Ritið : tímarit Hugvísindastofnunar - 01.01.2011, Side 157

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SKRIF VIÐ NÚLLPUNKT
(en þessa þætti má lesa sem ákveðna birtingarmynd illsku) og sem slík fela
endalokin ekki í sér markvissa stefnu að merkingarbærri heild. Þetta kjar-
nast í síðustu sögunni, „Svarta hlutnum“, þar sem úrvinnsla Steinars Braga
á dauðahvötinni vísar til þeirra endaloka sem eygja má í gróðurhúsaáhrif-
unum og hlýnun jarðar – en þar glittir í ómerkingarbær endalok í þeim
skilningi að þau grundvallast á blindu og vanhæfni til að takast á við veru-
leikann.
Lesandinn stendur þannig andspænis knýjandi vandamáli. Hvað ef
dauðinn, hinn tilvistarlegi núllpunktur sem liggur handan vellíðunarlög-
málsins og er framsettur í hugmyndakerfi Freuds sem fjarvera skynhrifa,
er táknræn hliðstæða þeirrar stjórnlausu neyslu sem stefnir í að tæma
auðlindir jarðar? Ef til vill má lesa umgengni okkar við umhverfið í sam-
tímanum sem birtingarmynd dauðahvatarinnar, og ómeðvitaða þrá eftir
endalokum.
ABSTRACT
Writing at Degree Zero: Fossils, Cyborgs and Finitude in
Himinninn yfir Þingvöllum
Steinar Bragi’s Himinninn yfir Þingvöllum, a collection of three novellas, is read in
conjunction with Freud’s notion of the death drive in order to illustrate the
aesthetic and philosophical complexities of the work. Each of the three novellas
thematizes death through the desire for an ending, which is figuratively presented
through narrative motifs such as necrophilia, the notion of species extinction, and
apocalypse. Steinar Bragi, it is maintained, grapples with a Freudian problematic
that involves a contradictory notion, often referred to as the “nirvana principle”,
which places the goal of life as reaching the void anterior to existence. This, it
would seem, rationalizes self-destructive behavior as being part of an inexorable
movement toward stasis. By initially addressing this problematic in terms of the
individual, then expanding the context until it encompasses a post-apocalyptic
world, the three novellas form a coherent “story” that foregrounds urgent ques-
tions regarding man’s relationship to the environment, leaving the reader facing a
final dilemma: what if the existential nullification that takes one beyond the pleas-
ure principle, and is represented in Freud’s schema as the absence of all sensory
stimuli, the zero degree of death, is the symbolic equivalent of man’s drive toward
exhausting the world of its resources? Can we read current environmental practi-
ces as being under the sway of the death drive, fuelled by an unconscious desire for
an end?
Keywords: Himinninn yfir Þingvöllum, Steinar Bragi, the death drive, Sigmund
Freud, environmental criticism.