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Differential Poetics in Transatlantic American Modernism Sarah Ruddy Wayne State University

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Differential Poetics in Transatlantic American Modernism Sarah Ruddy Wayne State University Wayne State University DigitalCommons@WayneState Wayne State University Dissertations 1-1-2012 This fact which is not one: differential poetics in transatlantic american modernism Sarah Ruddy Wayne State University, Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_dissertations Recommended Citation Ruddy, Sarah, "This fact which is not one: differential poetics in transatlantic american modernism" (2012). Wayne State University Dissertations. Paper 473. This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@WayneState. It has been accepted for inclusion in Wayne State University Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@WayneState. THIS FACT WHICH IS NOT ONE: DIFFERENTIAL POETICS IN TRANSATLANTIC AMERICAN MODERNISM by SARAH RUDDY DISSERTATION Submitted to the Graduate School of Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 2012 MAJOR: ENGLISH Approved by: Advisor Date © COPYRIGHT BY SARAH RUDDY 2012 All Rights Reserved ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To simply say thank you for the generosity of which I have been the fortunate recipient does not seem like enough. I am humbled and grateful for the network of advisors, teachers, colleagues, family, and friends who have supported me throughout the time that I have been at work on this dissertation. First, I would like to thank my advisor, Barrett Watten, for the guidance, support, and friendship he has offered me since the first day we met. Without his simultaneous demand for and gentle yet insistent pushing toward intellectual rigor, bravery, and balance, I would not be able to call myself a scholar—nor would I want to. Jonathan Flatley and renée c. hoogland have, as committee members, each contributed time, energy, and attention to this project—as well as to me—for which I am incredibly grateful. Lyn Hejinian’s commitment from afar, as outside reader, has been constant and encouraging. My entire committee has been patient, engaged, and each member has invested tremendous amounts of care in my work and my growth as a student, teacher, and scholar. They have stuck with me through draft after draft of these ever-growing chapters, through what sometimes seemed like endless revisions, continuing to challenge me intellectually and mentor me personally at each step. Many other professors also deserve profound thanks for their contributions to this project. In its early stages, Dana Seitler nurtured my intellectual curiosity with a firm and generous hand, helping me to see possibilities for my work that I had not previously realized were available to me. At Wayne State, I am grateful to have been able to study with and work alongside Cannon Schmitt, Steve Shaviro, Carla Harryman, and Jacalyn Harden. Early in my academic career, I was fortunate to work under the guidance of an amazing group of scholars—many of whom are now colleagues—at the University of Maine. Carla Billitteri ii was the first to suggest that I pursue an advanced degree, and the support and advice followed rapidly from Ben Friedlander, Steve Evans, Pat Burnes, Jennifer Moxley, Tony Brinkley, Deborah Rogers, and Laura Cowan, all of whom I thank deeply. I feel lucky, as well, to have been able to study with the late Burton Hatlen, who taught me, among other things, about the importance of writing well. Thank you also to Steve Benson, Maria Damon, Michael Davidson, Elizabeth Grosz, George Hartley, and Dee Morris, members of a community of poets and scholars whom I have found to be remarkably generous, both intellectually and personally, as I have undertaken this frequently intimidating journey. I would not have survived this process without the friendship of my fellow graduate students, colleagues, and comrades in Detroit, Orono, and beyond. To Kristine Danielson, Brooke Morrill, Ben Shockey, Ryan Dillaha, Michael Schmidt, Jill Darling, Joel Levise, Justin Prystash, Shashi Thandra, Theresa Faraj, Arlo Quint, Christopher Fritton, Deborah Levine, Carly Sommerstein, Megen Kelly, Zelinda Barnes, Erich Strom, Melanie Greeley, Annmarie Wolcott, and Nick Mitchell: Seriously, thank you. The unfailing and unflinching support and love from my family is most important for me to acknowledge. It is the most important thing. To my brother Jamie Ruddy, niece and nephew London and Dylan Ruddy, grandmother Margaret “Fee” Bonning, Sian Evans, Taran and Madryn Evans-Moran, Doug and Pat Cole—thank you is not enough, but thank you. Most of all, my parents, Jim and Jenni Ruddy, have shown unending patience and generosity. I love you! Also, I promise I’ll pay you back. Finally, I would like to dedicate this work to my sister Samia Ruddy, who inspires me to be brave, and to keep being brave. