in order to substitute for the abandoned homeland. But above all, the ornamental gates attract tourists. Some refugee camps also have entrance arches over a street. The Aida Camp in Bethlehem, for example, has an arch

178 Olin

­f igure 10.1 Entrance to Dheisheh refugee camp photograph: margaret olin, 2015

shaped like a keyhole topped by a gigantic key. Memorials for checkpoints, however, have different purposes. In Berlin, for example, where Checkpoint Charlie stands as a memorial, its position in the middle of a busy street, with traffic and pedestrians flowing around it, underlines the point that the once-​divided city has become a seamless, capitalist whole. The memorial of the preserved checkpoint turnstile that marks the entrance to Dheisheh, however, marks neither an ethnic neighbourhood nor the end of a prison-​like separation. It denotes something about the camp’s past, but also something about its present. The memorial declares that the camp, although no longer forcibly separated from the city, is still not a ‘neighbourhood’ in the ordinary sense of the word. Dheisheh remains a camp: it is not under the control of the Palestinian Authority. The checkpoint is not overpowered by a bustling metropolis that has grown up around it. It stands on a square under the shadow of United Nations buildings and is surrounded by clusters of Non-​Governmental Organizations (ngo s), as though it could be put into service at any moment as perhaps it could. The checkpoint and the ‘key memorials’ are not the only memorials in Dheisheh, however. The walls of the camp are filled with murals, and by far the majority of the murals are memorials. The entrance to the camp, dominated by the memorialised checkpoint and the key memorial, offers only a foretaste of the memorials seen everywhere in the interior of the camp. They include memorials

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­f igure 10.2 Yazan Gharib, Ahmed Mesleh. Dheisheh refugee camp photograph: margaret olin, 2014

to fallen Palestinian leaders such as Abu Ali Mustafa, who, until he was assassinated by Israeli forces in 2001, had been the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (pflp), as well as memorials to young people killed by Israeli soldiers, like Kifah Abed, killed in 2001 or Jihad Al-​Jaafary, killed in 2015, or Mu’in Al-​Atrash, who lived for nine years as a paraplegic before dying of his wounds in 2013. Behind the face of Ahmed Mesleh, killed in 2006, are names of other children from the camp who were killed (Figure 10.2). One row of martyrs beginning with Qusai Al-​Afendi, martyred in 2008, memorializes martyrs who were killed on Tuesdays (cf. A Voice from Palestine)1. After the last face is a blank spot with a question mark as though to ask ‘who will be next?’ These walls differ from the murals on the long “separation” wall that Israel is still in the process of erecting throughout Palestine. The separation wall, which is intact through Bethlehem, functions as an international bulletin board. Graffiti and murals by internationals known and unknown send messages of support and anger in multiple languages, and entreat other foreigners to help (Figure 10.3). The artists range from the celebrated British street artist 1 I owe many of my interpretations to Omar Hmeedat.

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­f igure 10.3 Separation wall, Bethlehem, Palestine photograph: margaret olin, 2015

known as Banksy, who has also painted murals in Gaza, to less well known artists such as the Germans How and Nosm and anonymous visitors who simply leave marks or messages. In contrast, Dheisheh contains only the occasional mural by a foreign artist and a few copies of murals by Banksy. The murals otherwise are overwhelmingly local, and many of the martyrs commemorated on them are local as well. Funeral processions of recent martyrs who resided in the camp pass by murals dedicated to martyrs who preceded them. The murals maintain the past constantly in the face of the present, not for reasons of historical memory or piety, to honour those from whom one came, but as an emblem of the future. My subject here, however, is not Dheisheh’s memorial practices in general but rather, in keeping with the theme of this volume, a specific visual representational practice in the camp that pertains to the state of perpetual waiting. Figure 10.4 shows a drawing of a barefoot youngster facing away from the viewer. Most of the people in the community and many outside of it know his name, Handala, his age, ten years, and his status, a refugee. Among the figures on the walls of Dheisheh, this barefoot young refugee is nearly the only one who is alive. Handala is waiting. Handala was the signature character of the Palestinian cartoonist Naji Al-​ Ali. The life story of Naji Al-​Ali is inseparable from that of his creation. Al-​Ali

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­f igure 10.4 Handala group, mural in Dheisheh refugee camp photograph: margaret olin, 2015

was born in the Palestinian village Al-​Shajara. At ten, his family was expelled and Al-​Ali grew up in Ain al-​Hilweh refugee camp near Sidon. Later he lived in the Shatila refugee camp in Beirut. As an adult artist, he drew political cartoons for newspapers in Kuwait and Lebanon and eventually for the international edition of the Kuwaiti paper Al-​Qabas in London. In all of them he skewered not only Israel for the occupation, but also Palestinians who profited off of the occupation or from corruption, or simply stood by without wishing to see or hear about the plight of the Palestinians (like the three caricatured men in Figure 10.4). He also criticised the leaders of Arab countries surrounding Palestine who stood by and refused help, profiting off of oil and American aid. In 1987, unknown assailants assassinated him in London. The Israeli Mossad is generally identified as having been behind the assassination, but other plausible suspects mentioned include the plo, which was also known to have made threats against him. (Najar 2007: 258; Haugbolle 2013; Al-Ali and Sacco 2009) All of Al Ali’s cartoons featured the refugee boy surveying the scene depicted in the cartoon. Handala remains forever ten years old, the age that Al-​Ali was when he was forced to leave his home in Palestine in 1948. This little refugee with his hands behind his back, ubiquitous on the walls of Dheisheh as he is throughout Palestine and on the bumper stickers and Facebook pages of the

182 Olin Palestinian diaspora abroad, refuses to turn around, to show his face or to grow older or taller until Palestinian refugees gain the right of return. Sometimes he moves a hand in order to be more active, either to wave a sword or a flag, to offer flowers, or to become involved in other ways in the scene he is observing. But his back always remains to the viewer. Handala came to be an iconic figure even before Naji Al-​Ali’s death. As the signature of and stand-​in for his creator, he gained a stature of his own as a hero, and he struck a chord with other refugees, who adopted him as the quintessential refugee child. The other stock figures in Al Ali’s work –​the male Palestinian adult; the Palestinian mother figure or young woman; the evil would-​ be capitalist Arab who fails to help his brother Palestinians; and the Israeli soldier –​are all recognisable but not nearly as compelling as the simple refugee child. (cf. Kreitmeier 2012) After Al-​Ali’s death promoted him to the status of a martyr, his already iconic work was widely reproduced. Books of his cartoons were published, mostly in Arabic but also in other languages. Books written about him, again mostly in Arabic, but also in English and in German, enumerate the stock figures and offer a narrative of his life. Kasim Abid’s 1999 film Naji Al-​Ali, An Artist with Vision, narrates Al-​Ali’s life, and short films about Handala proliferate. (Abid 1999) Furthermore, Handala is painted all over the walls, by himself or as part of one of Al Ali’s cartoons. Aysar Al-​Saifi, a resident of Dheisheh, reproduced a number of Al-​Ali’s cartoons in the streets of the camp by projecting on the walls and tracing them. A typical one is aimed at Arabs indifferent to the refugee cause. In it, a Palestinian woman tells her husband, as Handala watches, “we are Arabs and we are brothers because we have blood ties.” Her poor husband replies, “stop telling me that blood never becomes water –​It becomes shit.” All of Al-​Ali’s cartoons, however, have in common the refugee boy who refuses to turn around. Although Handala is alive in most depictions, martyrdom is never far away. Sometimes he is shown hanging from a noose, for example. Often a cartoon will allude to the risk of martyrdom taken by activists. In one such cartoon, Handala speculates to a Palestinian writer, “Your article about democracy pleased me a lot. What are you writing tomorrow?” “Tomorrow,” the writer answers, “I will write my testament.” Indeed, Al-​Ali is himself represented on the walls of Dheisheh as a martyr. When he is, Handala takes part, often standing next to Al-​Ali, paintbrush in hand, signing the portrait of his creator. (Figure 10.5) One cartoon by Naji Al-​Ali featuring Handala stands at the entrance of the camp near the checkpoint and key memorials. A text by the artist accompanies

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­f igure 10.5 Ahmed Hmeedat, Naji Al-​Ali, Dheisheh refugee camp photograph: margaret olin, 2014

this picture. It attests to the presence of death that permeates the camp (­Figure 10.6). The text reads, in translation: If someone wants to write for Palestine If someone wants to draw for Palestine He might as well consider himself dead!!

naji al-​a li, cf. Figure 10.6, trans. Amr Al-​Shawaf

To write or draw “for Palestine,” then, is to write one’s death certificate. Given the large number of death threats that preceded al-​Ali’s death, it is not surprising that in his work he pointed to the possibility of his eventual assassination or that of journalists engaged in the struggle for the liberation of Palestine, as well as for democracy within Palestine itself. Handala most commonly represents the essential observer. The turned back invites us to see what he sees, what Al-​Ali sees. He is a stand-​in for the viewer, often also a refugee, who knows and watches the scenes portrayed in Al-​Ali’s work. Nearly all are scenes of disaster. It is inevitable, standing behind Handala in Al-​Ali’s cartoons on the walls of the camp, and seeing disasters pile up in the

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­f igure 10.6 Handala Group, mural in Dheisheh refugee camp photograph: margaret olin, 2015

time between his present and the past of his beloved home village, to think of Walter Benjamin’s angel of history, after Paul Klee’s drawing Angelus Novus. (Figure 10.7) [The] ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress. benjamin 2007: 257–​8

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­f igure 10.7 Paul Klee, Angelus Novus, 1920. Oil transfer and watercolor on paper. courtesy: the israel museum, jerusalem, israel. photo © the israel museum, jerusalem by elie posner

In Klee’s drawing, we see the angel from the point of view of the “past” (ibid.). His horrified expression registers the catastrophes that pile up as he is driven backward into the future. Handala is an Angelus Novus seen from behind. Sometimes the scene Handala faces is directly reminiscent of the sort of scene that confronts Angelus Novus. One such scene is the Shatila massacre

186 Olin in Lebanon in 1982, when hundreds or perhaps thousands of civilians in the refugee camp where Al-​Ali grew up were killed by a right-​wing Lebanese militia. Unlike the Angelus Novus, we do not see Handala’s face as he looks at them, but we do see the wreckage and the horrors to which he responds, and, through the captions, we hear him as well. A similarly stunted German boy, Oskar, the protagonist of Günter Grass’s novel, Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum 1959), was even younger than Handala when history put his life in suspension. Oskar, as the hero of a narrative medium, was also marked by refusal. He did not refuse to turn around like Handala, and allow himself to be seen. He did, however, refuse, like Handala, to grow, and did so already at the age of only three. And similarly to Handala, in his story disasters continually accumulate around him. Like the Palestinian child, he wends his way through a divided landscape full of conflict. 2

Handala and His Age Mates

On the walls of the camp, however, Handala has a special role to play. Children make up a large part of the population of Dheisheh refugee camp. Like everyone else, these children live their lives to a large extent out of doors in streets populated pictorially by martyrs, many of them close to their own age. But they also live with the child Handala, and some often like to draw him. After all, the engaging little character resembles a child’s drawing, and since the union of the simple forms is relatively easy to copy, Handala offers an excellent drawing exercise for children. Child-​like Handala figures people the walls along with more adept-​looking ones (Figures 10.8 and 10.9). In Dheisheh, Handala worked very well in 2015 as the subject for a mural painting event for children supervised by an artist. Handala, still facing away, forcibly opens the wall to reveal a shining Palestinian city behind it. The children’s drawings, however, make more noticeable one overriding difference between Handala and typical children’s drawings as we are accustomed to seeing them everywhere else:  most children’s drawings face forward, and in general, the faces of most children’s drawings wear a happy smile. Certainly, some children in Dheisheh also draw smiley faces. Some cannot resist drawing even Handala with a smile or refrain from adding a smile to an existing Handala figure. (Figures 10.10, 10.11). These smiley faces are rare; when children draw Handala they know that they are drawing a classic figure with little to smile about. Yet when a smile occurs, it imparts an uncanny sense of a Handala who faces in two directions at once. Al-​Ali took seriously Handala’s decision to remain a child. He wrote:  “Only when Hanthala returns to Palestine will he grow up and exceed the age of ten.

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­f igure 10.8 Handala figure and child’s copy photograph: margaret olin, 2015

The rules of nature do not apply on him. He is an exception.” (Kan’an 48) Only when he returns to Palestine will the laws of nature presumably apply to him again, but not before. The term “exception” was applied to refugee status in the early years of the Nakba (catastrophe), the Palestinian term for the expulsion from their homes in 1947–​8. The reason for the use of the term “exception” relates

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­f igure 10.9 Child’s drawing photograph: margaret olin, 2015

to the desire of the refugees to return home. Many other refugees live abroad in fear of the possibility that they might be forced to return to their former homes, but Palestinians, many of whom live in camps within Palestine not far from their home villages, were barred by law from returning to them, even if those villages continued to exist. Palestinian exceptionalism was acknowledged by the establishment of a commission dedicated to Palestine in the United Nations, the above-​mentioned unrwa that runs the refugee camps, including Dheisheh. Moreover, the refusal of a number of host countries to integrate the refugees into the population encouraged Palestinians to stay distinctive, and their own efforts to maintain their independence and refugee status have in large part kept them distinct even where they live in refugee camps within Palestine.

