![]() As the social theorist Zygmut Bauman observed, a plausible and individualized account of suffering has become a passport to social and political visibility in a world of indifference and insensitivity. Search for “speak the unspeakable” online, and the encyclopedic range of results, from the horrific (mass death) to the trivial (relationship advice) to the downright offensive (men’s rights forums, campus “free speech” controversies), makes it easy to start feeling cynical about how people deploy their memories for recognition. ![]() How can the contemporary novel speak the unspeakable? It’s an old question, a tired one perhaps, now that “the unspeakable” has come to encompass many forms of trauma that writers regularly speak about: self-harm, sexual abuse, genocide, fascism, climate change. Giorgio de Chirico: The Archaeologist, 1927 from Endless Enigma: Eight Centuries of Fantastic Art, the catalog of a recent exhibition at the David Zwirner Gallery. Private Collection, Monaco/Nicholas Hall and David Zwirner/© 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome ![]()
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