Resurgence, or the singular energies of unbidden return : the example of Woolf’s “Time Passes”

Authors

  • Jagna Oltarzewska Université Paris IV-Sorbonne

Keywords:

Deleuze, Gilles, Woolf, Virginia, Evénement

Abstract

Unlike notions of repetition and return, with their strongly psychoanalytic and philosophical associations, resurgence has not received the theoretical attention required to forge it into a familiar conceptual tool. Its powers of suggestion are considerable, but any critical labour undertaken in its name risks grounding itself on a notion whose sense is at once vaguely consensual and under-determined.  My aim here, in consequence, is to examine the various uses of the word in order to gauge more precisely its range of reference and heuristic potential. The semantics of resurgence are found to resonate strongly with a certain philosophy of the event; both notions are put to work in a reading of Woolf’s canonical passage “Time Passes”, in an attempt to see how the literary text accommodates and processes one of the paradigmatic events of our time: the Great War.

Author Biography

Jagna Oltarzewska, Université Paris IV-Sorbonne

Jagna Oltarzewska currently lectures in the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Paris-Sorbonne. She has published on contemporary North American and Canadian authors and her research interests also include literary theory and intercultural translation, to which she has devoted a number of articles.Jagna Oltarzewska currently lectures in the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Paris-Sorbonne. She has published on contemporary North American and Canadian authors and her research interests also include literary theory and intercultural translation, to which she has devoted a number of articles.

 

Couverture-L'Atelier-1-2009

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Published

2009-07-15

Issue

Vol. 1 (2009): La Résurgence

Section

ARTICLES

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