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Paradoxically recompiled : distraction and the senses in the site-specific works of Lisa Robertson

University of British Columbia

My thesis examines Lisa Robertson's engagement with description in two site- specific book projects, The Weather and Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture. By treating description as a trace of certain ideologies of perception, I look for ways in which Robertson's prose takes up existing descriptive vocabularies, and redeploys them in an attempt to alter our perception (and conception) of certain objects, spaces, and social structures. This redeployment takes the form of what Rem Koolhaas has termed a “prospective archaeology,” which incorporates different and even contradictory discourses, and may thus prompt a variety of different readings. Formulated thus, Robertson's works provide a counterpoint to the genre of ekphrasis, poems addressing visual art. By equating ekphrasis with the concentrated attention that Walter Benjamin associates with sculpture and painting, I develop an analogy between Robertson’s work and the distracted engagement that Benjamin finds in film. Ultimately, I suggest that Robertson’s prose is better viewed through the media theory of Benjamin, especially his remarks on distraction and the optical unconscious. Both terms denote altered relationships with the senses, and part of my thesis seeks analogues for optical and tactile experience in Robertson’s work. The remainder takes up this analogy between literature and cinema in terms of montage, using work by Friedrich Kittler and Timothy Morton. Finally, I ask how Robertson’s texts both prompt for and exceed reading in terms of allegory and ekphrasis.

Text

2012-09-04

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/43169

English

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/