Truth and Tragedy

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

A View of Tragedy from the Poetics
History represents the particular Poetry represents the universal Complete and unified action, beginning middle and end, short memorable stories Good plot: reversal of fortune Comic mimesis: Flawed character. Tragic mimesis: Great characters that evoke pity and fear Comedy as recognising free will. Tragedy as fatalistic.

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

A View of Tragedy from the Poetics
Which is relevant in the case of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas? Is it tragic? Tragedy is the imitation of an action (mimesis) according to the law of probability or necessity. Aristotle indicates that the medium of tragedy is drama, not narrative Tragedy shows rather than tells. Tragedy as catharsis. Anagnorsis: recognition of an unknown truth Tragedy or comedy as truth?

Jaques Derrida (1930-)

Man can find truth in nature.

Jaques Derrida (1930-)

Previous interpretation (structuralism):

Argues that all STRUCTURES have an implied center

All systems have binary oppositions One part more important than another (good/evil, male/female)

Reinforces humanist idea that speaker/subject more important

Reinforces real self as the origin of what is being said This is logocentricismbasic to all Western thought since Plato

Derrida
The Author The Text The Reader

Derrida
BINARY OPPOSITIONS
Nature / culture

ASSUMED CENTER Nature is evil/good

Health / disease Purity / contamination

WHAT HE IS REALLY SAYING

Simplicity / complexity
Good / evil Speech / writing

Theme of lost innocence Nave romantic illusion Western guilt over colonization and the Holocaust

Jaques Derrida (1930-)

"If anything is destroyed in reading, it is not the text, but the claim to unequivocal domination of one mode of signifying over another.
A deconstructive reading is a reading which analyses the specificity of a text's critical difference from itself."

Exclusions In deconstruction and structuralism, exclusions and repressions are as important as what is said in fact are more central. What is not said provides clues to authors real views of society and governments influence on art.

Phenomenology
EDMUND HUSSERL (1859-1938) Crisis of the European Sciences (1935)Wanted to launch a spiritual rebirth through an absolutely self-sufficient science of the spirit
We can not be sure of the independent existence of objects Only absolute truth is what appears to us in our minds, things posited by our consciousness There are universal types or essences which we can grasp Knowledge of phenomena is intuitive

Our book What is excluded? (Or repressed?)

What is the assumed centre of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas? What is the author really saying?