Abstract
Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five, based on the author’s experience of the destruction of Dresden in 1945, is a postmodern literary work that follows a broken narrative line, striving to assemble fragments of past and present into a unifying whole. Beginning with the author’s assertion in the opening chapter that the novel “was written by a pillar of salt,” a biblical allusion to the destruction of Sodom, this essay explores the relevance of Catherine Malabou’s notion of destructive plasticity to the structural qualities of Vonnegut’s trauma narrative. In Malabou’s thought, plasticity bears negative connotations, referring to the destructive emergence of an other that takes the place of the self when the latter is encountered with a devastating accident, an overwhelming natural or political catastrophe. The author’s metamorphosis becomes a symptom of, and a telling metaphor for, the destructive effect of the traumatic event upon the psychic apparatus. Moreover, the novel’s distinctive fragmentation, suggesting the haunting image of a city in ruins, becomes a textual manifestation of the traumatized psyche. The destruction of the narrative line into the fragmented plot is viewed as a result of the violent breach caused by the impact of the traumatic scene upon the sense of historical and narrative continuity, coherence of form and stability of meaning. In Slaughterhouse-Five, the work of the author emerges as the shattering and rearrangement of the temporal continuum of the narrative and involves, to use one of Malabou’s formulations, “the plastic art of destruction.”
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Alberto Cacicedo notes that “the repressed memory of the bombing of Dresden produces in Vonnegut a ‘disease’ … [which reproduces] the dynamic of trauma,” and views the writing of the novel as a therapeutic process aiming toward the recovery of the lost memory (2009, 129). Vees-Gulani argues that Billy exhibits a series of symptoms typically associated with PTSD (2003, 162–170).
- 2.
For a detailed discussion of Malabou’s work on trauma and its political ramifications, especially in her book The New Wounded, see Kellogg (2015, 111–132). For an account of Malabou’s work on plasticity in relation to neuroscience and a critical reading of The New Wounded, see Watkin (2016, 93–109).
- 3.
In a similar vein, Adam Beardsworth in Chapter 10 discusses how the destruction wrought by the atom bomb and the fear of nuclear annihilation impacts on psychic life in Cold War America.
- 4.
On Freud’s archaeological metaphor, see Khanna (2003, 38–46).
- 5.
See also Chapter 14 on Benjamin’s reading of the ruination of Pompeii.
References
Boon, Kevin Alexander. 2011. Temporal Cohesion and Disorientation in Slaughterhouse-Five: A Chronicle of Form Cuts and Transitional Devices in the Novel. In Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut: Critical Insights, ed. Leonard Mustazza, 36–63. Pasadena and Hackensack: Salem Press.
Cacicedo, Alberto. 2009. “You Must Remember This”: Trauma and Memory in Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five. In Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, ed. Harold Bloom, 125–138. New York: Infobase. Originally Published in Critique 46.4 (2005): 357–368.
Freese, Peter. 2009. Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five or, How to Storify an Atrocity. In Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, ed. Harold Bloom, 17–32. New York: Infobase. Originally Published in 1994. Historiographic Metafiction in Modern American and Canadian Literature, ed. Bernd Engler and Kurt Müller, 209–222. Paderborn: Schoningh.
Freud, Sigmund. 1959. Delusions and Dreams in Jensen’s Gradiva. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 9, trans. and ed. James Strachey, 3–95. London: Hogarth Press.
Gibbs, Alan. 2014. Contemporary American Trauma Narratives. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Jarvis, Christina. 2011. The Vietnamization of World War II in Slaughterhouse-Five and Gravity’s Rainbow. In Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut: Critical Insights, ed. Leonard Mustazza, 80–108. Pasadena and Hackensack: Salem Press. Originally Published in 2003. War, Literature, and the Arts 15 (1–2): 95–117.
Kellogg, Catherine. 2015. Plasticity and the Cerebral Unconscious: New Wounds, New Violences, New Politics. In Plastic Materialities: Politics, Legality, and Metamorphosis in the work of Catherine Malabou, ed. Brenna Bhandar and Jonathan Goldberg-Hiller, 111–132. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Khanna, Ranjana. 2003. Dark Continents: Psychoanalysis and Colonialism. Durham: Duke University Press.
Lundquist, James. 1977. Kurt Vonnegut. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing.
Malabou, Catherine. 2012a. The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain Damage, trans. Steven Miller. New York: Fordham University Press.
Malabou, Catherine. 2012b. Ontology of the Accident: An Essay on Destructive Plasticity, trans. Carolyn Shread. Cambridge: Polity.
Vees-Gulani, Susanne. 2003. Trauma and Guilt: Literature of Wartime Bombing in Germany. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Vonnegut, Kurt. 1971. Slaughterhouse-Five. New York: Dell.
Vonnegut, Kurt. 1990. Hocus Pocus. New York: Putnam.
Watkin, Christopher. 2016. French Philosophy Today: New Figures of the Human in Badiou, Meillassoux, Malabou, Serres and Latour. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Giannakopoulos, G. (2019). Out of the Ruins of Dresden: Destructive Plasticity in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. In: Mitsi, E., Despotopoulou, A., Dimakopoulou, S., Aretoulakis, E. (eds) Ruins in the Literary and Cultural Imagination. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26905-0_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26905-0_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-26904-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-26905-0
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)