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­f igure 10.10 Children’s drawings photograph: margaret olin, 2015

The difference between Palestinians and other refugees has, however, begun to erode. The right of return has become more prominent in policy on refugees generally, with the effect of making Palestinians less exceptional. Even the ideas of the right of return and of Palestinian exceptionalism have evolved over the decades. A collective right of return has given way to an individual right that is more in line with other refugee situations. Some have argued that the changes have registered culturally in places like Dheisheh, as residents increasingly become attached to the camp as an urban neighbourhood. (cf. Abourahme and Hilal 2012) Whether or not they have, the changes do seem to have registered visually. A mural painted in 2013 in Dheisheh subjects Handala to the laws of nature, preemptively breaking the rule that keeps him a child until the return to Palestine. In that mural, an old Handala is accompanied by two young Handalas. (Figure 10.12) By contravening the rule that keeps Handala young, the mural embodies the imbrication of the past with the future. It was planned and painted cooperatively with a youth group on the 65th anniversary of Nakba day. According to The Pathways, a pamphlet published as part of the Campus in Camps initiative, the plan was to draw Handala “in new ways”: This picture illustrates the life of the camp: how the new generation takes over the responsibilities of the camp and homeland, and how we take on

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­f igure 10.11 Chid’s drawing inside of mural by Handala group photograph: margaret olin, 2017

the role of building our vision in a way that addresses both the current situation of the camp and the future of return. It shows the meaning of the camp, its political exception, and how we must look to the future and not remain stuck in past. aysar al saifi, murad odeh, 2013: 24–​5

Both the mural of an old Handala and the quotation about it point to an issue involved in waiting. Waiting is a condition that should, presumably, suppress creativity and draw attention away from the present situation. Here, past, future and present are locked in a complex relation to one another, with the future of return negating the past to which the return is directed. A community leader in Dheisheh discussed the problem with two researchers:

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Figure 10.12 Group mural showing Handala as an old man, 2013 photograph: margaret olin, 2015

A society that resisted change, a society stuck in a culture of exile –​“this is not my house” is what people would say –​a society stuck in temporariness; but temporariness kills creativity, it kills and prevents initiative … political and social awareness, our general cultural awareness was inhabited by a culture of temporariness that prevented societal development … you can not plan tomorrow if you live in a state of transit. abourahme and hilal 2012

And indeed, in the context of the conversations that take place on the walls of Dheisheh, smiles on children’s drawings of Handala seem prescient. Handala represents a comment on the retrospective look of the Martyr’s murals. He faces backward because he faces forward. He waits to return, but return lies in the future. While the martyr figures look to the past directly, they face us. Handala faces away from us but he does not face back toward the past. Rather, he faces back to a future, a future-​past that Handala makes visible as, unlike Angelus Novus, the disasters that pile up around him happen in present time and in plain sight. Handala, then, like most refugees, waits for the future. But he has waited such a long time that time has changed, and continues to change. Time changes even the past. The smiles and the aged Handala accompanied by grandchildren may mirror the desire of children –​and perhaps even their

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Figure 10.13 Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, Jerusalem photograph: margaret olin, 2015

elders –​to live in the present, even while they realise they are meant to regard the past as the future. 3

Handala in a Wider Field

Handala can serve as he does in the camps because, unlike Klee’s Angelus Novus, he has a spatial, not only a temporal significance. On walls, images of Handala suggest the delineation of space. Elsewhere in Palestine, Handala stands before homes from which refugees like himself were expelled. In East Jerusalem, for example, he appears on the wall of a house taken from the inhabitants by settlers several years previously. (Figure 10.13) The inhabitants expelled from Sheikh Jarrah continue to protest, along with their supporters, their expulsion from their homes while they pursue their cases in court. (cf. Wildman 2013) Handala faces away from the viewer on the street, back toward the homes to which the homes’ owners, one of whom stands in front of the image in my illustration, long to return. Handala also appears on the separation wall amid the murals of international artists, and is sometimes carried as a large puppet-​like sign in demonstrations (Figure10.14, 10.15). It is, then, not surprising that in Dheisheh, the double character of the

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Figure 10.14 A drawing of a cartoon by Naji Al-​Ali on the edges of a mural painted in 2013 by How and Nosm, German street artists living in New York. Bethlehem photograph: margaret olin, 2016

figure of Handala marks the entrance to the camp, his gaze fixed away from the camp on a homeland beyond its borders. His image is also easy to adapt to current issues. A drowned Handala mimics the drowned child Alan Kurdi, whose photograph became an icon of the Syrian refugee crisis. Resistance to other forms of censorship and coercion use other aspects of Handala’s image. “Je suis Charlie” became the slogan of supporters shortly after the assassination of cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical magazine in Paris whose fate was the center of wide attention in the West. In a cartoon that appeared in the Muslim Observer, the cartoonists, newly arrived in paradise, see Naji Al-​Ali waiting for them there. In a comment on the silence of the world after his own assassination, Handala is shown saying “Je suis Ali.” (Figure 10.16)

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Figure 10.15 Israeli & Palestinian Combatants for Peace Protest, Fence near Bethlehem, Palestine photograph: dorit jordan dotan. 2014

Figure 10.16 “Je Suis Ali,” Cartoon copyright of khalil bendib, www.bendib.com; all rights reserved, 2015

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Figure 10.17 Dheisheh refugee camp photograph: margaret olin, 2015

As perhaps the children’s pictures already suggest, in some respects Handala is a Palestinian Che Guevara, since, like Che, his image has permeated popular culture. Handala is widely represented on items of popular usage –​key chains, necklaces, t-​shirts and iPhone covers and tote bags. (Figure 10.17) This last group of images brings to mind another role Handala plays in Palestine. The refugee camps can remain an exceptional phenomenon in part because, still officially under the auspices of unwra, they are not subject to the Palestinian Authority, and the Authority is thus not responsible for their plight. They are left alone, abandoned as a pawn in the struggle against the occupation. Handala, facing toward the past, is a sign of the stalemate of the entire process: a child refuses to grow because he is caught in a struggle between powers. Indeed, a child cannot grow in that situation. Handala is prevented from going back to Palestine, but he refuses to go anywhere else to find a different sort of future. In that sense, not only Israelis seem to have abandoned Handala; Palestinians are also accused of abandoning him. Indeed, this abandonment was a subject of Al-​Ali’s pen. Arabs elsewhere, the United Nations, and the world at large: all of them have a stake in making sure that the refugees continue to play a role as pawns in the contest for land in which all of them are involved. All have a stake in keeping Handala from turning around, growing up, and moving on. The commercial exploitation of Handala,

196 Olin as the emblem of the refugee, is itself both part of and a sign for the political exploitation of the Palestinian refugee. The world outside the Levant might consider paying attention to this Handala. But if one thinks of Handala as represented in the Dheisheh refugee camp, he is not a sign for waiting. Dheisheh has found a way to pursue creativity that is directly bound up with waiting but looks beyond it. To make a theme of waiting is not merely to represent it. To turn Handala around, allowing him to age, is part of this effort. For while Handala may seem to wait, waiting is perhaps not the only activity in which Handala engages. While he waits, Handala mobilises for an identity in a future Palestine.

References



Primary Sources



Secondary Sources

Grass, Günter (1959): Die Blechtrommel. Darmstadt: H. Luchterhand. Klee, Paul (1920): Angelus Novus. Painting. Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

Abid, Kasim, dir. (1999):  Naji Al-​Ali:  An Artist with Vision. Icarus films. . Accessed 1 Nov. 2016. Abourahme, Nasser, and Sandi Hilal (2012): “The Production of Space, Political Subjectification and the Folding of Polarity:  The Case of Deheishe Camp, Palestine.” . Accessed 24 Nov. 2018. Al-​ Ali, Naji and Joe Sacco (2009):  The Cartoons of Naji Al-​ Ali. London and New York: Verso. Al Saifi, Aysar, and Murad Odeh (2013): The Pathways: Reframing Narration. Dheisheh Refugee Camp. N.a. (2011): A Voice from Palestine. Wordpress (private blog). . Accessed 24 Nov. 2018. Benjamin, Walter (2007): “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” 1968. Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken. 253–​64. Dheisheh News (2013): “Martyrs of Dheisheh Camp.” Facebook. . Accessed 1 Feb. 2017. Haugbolle, Sune (2013): “Naji al-​Ali and the Iconography of Arab Secularism.” Visual Culture in Modern Middle East:  Rhetoric of the Image. Ed. Christiane Gruber and Sune Haugbolle. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 231–​58.

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Kagan, Mike (2009):  “The Decline of Palestinian Exceptionalism:  Observation of a Trend and its Consequences for Refugee Studies in the Middle East.” Journal of Refugee Studies. 22.4: 417–​38. N.a. Kan’an 48. “Naji al-​Ali al-​hadiye lam tasal ba’d” (1997, Dar al-​Karmel Lilnasher wal tawzieh, Amman). Kan’an 48, . This source contains translations of an essay and part of an interview of al-​Ali. Accessed 1 Nov. 2016. Kreitmayr, Nadine (2012): Der Nahostkonflikt durch die Augen Hanzalas: Stereotypische Vorstellungen im Schaffen des Karikaturisten Naji al-​’Ali. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag. Najjar, Orayb Aref (2007): “Cartoons as a Site for the Construction of Palestinian Refugee Identity: An Exploratory Study of Cartoonist Naji Al-​Ali.” Journal of Communication Inquiry 31.3: 255–​85. Olin, Margaret (2012–​16):  “Conversations on the Periphery.” Margaret Olin. 7 March 2016. . Accessed 24 Nov. 2018. Marking Time: Photographs from Dheisheh Refugee Camp, 2014–​16. Olin, Margaret (2015): “Conversations on the Periphery I: Wall on Wall.” Touching Photographs. 10 Apr. 2015. . Accessed 1 Feb. 2017. United Nations Camp Profile. . Accessed 1 Jan. 2016. Deleted. Wildman, Sarah (2013):  “Facing Eviction in Sheikh Jarrah.” New  Yorker, 9 Apr. 2013. . Accessed 23 May 2018.

chapter 11

When Boredom Meets Fear: Waiting in Philip Larkin’s “The Building” Elise Brault-​Dreux Abstract This article looks at “The Building”, a poem in which Philip Larkin depicts the both familiar and awkward atmosphere of a hospital waiting room. The analysis focusses on waiting through the lenses of fear and boredom. Boredom, in this poem, combines a subjective perception of elongated temporality with a lack of involvement in –​and therefore dissatisfaction with –​the immediate situation. The now is uneventful and inexperienceable1 in this place where time, space and movement are highly regulated by the institution. Yet, boredom is not a mere experience of nothingness, nor a simple absence of event: bored patients submissively comply with cultural codes, find ways to keep mechanically busy, and look forward to the moment when they are finally released from this transient situation. But, Larkin insists, when the nurse will interrupt the ordeal of waiting, the doctor will remind them of their mortality, in other words, of the inability to experience the future. So, waiting to be diagnosed and then to be reminded that the final event will put an end to one’s temporality altogether may be read as a form of ontological absurdity.

Keywords Philip Larkin –​boredom –​death –​event –​fear –​hospital –​waiting

1

Introduction

With his poem “The Building”, published in 19742, Philip Larkin takes the reader into a waiting room whose location or nature is not quite clear at the beginning. 1 E. Goodstein refers to the “inexperienceability” of the present (Goodstein 123) to define this specific type of situation. 2 All subsequent quotations of “The Building” are taken from this edition.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/​9 789004407121_​0 13

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At first, the reader may believe that (s)he is entering the waiting room of a hotel (with its “porters” (l.5) and taxis before the entrance, yet “higher than the handsomest hotel” (l.1)), or of an airport (“Like an airport lounge” (l.9)), until a reference to a “frightening smell” (l.7) and then to “a kind of nurse” (l.14) makes it clear that the focal point of the poem is about to be the waiting room of a hospital, of any early-​seventies English hospital. The reader therefore has to wait to understand where the poetic voice is leading her/​him. Yet, unlike the patients in the waiting room who, as we will see, are waiting to be diagnosed and are somewhat passive and uninvolved in the surrounding events, the reader actively waits for –​looks for –​more details (like literary symptoms) to better picture the scene and eventually diagnose that the “building” is a hospital. With the somewhat flippant voice of a persona that may at times be heard as that of the mature, pessimistic poet himself, Philip Larkin, well known for showing intense preoccupation with upcoming death, here proposes a sociological picture which renders this mundane scene of waiting quite familiar to the reader. Rows of people are sitting, waiting for their respective appointment. Only in the final stanza does the poetic voice go beyond this empirical approach, giving the poetic discourse an existential dimension, in order to remind us that waiting and expecting are, in the end, quite pointless, for the end is the same for all mortals. In an earlier poem, “Dockery & Son” (1964), Larkin famously declares that “Life is first boredom [here referring to childhood]3 then fear [old age].” (l.45) In the waiting room of “The Building”, one may wonder if boredom and fear may somehow converge. If so, what type of boredom and what type of fear is at play here? In this liminal zone, where patients are passively waiting for their turn, their perception of time is likely to be elongated. Their subjective apprehension of temporality may thus fail to adjust to the objective time of clocks and thus gives way to a form of hyperconsciousness of time. These are some of the possible elements that most commonly give way to boredom, that is when the moment is so eventless that the mind is left with only time and the inability to experience a present to focus on. And yet, these waiters do not seem to be just bored in an ordinary fashion, nor are they merely experiencing a void. For, the place is meaningful: even though they remain passive, they are actually waiting with a purpose –​that of being diagnosed. This purpose, coupled with apprehension, interferes with their passive waiting. The reader is, in fact, introduced into the place by means of a sense of smell: “….and in the hall /​As well as creepers hangs a frightening smell.” (ll.6–​7) This progression from vision (“creepers”) to “smell” translates, for the reader, the 3 “childhood /​is a forgotten boredom” (“Coming”: ll.12–​3).

200 Brault-Dreux patients’ physical arrival in the building. The zeugma governed by “hangs” (both creepers and smell actually hang) leads to a delayed introduction of the highly significant “frightening smell” whose focal position thus catches the reader’s eye. In the syntactic linearity, “hang” introduces ideas of immobility, inaction, almost paralysis, and is then given a death-​like connotation with the immediately following “frightening.” Both reader and patient at once recognise this peculiar smell that partakes in common shared experience to such a great extent –​a mix of chemical, cleaning and even ethereal substances that is culturally redolent of hospitals and, by proxy, diagnoses, cure and even death. Fear then, in this waiting room, might actually be fear of the unknown outcome of the diagnosis (in that sense, fear is thus somewhat linked to suspense). But paradoxically –​and this is what Larkin seems to be pointing out in this poem –​the smell is frightening since it suggests what they all, in fact, know, that is, irrespective of the nature of the still unknown experience in the consultation room, they will in any case be meeting their death. In other words, these waiters, as they are caught in this unknowable present, know that what eventually awaits them is the upcoming revelation of the impossibility to experience their future. This article therefore addresses the issue of boredom, on occasion combined with apprehension, expectation or fear. For that purpose, the patients’ waiting experience in Larkin’s waiting room will be analysed from three different angles: first from a social perspective (waiting is here institutionally and culturally organised), then from the perspective of a subjective experience of time (bringing in the Bergsonian notion of duration) and then from a broader ontological perspective: what is the point, for a mortal individual, to wait in order to be diagnosed? 2

Waiting in the “Building”: an Organised Social Experience in a Liminal Zone

The title and the first line of the poem introduce a massive presence (“Higher than the handsomest hotel” (l.1)) whose immense structure is subdivided into identical, countless “floors” (l.24), “levels” (l.29), and “rooms” ((ll.34–​5). What is more, “…past these doors are rooms, and rooms past those, /​And more rooms yet…” (ll.34–​5)).4 This “lucent comb” (l.2) suggests both the swarming 4 In another poem, “How”, Larkin likewise refers to hospitals’ massive architectural structures: How high they build hospitals! Lighted cliffs, against dawns Of days people will die on. I can see one from here (ll.1–​3).

