Adaptation and/as salvage

de Bruin-Molé, Megen (2027) Adaptation and/as salvage. In, The Routledge Handbook of Adaptation in the 21st Century. Routledge.

Record type: Book Section

Abstract

In A Theory of Adaptation, Linda Hutcheon explained adaptation as ‘an acknowledged transposition of a recognizable other-work or works; A creative and an interpretive act of appropriation/salvaging’ (Hutcheon 2013 p. 9, my emphasis). While some critical attention has been paid to adaptation and/as appropriation, until recently less work has engaged with the idea of adaptation and/as salvage. This approach can help us to understand how adaptation practices equip us with tools to deal not just with cultural change, destruction, and loss, but also environmental and ecological change and loss. To do so this chapter first draws on the metaphor of literary salvage, borrowing Heather J. Hicks’ definition of literary salvage as post-apocalyptic. She notes that 'apocalyptic literature has been profoundly intertextual, consistently borrowing and adapting material from earlier texts […] In the aftermath of catastrophe’ (Hicks 2016 p. 3). In the instances this chapter explores the catastrophe is not fantastical or futuristic, but lived and historical.

Drawing on brief case studies from salvage anthropology, heritage work, and the intentionally appropriative fiction of African-American author Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins, the rest of the chapter examines works of ‘adaptation’ at the borders of the term, using the critical lens of ‘salvage’ to raise questions about the time, space, and positionality of adaptation studies. Salvage implies a particular kind of power relationship between an object and an adaptor, often in a case where the object of adaptation has already been lost or damaged beyond repair. As Caitlin DeSilvey writes of salvage in the heritage industry, meaning ‘arose from the encounter with the materials and the unscripted, instinctive impulse to recover what had been lost […] The salvage occurred at the point where narrative failed.’ (DeSilvey 2017, p. 67). This chapter considers the implications of salvage adaptation for narrative-based texts in the twenty-first century.

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