Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro Centro de Educao e Humanidades Instituto de Letras His Majesty Buffo, the Great: historical

clowning and the postmodern evil/ killer clown

Ewerton Willey Lousada Baldez

Research line: Literature and Comparitivism. Keywords: clowning, grotesque, carnivalesque. Justification The common sense about clowns, in general, could be seen as a comic, joyous, rather ingenuous figure. In spite of this, feelings that range from slight uneasiness to absolute terror (coulrophobia or clownphobia [DERY, 1999]) are also related to them and find expression (and authorization) through several media, literature included, in the infamous evil/ killer clown. One example of such literary expression could be found in Buffo, the Great and his troupe of white-face clowns (CARTER, 1984), a character (sub)nucleus in Angela Carters novel Nights at the Circus, as well as in other of its characters. Our interest has been raised due to Carters works status as part of the postmodernist canon (HUTCHEON, 1988, p. 61, 114) and her use of narrative techniques close associated to that movement, although not exclusively: polyphony, irony, unclosed plots and, specially, the combination of carnivalesque/ grotesque (BAKHTIN, 1987) elements in the characters development and in the parodic narrative as a whole. Besides, the novel is contemporary to mass media productions that share views and approaches concerning the subject. This hinted us towards an inquiry which consists in investigate whether clown alleys dwellers and their likes establish between (and among) other enunciates in literature and in mass culture in general what Michel Foucault calls as bundle of relationships (2012, p. 65, our translation). If demonstrated so, we hope our suspicions could lead to the possibility of a description of Angela Carters novel as presenting two similar, related, but different themes that call our attention. For a simple matter of descriptive method, we would call them (at least for the moment) the clown in the literature and the already mentioned evil/ killer clown in 1

mass culture and literature themes (DERY, 1999), which could be disperse enunciative subjects of a major discursive formation, a species of clownesque* discourse. Once these themes be delimited as subjects of the discursive emergences (FOUCAULT, 2012), of which we believe Nights at the Circus participate, we would try to use these findings in a dialogue with post-structuralist and postmodernist theories in order to identify the traces shared by these and the novel. Moreover, we also believe that these assumptions, if confirmed, could be relevant to a better understanding of the occurrence of the clownesque in English language literature in general and of the game of mutual legitimization between the literary discourse and the mass culture phenomena regarding the evil/ killer clown. According to Linda Hutcheon (1988, p.4)
a cultural activity that can be discerned in most art forms and many currents of thought today, what I want to call postmodernism is fundamentally contradictory, resolutely historical, and inescapably political. Its contradictions may well be those of late capitalist society, but whatever the cause, these contradictions are certainly manifest in the important postmodern concept of the presence of the past.

The contradictions advocated by the theorist and its link with the past, which is made through the rethinking and reworking of the forms and contents of it (Ibid., p. 5) are the main reason for our subject choice and approach. In fact, as was pointed in the very beginning of this project, the image of clowns produced in postmodern times is strongly paradoxical and its contradictions are possibly of the same scope presented by Hutcheon. In other words, the evil/ killer clown could be seen as an example of a parodic deconstruction performed from the very installment of the historical clowning. Besides, clowns are instances of the ex-centric inside the already ex-centric circus environment, since, for example, clowns are lodged among the poorest (CARTER, 1984):
The multi-ringed circus becomes the pluralized and paradoxical metaphor for a decentered world where there is only ex-centricity. Angela Carters Nights at the Circus combines this freak-circus framework with contestings of narrative centering: it straddles the border between the imaginary/fantastic (with her winged woman protagonist) and the realistic/historical, between a unified biographically structured plot, and a decentered narration, with its wandering point of view and extensive digressions (Ibid., p.

61).

Therefore, by these historiographic metaficitional (ibid., p. 124) traits of the novel (self2

awareness, ironic parody, polyphony) we hope to establish its mirrowing of contemporary theories regarding postmodernism, in a way that highlights the historical clowning activity and its undermining in the figure of the evil/ killer clown, a mass culture product that perhaps symbolizes and incarnates the postmodern paradoxes.
* Although the word clownesque belongs to the French language and our uncertainty to its use in English, we have opted for it, despite the danger of incur in a kind of galicism or neologism, due to the already accepted similar forms in literary studies of grotesque, carnavalesque and picaresque and to the close relationship of our subject to these concepts.