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presence inside the building as well as the massively contained and controlled movement it houses. (cf. Topia 1994) The subdivision of space into countless, identical units –​the “rooms” –​actually reverberates in the succession of identical time units in the waiting room, where waiting patients are physically contained. In the waiting room, the patients are in a liminal zone, neither outside, nor yet in a medical room. This liminal space prepares the patients, both physically and mentally, for the consultation when their symptoms will be translated into diagnoses by a doctor. The waiting room is the first stage of this analysing process as it is designed to hold the body, to constrain or force it into a sitting or standing position.5 Waiting is then primarily a physical experience. Here, patients actually “tamely sit /​On rows of steel chairs” (ll.9–​10). The adverb reveals that patients have interiorised the normality of this enforced immobilisation (Tanner 2006: 80), whose organisation in space has been pre-​defined by “rows” which make it easier for nurses to estimate the number of waiting patients. But this geometric horizontal organisation also constrains the patients’ behaviours as it blocks verbal communication, and “steel chairs” further intensify the omnipresent sense of coldness quite commonly associated with hospital halls. Movements also are dictated: Every few minutes comes a kind of nurse To fetch someone away: the rest refit Cups back to saucers, cough, or glance below Seats for dropped gloves or cards. (ll.14–​7) Gestures are mechanical, and “coughs” are not the only reason for the consultation, but a social gesture aimed at filling a void or masking the unease of not being the one called by the nurse. In this medical waiting room, waiting is then entirely contained and controlled by social conventions, material architecture, and structures. In other words, it is a social practice regulated by cultural codes to which patients generally submit obediently. Yet, the focalisation at one point orients the reader’s gaze outside, where, by contrast, people are “free”: Outside seems old enough: Red brick, lagged pipes, and someone walking by it Out to the car park, free (ll.38–​40). 5 Waiting entails “various bodily demands and corporeal attentiveness” (Bissell 2007: 278).

202 Brault-Dreux “Free” stands out and thus highlights the focaliser’s strong desire to enjoy the physical freedom that enables him /​her to carry out their routine. By contrast, the patients are constrained inside, on “rows of steel chairs” (l.10). The physical containment in the hospital waiting room is made possible and accepted by patients only because they all know it is transient: they are only momentarily held in transit in this preparatory zone. And their waiting time is actually highly regulated by the hospital staff’s planning:  “Every few minutes comes a kind of nurse” (l.14). She follows a schedule of appointments determined by a timetable. For the nurse, as for the bulk of the patients, this division of time in units of appointments partakes of a routine and of medical protocols, each peculiarly planned. And yet, though each appointment is ticked off on the schedule, though the clock shows the passing time units, what passes, in fact, are the bodies. Henri Bergson states:  “It is we who are passing when we say time passes” (2002: 216) Harold Schweizer remarks in a similar vein that “nothing embodies change, movement, duration, indeed being, more intensely than we, the most fleeting, most temporal, most mortal of all” (Schweizer 2008: 25) –​and because the body incarnates time, it is “fleeting”, in decay and is led to the consultation room to try to resist this temporality. Time, then, is physically endured  –​both throughout one’s entire existence and in this waiting room. Besides, the “smell” is “frightening” precisely because it mixes odours of medication with suggestions of the inevitable process of rotting away (just as inevitable as the passing of time). The passing of time is also revealed in the things which have no consciousness of being in time, of time passing around and with them. Schweizer remarks that “things, blissfully oblivious as they are, seem (but only seem) impervious to duration” (Schweizer 2008: 26), while human waiters experience time subjectively. Yet, things do show traces of the passing of time. The “ripped mags” (l.10), for instance, quite realistically bear the traces of weeks, months, and quite often even years of reading. They have repeatedly been consumed by patients who were just looking for a transient mental occupation. The “paperbacks, and tea at so much a cup,” (l.8) which keep the waiters busy, are equally realistic. The patients thus mechanically consume and fill this empty interval in existence (just as “coughs” (l.16) fill in a lack of action or a shortage of other reactions). In these uneventful circumstances, waiting patients seek activity. Yet, the genuine interest patients may find in those common activities (so common that the reader immediately recognises them) may be too low and in the end raises no spirit from passive waiting but merely keeps them somehow mechanically and uniformly busy. This is where the notion of boredom, in relation to that of involvement, may be of analytical use. If boredom most often derives from the perception of an elongation of time, then it

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is also related to a lack of involvement in the immediate situation. This is how J.M. Barbalet, in “Boredom and Social Meaning”, defines boredom: “A leading characteristic of boredom, which is the most obvious attribute of experience of it, is that it is a feeling of not being involved in or engaged by events or activities.” (1999: 634). And each patient, as (s)he mechanically “turn[s]‌the ripped mags” (l.10), reveals a lack of involvement in the situation. While they are waiting for a form of involvement in the consultation room, they merely seek to fill time. Thus forced to be unproductive, the waiters nonetheless tend to consume: input hence deliberately supplants the deficiency of output. Moreover, the poetic voice, quite flippantly and with ironical undertones, sheds light on their unproductivity by summoning the reader to check the time of day: See the time, Half-​past eleven on a working day, And these picked out of it; (ll.27–​8) In addition to consuming what mere goods are offered to them, these Larkinian immobile waiters are also watching the other patients. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the root of the verb “to wait” is “to watch with hostile intent” –​in other words, to watch for the event to come. And the medical waiting room, besides being a place where the event is awaited, also offers a sort of stage for the patients whose constrained bodies are on display for the other patients to watch (not necessarily with hostility though). Laura Tanner defines this “cultural stage” (2006: 66) as follows: “the medical waiting room represents a rare space in which the otherwise private fact of illness or imminent death is put on public display” (ibid.: 65). The poem goes: see, as they climb To their appointed levels, how their eyes Go to each other, guessing (ll.28–​9) When they leave the “cultural stage”, each patient is watched by other patients who are about to be watched as well when their time comes. Tanner compares this “self-​reflexive gaze” (2006: 66) in the medical waiting room to a peculiar sort of panopticon which makes each person both seer and seen. But all dimensions of empowerment the seer is endowed with in Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon are cancelled: the patient acquires no power in watching, and his/​her c­ apacity to watch does not derive from a specific position of power. Tanner then writes: “In the medical waiting room, the gaze that lingers on

204 Brault-Dreux the abject bodies of others engages in a form of surveillance that is ultimately self-​surveillance” (ibid.: 78). In the medical waiting room, each person is both a subject and an object; each one is at once seeking signs and symptoms on others and exposing, in spite of themselves, their own symptoms; each one is, in fact, silently diagnosing and being diagnosed. But, Larkin insists on the off-​handedness of this watching. In “The Building”, the bored eyes compulsively go to each other, with no specific “plan of action” (Schweizer 2008: 31) –​no intent, and logically no involvement. In this sense, the intransitivity of “guessing” (l.30) is quite suggestive. Although each patient looks for symptoms in the other patients, the result of this guess is pointless. They will never know what the others suffer from and will forget about them as soon as they have left the room. The shallowness of these substandard and amateur diagnoses is also conveyed in the fragmentary reference to the act of watching. The speaker uses no verbs such as ‘watch’, ‘look’ nor even ‘see’, but the mechanical and isolated “eyes” that merely “go” (ll.28–​9) to other patients. The eyes simply “go” because people, while waiting, are on display, before the others’ eyes. on the way Someone’s wheeled past, in washed-​to-​rags ward clothes: They see him, too. They’re quiet. (ll.30–​2) This passing, vulnerable body, which is even deprived of its identity by having to wear ward clothes, is almost offered to the eyes of the other patients who will compulsively watch –​like a performance for bored spectators. So, the only way for these waiting patients to refuse this dismal show that, in fact, sends them back to their own condition, is to deliberately divert their gazes towards the outside: For the moment, wait, Look down at the yard. Outside seems old enough: Red brick, lagged pipes, and someone walking by it Out to the car park, free. Then, past the gate, Traffic; a locked church; short terraced streets Where kids chalk games, and girls with hair-​dos fetch Their separates from the cleaners –​(ll.37–​43) The paratactic style translates the erratic movement of the eyes that are somewhat solemnly observing the yet mundane actions and visions outside, and conveys the mimetic desire to be in the place of these passers-​by. Watching

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passes the time of waiting, and watching outside, albeit randomly, is a means to mentally evade the space where waiting is organised. In his way of picturing the hospital waiting room, Larkin conveys the sense of a collective social experience of waiting whose time and space are organised by an institution, and where people, following tacit social conventions, remain tamely seated, silent, and pass their time by consuming and watching the scene in which they themselves perform. David Bissell defines the medical waiting room as the place for a “performative social event” (2007: 285). And yet, as Larkin suggests in “The Building”, in this transpersonal social experience patients are quite significantly asocial. Though sitting extremely close to each other, and sometimes even showing themselves in ward gowns, they share nothing and are involved in no social experience. They withdraw into silence, disengaged and focused on their private cogitations and activities. Even their social identities are being held at bay: Humans, caught On ground curiously neutral, homes and names Suddenly in abeyance; (ll.17–​9) These “humans” all act alike in this social situation that paradoxically makes them asocial. And each of them subjectively apprehends the moment, and, most importantly here, the time that passes. 3

Subjective Experience of Duration

Waiting in a medical waiting room takes on affective dimensions, as it involves apprehension, fear, threat or, more positively, expectation. All patients (though the word ‘patient’ is not used by the poetic voice in the poem) wait with an intention: that of being diagnosed or, at best, cured by a doctor. Passively waiting with an intent in effect pertains to the experience of boredom. For, boredom entails feeling a sense of emptiness, a lack of meaning, a dissatisfaction with the moment, and still knowing that meaning, involvement, activity or satisfaction do lie beyond, in space or time. But, the now cannot be experienced. The only thing the patients can do is wait, and potentially cogitate on the reasons that brought them here. Such intimate rumination suggests a sense of guilt: all are “Here to confess that something has gone wrong.” (l.22) The guilt implied in the idea of “confession”, coupled with the abnormality of that vague “something” whose nature is yet to be determined in the consultation room, transform the common experience of waiting (in both meanings of the word

206 Brault-Dreux ‘common’) into an extremely private moment of anxiety and apprehension when time is subjectively experienced. In a much earlier poem, “Triple Time” (1955), Larkin refers to the present as “A time unrecommended by event.” (l.5) And this is how the present seems to be experienced in this Larkinian waiting room. Though things are going on, the affective, subjective experience of the present is quite “uneventful” (Kuby 1974: 71). The philosopher Vladimir Jankélévitch writes, for example, that “one does not think time […], one thinks the events in time” (1974: 119, my translation). So, whenever the present is quite uneventful, one’s experience of time is jeopardised. Because there is no event to be aware of, one’s consciousness is transferred to time and it may then be the first step into boredom. While time should be felt, it is now thought. There is, therefore, a sort of gap between the deficiency of experience (nothing is felt, there is no event), on the one hand, and a hyperconsciousness of time, on the other hand. An outward sign of the lack of adjustment between duration (time experienced) and endured time (time thought) is, for instance, visible in people’s faces: “faces are restless and resigned,” (l.13). If “resigned” suggests a submission to time passing and to the social conventions that dictate one’s behaviour in this situation, “restless” suggests almost the opposite: that is, an incapacity or even refusal to mentally and physically endure external, countable time. Barbalet sees that point as peculiarly characteristic of boredom which, therefore, is distinguished from ennui: Boredom […] includes an experience of dullness and lack of vital interest in events or engagements. But if it were only that, then boredom would be indistinguishable from ennui […]. Boredom, but not ennui, is a feeling that expresses a dissatisfaction with the lack of interest in an activity or condition. Boredom, in its irritability and restlessness (conditions not present in ennui), is not a feeling of accepting of or resignation toward a state of indifference, as ennui is. […] The elements of active discomfort are what characterize boredom, and set it apart from ennui. barbalet 1999: 634

So, following Barbalet’s theory, “restlessness” is far more revealing of boredom than “resignation” is. One might even argue that it is the patients’ unchallenging “resignation” to cultural conventions that makes them “restless.” In other words, this dissatisfaction with the inexperienceable present derives from an appetite for more experience. The individual’s being is in excess. It wants more. Either more experience or minutes unfolding more quickly.

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Larkin interestingly chooses not to use the term “patient”, as though those people could not be patient. Bissell defines patience as follows:  “patience could be seen as the apotheosis of waiting, or how to competently experience duration in a positive sense” (2007:  290, emphasis added). In line with this, Vladimir Jankélévitch observes that one should try to use one’s own duration (1974: 116). However, in this particular waiting room, waiting is neither positive nor productive. When the waiter’s mind is ventriloquised through the poetic voice, an irrepressible impatience surfaces in the cogitation: For past these doors are rooms, and rooms past those, And more rooms yet, each one further off And harder to return from; and who knows Which he will see, and when? For the moment, wait (ll.34–​7, emphasis added). Repetitions give an erratic aspect to the stream-of-consciousness which once again conveys restlessness and apprehension. Time is too slow: the excess of being that is suggested in this stammering sentence (“and…and…and…”) cannot possibly be satisfied. The prospective “when?” is left unanswered, for the answer can only be given by future experience. The flow of existential questions is interrupted by “for the moment, wait” (l.37) and one is brought back to more material, immediate grounds. At this point, there is a slight shift in voice that seems to move away from the patient’s mind towards a sort of taming Larkinian voice that lingers in the background. It is this somewhat authorial voice that, earlier, also put these restless faces in perspective: And faces restless and resigned, although Every few minutes comes a kind of nurse To fetch someone away… (ll.13–​5, emphasis added) The use of “although” highlights the disjunction between the patients’ subjective perception of elongated time and the objective reality of an intense activity: things are going on, nurses come back only “every few minutes” despite the patients’ feeling of restlessness. One may also add that the gap between patients’ subjective time and the objective time incarnated by the nurses is widened by the fact that the latter never wait: they act under the pressure of organised therapeutic time. In contrast with the patients who are socially disengaged, the nurses show full involvement in their relentless activity. Moreover,

208 Brault-Dreux the seated patients count on the returning apparition of this embodiment of involvement in order to relieve them from the experience of waiting. The moment their name is called up by the “nurse” is the rupture of the period of stasis.6 When the nurse turns up, she raises expectations that are, save for one person, quickly deflated: the rest refit Cups back to saucers, cough, or glance below Seats (ll.15–​7). Later in the poem, the nurse comes back, in a parenthetical comment, when mention is made again of the moment: …. when Called to these corridors (for now once more The nurse beckons –​). Each gets up and goes At last. (ll.49–​52) The now familiar scene (both for patients and readers) has made useless both the articulate language, now supplanted by discreet body language (she “beckons”), and a description of the event, now suggested by a mere dash. Therefore, each individual, waiting for his or her turn, has been among “the rest” (l.15), and is a spectator of countless experiences of relief. Simultaneously impatient and possibly frightened, each one, “separately” (l.47), will eventually be “at last” (l.52) liberated from this constraining experience by the nurse. She triggers the awaited event. At that point, the patients know that they will, ‘at last’, be relieved from this socially, culturally organised situation. They will now be moving on to corridors and rooms, where the ontological nature of waiting becomes prominent. In the waiting room, they had been waiting for an appointment with a doctor, too aware of the passing of the minutes or hours. But the latter will merely 6 The nurses’ mechanical, repetitive tasks, following a highly scheduled timetable, may actually account for the predetermination of “nurse” by “a kind of” (l.14): in the collective unconscious, the nurse incarnates humanity, proximity and care. In the first part of the poem, as they fit a formatted objective therapeutic pace, nurses diverge from the mental image of kindness which they thence approach only asymptotically with “a kind of”. It is only later in the poem, when both patients and reader have spent enough time in this “building” to fully understand that it is a hospital, and when the patient’s turn is imminent, that reference is made to “the nurse” (l.51). At that point, nurses are no longer just mechanically calling names, they are now about to care, to fully incarnate what we picture as their genuine function.

