Mod B Flashcards
Attached
1
SUBJ
‘Even when one is no longer attached to things, it’s still something to have been attached to them;’
Epigraph
Reveals subjective narratives that objects carry perpetuated by their connection to their owner - restoration of the truth
Japonisme
2
SUBJ
‘It was to be a covert book on japonisme, the way in which the West has… misunderstood Japan for more than a hundred years’
Netuske are a metonym for Jewish identity
De Waal finds solace in them due to shared experiences
Vitrine
3
SUBJ
‘He’d open the sliding doors of the long vitrine… and would get out the netsuke one by one’
Multisensory interaction with the netsuke - synthesises experiences of his ancestors, haptic epistemology finds comfort in relationship
Repetition
4
SUBJ
‘I liked the way that repetition wears things smooth,’
Tactile imagery
Likened Ephrussi history to a story with many layers - exposed with continued interaction with the objects
Collection
6
SUBJ
‘It is a very big collection of very small objects.’
Dualism
Inherent juxtaposition within the netsuke - holds memories as De Waal unveils his family’s trauma
Fraying
5
SUBJ
‘It seemed an unfinished, fraying memory.’
Leitmotif
Transience of memory - decaying of memory throughout time - netsuke repair and restore ephemeral narratives passed through family
Asymmetric
7
SUBJ
‘They are always asymmetric… you cannot understand the whole from a part.’
Appreciation of netsuke - parallel the Jewish experience, enable the restoration of the family identity
Open - witnessed
8
SUBJ
‘I want to… feel it open… I want to know what it has witnessed.’
Kinaesthetic imagery
Promotes physicaly restoration of the narrative
9 Collect - knowing
9
SUBJ
‘I think it allows him to collect, to turn looking into having and having into knowing.’
Anadiplosis
Transmutes the netsuke from something Charles and De Waal posses, to something they can garner truth and connection from
Dark
1
OBJ
‘For rooms covered in gold, it is very very dark’
Displaced - cannot connect - derailed physically
Acculturated
2
OBJ
‘I do not understand what it means to be part of an assimilated, acculturated Jewish family,’.
Impacts his corporeal, kinaesthetic body
Disappeared
3
OBJ
‘I know nothing about any of them: the Ephrussi family are so perfectly assimilated they have disappeared into Vienna.’
Can no longer rely on the netsuke to reveal the truth of the narrative - must accept the objectivity
Loss inheritance
4
OBJ
‘This feeling of loss, of having failed to preserve an inheritance, affected Viktor profoundly.’
Importance of memory and legacy to the displaced Jewish cultural narrative - permanence of narratives in transience of identity
Uncounted
5
OBJ
‘The uncounted and the unmeasured started at last to be counted very accurately.’
Netsuke are able to gain value in memory now that everything is transient - stand witness to the events of aryanisation
Nazi to Jews
6
OBJ
‘You think you own us, you fucking foreign shit. You’ll be fucking next, you shit, you fucking Jews.’
High modality language
Affliction of generational trauma on De Waal - displacement of netsuke from the Ephrussi ancestral home
Furniture ranked
7
OBJ
‘Every piece of furniture, every object ranked,’
Intrinsic connection between the netsuke and Ephrussi history - corrupts the monolithic narrative told by De Waal
Erased
8
OBJ
‘I am wrong. The family is not erased, but written over. And finally, it is this that makes me cry.’
Truncated syntax
Netsuke withstand aryanisation and provide permanent objective truth
Couldn’t put back together
9
OBJ
‘It was a family that could not put itself back together.’
Displacement of the objects results in the dissolution of the Ephrussi narrative - de Waal can no longer avoid the harsh effects of trauma
Centre of Iggie’s life
1
FUS
‘For right in the centre of this house, in the centre of Iggie’s life, are the netsuke.’
Reconciliation of the netsuke - not othered anymore
Lose strangeness
2
FUS
‘Here the netsuke become Japanese again. They lose their strangeness’
Not subject to anti-semitism that was rife previously, re-establish their place in the narrative
Passport
3
FUS
You assimilate, but you need somewhere else to go. You keep your passport at hand. You keep something private.’
Anaphora
Synthesis of the narrative, personalises the memoir - netsuke repair trauma
Concrete
4
FUS
‘Some traces are more concrete.’
Provide permanence in spite of continued transience of memory and identity
Patina
6
FUS
‘Perhaps patina is a process of rubbing back so that the essential is revealed…’
Tactile imagery
Layers provide all aspects of the truth - repair and synthesise the memoir
Begin again
7
FUS
‘The netsuke begin again’
Perpetual repair of the memoir - continued restoration and reconstruction of memory and Jewish identity
Book - small Japanese things
5
FUS
‘I no longer know if this book is about my family, or myself, or is still a book about small Japanese things’
Polysyndeton
Coda is a synthesis point - it is all of these things
