Abstract
In Sisyphus Outdone (2012), Nathanaël’s particular tribute to Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), the reader faces a challenging hybrid text in which the verbal and visual dimensions intermingle to produce an idiosyncratic type of narrative. Fragmentary, elliptical, a web of quotations, dictums, and meditations on the difficult condition of the individual in the current image-saturated scenario of the first decades of the 21st century, the text manages to propose a rigorous reflection upon crucial aspects of representation from History and temporality, to the Subject now, photography, catastrophe theory, architecture, failure and translation, among the most salient. Sisyphus, I suggest, exhibits a strategic photopoetics which operates as a self-reflective mechanism contributing to the persistence of an impermanent liminal subject and to the (re)production of textuality and the proliferation of voices against silence.
Works Cited
Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Translated by Richard Howard, vol. Vol. 1980, Hill & Wang, 1981.Search in Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. The Preparation of the Novel: Lecture courses and seminars at the Collège de France (1978-1979 and 1979-1980). 2003. Translated by Cate Briggs, Columbia University Press, 2011.Search in Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. The Rustle of Language. Translated by Richard Howard, University of California Press, 1989.Search in Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt, translated by Harry Zohn, Schocken, 1969, pp. 253–64.Search in Google Scholar
Blanchot, Maurice. “The Essential Solitude.” The Gaze of Orpheus and Other Literary Essays, edited by P. Adams Sitney, translated by Lydia Davis, Station Hill, 1981, pp. 63–78.Search in Google Scholar
Blanchot, Maurice. “Literature and the Right to Death.” The Gaze of Orpheus and Other Literary Essays, edited by P. Adams Sitney, translated by Lydia Davis, Station Hill, 1981, pp. 21–62.Search in Google Scholar
Blanchot, Maurice. “Two Versions of the Imaginary.” The Gaze of Orpheus and Other Literary Essays, edited by P. Adams Sitney, translated by Lydia Davis, Station Hill, 1981, pp. 79–90.Search in Google Scholar
Blanchot, Maurice. The Writing of the Disaster. Translated by Ann Smock, vol. Vol. 1980, University of Nebraska Press, 1995.Search in Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. Senses of the Subject. Fordham University Press, 2015.10.1017/S2753906700001480Search in Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. Undoing Gender. Routledge, 2004. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203499627.10.4324/9780203499627Search in Google Scholar
Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. Translated by Justin O’Brien, Vintage, 1991.Search in Google Scholar
Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.10.1353/book.20656Search in Google Scholar
Crary, Jonathan. Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. MIT Press, 1990.Search in Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997, (Original work published 1967).Search in Google Scholar
Fédida, Pierre. L’Absence. Gallimard, 1978.Search in Google Scholar
Goldman, Judith. “A Failed Snapshot [instantané raté]: Notes on Nathanaël (Nathalie Stephens), SISYPHUS, OUTDONE. Theatres of the Catastrophal.” Postmodern Culture, vol. 20, no. 3, May 2010. http://www.pomoculture.org/2013/09/03/a-failed-snapshot-instantane-rate-notes-on-nathanael-nathalie-stephens-sisyphus-outdone-theatresof-the-catastrophal/.10.1353/pmc.2010.0022Search in Google Scholar
Halberstam, Jack. The Queer Art of Failure. Duke University Press, 2011. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822394358.10.1215/9780822394358Search in Google Scholar
Harcourt, Bernard. Exposed: Desire and Disobedience in the Digital Age. Harvard University Press, 2015. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674915077.10.4159/9780674915077Search in Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric. “Culture and Finance Capital.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 24, no. 1, Fall 1997, pp. 246–65.10.1086/448873Search in Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric. Valences of the Dialectic. Verso, 2009.Search in Google Scholar
Kofman, Sarah. Camera Obscura: Of Ideology. Translated by Will Straw, Cornell University Press, 1999, (Original work published 1973).Search in Google Scholar
Lacan, Jacques. “The Mirror-Stage as Formative of the Function of the ‘I’ As Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience.” Écrits. A Selection. Translated by Alan Sheridan, Norton, 1977, pp. 1–7.10.4324/9781003209140-1Search in Google Scholar
Lacroix, Sophie. Ruine. Villette, 2008.Search in Google Scholar
Lury, Celia. Prosthetic Culture: Photography, Memory and Identity. Routledge, 1998. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203425251_chapter_1.10.4324/9780203425251_chapter_1Search in Google Scholar
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The German Ideology. Vol. 1846, International Publishers, 1947.Search in Google Scholar
Nathanaël. Absence Where As (Claude Cahun and the Unopened Book). Nightboat, 2009.Search in Google Scholar
Nathanaël. Absence Where As. Nightboat, 2009.Search in Google Scholar
Nathanaël. Feder: A Scenario. Nightboat, 2016.Search in Google Scholar
Nathanaël. The Horses That Come Out of Our Heads. O’Clock Press, 2016.Search in Google Scholar
Nathanaël. Laisse: rejet apparent. Memoir d’encrier, 2016.Search in Google Scholar
Nathanaël. La mort de ma soueur (épiphyte). Dernier télégramme, 2018.Search in Google Scholar
Nathanaël. Sisyphus Outdone: Theatres of the Catastrophal. Nightboat, 2012.Search in Google Scholar
Nathanaël. “Vigilous, Reel. De-sire as Accusation.” Albion, 2010.Search in Google Scholar
Nealon, Jeffrey T. Post-Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Just-in-Time Capitalism. Stanford University Press, 2012.10.1515/9780804783217Search in Google Scholar
Silverman, Kaja. The Threshold of the Visible World. Routledge, 1996.Search in Google Scholar
Sontag, Susan. On Photography. Penguin, 1979.Search in Google Scholar
Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. Penguin, 2003. Steyerl, Hito. “In Defense of the Poor Image.” e-flux, Journal # 10, November 209, pp. 1-9, https://www.e-flux.com/journal/10/61362/in-defense-of-the-poor-image/. https://doi.org/10.3917/dio.201.0127.10.3917/dio.201.0127Search in Google Scholar
Sontag, Susan. ““Duty-Free Art.” e-flux.” Journal, vol. 63, Mar. 2015, pp. 1–17 https://www.e-flux.com/journal/63/60894/duty-free-art/.Search in Google Scholar
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Remarks. University of Chicago Press, 1975.Search in Google Scholar
Zeeman, E. C. “Catastrophe Theory.” Scientific American, vol. 234, no. April, 1976, pp. 65–83.10.1038/scientificamerican0476-65Search in Google Scholar
© 2020 Esther Sánchez-Pardo, published by De Gruyter
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