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remind each of them that what passes is not time but their bodies, and they realise that human nature does not pass eternally. As mortals, they are essentially waiting for the ultimate event, that is death. That is where the word “resigned” in “faces restless and resigned” (l.13), in retrospect, reads differently: not just resigned to being forced to wait in the waiting room, they are also resigned to accepting the finitude of life, the inexperienceability of the future. 4

Awareness of the Inexperienceability of the Future

The poem subtly unveils the coexistence of a hyperconsciousness of time spent in the waiting room (where waiting becomes restless boredom) and a hyperconsciousness of the limitation of lifetime. In this waiting hall, then, fear meets boredom. Such fear, introduced at the start of the poem by the “frightening smell” (l. 7) is later expressed silently, or even, by silence: “… To realise /​ This new thing held in common makes them quiet” (ll.32–​3). The deictic “this” makes this “thing” immediate, unavoidable and recognisable by everyone. The epithet “new” suggests the idea of a sudden revelation, here, in the waiting room, that the human body passes. And the loose semantic reference of “thing” suggests that mortality is still unnameable, though “common” to all human beings. Like waiting in a waiting room, mortality is a shared, common experience. But like waiting in the waiting room –​where behaviours are asocial and time is apprehended subjectively –​mortality is individually, subjectively, and especially intimately experienced. When the waiters deliberately divert their glances to the outside so as to bypass the boring and unsatisfying inexperienceability of the present, Larkin also hints at their rising awareness of the impossibility to experience the future: …And so, unreal, A touching dream to which we are all lulled But wake from separately. In it, conceits And self-​protecting ignorance congeal To carry life, collapsing only when Called to these corridors (ll.45–​50) In the waiting room, this day dream is likely to be a strategic mode to fight against boredom, a mode of “withdrawal from the world” (Bissell 2007: 278), as Bissell in part defines the event of waiting, and from which each wakes up when the nurses call their names. But this lull is also quite significantly at work on an existential level. The inclusive “we are all” (l.46) refers less to waiting

210 Brault-Dreux patients than to mortals in general who, in order to carry on living, soothe themselves with deliberate ignorance of, or at least about, mortality. But this anaesthetic strategy, the poetic voice insists, is purposeless and definitely not protecting. In the waiting room, the nurse will wake them up, as expected. In life, death will happen, in spite of the day dream, and just as predictably. And a few lines later, one actually reads: “All know they are going to die” (l.57) –​with an interesting drop of “we” (mortals) in favour of “they” (patients) which relocates the scene from existential deliberation back into the waiting room, and which positions the poetic voice somewhat above, not as an immortal, but as someone who does not hide behind “self-​protecting ignorance” (l.48). In the last stanza, the poetic voice actually even transcends the empirical analysis of the rest of the poem which is more or less flippantly brushed aside altogether with, “That is what it means” (l.59): … That is what it means, This clean-​sliced cliff; a struggle to transcend The thought of dying, for unless its powers Outbuild cathedrals nothing contravenes The coming dark, though crowds each evening try With wasteful, weak, propitiatory flowers. (ll.59–​64) The anaphoric “That is what it means” refers back to the whole poem and introduces the final stanza as a synthetic universal truth which will translate the waiting room scene into meaning. The monumental building will never be huge enough to smother the thought, and most essentially, the fact of dying. Death is inevitable. It is the last event or, as Françoise Dastur defines it: the event par excellence, except that it is never present, it never presently happens. It does not open up a world, but rather closes it forever. It does not constitute a blank or gap inside temporality or a diachronic moment which could be the origin of a new configuration of possibilities. It is the simple, simultaneous destruction of synchrony and diachrony. dastur 2000: 183

Death then is the final, unavoidable, rupture –​of the perception of time, therefore of existence. Hoping, masking it, supplanting it with flowers –​all that is a vain waste which Larkin likewise voices in another poem, “Next, Please”, where he declares that “we /​Pick up bad habits of expectancy” (ll.1–​2) for there is nothing to “wait […] so devoutly” (“Next, Please”: l.20). When one has reached

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“that vague age that claims /​The end of choice, the last of hope” (“Next, Please”:  ll.20–​1), expecting is then useless, and so is waiting with an intent, restless or bored. In the end, each patient will be summoned by the nurse and reminded of his/​her mortality when diagnosed by a doctor during an appointment (s)he, quite ironically, had to wait for. In the poem, the pointlessness of waiting with an intent is coupled with a debunking of religion. The diverting gaze that transiently takes the reader outside significantly stops on a “locked church” (l.41) –​sign of a modern world in a quick process of secularisation. The modern temple is now the hospital, where patients wait and roam anonymously and are “[h]‌ere to confess that something has gone wrong” (l.22). At the end of the poem, the patients that have been “at last” called by the nurse are referred to as “[t]he unseen congregations whose white rows /​Lie set apart above” (ll.54–​5). Mixing despair and irony, Larkin thus suggests white angels already apart, in heaven. Here, expectation has thus lost its religious dimension and is taken down to the materialism of the secular “building” and to the physicality of the patients. Religious prophecies and expectations have been superseded by clinical predictions which, at best, give each patient a little respite before the final “coming dark” (l.63) whose power, even when it “[o]‌utbuild[s] cathedrals” (l.62), will never defeat the materiality of the body. With this “agnostic sentiment” (Regan 1992: 33) hovering over the medical waiting room, the “existential despair” (ibid.: 133) at the end of the poem can definitely not be counteracted by any “self-​protecting ignorance” (l.48). Critics on the whole agree that “The Building” is an expression of the “ultimate futility” of the “value of human life” (Swarbrick 1995: 130); that it partakes in the Larkinian “ferocious lucidity” (Everett 1980: 228), or is one among other poems in which Larkin “seems to relish reminding us of this truth”, which is “the expectation of death” (Rossen 2008: 130). 5

Conclusion

To conclude, I  would argue that in this poem Larkin’s staging of his poetic scene in a medical waiting room actually magnifies a sense of “ultimate futility” (Swarbrick 1995:  130). The inexperienceability of the present, socially organised by the institution as a preamble to the medical consultation, is only a preparation for the upcoming acknowledgement, in the rooms above, of the impossibility to experience the future. And this reads as an ontological absurdity. Restless on chairs, dissatisfied with the immediate present, patients are bored, as though the official confirmation of the finitude of life by a doctor

212 Brault-Dreux was taking too long to be spelt out. Just as “resigned” (l.13) as the patients of his poem, Larkin is in fact staging for us, in a modern secularised context, the pointlessness of waiting with an intent, waiting for someone who is going to remind you that death is invariably awaiting.

References



Primary Sources



Secondary Sources

Larkin, Philip (2012): The Complete Poems. Ed. Archie Burnett. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Larkin, Philip (2012): “The Building”: 84–​6. The Complete Poems. Ed. Archie Burnett. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Larkin, Philip (2012): “Dockery & Son”: 65–​7. The Complete Poems. Ed. Archie Burnett. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Larkin, Philip (2012):  “How”:  112–​ 3. The Complete Poems. Ed. Archie Burnett. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Larkin, Philip (2012):  “Next, Please”:  31. The Complete Poems. Ed. Archie Burnett. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Larkin, Philip (2012):  “Triple Time”: 40. The Complete Poems. Ed. Archie Burnett. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Barbalet, J.M. (1999):  “Boredom and Social Meaning.” British Journal of Sociology 50.4: 631–​46. Bergson, Henri (2002): Duration and Simultaneity. In Henri Bergson: Key Writings. Ed. Keith Ansell Peason and John Mullarkey. London: Continuum. Bissell, David (2007):  “Animating Suspension:  Waiting for Mobilities.” Mobilities 2.2: 277–​98. Dastur, Françoise (2000): “Phenomenology of the Event: Waiting and Surprise.” Hypatia 15.4: 178–​87. Everett, Barbara (1980): “Philip Larkin: After Symbolism.” Essays in Criticism 30: 227–​42. Jankélévitch, Vladimir (1974) : L’aventure, l’ennui, le sérieux. Paris: Editions Montaigne. Kuby, Lolette (1974): An Uncommon Poet for the Common Man: A Study of Philip Larkin’s Poetry. Paris: Mouton. Oxford English Dictionary (1989): “to wait.” Second Edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Regan, Stephen (1992): Philip Larkin: An Introduction to the Variety of Criticism. London: McMillan. Rossen, Janice (2008): Philip Larkin: His Life’s Work. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Schweizer, Harold (2008): On Waiting. London: Routledge.

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Swarbrick, Andrew (1995): Out of Reach: The Poetry of Philip Larkin. London: Macmillan. Tanner, Laura (2006):  Lost Bodies:  Inhabiting the Borders of Life and Death. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Topia, André (1994): “Frames and Rooms: l’espace gigogne de Larkin.” Etudes Britanniques Contemporaines, Montpellier: University of Montpellier, Janvier 1994.

chapter 12

Waiting in Sickrooms and Victorian Houses: Virginia Woolf’s “On Being Ill” Katrin Röder Abstract This article investigates the representation of the perceptual changes generated by embodied, gendered experiences of waiting in Virginia Woolf’s essay “On Being Ill”. It focuses on Woolf’s depiction of the ways in which ill persons view their being-​in-​the-​ world, their bodies and their relationships with subjects and objects inside as well as outside of sickrooms. In addition, it explores Woolf’s discussion of Victorian women’s practices of waiting as ‘angels in the house’ and shows in which ways states of waiting in sickrooms and Victorian houses are connected. Furthermore, this article compares Virginia Woolf’s and Julia Stephen’s depictions of patients on their sickbeds and discusses Woolf’s reflections on practices of waiting during illness in her diaries and letters.

Keywords Vita Sackville-​West –​Julia Stephen –​Virginia Woolf –​angel in the house –​­contingency –​ creativity –​ duration –​ embodiment –​ empowerment –​ feminism –​ gender –​ illness –​ illness essay –​practices of waiting –​pathography –​resistance –​rest cure

1

Introduction

“On Being Ill”, fittingly described by Hermione Lee as “one of Virginia Woolf’s most daring, strange and original essays” (Lee 2012: xiii), was written between September and November 1925 on her sickbed.1 As such, it is the direct creative outcome of processes of waiting and writing during illness. This article investigates Woolf’s representation of the perceptual changes generated by 1 In her letter to Edward Sackville-​West, Woolf expresses her concern that “writing in bed, and forced to write quickly by the inexorable Tom Eliot”, she had “used too many words” (“Letter to Edward Sackville-​West, 6 February 1926,” Woolf 1977: 239–​40).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/​9 789004407121_​0 14

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embodied, gendered experiences of waiting. It will focus on Woolf’s depiction of the ways in which ill persons view their being-​in-​the-​world, their bodies and their relationships with subjects and objects inside and outside of sickrooms as well as on Woolf’s representation of Victorian women’s practices of waiting as ‘angels in the house.’ “The immediate story behind the writing of ‘On Being Ill’ ”, Lee explains, “begins with Virginia Woolf falling down in a faint at a party at her sister’s house in Charleston on August 19th, 1925” (2012: xvi). Woolf’s faint led to a sequence of “slow months” of depression and illness during which she kept working on her essay which reflects on the experience of deceleration during illness (Lee 2012: xvi–​xvii). On 3 September 1925, she agreed to contribute her essay to T.S. Eliot’s New Criterion and promised to hand it in on 14 November 1925 (Woolf 1977: 203 note 1, 220). An investigation of her diary entries and letters from this time shows that a great part of her personal experience of illness has found its way into her essay. Despite this background it is important to note that the text is not characterised by a narrative strategy of autobiographical disclosure. Instead, Woolf uses a generalising but “intimate, inconsequential speaking voice in ‘On Being Ill’ which makes the essay read like a form of conversation” (Lee 2012: xxvii).2 Its perspective is strongly embodied, that is, shaped by the perceptual changes that illness and the experiences of waiting on sickbeds bring about. Woolf’s use of “we”, “one”, “the recumbent” or “the invalid” instead of “I” as narrative personas suggests that the observations made are philosophical and comprehensive but also specific at the same time. Lee argues convincingly that Woolf’s essays never take “the form of confession” (2010: 104): Woolf “does not speak about herself directly. She never refers to herself in her essays as a novelist, or to her life as Virginia Woolf” (ibid.). Furthermore, Lee states that Woolf’s essays contain a medium, “a transparent veil of style that half reveals, half conceals the writer”, arguing that “there has to be a veil, or there is no essay, no conversation, no art, just feeling and opinion and personality” (ibid.: 105). In “On Being Ill”, the conversational voice includes Woolf’s own embodied experiences of illness and works towards the creation of a relational identity of the sick and disabled which does not deny but accentuate individual difference. 2

Woolf’s Illness

From her early years onwards, Woolf suffered from breakdowns which more recently have been interpreted as symptoms of bipolar disorder or psychosis 2 Cf. Lee 2012: xxvii.

216 Röder (Caramagno 1988: 12, 13; Caramagno 1992: 13; Berry-​Cabán 2006: 1). Woolf’s breakdowns led to “persistent, periodical illnesses, in which mental and physical symptoms seemed inextricably entwined” (Lee 2012: xiv), as can be observed in Woolf’s letters and diary entries from September to November 1925 where she describes her faintness and severe headaches.3 Thomas C. Caramagno emphasises the importance of these experiences of illness for Woolf’s writings and aesthetics, especially for her ability to “question all mental states” (1988: 16) and for her insight into the fact that “perception was neither reliable nor simple” (ibid.: 14–​7). Woolf suffered from a severe fit of illness in early October 1925 after she and her husband had returned to Tavistock Square, London (Woolf 1980: 46). Dr Elinor Rendel, Lytton Strachey’s niece, was sent for and advised rest (Welsch 2005: 48). Woolf’s letters to Vita Sackville-​West reveal her resistance to the rest cure, a severely gendered “treatment” prescribed to women suffering from mental illness,4 as well as Woolf’s anger about the fact that she is forbidden to work (Lee 2012: xvii): “The Dr has sent me to bed: all writing forbidden”, “Can not make the Dr say when I can get up, when go away, or anything”, “Owing to standing or sitting 3 minutes too long in the Press I am put back into bed –​all the blame now falling on the Hogarth Press” (Woolf 1977: 217, 218, 221). Woolf’s illness coincided with her love relationship with Vita Sackville-​West who visited her during Woolf’s illness and who was her most intimate correspondent during that time. In “On Being Ill”, the experiences of illness and love mingle so much that they become almost indistinguishable: illness often takes on the disguise of love, and plays the same odd tricks. It invests certain faces with divinity, sets us to wait, hour after hour, with pricked ears for the creaking of a stair, and wreathes the faces of the absent (plain enough in health, Heaven knows) with a new significance, while the mind concocts a thousand legends and romances about them for which it has neither time nor taste in health. woolf 2012: 6

3 See her letters to Vita Sackville West, Janet Case, T.S. Eliot, Roger Frye: “Letter to Vita Sackville-​ West, 24 August 1925,” Woolf 1977: 197–​8; “Letter to Vita Sackville-​West, 1 September 1925,” Woolf 1977: 199–​200; “Letter to Janet Case 1 September 1925,” Woolf 1977: 201–​2; “Letter to T.S. Eliot, 3 September 1925, Woolf 1977: 203–​4, 203”; “Letter to Vita Sackville-​West, 7 September 1925,” Woolf 1977: 204–​5, 205; “Letter to Roger Frye, 16 September 1925”, Woolf 1977: 208–​ 10, 208. 4 On Silas Weir Mitchell’s endorsement of the rest cure for women see Showalter (1987: 139–​ 43). The rest cure consisted of bedrest, the avoidance of exertion and excitement, milk and meat diets and the prohibition of work including writing or reading. It enforced inertia and intellectual deprivation, (cf. Lee 2012: xv).

