Catachresis in "Nightwood"

by Ash Kestler


In Alan Singer’s essay, “The Horse Who Knew Too Much: Metaphor and the Narrative of Discontinuity in Nightwood,”[i] the question is asked of whether or not Nightwood meets the requirements of a novel. More importantly, if Djuna Barnes’ fiction is a novel, how does it supplant the conventional aspects of narration and metaphor. As it is pointed out, her methods hinder literature classification and complicate the allocation of Nightwood to a specific genre. Singer places Barne’s writing “at odds with all the reductive unities of teleological plot” (Singer 69) and employs Aristolean tautology to reference the conventions of traditional novels and the various points at which Barnes departs from ‘normal’ uses of fictive language and narrative. Singer positions himself outside of the two differing discourses on Nightwood, offering Barnes’ ‘metaphor displacement’ method as means by which to read the text. Singer’s secondary argument is that the process of reading Nightwood is to force the reader to reconceptualize genre, creating an “infinite process of emerging meaning.” (Singer 67)

Barnes’ “radically subversive thought,” is characterized in a lengthy set of deconstructuralist arguments. (68) Throughout his analyses, Singer shows how Barnes denies the “substitution theorem of metaphor,” and replaces it with what Singer calls extended tropes. (71) Singer engages Pierre Fontanier and Jaques Derrida’s rhetoric of “catachresis” showing how Barnes displaces normal contextual substitutions inherent in metaphor with objects that deprive Nightwood of “contextual reflexivity”(71) and produce instead, “new rules of exchange.” (73) Singer’s argumentative spine is established mostly on this point, however, he also suggests that this supplantation exists within the characters as well. Dr. O’Connor was examined as the omniscient narrator, with self-creating elements, who stands outside of Barnes “authorial” presence. (74) Singer, perhaps unintentionally provokes the question: what is a self-creating literary figure? As it seems, the self-creating process of a literary figure would have to be an extension of the author. Singer even admits that O’Connor “produces and echo of Barnes own rhetoric,” (73) which denies Barnes of a certain amount of authorship by detaching her from her own work and insinuating that the characters are mindful enough produce on their own. Singer accounts for this through the dispersal effects of “metaphoric elaboration,” which orient the characters in a displaced context. For example, Robin Vote, through metaphor is presented in a mythological “contextual field” invoked by her stand-in – the “unicorn.” (75)

Although, it seems that O’Connor would then act as a representation of Barnes, or at least an extension of her authorial presence. It is the departure from straightforward authorship, in Barnes’ novel that remains a semantic point. Singer would think ‘replacement’ is an orthodox metaphor, and wouldn’t agree as he constructs his analysis on narrative and metaphorical discontinuity as semantic in the reformation of genre. However, it seems that the discontinuity could also be seen as a method in developing a multiplicitious narration (i.e., that of the author, and that of characters like O’Connor) to offset monolithic notions of narration and character development, such as the “static image” of Robin Vote (82). Yet Singer’s essay is steeped in the anti-cathartic process of reading Nightwood, which is contrary to tradition but still monolithic. Extending the displacement theory too far confines the author to a very abstract “external” position outside the “internal (dramatic),” and it is the external and internal that Singer supposed Barnes was attempting to “nullify.” However, Singer suggests that Barnes only achieves the disposal of this binary by the end chapter, “The Possessed,” when the narrative morphs into a conventional literary mode, and the “figurative becomes literal.” (83) It is suggested then that Barnes usurps the O’Connor narrative with her own, yet this is debatable since O’Connor’s narrative is, in fact, Djuna Barnes, isn’t it? Can she really usurp her own creation?

[i] The Horse Who Knew too Much: Metaphor and the Narrative of Discontinuity in “Nightwood.” Alan Singer. Contemporary Literature, vol. 25, No. 1. (Spring, 1984), pp. 66-87