Narrative Care Narrative Care: Biopolitics and the Novel Arne De Boever Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 175 Fifth Avenue 50 Bedford Square New York London NY 10010 WC1B 3DP USA UK www.bloomsbury.com First published 2013 © Arne De Boever, 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the author. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data De Boever, Arne. Narrative care : biopolitics and the novel / Arne De Boever. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4411-4999-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Fiction--21st century--History and criticism. 2. Ethics in literature. 3. Biopolitics. I. Title. PN3504.D39 2012 809.3'051--dc23 2012035938 ISBN: 978-1-4411-4472-0 Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN To Olivia and Ada Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Towards a Pharmacology of the Novel 1 The Moment of Narrative Care 1 A Pharmacological Theory of Care 4 A Biopolitical History of the Novel 9 After Ethics: Reading Sebald’s Images 14 J. M. Coetzee and the Obscene 18 1 J. M. Coetzee’s Slow Man as “a Biologico-Literary Experiment” 27 A Novel of Care 27 The Welfare State 29 From Pastoral Care to Biopolitics 34 Elizabeth Costello’s “Biologico-Literary Experiment” 41 The Politics of Companionship 46 2 Bare Life and the Camps in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go 59 Exploding Care 59 Biopolitics in Never Let Me Go 61 The Novel as a Camp 67 Aesthetics of Existence 72 3 Life-Writing in Paul Auster’s The Book of Illusions 93 Creation and Destruction 93 Life-stories (Sadism and the Novel) 96 The Inner Life of Martin Frost 104 History’s Remains 110 4 “Just Being”: On Tom McCarthy’s Remainder 125 Very Little, Almost Nothing 125 The Pharmacology of Re-enactment 127 “Strategy of the Real” 133 The Re-enactment of the Novel (Re-enactment and Politics) 137 Synecdoche, New York 143 viii Contents Conclusion: Pedro Almodóvar’s Talk to Her as a Narrative of Care 151 Narrative Coma 151 Care and Gender 155 Rebellions of Care 158 Bibliography 164 Index 173 Acknowledgments I began thinking about Narrative Care during the last year of my graduate studies. I finished the manuscript four years later, shortly after the publi- cation of my first book States of Exception in the Contemporary Novel. The problematic of Narrative Care is closely related to that of States of Exception and the book’s cover image is meant to suggest this: it echoes the cover of the other book, putting the problematic of the novel’s relation to the state of exception in a new perspective. Narrative Care could not have come about without States of Exception and I am grateful for the early criticism I received from my dissertation advisors at Columbia University—Bruce Robbins, Stathis Gourgouris, and Patricia Dailey—on some of the ideas that are circulated here. An early version of chapter one was presented at the international conference “Matters of State” held in Leuven (Belgium) in April 2009, and I want to thank my fellow panelists, in particular Alex Houen and Pieter Vermeulen, for their feedback on the chapter. For some time Pieter and I were planning to edit a special journal issue on biopolitics and the novel, but those plans never materi- alized. I would nevertheless like to thank those who intended to contribute an article to this issue, in particular Gregg Lambert and J. Paul Narkunas. Much of the research for this project was completed at the California Institute of the Arts, where I benefited from conversations with my colleagues Maggie Nelson, Martín Plot, Janet Sarbanes, James Wiltgen, and Nancy Wood. I am grateful to the students in my courses “What is Biopolitics?” and “Take Care of Yourself” for their questions and comments. “Take Care of Yourself” was part of an interdisciplinary course cluster on bioart and I want to thank Michael Bryant, Tom Leeser, Robert Mitchell, Timothy Morton, Anne-Marie Oliver, and Phil Ross for sharing their ideas with me in this context. Thanks also to Frédéric Neyrat and Frédéric Worms for accepting my invitations to come speak at CalArts, and for furthering my thoughts on care, biopolitics, and the aesthetics of existence. Warren Neidich—artist and theorist of the brain—generously gave me permission to reproduce his work on the book cover. My most important debt is to two contemporary philosophers whose brilliant writing and personal generosity have driven this project forward: Catherine Malabou and Bernard Stiegler. I could not have completed the research for this book without the support I received from the School of Critical Studies’ and the California Institute of the Arts’ faculty development funds. My graduate student Austin Walker