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Many passages from Woolf’s letters to Vita Sackville-​West and from Woolf’s diary entries about their relationship contain embodied reflections on illness which found their way into “On Being Ill”. In a letter to Sackville-​West from September 1925, Woolf refers to her leisure and idleness during her illness, but she also reveals that she waits impatiently for the end of this idle period because it prevents her from progressing with her work: “This is miserable scribbling, the effervescence of idleness. (I’m waiting for luncheon) but I shall rouse up in London” (Woolf 1977: 214). Woolf captures the waiter’s5 constant oscillation between states of lingering and repeated impulses to act, to provoke a change of the situation. It is because of this indecision, Harold Schweizer observes, that the ill and the suffering can experience “deeper waiting”, being forced “into intimate existential self-​encounters”, that is, into encounters with their own mortality (2008:  23–​4). The ill and the suffering, Schweizer continues, “wait deeply in the dimensions of duration” (ibid.), a description which fits Woolf’s essay excellently because, as its title reveals, it explores the gerundive aspect of the experience of illness and the changes it provokes rather than illness as such. In her correspondence with Sackville-​West, Woolf comments on her observation of the changes in perception and of the changes of relationships brought about by illness. In a letter from the beginning of September 1925, she describes the “infernal pains” in her head and her “astonishingly incongruous dreams” about “precipices and horrors”. She acknowledges the perceptual and psychological changes brought about by her embodied experience of sickness, an observation which found its way into her essay where she discusses the “spiritual change” caused by “a slight attack of influenza”, revealing “precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers” (Woolf 2012: 3; Woolf 1977: 205). In her diary entry from 27 November 1925, Woolf reflects on the proximity and openness created among people during times of illness, but she also contemplates the limits of sympathy: The best of these illnesses is that they loosen the earth about the roots. They make changes. People express their affection. […] Gwen [Raverat] comes in: threatens to dissolve […] suddenly she will break down & tell me something that she has not told anyone. She finds me understanding. And I suppose she is in love –​or Marchand in love –​& I do not altogether want to hear it. woolf 1980: 47

5 Following Harold Schweizer, I use “waiter” in the sense of the German word “Wartender” (cf. Schweizer 2008: vii).

218 Röder In her essay, Woolf uses the image of roots to discuss the processes of transformation caused by illness:  she describes how “ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us by the act of sickness” (Woolf 2012: 3). In the diary entry quoted above as well as in the essay, illness is shown to exert a transformative power: it loosens the restraints existing between people, but it is also shown to loosen the patients’ own social restraints, allowing for daring, impertinent observations on the limits of closeness and sympathy and on the egoism and self-​centredness of visitors (cf. ibid.: 8–​9, 11–​2). On hearing about the complications of Karin Stephen’s6 operation which left Stephen’s face partly paralysed so that she was unable to speak (Woolf 1980:  46 note 14), Woolf comments self-​critically on the fleeting feeling of sympathy which swiftly changes into patronising pity in her diary entry from 30 September 1925: “This softens the heart towards her. It makes one think of her courage. But how quickly the intense feeling of sympathy passes, & she resumes her place in ones [sic] mind as a person one is conscious of being permanently, dully, sorry for” (Woolf 1980: 46). In her lonely reflections on the sickbed, longing for the company of Sackville-​West, Woolf observes how little people know about one another,7 an insight echoed in “On Being Ill” where the narrative voice rejects the philosophy of sympathy according to which humans are “tied together by common needs and fears” and “go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way” (Woolf 2012: 11). 3

The Illness Essay

In her critical introduction to Woolf’s essay, Hermione Lee comments on the shape-​changing nature of Woolf’s text, calling it a “net or web […] which is at once autobiography, social satire, literary analysis, and an experiment in image-​making” (2012: xiii-​xiv). Janine Utell suggests that “On Being Ill” can be read as an example of pathography, a genre which she, relying on Anne Hunsaker Hawkins, defines as “life writing about illness” (Utell 2016: 29; Hunsaker Hawkins 1999: 1). Indeed, as the passages from Woolf’s diaries and letters quoted above show, Woolf’s essay is closely connected to 6 Karin Stephen was Virginia Woolf’s sister-​in-​law and herself a psychoanalyst and psychologist. 7 Woolf writes to Sackville-​West: “I can get the sensation of seeing you […] and then can not invent a thing you say –​This proves […] how little we know anyone, only movements and gestures, nothing connected, continuous, profound. […] It would be better to talk, much better. But I can’t talk yet without getting these infernal pains in my head, or astonishingly incongruous dreams” (“Letter to Vita Sackville-​West, 7 September 1925,” Woolf 1977: 204–​05, 205).

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her own experiences of illness and of writing during illness. However, the significance of “On Being Ill” cannot be reduced to this autobiographical background. Instead, it can be more productively analysed if the text is regarded as an early example of the illness essay which Ann Jurecic defines as a mixed genre containing personal observations, social criticism and reflections on the connection between individual patients and their social environments (Jurecic 2016: 15, 16, 17). As Jurecic argues, the illness essay is an attempt at a representation of experiences of illness (cf. the literal translation of the French word essai, ibid.:  14). Consequently, the insight into illness and the ill body provided by Woolf’s text is provisional, speculative, experimental and inconclusive, an “unmapped quest” or question, a process of rambling in wonder and doubt, to use the phrase by which John D’Agata described the “List of Ziusudra”, an ancient example of contemplative nonfiction (ibid.: 14, 16, 17). In the illness essay, illness and a sense of the body’s materiality and mortality permeate the narrative voice’s point of view, sense of identity and trajectory in the world, a fact that Woolf describes or rather performs in the following passage: All day, all night the body intervenes; blunts or sharpens, colours or discolours, turns to wax in the warmth of June, hardens to tallow in the murk of February. The creature within can only gaze through the pane –​ smudged or rosy; it cannot separate off from the body like the sheath of a knife or the pod of a pea for a single instant; it must go through the whole unending procession of changes, heat and cold, comfort and discomfort, hunger and satisfaction, health and illness, until there comes the inevitable catastrophe; the body smashes itself to smithereens, and the soul (it is said) escapes. woolf 2012: 4–​5

By choosing the genre of the essay with its “potential for constant re-​evaluation of a specific moment” (Coogan 2008: 52), Woolf acknowledges the novelty and inconclusiveness of experiences of illness and of writing on the subject of illness, highlighting the difficulty of getting a grip on the subject of the constantly changing ill body, emphasising the tentativeness of her approach as well as her subject’s elusiveness and impenetrability. In the following section, I  seek to show that the processes of waiting in sickrooms depicted in “On Being Ill”, especially the processes of lingering and dwelling, focus on the ill body and embodied experiences of illness by revealing their transformative power and contingency: the ill body and the embodied

220 Röder experiences of illness are shown to be impenetrable and unfathomable, they resist the regimes of daily routine, social control and scientific analysis. It is precisely because of this, however, that the processes of contemplation during illness are invested with a creative, imaginative power. They are revealed to be fascinating journeys into the unknown and into the realm of the contingent (the realm of quanta and thermodynamics rather than of Bergsonian mobility or flux),8 comprising surprising changes in perception, changes of relationships and of situations. 4

“On Being Ill”

Although “On Being Ill” is a very productive text, especially  –​as I  seek to demonstrate –​for the analysis of its discussion of practices of waiting, it was often overlooked by critics, as Kimberly Engdahl Coates has observed (Coates 2012: 1). Above all, scholars have failed to acknowledge the significance of the fact that Woolf’s essay describes two distinct but strongly connected experiences of waiting: its first part depicts experiences of waiting in sickrooms (by patients, nurses and visitors) and the second part revolves around two Victorian women’s experiences of waiting for the return of their husbands as portrayed in Augustus Hare’s double biography Two Noble Lives (Hare 1893). So far, critics have commented on the relevance of the subject of creativity in relation to illness and gender difference in “On Being Ill”: in her article on the masochistic aesthetics of T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf, Eva Sorum has argued that in “On Being Ill”, Woolf expresses her doubts concerning the idea that experiences of illness can give rise to new forms of reading and storytelling because illness is too close to death (2005: 26–​7, 37). By contrast, Coates reads Woolf’s essay as a text of feminist empowerment. By rejecting Sorum’s reading, she argues that illness functions as an aesthetic strategy, as a resource of female creativity and resistance (2012: 3, 10).9 Rita Charon reads “On Being Ill” as a text that examines questions of medical health care but she also links Woolf’s essay to Elizabethan travelogues which deal with expeditions into unknown territories

8 On the relevance of Bergsonian philosophy for cultural representations of practices of waiting see Schweizer (2008: 27). On Woolf’s interest in thermodynamics and quantum physics see Ryan (2012). In “On Being Ill”, the narrative voice refers to the heat death of the universe: “heat will leave the world; stiff with frost we shall cease to drag ourselves about the fields; ice will lie thick upon factory and engine; the sun will go out” (Woolf 2012: 11, 16). 9 Similar to Coates, Janine Utell emphasises Woolf’s focus on the creative dimension of illness (Utell 2016: 32).

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(2012: 114–​15). In her afterword on Woolf’s essay and on Julia Stephen’s Notes from Sick Rooms, Charon argues that the two texts contain radically opposed approaches to illness. Daughter and mother disagree about the knowability of a patient’s experiences of sickness and about the best ways in which caregivers may ease their condition: The mother asserts that the ill person is knowable down to her toes. The able nurse […] will accurately interpret their meanings and choose proper actions in response. […] The daughter asserts that […] [n]‌o predictions can be made on the basis of the evidence from others’ experience. The experience of illness cannot be generalized. A person is solitary within her illness and, presumably, within her health too. (ibid.: 113) Coates argues that “On Being Ill” was intentionally written to refute Julia Stephen’s philosophy of medical health care (2012: 3, 5). It is certainly true that Woolf rejects the tradition of medical care represented by her mother as the “quintessential nurse”, together with the image of the practical and selfless philanthropist who sacrifices her own life in caring for the sick but who treats them as “cases” or objects, not as individuals (ibid.: 3, 4, 6; Stephen 2012: 55). At the beginning of Woolf’s essay, illness is described as a very common phenomenon. It brings “spiritual change”, enables access to radically new, surprising, unprecedented embodied experiences and leads to a confrontation with one’s own mortality: how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserters of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to view, what precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals, what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us by the act of sickness, how we go down into the pit of death and feel the waters of annihilation close above our heads […]. woolf 2012: 3

Despite the aesthetic and epistemological value of such experiences, illness has no central place in literature, except for a few modest attempts. The narrative voice in Woolf’s essay emphasises that there is a need for a new, “more primitive, more sensual, more obscene” language that can describe the marvels of the body’s changes during illness which were neglected in Western literature for such a long time (Woolf 2012: 7). Jeanne Dubino has argued that although “On Being Ill” contains many references to the body, Woolf actually “writes the

222 Röder soul” because her representation of illness is not based on Mikhail Bakhtin’s discussion of the grotesque body that symbolises “human connectedness” (Dubino 1994: 39). Woolf, by contrast, “emphasises individual experience” and “detachment” (ibid.). There are indeed “no description of the plenteous body fluids” and “not even a runny nose and eyes” in “On Being Ill” (ibid.: 41). However, Woolf’s powerful acknowledgement of the ill body’s permanent intervention and change –​as well as of the change in perception it provokes –​proves her interest in the embodied experience of illness (Woolf 2012: 4). In contrast to many writers before her, she does not “taper into mysticism” or “transcendentalism” (ibid.: 6). Even though Woolf’s discussion of illness is deeply psychological, it is also physical, as she uses a language that describes the materiality of the sick body experienced during processes of waiting on sickbeds. Patients notice a slowdown of the passing of time and a heightened activity of their senses, they wait in isolation “with pricked ears for the creaking of a stair” that might announce the arrival of visitors (ibid.: 6). Although Woolf’s essay depicts patients’ painful experiences of waiting in suspense for the arrival of a visitor –​a process which Schweizer identifies as waiting with a purpose (Schweizer 2008: vii) –​, Woolf’s take on this process of waiting is more productive than Charles Lamb’s from whose letters she quotes in her essay (Woolf 2012:20): as her text demonstrates, she, in contrast to Lamb, did not regard the mind as “unwholesome food” to prey on (Ainger 2011: 159). In “On Being Ill”, times of waiting in solitude on the sickbed allow for reflections on the lack of a creative and candid language that describes the dramatic changes caused by illness: the sentence “I am in bed with influenza” cannot convey the great experience; how the world has changed its shape; the tools of business grown remote; the sounds of festival become romantic like a merry-​go-​round heard across far fields; and friends have changed, some putting on a strange beauty, others deformed to the squatness of toads, while the whole landscape of life lies remote and fair, like the shore seen from a ship far out at sea, […] the experience cannot be imparted […] his [the invalid’s] own suffering serves but to wake memories in his friends’ minds of their influenzas, their aches and pains which went unwept last February […]. woolf 2012: 8–​9, emphasis in the original

The end of this passage focuses on the incommunicability of experiences of illness and shows that visitors whose company seems to relieve the process of waiting on sickbeds do not listen to the patient’s (in this case a male invalid’s) sorrows and sufferings but immediately turn to their own experiences

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of sickness which did not arouse sympathy in others (an observation made by Woolf in her diary entry from 27 November 1925, cf. Woolf 1980: 47). In “On Being Ill”, the narrative voice rejects the philosophy of sympathy which emphasises the connectedness of human beings through the operation of the passions10 and which suggests that “human beings [are] so tied together by common needs and fears that a twitch at one wrist jerks another, where however strange your experience other people have had it too” (Woolf 2012:  11). The following passage emphasises the impenetrability of the self and the other that becomes palpable during illness: We do not know our own souls, let  alone the souls of others. Human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way. There is a virgin forest in each; a snowfield where even the print of birds’ feet is unknown. Here we go alone, and like it better so. Always to have sympathy, always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable. (ibid.: 11-​2) Another obstacle that prevents people from showing sympathy is related to modern urban life: cities always hold “some little distraction” (ibid.: 9) which prevent people from a permanent attention to those in need of help and attention: “[…] an organ grinder at the corner of the hospital, a shop with book or trinket to decoy one past the prison or the workhouse, some absurdity of cat or dog to prevent one from turning the old beggar’s hieroglyphic of misery into volumes of sordid suffering […]” (ibid.: 9). The narrative voice in “On Being Ill” observes that sympathy is shown by mostly female “laggards and failures” who, like the invalids themselves, have “dropped out of the race” and have time to linger, “time to spend upon fantastic and unprofitable excursions” (ibid.: 10). According to Coates, Woolf’s portrayal of nurses and philanthropists is rather negative (2012: 6–​7). However, a closer look at Woolf’s text shows that nurses are not only characterised by obsoleteness but also by “anarchy and newness” (Woolf 2012: 10), a fact that makes them similar to the invalids in Woolf’s essay. Having rejected the illusory expectations about sympathy, the narrative voice in Woolf’s essay no longer seems to wait for an external event, e.g. the arrival of visitors. Instead, it demonstrates that visitors dwell upon and become absorbed in their reflections on the transformative effects of waiting during illness. Coates argues convincingly that in

10

This philosophy is expressed e.g. in David Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature from 1740 (2007: 236; cf. Mullan 1988: 23).

