Ballard and Balladur: Reading the Intertextual and the Architectural in Concrete Island
Keywords:
intertextuality, La Grande Motte, Walter Benjamin, architecture, embodimentAbstract
Concrete Island’s ([1974] 1994) complex intertextuality invites its readers to see the protagonist Robert Maitland as a kind of Robinson Crusoe of the Kafkaesque contemporary environment. Such an interpretation can be further developed by invoking other non-literary intertextual references, including an intriguing reference in the novel to the architecture of the Mediterranean leisure complex La Grande Motte, designed by Ballard’s near namesake Jean Balladur. This connection, striking in itself, reinforces and extends recent claims that the work is in dialogue with contemporary debates concerning architecture, especially that of leisure spaces. The following article frames this dialogue by using the work of Walter Benjamin on modernity, in which the architectural is said to be experienced both through aesthetic contemplation and in a state of distraction through habitual use and embodied familiarity. The approach provides the reader with a language with which to decode the novel’s themes and highlights the significance of its surreal tactile and bodily imagery as it explores Maitland’s responses to his surreal predicament on the island through such intertextual parallels.Downloads
Published
2016-08-25
Issue
Section
Special Issue Articles
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).