Journal of Research & Scholarly Output 2006 - Grimsby Institute of ...

production in which we might catch “whiffs”
of the “faint wandering notes of a hidden
music” (31). Keep that thing away from this
thing so that ‘the thing’ may retain its
centrality in the scheme of power
mechanics.
reflexive response to structures of power. 2
Without the threat of dismantling, aesthetic
wholeness has no meaning; “the flame of art
burns most intensely” where it is most in
danger of being extinguished (15). Without
the violent threat of unravelling, the figure in
the carpet will not hold. Without the
Within this scenario, critical reception
becomes a power game of ‘fascination’; the
imposition of critical power, the figure simply
cannot configure
indefinable thing has us in thrall, wasted and
wandering in a romantic quest for ‘unveil the
indefinable’: “literature [is] a game of skill”
(36). ‘The treasure’ is an object of exchange
between subjects, ‘[t]he [m]iddle’ in which
one and other converge in a passionate
encounter, “fire[d] as [we’ve] never been
fired” before (18).
Was the figure in the carpet traceable or
describable only for husbands or wives - for
lovers supremely united? (52)
The linking of united lovers with the heart of
the textual mystery invites a reading of a
position of interpretative jouissance, an
artistic sublime achieved through that which
transcends its circumscribed place in the
scriptible. We, as critics, may be fascinated
by the totem of power wielded by the textual
fasces, spellbound by what Vereker refers to
in his work as the “organ of life” (19). In
coercive structure then, which imprisons the
reader (existing within the text and outside
its boundaries), lies “intoxication” (42) and a
“pleasure so rare” (5) as subject and object
clash in a sexual/textual encounter which
gives a form of “rapture” (3). That there is a
clash between one and other in the act of
interpretation may be co-existent with
liminal challenge as a jubilation in the extratextual
position thus rendered - that is, in a
Page 54
FOCUS