224 Röder “On Being Ill” illness becomes an empowering experience for women: “[…] for the ill female subject who is also a writer, it may become the one place where she can allow body and imagination to encounter one another uninhibited” (2012: 13). The narrative voice in “On Being Ill” reflects on the fact that invalids cease to function in accordance with social norms and to fulfil the purposes assigned to them in the worlds of warfare, business and labour. For them the enabling experience of “waiting on” (Schweizer 2008: 79) during illness opens up new perspectives, provides new insights and amounts to an alternative form of existence which partly resembles that of the flâneur (ibid.: 80). In Woolf’s essay, this alternative form of existence is strongly informed by a relational consciousness which rejects the norms and values of ordinary life (efficiency, sense of duty, obedience, battle readiness): we cease to be soldiers in the army of the upright; we become deserters. They march to the battle. We float with the sticks on the stream; helter-​ skelter with the dead leaves on the lawn, irresponsible and disinterested and able, perhaps for the first time for years, to look round, to look up –​to look, for example, at the sky. woolf 2012: 12

Invalids are described as “sky-​gazer[s]‌” who experience intense moments of epiphany because illness gives them the freedom to do what they normally cannot do (look at clouds and flowers, contemplate) and to resist society’s demands (cf. ibid.: 13). In Woolf’s essay, illness is indeed a “radicalising experience” (Wilson 2009: 76), it makes invalids take on “a revolutionary stance […] opposed to the official order” (Dubino 1994: 39). The ill are “deserters”, “outlaws” (Woolf 2012: 12, 22) or “refuseniks” (Lee 2012: xxx), they do not accept conventions but blurt out unpleasant, offensive truths, they turn sympathizers away, do not go to work, waste time and fantasise, do not go to church or believe in heaven (Woolf 2012: 11–​7; cf. Lee 2012: xxx). During their experiences of waiting on, Harold Schweizer observes, waiters focus on objects as a compensation for their inability to act, to end the process of waiting (cf. 2008: 17, 22, 80). In “On Being Ill” invalids look at animate and inanimate objects11 and phenomena in their surroundings (the sky, clouds,

11

In accordance with object relations theory (especially with the work of Melanie Klein), I  use the word “object” to denote all entities to which subjects relate themselves. On Woolf’s familiarity with Melanie Klein’s work from 1925 onwards see Abel (1989: x., 9–​19, esp. 13).

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flowers, books), they dwell upon them, lose themselves in them and seem to merge with or flow into them: Now, lying recumbent, staring straight up, the sky is discovered to be something so different […] that really it is a little shocking. This then has been going on all the time without our knowing it! –​this incessant making up of shapes and casting them down, this buffeting of clouds together, […] this interminable experiment with gold shafts and blue shadows, […] this endless activity […]. woolf 2012: 13

Coates argues convincingly that although Woolf dispenses with sympathy as “false identification with another’s physical or emotional state” (2012: 9–​10), she describes a “ ‘physics’ of sympathy” that exists between invalids and their surroundings and that “does not refuse individuality” (2012: 10). It is important to emphasise that the “ ‘physics’ of sympathy” in “On Being Ill” does not render subjects, objects or phenomena transparent. Instead, they are opaque, self-​ absorbed, active, resistant and independent and refuse to fulfil the purpose or function assigned to them: Divinely beautiful it [the sky] is also divinely heartless. Immeasurable resources are used for some purpose which has nothing to do with human pleasure or human profit. If we were all laid prone, stiff, still the sky would be experimenting with its blues and its golds. woolf 2012: 14

Even animate objects closer to invalids than the sky are depicted as being entirely self-​sufficient and independent: Perhaps then, if we look down at something very small and close and familiar, we shall find sympathy. Let us examine the rose. We have seen it so often flowering in bowls […] that we have forgotten how it stands, still and steady, throughout an entire afternoon in the earth. It preserves a demeanour of perfect dignity and self-​possession. […] There they [the flowers] stand; and it is of these, the stillest, the most self-​ sufficient of all things that human beings have made companions […]. (ibid.: 14-​5) The description of phenomena and objects surrounding patients in the passages quoted above (the sky, clouds, flowers) strongly echoes Woolf’s depiction

226 Röder of her view of the garden from her sickroom at Monk’s House included in her diary entry from 14 September 1925: A disgraceful fact –​I am writing this at 10 in the morning in bed in the little room looking into the garden, the sun beaming steady, the vine leaves transparent green […]. I am writing this partly to test my poor bunch of nerves at the back of my neck –​will they hold or give again, as they have done so often? –​for I’m amphibious still, in bed & out of it; partly to glut my itch (“glut” and “itch”!) for writing. It is the great solace, & scourge. woolf 1980: 40

The fact that the objects in “On Being Ill” do not fulfil the functions assigned to them does not imply that they have no effect on invalids, on the contrary, flowers and books console and refresh precisely because of their self-​absorption and forgetfulness: Wonderful to relate, poets have found religion in nature; people live in the country to learn virtue from plants. It is in their indifference that they are comforting. That snowfield of the mind, where man has not trodden, is visited by the cloud, kissed by the falling petal, as, in another sphere, it is the great artists, the Miltons and the Popes, who console not by their thought of us but by their forgetfulness. woolf 2012: 15-​6

The inanimate objects in the sickrooms depicted in “On Being Ill” are likewise characterised by their refusal to fulfil their proper functions. In their resistance to pragmatic functionality and their self-​absorption they resemble the nurses (appearing under their initials “C.L.”, “A.R.” and “K.T.”) and patients depicted in Woolf’s essay: C. L. […], sitting by the stale sickroom fire, builds up, with touches at once sober and imaginative, the nursery fender, the loaf, the lamp, barrel organs in the street, and all the simple old wives’ tales of pinafores and escapades; A. R., the rash, the magnanimous, who, if you fancied a giant tortoise to solace you or theorbo to cheer you, would ransack the markets of London and procure them somehow; […] the frivolous K. T., who, dressed in silks and feathers, powdered and painted […] as if for a banquet of Kings and Queens, spends her whole brightness in the gloom of the sick room, and makes the medicine bottles ring and the flames shoot up with her gossip and her mimicry. (ibid.: 10-​1)

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In this passage, the nurses attend to their patients’ (sometimes extravagant) desires to be entertained during their long hours of waiting for medical treatments, visits, meals, amelioration, recovery, or, in some cases, death. They do so in ways that express their own idiosyncratic personalities, interests and dreams, to the extent that they themselves, their patients as well as the medical objects in their surroundings lose their practical purpose and passivity, that is, their status as objects. They become active and merge and move with the aesthetic surplus energy of fantastic tales and mimicry. None of the disconnected objects or subjects inside and outside of the sickrooms described above fulfils the purpose for which it was created or employed. They are neither in place nor compose an orderly functional whole.12 Instead, they follow their own idiosyncratic, playful, extravagant, erratic, uncontrollable motions, interests and passions. No image of a sickroom could be more different from that described by Julia Stephen in her manual for nurses in which all inanimate and animate objects are rather passive, fulfil their strictly controlled purpose and function as parts of a given, fully transparent and meaningful whole: When evening draws on, the nurse should see that she has all the things in readiness that her patient can possibly require. She should not only have the food and medicines which are to be taken during the night, but she should see that the kettle is full, that she has matches, wood, and coal, a spare candle or two, plenty of water, and that materials for making poultices are at hand. […] Plants and flowers should be placed so as to show their best shape and colour to the invalid’s eye, and in such a position as to be seen by her easily without any exertion. stephen 2012: 82, 85

In “On Being Ill”, the invalids’ contemplation of the objects or subjects in their surroundings is no everlasting occupation because invalids “cannot stiffen peaceably into glassy mounds” but “must wriggle” as long as they are alive (Woolf 2012: 17). This wriggling often takes the form of a desire for reading. In Woolf’s descriptions of her sickroom, books and papers are her most frequent companions: “There is one dog in my room, and nothing else but books, papers, and pillows and glasses of milk and quilts that have fallen off my bed and so on” (Woolf 1977: 204–​5). In “On Being Ill”, the reading experiences of the invalids differ decisively from their experiences during health:  “Illness

12

On the particularity of objects on which waiters focus, on their accidental presence and their refusal to assemble into a meaningful, functional whole see Schweizer (2008: 39–​40).

228 Röder makes us disinclined for the long campaigns that prose extracts. We cannot command all our faculties and keep our reason and our judgement and our memory at attention while chapter swings on top of chapter […]” (Woolf 2012: 19). The reading practices of the invalids tend to be “sudden, fitful, intense”, fragmentary, discontinuous and inconclusive, they “break off a line or two and let them open in the depths of the mind” (ibid.: 20). The ill person first focuses on the physical qualities of poetical lines that appeal to the senses (“a sound, a colour, here a stress, there a pause”) rather than to reason (ibid.:  21). Instead of extracting their proper functional “surface meaning” (ibid.), invalids creep beneath some obscure poem by Mallarmé or Donne, some phrase in Latin or Greek, and the words give out their scent and distil their flavour, and then, if at last we grasp the meaning, it is all the richer for having come to us sensually first, by way of the palate and the nostrils, like some queer odour. (ibid.: 21-​2) Similar to the other animate and inanimate objects or subjects inside and outside of sickrooms, books cease to fulfil their orderly, predictable function of providing straight-​forward information, poems become physical objects one creeps beneath, “words seem to possess a “mystic quality” (ibid.:  21). Books vibrate in a physical connection with their readers, but their meaning often remains unfathomable: “Incomprehensibility has an enormous power over us in illness […]. In health meaning has encroached upon sound. Our intelligence domineers over our senses” (ibid.). In periods of illness, however, “the police” are “off duty” (ibid.). What is more, invalids tend to prefer biographies or trash to high-​brow literature because they lend themselves to the “rashness” of the invalid’s reading practice (ibid.: 22). In her letter to Vita Sackville-​West from 23 September 1925, Woolf writes: “Hardly a word written, masses of complete trash read […]” (Woolf 1977: 214). Fittingly, the end of “On Being Ill” focuses on Augustus Hare’s extensive double biography The Story of Two Noble Lives (1893) which is modelled on the example of Plutarch’s Parallel Lives. Hare’s “fat volumes” are eagerly consumed by invalids waiting for endless hours on their sickbeds (Woolf 2012: 24). Readers “flounder and threaten to sink in a plethora of aunts and uncles” (ibid.) and the Victorian masters portrayed by Hare keep us waiting intolerably while they prepare our minds for whatever it may be –​the surprise, or the lack of surprise. So Hare, too, takes his time; the charm steals upon us imperceptibly; by degrees we become almost

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one of the family, yet not quite, for our sense of the oddity of it all remains […]. (ibid.) While the essay focuses on sick readers who wait for a surprising turn of events and on their growing fascination as they turn the masses of pages of Hare’s fat volumes, it achieves a transition to the practices of waiting performed by Hare’s Victorian heroines Charlotte Canning, Countess Canning and Louisa Anne Beresford, Marchioness of Waterford, who expect the return of their husbands. Whereas Charlotte married Earl Canning who became Governor-​ General of India, went to India with him, became a watercolour artist and died of malaria, Louisa married Lord Waterford and went to Ireland (ibid.: 26). Both Charlotte and Louisa led rather isolated but not inactive lives. Louisa drew and painted and worked as a philanthropist: Louisa, dumped down in Ireland with Lord Waterford at the hunt all day, was often very lonely; but she stuck to her post, visited the poor, spoke words of comfort […] and sketched and sketched. Thousands of notebooks were filled with pen and ink drawings of an evening […] she designed frescoes for schoolrooms […] painted Holy Families in abundance, until the great Watts exclaimed that here was Titian’s peer and Raphael’s master! At that Lady Waterford laughed […] and said that she was nothing but a sketcher; had scarcely had a lesson in her life –​witness her angel’s wings scandalously unfinished. Moreover, there was her father’s house forever falling into the sea; she must shore it up; must entertain her friends; must fill her days with all sorts of charities, till her Lord came home from hunting […]. Off he would ride again, stately as a crusader, to hunt the fox, and she would wave to him and think each time, what if this should be the last? (ibid.: 27-​8) This passage seems to depict Lady Waterford as being strongly influenced by the Victorian ideal of the angel in the house. However, her painting of unfinished angels’ wings signals a hesitation and a deviation from the traditional image (ibid.: 27). In her passionate devotion to drawing and painting, she frees herself from her proper social role and engages in a creative, self-​absorbed activity which holds the potential for an alternative form of existence as a female artist. When the long-​feared (or half wished-​for?) events of her husband’s accident and sudden death finally occur, she is overcome by a fit of agony (ibid.: 28). This scene ends Woolf’s essay and has given rise to strongly diverging readings: for Charon, the final lines of Woolf’s essay highlight the difficult processes of ­detecting and meeting the needs of suffering human beings

230 Röder (Charon 2012: 114).13 Coates, by contrast, contributes a feminist reading: “Woolf moves us, in an essay on illness, to ponder pain and agony as potentially generative forces for this woman artist who finds herself on the cusp of the twentieth century without a master” (Coates 2012: 8). Likewise, Dubino argues that the end of “On Being Ill” points to a new beginning, to the end of the age of the patriarchal family and the rise of the woman artist (Dubino 1994: 43). Woolf’s essay is informed by the hope for a more independent life of the female artist, a possibility envisaged during creative, speculative processes of contemplation and imaginative reading on sickbeds. Its abrupt and curiously open ending expresses the full impact of the reflective, embodied processes of waiting on sickbeds that turn the objects of contemplation (the ill body, books, medical objects, parts of the natural world, female artists, patients, nurses etc.) into active, opaque, unpredictable entities that hold the potential of surprise and change. 5

Conclusion

In my reading, I  intended to show that the practices of waiting depicted in Woolf’s essay, itself the outcome of such practice, turn the waiter’s objects of contemplation (the sick body, subjects and objects inside and outside of sickrooms, women in Victorian houses) into active and impenetrable entities. Neither the ill nor the female body is viewed as a defective, passive object or as a case that needs to be controlled, fixed, healed or normalised. Instead, they are described as sites of complexity, creativity, unpredictability, activity and resistance.14 The speculative approach of Woolf’s illness essay emphasises the provisional character of the insights it provides. Its depiction of waiters’ practices of contemplation and of reading in sickrooms as well as of drawing in Victorian houses generate a tentative, speculative understanding of surprising experiences, creative changes in perception and alternative forms of existence.

