In ‘n kursus in literatuurteorie daag ek my studente in die derdejaar uit: kom ons kyk na die verhaal van Rooikappie en ons probeer bepaal watter boeke is in haar mandjie te vind.
Freud of Lacan? Derrida of Jane Gallop? Harold Bloom of Jung?
Watter digters neem jy op hierdie reis van moeder na Ouma deur die donker woud (Jung) tot die ouma waar die Wolf haar inwag wat paradeer as die Ouma (Butler). En dan word sy – wat nie na die moeder se waarskuwings geluister het nie - gered deur die houtkapper. (Freud)
Is dit ‘n verhaal oor vroulike vrees vir verkragting? Cixous se kwessie van onthoofding?
Waarom die verandering van identiteit? Dalk Judith Butler se siening van identiteit wat kan verander?
Kan jy egter die vader doodmaak wat reeds dood is?, aldus Jane Gallop.
Of is die konfrontasie met die wolf dalk die digter wat sy vaderlike tradisie uitdaag?, aldus Harold Bloom. Die verhouding tussen die precursor en ephebe.
Of is hierdie teks ‘n representasie van die argeologie van interpretasie via Derrida en Freud met die onbewuste as ‘n “oorspronklike afdruk”, ‘n ruimte van teenstrydigheid?
Of vertel die verhaal iets van die Begeerte na die Ander (Lacan) en dat die leser vasgevang is in hierdie soektog na Begeerte wat bly ontglip? Soos betekenis.
Hierdie spel met die Rooikappie-verhaal is deur vele feministe al gebruik as ‘n teoretiese matriks. (Dit staan opgeteken in Gallop, Cixous en vele andere.) Ook Johan Degenaar het in die tagtigerjare in De Kat oor Rooikappie vanuit ‘n filosofiese perspektief geskryf.
II
Of hoe nou gemaak met tekste wat deur twee outeurs geskryf is soos Gilbert & Gubar? Of Deleuze & Guattari?
Aan wie behoort die outeursreg?
Aan beide. Aan sowel Rooikappie as haar moeder en ouma (die tradisie) en die wolf en houtkapper (die manlike orde).
Vrou en man. Man en vrou.
Dubbel-identiteite.
Tandempublikasies.
Want agter Lacan sien ons Freud; agter Northrop Fye skuil Jung; agter Bloom staan Northrop Frye en Freud.
III
Elke leesstrategie verklap iets van die leser. Daar kan nie ‘n onskuldige leesaksie wees nie.
Soos T.S. Eliot skryf in 1921 in Tradition and the individual talent:
No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. I mean this as a principle of æsthetic, not merely historical, criticism. The necessity that he shall conform, that he shall cohere, is not one-sided; what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new. Whoever has approved this idea of order, of the form of European, of English literature, will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past. And the poet who is aware of this will be aware of great difficulties and responsibilities.
Bibliografie:
Bloom, Harold: A map of misreading. Yale University Press, New Haven. 1975.
Butler, Judith: Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. Routledge, Londen. 1990.
Chetwynd, Tom: A dictionary of symbols. Paladin Grafton Books, Londen.
Cixous, Hélène: "Castration or Decapitation?" in Robert Con Davis & Ronald Schleifer(redd.) se Contemporary literary criticism - Literary and cultural studies. Longman, New York. 1989.
Cixous, Hélène: Sorties. opgeneem in David Lodge (red.): Modern criticism and theory - A Reader. Longman, New York, 1988.
Derrida, Jacques: Writing and difference. Vertaal deur Alan Bass. Routledge & Kegan Paul, Londen. 1978.
Eliot, T.S.: Tradition and the individual talent. Besoek 8 Mei 2022
Freud, Sigmund: The interpretation of dreams.Vertaal deur James Strachey. Penguin, Londen.1900/1976.
Frye, Northrop: Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton University, Princeton. 1957/1973.
Gallop, Jane: Feminist accused of sexual harassment. Duke University Press, Durham. 1997.
Gallop, Jane: The daughter's seduction - feminism and psychoanalysis. Cornell University Press, Ithaca. 1982.
Gilbert, Sandra M. & Gubar, Susan: The madwoman in the attic: the woman writer and the nineteenth century literary imagination. Yale University Press, New Haven. 1979.
Jung, C.G.: The collected works (Bollingen series XX). 20 volumes. Vertaal deur R.F.C. Hull. Ed. H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, Wm. McGuire. Princeton University Press, Princeton. 1953 -1979.
Lacan, Jacques: Écrits - a selection. Vertaal deur Alan Sheridan. Tavistock, Londen. 1966/1977.
Ragland, Ellie: Essays on the pleasures of death. From Freud to Lacan. Routledge, New York. 1995.
H. P. van Coller - Resensie: Nié met ander se kalwers geploeg. Besoek 6 Mei 2022
© Joan Hambidge
