NARRATIVE AND MEDICINE 2012

Title of the paper:

"Screams, Shouts and Silences. The noise of the wor(l)d and the impossibility of narrative"

Abstract: In my presentation I want to talk about how my academic research into the literature of Nonsense was induced by the encounter of a radical other (Lévinas) for whom language remained divorced from meaning and emotion. Intentionally ignoring medical and scientific descriptions and explanations, I want to speak about what it takes to step into unmapped territory, where conceptual categories are of no avail and where “making sense of things” demands leaps into points of view that question the basic assumptions with which we categorize, reflect, think and construct narratives. What I have learned (from living with a person diagnosed with childhood development disorder/autism and from living in a foreign language and culture) is that each speech situation (Murdoch) depends on “necessary nonsense”: the engagement of all our senses in the postures of our bodies (Hall), the material dimension of language (Kristeva and Hoffman) and the ethological word (Cyrulnik). The pre-condition of narrative, so it seems, is a pre-verbal capacity to establish contact with the other so that body language and sounds do not appear as signs of attack but as means of connection that build “the common road upon which we are all embarked” (Charon).

When the pre-verbal capacity to connect is absent, nonsense syllables may coax the other into a realm where proximity, eye-contact, touch and sound become tolerable and pave the way for words, sentences and narratives where meaning is in a most literal way carved out of the material support of language.

Biographical information:

- Flemish and Portuguese. Assistant Professor at the University of Lisbon. Researcher at Ulices (Group 4).

- Research topics:

• The Literature of Nonsense and the communicative potentialities inherent in language form.
• Canadian Literature

- Some Publications:

• “Nonsense and Other Senses”, in Tarantino, Elizabetta (ed.) Nonsense and other Senses. Regulated Absurdity in Literature (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009). Ch. XIII, pp. 259-274.
• ‘Peter Ibbetson’ or the Limbo of Memory”. Revista Anglo-Saxónica, Série II. Nº 18, 2003, 213-230.
• "Dissemination: Dickens, David, Mr Dick and Derrida", Revista Anglo-Saxónica, Série II, nºs 16717, Lisboa: Edições Colibri, 2002, pp. 382-408.