References



Primary Sources

Ainger, Alfred (2011): Charles Lamb. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Print. Hare, Augustus (1893): The Story of Two Noble Lives. New York: Anson Randolph.

13 14

For a similar reading see Sorum (2005: 37). On sick and disabled bodies as sites of resistance see Price and Shildrick (2002: 68, 70).

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Hume, David (2007): A Treatise of Human Nature. 1738. Ed. David and Mary Norton. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Stephen, Julia (2012): “Notes from Sick Rooms.” On Being Ill by Virginia Woolf with Notes from Sick Rooms by Julia Stephen. Ashfield, Massachusetts: Paris Press. 51–​105. Woolf, Virginia (1977): The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Volume III. Ed. Nigel Nicolson. London: The Hogarth Press. Woolf, Virginia (1980): The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Volume III: 1925–​1930. Ed. Anne Olivier Bell. London: The Hogarth Press. Woolf, Virginia (2012): “On Being Ill.” On Being Ill by Virginia Woolf with Notes from Sick Rooms by Julia Stephen. Ashfield, Massachusetts: Paris Press. 3–​28.



Secondary Sources

Abel, Elizabeth (1989): Virginia Woolf and the Fictions of Psychoanalysis. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Berry-​Cabán, Cristóbal S. (2006): “The Great Confessional: Virginia Woolf on Illness.” The International Journal of Healing and Caring 6.1: 1–​7. Caramagno, Thomas C. (1988): “Manic-​depressive Psychosis and Critical Approaches to Virginia Woolf’s Life and Work.” PMLA 103.1: 10–​23. Caramagno, Thomas C. (1992): The Flight of the Mind: Virginia Woolf’s Art and Manic-​ Depressive Illness. Berkeley: University of California Press. Charon, Rita (2012):  “Afterword.” On Being Ill by Virginia Woolf with Notes from Sick Rooms by Julia Stephen. Ashfield, Massachusetts: Paris Press. 109–​16. Coates, Kimberley Engdahl (2012): “Phantoms, Fancy (And) Symptoms: Virginia Woolf and The Art of Being Ill.” Woolf Studies Annual 18: 1–​28. Coogan, Thomas (2008): “The Disabled Body: Style, Identity and Life Writing,” Unpublished Dissertation (University of Leicester). 19 Dec. 2016 . Accessed 20 Nov. 2018. Dubino, Jeanne (1994):  “On Illness as Carnival:  The Body as Discovery in Virginia Woolf’s ‘On Being Ill’ and Mikhail Bachtin’s Rabelais and His World.” Ed. Mark Hussey and Vara Neverow. Virginia Woolf: Emerging Perspectives. Selected Papers from the Third Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf. New York: Pace University Press. 38–​43. Hunsaker Hawkins, Anne (1999): Reconstructing Illness. Studies in Pathography. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press. Jurecic, Ann (2016): “The Illness Essay.” Life Writing 13.1: 13–​26. Lee, Hermione (2010): “Virginia Woolf’s Essays.” The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf. Ed. Susan Sellers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 89–​106. Lee, Hermione (2012):  Introduction:  ‘On Being Ill’. On Being Ill with Notes from Sick Rooms by Julia Stephen. Ashfield, Massachusetts: Paris Press. xiii-​xxxvi. Mullan, John (1988):  Sentiment and Sociability. The Language of Feeling in the Eighteenth Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

232 Röder Price, Janet and Margrit Shildrick (2002): “Bodies Together: Touch, Ethics and Disability.” Disability/​Postmodernity: Embodying Disability Theory. Ed. Mairian Corker and Tom Shakespeare. London, New York: Continuum. 63–​75. Ryan, Derek (2012):  Woolf and Contemporary Philosophy, Virginia Woolf in Context. Ed. Bryony Randall and Jane Goldman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 362–​75. Schweizer, Harold (2008): On Waiting. New York and London: Routledge. Showalter, Elaine (1987):  The Female Malady:  Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830–​1980. London: Virago. Sorum, Eva (2005): “Masochistic Modernisms: A Reading of Eliot and Woolf.” Journal of Modern Literature 28.3: 25–​43. Utell, Janine (2016): “View from the Sickroom: Virginia Woolf, Dorothy Wordsworth, and Writing Women’s Lives of Illness.” Life Writing 13.1: 27–​45. Welsch, Camille-​Yvette (2005): “Biography on Virginia Woolf.” Virginia Woolf. Ed. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers. 5–​66. Wilson, Lucy (2009): “Illness and Insight: Virginia Woolf and Caribbean Women Writers vs. Western Medicine.” Kunapipi 31.2: 71–​81.

Index A Frolic of His Own 58–​9 A Hologram for the King  11, 108–​10, 113, 115 Absurdity 103, 108, 115, 127–​32, 134, 137–​ 8, 223 Ontological 198, 211  See also theatre of the absurd Action bias 9 Activity 8, 41, 66n, 79, 109–​10, 110n2, 114, 128, 155, 157–​9, 161–​3, 167, 181, 195, 199, 202, 205–​7, 222, 225, 227, 229–​30  See also inactivity Africa 6, 11–​2, 61, 97, 99, 102, 125, 127, 131–​4, 137 South 12, 61, 125, 127, 131–​4 Agamben, Giorgio 6, 6n1, 11, 94–​5, 95n, 99, 105, 105n2 Agency 12, 39, 62, 68, 70, 89, 100, 155–​7, 162–​4, 167, 170 Customs and Border Protection Agency 4 United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinians in the Near East 176 Allegory 103, 105 American colonies 82 Ancien Régime 19–​20 And the Girls in Their Sunday Dresses 12, 125, 127, 132–​7 Angel in the house 229 Angelus Novus 184–​5, 191 Antechamber 9–​10, 17, 20–​9, 31, 39, 165 Anteroom 20, 23, 27–​8 Anthropology 7, 39–​40, 59, 131 Anticamera 21–​22, 22n, 24, 26–​27 Anticipation 8–​9, 12, 29, 35, 37, 39–​41, 44–​5, 47, 52, 73, 98, 101, 105, 109, 111, 115, 120, 164–​6 Anxiety 69, 97, 125, 128, 135, 206  See also fear  See also apprehension Apocalypse 67, 76 Apprehension 9, 199–​200, 205–​7 Archaeology 36, 44 Archbishop of Cologne 23 Architecture 9–​10, 17, 21, 22n, 24–​8, 35–​9, 41, 43–​4, 48, 50, 52–​55, 72n, 143, 200n, 201

Arrival 7–​8, 18, 25, 39, 45, 50, 67, 75, 96, 98, 101, 10–​6, 108–​9, 111–​4, 117–​8, 118n, 120–​2, 125, 127–​8, 133, 162, 164, 192, 200, 222–​3 Assembling rooms 37 Atlantic 43 Augé, Marc 1, 1n2, 7, 94, 96, 98 Auyero, Javier 3, 136 Avenir 98 Bakhtin, Mikhail 222 Banishment 82 Banksy 179 Barbalet, J.M. 203, 206 Bare life 95 Bauman, Zygmunt 3 Bayart, Jean-​François 1, 5, 94, 96 Beckett, Samuel 10–​2, 67, 98, 102–​4, 108–​9, 114, 118n, 121, 125–​32, 134–​7, 141, 158n, 165 Benjamin, Walter 72, 96, 184 Bentham, Jeremy 203 Berger, John 60 Bergson, Henri 200, 202, 220, 220n8 Bethlehem 176–​8, 180, 193–​4 Better Together 164–​5 Biography 1, 6–​7, 64, 95, 103, 149–​50, 215, 218–​20, 228 Bion, Wilfred R. 12, 140–​1 Bissell, David 2, 36, 96, 201n, 205, 207, 209 Bissett, Alan 171 Blair, Tony 161 Blau, Herbert 126, 128–​9 Bleak House 59, 65 Border 74–​5n, 95–​6, 163n, 192 Boredom 2, 10, 13, 18, 41, 110n, 198–​200, 202–​6, 209, 211 Borges, Jorge Luis 65, 69, 75n Bourdieu, Pierre 5–​6, 98, 105, 105n Brecht, Berthold 103, 146 Brexit 155, 156n, 168–​71 British nationalism 164 Broch, Hermann 12, 140–​2, 142n, 143, 143n, 144, 144n, 145, 145n, 146, 149–​50, 152 Brown, Gordon 165 Bureaucracy 1, 5, 68–​9, 72, 96, 133 Bury, Thomas 44–​6

234 Index Bus transportation 1, 4, 7, 8, 35, 45, 96  See also passages; transportation Cab 45  See also passages; transportation Cairns, Craig 161 Callaghan, James 159–​60 Cameron, David 164–​5 Camp 1, 6–​7, 9–​13, 94–​102, 104–​6, 162, 168n, 176–​85, 188–​92, 195 Campaign for a Scottish Assembly 160 Canaletto 26 Cape Town, South Africa 125, 127, 131–​2 Capitalism 1, 3, 5, 7, 10, 19, 39, 61, 72n, 82, 162, 177, 181 Carceral geographer 83–​4 Ceremonial hall 21 Charlottenburg Castle 26 Chronological conceptualisation 41 Citizen 99, 132, 137, 171 City 37, 45, 48, 53, 99, 108, 115–​7, 121, 166, 176–​7, 187 Claim of Right for Scotland 160 Clapton, Gary 3 Clock 18, 29, 68, 202 Time 7, 36, 40, 86, 199 Coaching Inn 37, 39–​40, 43 Commercial  Commercialisation 52 Exploitation 193 Space 5, 53 Conclusion 55, 65, 74, 87, 103, 110–​1, 116, 122, 132, 134, 155–​6, 219, 228 Concourse 53–​5 Confined spaces 26, 29, 110n, 113, 155–​6, 118–​9, 122, 140, 142, 144, 147–​8 Container 12, 97, 114, 141 Contingency 119, 138, 219–​20 Control 5–​6, 9, 28, 30, 38, 40, 50, 55, 69, 73, 75–​6, 80–​1, 85, 88–​90, 108, 131, 140, 142, 158, 164–​6, 170, 177, 201, 220, 227, 230 Corridors 10, 26–​7, 50, 208–​9 Cosimo i, Grand Duke of Tuscany 23 Court 9, 11, 18, 21, 23–​4, 26–​9, 31 Room 61, 69, 70n Protocol 20, 20n, 22, 22n, 28 Craig, Jeffrey 3, 98 Crapanzano, Vincent 131

Creativity 143, 146, 146n, 190–​1, 195, 214, 220, 220n9, 222, 229–​30 Crime 61, 80, 82, 82n, 83, 85–​6, 88–​9, 95 Critical theory 58–​76 Crown Street Station 43–​4, 46 Cultural code 198, 201 Cultural geography 58, 60, 70 Cultural studies 3, 36 Cunningham, George 159 Customs and Border Protection Agency  see agency Dark City 64 Dauphine 23 De Certeau, Michel 9, 70n, 83–​4 De Chabot, Duc and Duchess 18–​9 Death 13, 28, 45, 59, 61–​4, 67–​8, 68n, 71, 73, 76, 81, 87, 106, 111n, 116–​7, 119, 140–​5, 147, 151, 163, 177–​8, 181, 183–​4, 199–​200, 200n, 203, 209–​12, 220, 220n8, 221, 224, 227, 229 Deceleration 37, 215 Deferral 1, 3, 9, 11, 58–​9, 63–​5, 67–​8, 68n, 75, 117–​8, 125, 133, 165 Defiance 11, 89 Delay 1, 3, 5, 7, 11, 28, 45, 47, 58–​63, 65–​8, 72, 96, 109, 200 Deleuze, Gilles 108, 110, 113–​6, 113n, 114n8, 114n9, 115n, 118–​20 Democracy 10, 39, 39n, 135, 161–​2, 162n, 168n, 182–​3 Depression 97, 167, 215  See also mental illness Derrida, Jacque 67, 108, 110–​2, 111n, 112n4, 115n, 117–​20 Detention centres 1, 6, 9, 94, 96, 100–​1 Devolution 155, 157–​67, 162n7, 168n, 171 Dewar, Donald 161–​2, 166 Dheisheh 12–​3, 176–​83, 185, 187–​91, 195 Dickens, Charles 11, 58–​9, 65, 68, 79, 81–​7, 82n, 83n, 89–​90, 102 Discipline 11, 31, 38–​9, 79, 81–​4, 88, 101 Displacement 62, 66, 95, 97, 99, 101, 141 Dissatisfaction 198, 205–​6, 209, 211, 219 Dobelli, Rolf 9 Docile Bodies 79, 82 Duration 3, 12–​3, 28, 38, 50, 55, 61, 67, 70, 72, 80–​1, 88, 95–​7, 109, 113n, 122, 155, 171, 200, 202, 205–​8, 217

