ABSTRACT

This essay builds on Walter Benjamin’s allegory of the ruin to explore how W.G. Sebald’s work draws on ruination as a structural esthetic. The prevalence of destruction, wastelands, and discarded matter in Sebald’s writing has been criticized as a shortcut to signification playing into the hand of the melancholic rambler, with the Holocaust in the role of master signifier. The present essay offers a counter-narrative to these perspectives, intervening on two fronts: firstly, as a critical correction to dominant interpretations of Sebald’s emphasis on destruction and melancholy as apolitical; secondly, as a theory of reading materiality in literary works that actively resist political and historical determination. Expanding on and complicating the recent interest in studying material environments and objects in literature, this essay argues for a material understanding of language. It shows how Sebald casts the ruin into the role of witness that both calls for a readership and indexes the limits of restitution. The focus on residual materiality moves our understanding of Sebald’s ethical-esthetic process away from the melancholic subject-position, to that of a material-driven political imperative. To support its readings, the essay concentrates on Austerlitz and makes extensive use of Sebald’s essays and interviews.

摘要

本文以沃尔特·本雅明 (Walter Benjamin) 的废墟寓言为基础，探讨 WG Sebald 的作品如何将废墟作为一种结构美学。Sebald 的作品中普遍存在的破坏、荒地和废弃物被批评为意指的捷径，让忧郁的漫游者上了当，大屠杀扮演了主要能指的角色。本文提供了对这些观点的反叙事，在两个方面进行干预：首先，作为对塞巴尔德强调破坏和忧郁为非政治的主流解释的批判性修正；其次，作为阅读物质性的理论在积极抵抗政治和历史决定的文学作品中。本文扩展并复杂化了最近对研究文学中的物质环境和对象的兴趣，主张对语言进行物质理解。它展示了 Sebald 如何将废墟转化为见证人的角色，既呼吁读者又标示恢复原状的限制。对残余物质性的关注将我们对塞巴尔德伦理审美过程的理解从忧郁的主体立场转移到物质驱动的政治命令。为了支持其阅读，这篇文章集中于奥斯特里茨，并广泛使用了塞巴尔德的文章和访谈。