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………...ii List of Figures……………………………………………………………………………vi List of Abbreviations…………………………………………………………………….vii Introduction. This Fact Which is Not One…………...………………………………....1 A Brief History of the (Literary) Fact……………………………………………….1 Differential Poetics and Other Heterotopias………………………………………15 The Making of Transatlantic American Modernisms……………………………....23 Chapter Outline…………………………………………………………………...29 Chapter 1. The Differential is Spreading: Reading Gertrude Stein’s Geography and Plays as Literary Fact…………………………………………………………...37 Part One: Beyond Abstraction……………………………………………………37 Material Language and the “Fact” of Geography and Plays…………………..37 Composition as Denarrativization………………………………………...49 The Fact of “Gay” in Stein’s Queer Modernism…………………………..61 Part Two: An Absorbing Landscape: Stein’s Great War…………………………...71 “C’est nous qui avons fait ça”……………………………………………..71 Negativity and Plays………………………………………………………84 Mapping, Thinking, and “Pink Melon Joy”……………………………….98 Part Three: Conclusion: What Resists Being Formed…………………………….107 Chapter 2. “Just Contact With the Facts”: Langston Hughes’s Montage of a Dream Deferred………………………………………………………………………...111 Harlem History: Refusing Realist Heroics………………………………………..111 Montage in the Street: Hughes’s Popular Front Poetics………………………….151 iv Dream Deferred: The Resistance of Future Forms……………………………176 Chapter 3. Not Love But a Name: Geographies of Love and Fact in Jack Spicer’s Heads of the Town up to the Aether .....………………………………………195 Part One: My vocabulary did this to me. Your love will let you go on……………………..195 Recognition……………………………………………………………....195 Descent………………………………………………………………….210 Outside…………………………………………………………………..225 Part Two: For you I would build a whole new universe…………………………………232 Disclosure………………………………………………………………..232 Salvage…………………………………………………………………...245 Part Three: A world like that would be worth fighting for, a world that had no maps………259 Tradition………………………………………………………………....259 Imagine This as Love Poetry……………………………………………..276 Chapter 4. Documenting Disappearance: Exhibition and Community in the Photography of Nan Goldin …………………………………………………..278 Exhibition: The Mirror and the Magic Lantern…………………………………..278 Queer Communities: “Some Other Body Was Bursting Out”……………………305 Facts: Names that Have Ceased to be Proper……………………………………316 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………339 Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………355 Autobiographical Statement…………………………………………………………...357 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Romare Bearden, Slave Ship (1971)……………………………………………...194 Figure 2. Romare Bearden, The Block (1971)……………………………………………...194 Figure 3. Nan Goldin, Ryan in the tub (1976)……………………………………………...330 Figure 4. Nan Goldin, Satya School Years (1969–1972)………………………………….331 Figure 5. Nan Goldin, Dazzle Bag (1972–1973)………………………………………….331 Figure 6. Nan Goldin, Sharon with Cookie on the bed (1989)………………………………...332 Figure 7. Nan Goldin, Positive Grid II (1999–2002/2003)…………………………………333 Figure 8. Nan Goldin, Gilles and Gotscho Grid I…………………………………………....334 Gilles and Gotscho on the metro (1991)……………………………………………….334 Gilles and Gotscho in my hotel room (1992)…………………………………………...334 Gilles and Gotscho at home (1992)…………………………………………………...334 Gilles and Gotscho embracing (1992)…………………………………………………334 Figure 9. Nan Goldin, Gilles and Gotscho Grid II…………………………………………..335 Gotscho at the kitchen table (1993)…………………………………………………..335 The hallway of Gilles’ hospital (1993)………………………………………………...335 Gilles in his hospital bed (1993)……………………………………………………..335 Gotscho in the movie theater (1993)…………………………………………………..335 Figure 10. Nan Goldin, Clinic at the hospital (1988)………………………………………...336 Figure 11. Nan Goldin, Path in the woods at the hospital (1988)……………………………...336 Figure 12. Nan Goldin, David and Ric on the sidewalk (1996)……………………………….337 Figure 13. Nan Goldin, Self-portrait by the lake (1996)……………………………………...338 vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS BSD Goldin, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency CL Goldin, Couples and Loneliness GP Stein, Geography and Plays LHR Hughes, Langston Hughes Reader MV Spicer, My Vocabulary Did This to Me SW Stein, Selected Writings vii 1 INTRODUCTION. This Fact Which is Not One “I was talking like this to the Princeton professor and he said well if these are the facts there is no hope and I said well what is hope hope is just contact with the facts.” –Gertrude Stein, Everybody’s Autobiography (1937) I. A Brief History of the (Literary) Fact What happens to a fact when it is “made literary”? Contested narratives of modernism itself, and the demands made by what came after it, inform the construction of texts from documentary evidence, the complicated poetics of multiple modernities. The literary fact is a concept
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