Index Dwelling 219, 223, 225 Dylan, Bob 1 Dystopia 102, 110n2 Early modern 17, 20, 20n, 27, 30 Edge of Tomorrow 64 Edinburgh Agreement 163 Eggers, Dave 11, 108–​10, 110n1, 110n2, 116–​22, 117n, 118n Eliot, T.S. 69, 214n, 215, 216n1, 220 Embodiment 13, 24, 64, 71, 76, 86, 131, 142, 190, 202, 208, 214–​5, 217, 219, 221–​2, 230 Emplotment 95 Empowerment 8, 12, 157, 167, 203, 220, 224  See also power Encyclopedism 20, 59–​60, 63–​4, 69–​71, 73–​5, 75n End 8, 10–​3, 24, 27, 29–​30, 36, 43, 48, 50, 52–​3, 59, 63–​4, 67–​8, 74, 82, 89–​90, 101, 110, 116, 118, 129, 134, 162–​3, 162n7, 166, 168n, 169, 177, 182, 199–​201, 210, 222, 224–​5, 227 Ending 7, 13, 20, 22, 30, 35, 49, 55, 58–​67, 68–​72, 74–​6, 82, 84–​5, 87–​8, 99, 106, 108–​9, 110n, 111–​2, 116, 120–​2, 129, 133, 141–​2, 149n23, 150, 152, 156, 160, 163–​5, 170–​1, 177, 198–​9, 202, 211, 217, 222, 224, 228–​30 Endlessness 7–​8, 11, 63–​5, 72–​4, 76, 86, 98, 116, 119, 155, 162–​4, 171, 219, 225, 228 Enfilade 21, 23 English Channel 43 Enlightenment 29, 148 Entrance plaza 117 Epiphany 137, 224 Escape 19, 74–​5, 86–​7, 140, 144, 152, 219 Eschatology 58–​9, 61, 67–​9, 68n, 73, 75–​6, 75n Escorial 23, 23n Esslin, Martin 126, 128, 130–​1 Ethnography 36 Event 11, 39, 64, 67, 70, 72, 74, 76, 87, 94, 98, 105, 108–​22, 110n2, 111n, 112n4, 113n, 114n9, 115n, 130, 151, 163, 165–​7, 184, 187, 198–​9, 203, 205–​6, 208–​10, 223, 229 Eventful 108–​15, 110n2, 112n5, 118, 120–​2 Eventless 110, 114–​5, 188, 120–​2, 163, 167, 198–​9, 202, 206 Everyday 1–​3, 6, 10, 27, 31, 35, 98, 137, 156n1 Ewing, Winnie 159

235 Exhaustion 65, 71, 75–​6, 80, 98, 110, 114–​21, 114n9 Exile 12, 102, 133, 141, 191 Existential dimension 199 Expectation 8, 29, 59, 67, 72, 98, 101, 105, 110n2, 111, 114, 117–​8, 127, 143, 156, 158, 167, 199–​200, 205, 208, 210–​1, 223, 229 Extra-​temporality 94 Fear 8, 13, 76, 106, 131, 142–​5, 188, 198–​200, 205, 209, 218, 223, 229 Feminism 220, 230 Fifty First Dates 64 Flaneur 224 Flexitime 136 Florence 21, 26 Forth-​coming 98 Foucault, Michael 60, 70, 70n, 79, 82–​3, 88 France 6, 17–​9, 22–​3, 22n, 29, 38, 45, 47–​8, 70n, 75, 101, 103–​4, 114n7, 149, 219 Franklin, Benjamin 29 French capital 19 Freschot, Casimir 27–​8 Freud, Sigmund 59, 64, 141 Friction 38 Gaddis, William 58–​9, 61–​3, 65–​7, 70, 72, 74 Galsworthy, John 11, 79–​81, 83–​4, 86–​90 Gasparini, Giovanni 54, 85, 157, 165 Gender 71, 102, 134, 138, 214–​6, 220 Geneva 24 Globalisation 36, 110, 110n1 Godot see Waiting for Godot Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 25 Gracián, Baltasar 29–​30 Graffiti and murals 10, 13, 176–​9, 181, 183, 187, 189–​91, 193 Grass, Günter 13, 184 Groundhog Day 64, 74–​5 Gulliver’s Travels 63 Hage, Ghassan 7, 19n5, 98, 164 Handala 13, 176, 179–​93, 195 Health 13, 81, 88–​90, 106, 216, 219, 221, 227–​8  See also illness Healthcare 3, 8, 220–​1 Heidegger, Martin 111n Holy Roman Empire 17, 142 Homan, Sidney 127, 130

236 Index Homer 2 Hospital 9–​10, 13, 22, 65, 82, 146, 148–​9, 198–​ 202, 200n, 205, 208n, 211 Human geography 36 Hypocrisy 36 Identity 7, 13, 25, 72, 95, 99, 101–​2, 104, 106, 134, 156n1, 159, 161, 177, 195, 204, 215, 219 Illness 13, 87, 88, 89, 148, 203, 214–​24, 220n9, 227–​30 Illness Essay 218–​20, 230 Immobility 1, 3, 6, 7, 9, 12–​3, 36, 38, 95–​6, 103, 106, 119, 143–​4, 147, 149, 160, 177, 200–​1, 203 Impatience 4–​5, 52, 65, 148, 163, 207–​8, 217  See also patience Imprisonment See prison Inactivity 9, 29, 90, 155, 157, 162, 229 Active 155, 162 Independence 10, 12–​3, 38, 95, 133, 155–​65, 164n13, 167–​71, 168n, 176, 188, 225, 230 Indeterminacy 8, 10, 80, 110 Industry 3, 29, 48–​9, 52, 55, 160 Inexperienceability  Of the present 198n1, 209, 211 Of the future 209 Infrastructure 36–​8, 40, 55 Inmate 81–​2, 84–​6, 88–​9, 126–​30, 146–​8, 146n15 Insane asylums 141, 150 Instant gratification 5, 65 Inter-​textuality 97, 102 Intersections 4, 9, 13, 50, 52 Involvement 198, 202–​5, 207–​8 Israel 176, 178, 180–​1, 185, 193–​4 Italy 17, 21–​2, 22n, 28 66, 101, 103 Itinerary 7, 96 Jacob’s Ladder 64 Jail see Prison Jankélévitch, Vladimir 206–​7 Juridical rule 63, 66, 95 Justice 3, 61, 66–​8, 66n, 71, 80, 89, 134 Justice 87–​8, 90 Kafka, Franz 10–​2, 67–​8, 72, 164 Kant, Immanuel 69, 71 Kärrholm, Mattias 158, 164 Kermode, Frank 59, 64

Khosravi, Shahram 7, 94, 97 King Frederick ii of Prussia 26 King Henri ii 22 King Henri iii 22 King Louis xiv 23, 24n King, Martin Luther Jr. 6–​7 King Robert the Bruce of Scotland 156 Klee, Paul 184–​5, 191 Koshravi, Sharam 3 Kracauer, Sigfried 7–​8, 30 Krishnan, Shunmuga 4 Lampedusa, Ceuta 95 Larkin, Philip 13, 198–​200, 200n, 203–​7, 209–​12 Law 11, 58–​72, 72n, 105, 168, 188–​9, 217, 221, 224 Literature and 59–​61, 63–​8 Lawyer 58, 61–​3, 66–​9, 71  See also legality Leach, Neil 7, 8 Lee, Hermione 214–​6, 215n, 216n2, 218, 224 Lefebvre, Henri 3–​4, 70, 70n Legality  Legal delay 11, 58, 65–​6, 68 Legal language 68 Legal narratives 58, 60, 63, 65, 68, 70 Legal spaces 61, 64, 70, 72n Legal system 6, 11, 58, 62–​70, 72, 95, 100, 103, 158, 170 Legal texts 63 Legal time 61 Legal waiting see waiting Lesotho 132–​3, 135, 137 Liberation 12, 72, 125, 136, 138, 140, 142, 145, 148, 178, 183, 208 Limbo 20, 99, 101 Constitutional 155 Legal 11, 94–​5 Temporal 6–​7 Liminality  Space 39, 45, 94, 199–​201 Time 5, 60, 96, 155, 171 Post-​ 171 Linearity 6, 21, 113, 200 Non-​ 106, 114, 119 Lingering 203, 207, 217, 219, 223 Living in the past 134 Lobbies 1, 7

237

Index Loops 59–​60, 63–​5, 76  See also waiting, loops of Lounges 1, 199 Louvre 22

Office buildings 28, 39, 94, 96 Oppression 2, 12, 84, 136–​7, 147 Organisational meaning 36 Osondu, E.C. 11, 94–​5, 97–​102, 104–​6

Martyrdom 13, 178–​9, 181–​2, 186, 191 Masochism 59, 64–​5, 130, 220 Masses 3, 36, 38–​9, 50, 54, 73, 82, 134, 228–​9 Massey, Doreen 4 May, Jon 2–​3 McCarthy, Tom 67, 69, 72–​6, 75n, 76n Mda, Zakes 12, 125, 127, 132–​8 Memorials 71–​2, 176–​9, 183 Mengestu, Dinaw 94–​5, 100–​1 Mental illness 87–​8, 148, 216  See also depression Migration 4, 94–​5, 103 Millenarianism 58, 68, 76 Mobility 1–​7, 9, 11–​3, 35, 38–​9, 47–​9, 53, 55, 94–​6, 104, 129, 135–​7, 170, 195, 220 Immobility 1, 3, 6–​7, 9, 12–​3, 36, 38, 94–​6, 103, 106, 119, 135–​7, 143–​4, 147, 149, 160, 177, 200–​1, 203 Spaces of 2, 4, 13 Modernity 1–​5, 12, 17, 20–​1, 20n, 27, 30, 35, 37, 93–​41, 45, 50, 53–​5, 60, 67–​8, 70, 72n, 76, 82, 83n, 99, 141, 150, 157, 177, 211–​2, 223 Monotony 41 Monuments 36, 43, 52, 210 Commemorative 71 Morality 82, 85, 147 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 10, 18–​20, 18n1, 18n2, 18n3, 19n4, 22, 27–​30 Murals see Graffiti Music 18–​20, 30, 126, 128

Palestine 12, 103, 176, 178, 180–​1, 183, 188–​9, 191–​5 Palimpsest 137, 146 Panopticism 5, 70n, 83, 203 Parable 68, 105, 108 Passages 7–​8, 12, 25, 45, 47, 94, 171 Passenger 4, 35–​41, 43–​5, 47–​50, 52–​55, 96 Passive voice 100, 144 Pathography 218 Patience 8, 12, 29, 73, 97, 134, 137, 143, 155, 157, 162n8, 168n, 207 Patient 3, 8–​9, 13, 141, 198–​208, 208n, 210–​2, 214, 218–​22, 225–​7, 230 Plot 1, 58, 62, 68, 72, 98, 102, 108–​10, 112, 112n5, 119, 122, 132 Political self-​determination 158 Post-​Apartheid 61 Postcolonialism 125, 127, 137 Potsdam 26 Power 2, 4–​12, 21, 23, 27, 50, 70, 103–​5, 126, 135–​6, 138, 141, 152, 157, 159–​63, 168, 168n, 170, 203, 210–​1, 218–​20 Powerlessness 3, 5, 9, 11, 157–​9, 165, 171, 203, 211, 228 Relations 2–​12, 21, 23, 27, 39, 60, 68, 70n, 84, 88, 96, 103–​5, 129, 135–​6, 140, 145, 155–​7, 159, 167, 170–​1, 193, 228  See also empowerment Present 7, 67, 74, 96, 98, 100, 111, 113n, 119, 155, 157, 169, 177, 179, 184, 190–​1, 198n1, 199–​200, 206, 209–​11 Prison 6, 9, 11–​2, 48, 61, 69, 79–​90, 83n, 100–​1, 125–​33, 138, 141, 143–​4, 146, 146n14, 148, 177, 223 Literature 11, 80–​1, 87 Warden 81–​2, 129  See also solitary confinement Psychology 1, 8, 19, 35–​6, 40–​1, 48, 53, 58, 60, 65, 70, 88–​9, 97, 144, 146, 148, 150–​1, 158, 217, 218n6, 222 Punishment 79, 81–​2, 83, 85, 89 Purgatory 58, 68, 80, 97

Narratology 1–​2, 13, 18–​9, 58–​70, 72–​6, 79, 82–​3, 85–​6, 89, 95, 97–​9, 102, 104, 109, 121–​2, 142, 144, 149, 151–​2, 161, 181, 184, 215, 218–​9, 220n8, 221, 223–​4 Legal Narratives see Legality Narrative Identity 95, 106 Waiting Narratives 60, 70, 98 Nationality 47–​8, 50, 99, 133, 156–​61, 156n1, 156n3, 163–​7, 163n10, 171 Non-​linearity see Linearity Non-​place 1, 7, 9, 13, 94, 96

238 Index Queuing 3, 5, 9, 85, 132, 135–​7 Railways 9–​10, 22, 35–​50, 52–​5  See also passages, transportation Reade, Charles 11, 79, 81–​6, 89–​90 Reconciliation Commission 61 Refugee 3, 6, 13, 87, 94–​6, 99–​104, 176, 179–​82, 184, 188–​9, 191–​3, 195 Camps 1, 7, 10–​2, 94–​7, 100, 176–​85, 188, 192, 195 Repetition 58, 59, 60, 63, 64, 65, 69, 72, 74, 75, 100, 103, 118, 207 Sackville-​West 214, 216–​8, 228 Salmond, Alex 161, 164–​5, 168, 171 San Quentin State prison 125–​30, 132 Schwartz, Barry 3, 5, 84, 135, 136 Schweizer, Harold 2, 3, 10, 19, 36, 109–​13, 122, 127, 157, 202, 204, 217, 220–​2, 224, 227 Scotland 155–​75 Smooth space 113–​5, 118–​9, 121 Soja, Edward W. 60–​1, 68, 70 Solitary confinement 11, 79–​93 Stasis 1, 9, 11, 36, 55, 69, 96, 106, 155, 208 Stream-​of-​consciousness 129, 142, 207 Striated space 108, 113–​6, 122 Sturgeon, Nicola 168–​70, 172 Suspense 65, 87, 110, 116, 120, 137, 200, 222 Synchronising 13, 18, 36–​8, 53–​4, 203, 210 Teleology 6, 10, 59, 112–​3, 127, 155, 157 Theatre  For Development 134 Of Resistance 134 Of the absurd 127–​8, 130, 134 Time  Elongation of 109, 202 Endured 202, 206 Interstitial 86, 88, 171  See also clock Timetable 2, 7, 35, 39, 40, 44, 96, 202, 208 Transit 94–​5, 191, 202  See also passages

Transportation 35–​57  See also cab; bus transportation; passages; railway Trauma 58, 64, 70, 72–​3, 104, 129, 145, 149 Uncertainty 8, 13, 43, 47, 96–​8, 105, 125–​7, 146, 155–​6 Utopia 100, 102, 149, 156, 165 Versailles 23–​4 Waithood 3, 11 Waiting  Waiting for Godot 10–​1, 102–​9, 118, 121–​2, 125–​32, 135–​8, 165 Room 1, 3, 6–​8, 10, 24, 26, 35–​55, 61, 65, 115, 128, 165, 177, 198–​211 Areas at airport gates 5–​7, 22, 38, 40, 103, 199 As a universal condition 2, 94, 125, 127, 130 Bureaucratic 1, 5, 68–​9, 72, 96, 133, 136 Chronic 96, 98 Deeper 217 Equipped 54, 85–​6, 88, 90, 98 Imperative 35, 38, 41, 48, 52–​3 Kafkaesque 10, 12, 68, 164 Learning to wait 96–​7 Legal 59, 68–​9 Loops of 59, 65 Medical 3, 10, 201–​5, 211 Passive 199, 201 Protracted 37, 136 The ~ room of history 7, 109 Wartestellen 125–​6 Weiss, Peter 140–​54 Widerstand (resistance) 11–​2, 79, 84, 131, 134, 140–​154, 166–​7, 192, 214, 216, 220, 230 Woolf, Virginia 214–​230 Yes Scotland 155, 161, 164–​5 Žižek, Slavoj 67, 70, 72, 74