Ludwig, Katharina. 2024. The Hole: Notes toward an insurrectionary poetics of the wounded text. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London [Thesis]

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Abstract or Description

I consider broken narratives through an investigation of the concepts of (narrative) holes, specifically wounds (trauma) and the mouth (voice/language) in relation to minor literatures. Holes, I argue, act as openings and portals for minor voices, with the potential to undermine and subvert entrenched patriarchal and neoliberal power structures. I claim them as sites of resistance beyond teleologically progressing temporalities. I establish the textual hole as feminist (writing) practice with insurrectionary potential, bringing forward the concept of the ‘wounded text’ and its implications for a polyvocal and pluralistic textual practice through the hole acting as metaphor and analogy, investigating the space in between parts of fragmented, incoherent, disjunct or multi-linear narratives.

I argue that the wounded text should not be healed; rather I present ‘Un-healing’ (Un-heil-ung) as political and writerly strategy. The wound must stay open in order to speak. Healing would thus mean silencing, therefore acting complicitly with dominant structures.

Through case studies and writerly analysis I consider poetry in relation to the wounded text, bringing it forward as a polyvocal language with holes; a language of resistance with revolutionary possibilities.

Starting from a narratological, structuralist and poststructuralist analysis of text in combination with sources from feminisms, women studies, queer theory, postcolonial studies, and psychoanalysis, I re-introduce the materiality of the body into the text.

Departing from methods such as critical fabulation and narrative restraint – which Saidiya Hartman calls “the refusal to fill in the gaps and provide closure” – and by anecdotal storytelling and questioning of the authorial position, I approach the hole, tending to the wounded text by developing and proposing diverse literary and academic writing registers to free the hole from its preconception as a lack, to write with, through, and around it, and to contribute to a more nuanced reading of the hole/wound.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Identification Number (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.25602/GOLD.00034786
Keywords:	anarchism, art history, autofiction, broken narratives, brokenness, Carla Lonzi, Chiara Fumai, critical race studies, critical theory, écriture faim, epistolary writing, experimental writing, feminism, hole, holey text, illness, illuminated manuscripts, insurrection, Jacques Lacan, Katerina Gogou, literary theory, minor literature, mouth, multi-linear temporalities, mysticism, narrative holes, pain, poetics, poetry, postcolonial studies, psychoanalysis, queer studies, resistance, revolt, St. Catherine of Siena, trauma, un-healing, unsayable, voice, wound, wounded text
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Art
Date:	31 January 2024
Item ID:	34786
Date Deposited:	09 Feb 2024 12:39
Last Modified:	09 Feb 2024 12:44
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/34786

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