Objectives Our primary objective, has above said, is determine at which extent the evil/ killer clown entity/ phenomenon can be related to postmodern historiographic metafiction and the theoretical apparatus concerning it. In order to do so, it should be necessary to analyze the novel in its self-aware inquiries echoed by contemporary literary theory. Hence the need to achieve three secondary objectives, as follows. First, is necessary to set what we have been calling the clown in literature. Taking Nights at the Circus as our main primary source, our plan is to describe, tough in a modest range, the intertextual (parodic or not) relationship existing between Carters novel and other literary works, in a compared perspective. Thus, we hope to be able to perceive the essential lines of the theme in the history of literature. Second, being already completed our delimitation of the historical theme, we would perform a, at the same time, narrower and broader inquiry: the evil/ killer clown. On the one hand, it is narrower, since it apparently deals with a sub-theme of the former. On the other, is a broader one because of its discursive emergences in media other than literature: cinema, comics, music and even news concerning actual psycho killer clowns. Consequently, it is not totally wrong to say that, at this point, we make the necessary link between the historical clowning and our postmodernist-prone attempt of work. Finally, we intend to explore the figure of the clown and, specially the evil/ killer clown, as paramount to Bakhtins almost undissociated relation between carnivalesque and grotesque elements (BAKHTIN, 1987, p. 41). Although more related to the theoretical choices of approaching the issue, this objective is essential, in our opinion so far, to our

research and to achieve all the previous described. Hence its inclusion as a secondary objective.

Methodology Our first delimitation of the work would be made in the epistemological field, based on Michel Foucaults archeology (FOUCAULT, 2012). This would also serve as a corpus delimitation, due to Foucaults ideas of dispersive immersion of discourses and the suspension of traditional forms of organization of thought, such as evolution/ development, influence, even tradition itself, among others. Therefore, these enunciative emergences linked only by their discursive construction of subjects, strategies, concepts and enunciative modalities (Ibid.) would be applied both as the works episteme and its setting of corpus. Nonetheless, Foucaults frame is a maybe too general one. In consequence, we would then adopt an approach which could be more close to our literary field, namely, the works produced by Linda Hutcheon in her thinking on postmodernism (1988, 1999). As a result, we expect a more precise appliance of a specific theoretical apparatus which would permit us to deal with specific issues related to literature in general and to postmodernism literature in particular. By this phase of the work, the general post-structuralism frame contained in Michel Foucaults could be more precise in a practical way, due to Hutcheons concerning over parody, intertextuality, the ex-centric and historiographic metafiction, essential to our attempts in demonstrate our opinion about the depiction of the evil/ killer clown as an epitomic postmodern element in fiction and in mass culture. In addition to the aforementioned, we plan to use the historical materialism of Mikhail Bakhtin in his works on the carnivalesque and the grotesque (Ibid.). The main idea conveyed by the Soviet scholar to be explored is his insight about certain interdependence between the two concepts (Ibid., p. 41). This is due to our also aforementioned hint towards the basilar place of the historical clown as the point of confluence of these concepts (Ibid., p. 4) and their weight in the construction of a historical clownesque discourse to be deconstructed in the evil/ killer clown. Nonetheless, literature is, obviously, produced by language. So, we also intend to use the literary discourse analysis as advocated by Dominic Maingueneau, regarding the strategies adopted by the French thinker about the literary scenography and the literary ethos (2001).

This would be our strategy on dealing with the organization of the foucaltian dispersion of the enunciates, our possible bundle of relationships between our subject discursive emergence. Although here dealt in last place, we perceive the importance of a historical description of the subject itself and its direct correlates: comicity and the comedy. In this stage of the work, we would try to make a modest, rather brief, but, in our view, important, digression concerning different approaches of these concepts. We think that it is proper to begin our surveys with Aristotles brief comments on comedy (1991), extending them to Freuds works on witticism and comicity (1969) and Jungs concept of the archetype (1981). In consequence, our work could perform a double insertion of this works: as an attempt to delineate the historical comic discourse and a re-reading of these great narrative (as psychoanalysis) texts in a new deconstrutivist perspective. Off course, we have the notion of the difficulties presented by this proposal. However, we think that, despite this possible complication, it is a necessary part of the setting of our subject and his historical emergence in different epistemological fields. In conclusion, we have tried to modestly delineate our methodology concerning our work. Although the diversity of choices could render difficult, we hope, through them, to perform a, if not original, at least comprehensive range of sources and strategies, in order to deal with our interest in our subject. Surely, these general lines could be subject of changes, expansions or contractions. Nevertheless, our attempts in organize our approach could be close to the objectives aimed.

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Rio de Janeiro, RJ, 09 de novembro de 2012.

EWERTON WILLEY LOUSADA BALDEZ