Atdtda22: [42.2ii] A galley-slave repetition of days, 617

[Paul Nightingale]

[617.16-19] "... it is possible that we have stepped outside of Time as it
commonly passes here, above this galley-slave repetition of days, and have
had a glimpse of future, past and present"--she made a comprehensive
gesture--"all together."

Cf. the Chicago Fair on 22: "Observers of the Fair had remarked how, as one
moved up and down in Midway, the more European, civilized, and ... well,
frankly, white exhibits located closer to the center of the 'White City'
seemed to be, whereas the farther from that alabaster Metropolis one
ventured, the more evident grew the signs of cultural darkness and
savagery."

Or the novel's description of a changing landscape, often in connection with
the railway, eg Dally "[finding] herself stunned by the immensity, the
conglomeration of architectural styles" as she approaches Chicago (336).

Or the introduction to Candlebrow, the "aspect of terrible antiquity,
evoking a remote age before the first European explorers, before the Plains
Indians they had found here, before those whom the Indians remembered in
their legends as giants and demigods" (406).


Cf. also Raymond Williams' take on hegemony and uneven development, residual
and emergent cultures--another version of repetition and difference:

By 'residual' I mean that some experiences, meanings and values, which
cannot be verified or cannot be expressed in terms of the dominant culture,
are nevertheless lived and practised on the basis of the residue--cultural
as well as social--of some previous social formation. There is a real case
of this in certain religious values, by contrast with the very evident
incorporation of most religious meanings and values into the dominant
system. The same is true, in a culture like Britain, of certain notions
derived from a rural past, which have a very significant popularity. A
residual culture is usually at some distance from the effective dominant
culture, but one has to recognise that, in real cultural activities, it may
get incorporated into it. This is because some part of it, some version of
it--and especially if the residue is from some major area of the past--will
in many cases have had to be incorporated if the effective dominant culture
is to make sense in those areas.

[...]

By 'emergent' I mean, first, the new meanings and values, new practices, new
significances and experiences, are continually being created. But there is,
then, a much earlier attempt to incorporate them, just because they are
part--and yet not a defined part--of effective contemporary practice. Indeed
it is significant in our own period how very early this attempt is, how
alert the dominant culture now is to anything that can be seen as emergent.

From: Raymond Williams, 'Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory'
in Problems in Materialism and Culture, Verso, 1980, 40-41.