Exploring the Infra-Ordinary (the “Oblique Glance” as Autobiographical Strategy)

• Authors: Catrinel Popa
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This article aims at analyzing the relationship between intertextual and autobiographical memory in Georges Perec and Radu Cosaşu’s writings, revealing several of their characteristics, similarities and paradoxes. Starting from the assumption that almost every book Georges Perec ever wrote (regardless of whether essays, autobiographical accounts, travel sketches, screen plays or novels), carries the stamp of his struggle to construct a plural identity (trying to harmonize his Jewish-Polish origin, the legacy of traumatic past-experiences - his father’s death on the battle field when he was less than six, his mother’s deportation to Auschwitz and her subsequent death etc.), and that for Cosaşu the identity “quest” is central, too, I intend to demonstrate that obliquity represents in both situations a key-concept. Moreover, when reading their childhood recollections, Georges Perec’s notes on his journey to London or Radu Cosaşu’s account of his puzzling travel to Moscow in 1968, we notice that the strategy of the oblique glance gradually generates a sort of “industrial production” of screen-memories or rather the memory of a whole generation. Besides, we can envisage the possibility of understanding their exploration of the “infra-ordinary” as an occasion for reconsidering the various interplays between writing and remembering, intertextuality and imagination, or - as Perec puts it - between “space as inventory” and “space as invention”.

Keywords

EN

Autobiography; Obliqueness; Infra-ordinary; Travel literature; Everyday life

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Human and Social Studies
• Year: 2016
• Volume: 5
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 73-87

Dates

published

2016-03-01

online

2016-04-20

Contributors

author

Catrinel Popa

• University of Bucharest, Romania

References

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• Cosaşu, R. (1987). Sonatine. Bucureşti: Cartea Românească.
• Cosaşu, R. (1998). InSISIFicarea la noi, pe Boteanu [The InSISIFication Process on Boteanu Street]. Bucureşti: Editura Fundaţiei Culturale Române.
• Cosaşu, R. (2001). Autodenunţuri şi precizări [Selfdenunciations and Clarifications]. Bucureşti: Hasefer.
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• Perec, G. (1989). “Promenades à Londres”. L’infra-ordinaire. Paris: Editions du Séuil. 77-89.
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Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/hssr-2016-0005