apocalypse time: thinking about narrative

I'm writing this post at 4:30 AM: apocalypse time. Is there any other time of the day that seems more apocalyptic? The sky empurpled but becoming orangish gray, the minimal sounds, and the rain right now make it seem like a scene from The Road—but then again I'm not in the forest, I'm not shivering, and the sweatshirt I'm wearing is not (too) tattered.

I wanted to follow up on the discussion that we were having at the end of our last class (resisting apocalypticism one blog post at a time). I was pushing Calvin to consider non-narrative ways of thinking about human life, and I think that part of the reason I was resistant to use narrative as an over-arching structure for making sense of things is that this seems to be precisely one of the things that the genre of apocalyptic literature puts to question.

What are other ways of making sense of life besides 'narrative'? Well, one 'other' form could be poetry: think about how two of the apocalyptic texts we read include religious verses scattered throughout the narratives at hand (either invented or taken directly from scripture). One might propose that when narrative fails to account for things, poetry enters the scene—either to comfort (as in Zeitoun), or simply to demarcate 'chapters', as in Parable of the Sower (so to form the narrative by means of non-narrative material—that is curious). Poetry can be narrative, but it certainly not need be. In The Road, we discussed how many parts of the novel that were more poetic and imagistic than strictly narrative per se: sometimes the prose slips into aphoristic queries, and at other times the language creates a sonic register for what is being described.

My point is that while poetic language functions in relation to narrative, it is not exactly bound by narrative. It might be another way of thinking about life. We have all read poems that are anything but narratives (Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons comes to mind, or consider the more contemporary L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry of someone like Charles Bernstein, or even Lydia Davis's 'stories'). Poetry is another way of thinking about life without putting life into narrative form. And poetry (or poetic expression, at least) is recurrent in the texts we read for this class: the narratives sometimes pause in order to allow for poetic material that functions differently—in relation to the characters, but also in relation to the page (margins, line breaks, acoustics, rhythm, etc.).

Or think about Calvin's excellent question from two classes ago: are we supposed to read the photographs in Zeitoun as part of the 'text'? It sounds simple, but it's really a complex question and one that takes us right back into this problem of narrative. How does visual material interface with linguistic material? When are images used to assist narrative, and when are images used to create counter-narratives? Can images escape the gravitational pull of narratives altogether? We might have to think about the visual arts to follow this line of inquiry. Does all art abide by the rules of any single form (painting, or sculpture)? For example, should all 'art' have to fit on a canvas? Of course not: we know that 'art' can take many forms, and that to be a 'true' artist this often means exploring the limits of traditional forms, and the possibilities of 'new' forms. Robert Rauschenberg's "combine" paintings use ephemeral materials and don't always abide by the 'rules' of the canvas; so can they be thought of as 'paintings', or do we need a new 'term' for them? When might the idea of 'narrative' be insufficient for how humans are telling stories? (And is this what happens in the apocalyptic genre—or, for that matter, in 'theory'?) So the visual arts might serve as a useful example of a non-narrative way of thinking about life: consider a Christo landscape 'wrap'; or a Jeff Koons balloon sculpture; or a Tara Donovan Styrofoam cup cloud. These art forms resist narrative thinking, but they can certainly still make one think. Do humans need narrative in order to 'think'? I think not; but this is not to say that narrative is useless, but rather just to say that it isn't the only way of thinking. Narrative may be a common way of thinking, but it need not define thinking—particularly when the very narratives of society, language, identity, and culture suddenly change. (Such as in Zeitoun.)

This all may sound like a long, rambling tangent, but I am trying to reflect on our consideration of the use of narrative, especially in relation to Hayden White's "The Burden of History" and with Calvin's recourse to Paul Ricoeur in mind. We did not read Ricoeur for this class, but we certainly could have, and maybe should have, if indeed we want to think more about how narrative functions in the genre of apocalyptic literature and concerning identities in the midst of societal collapse. (Ricoeur's hermeneutics, by the way, deals with 'poetry' quite a bit, so this might be an apt point of entry.)

So there is my 'final lecture' for this class, written at the apocalypse time. Please comment if you want to follow up on any of these points, or if you want to present any modifications, objections, or revisions to what I've proposed here. I really enjoyed our class, and you all helped me think about the questions of apocalyptic literature and how 'theory' can intervene in apocalypticism, while also drawing from its strategies and formal qualities.