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Words Like That: Reading, Writing, and Sadomasochism

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Words Like That: Reading, Writing, and Sadomasochism WORDS LIKE THAT: READING, WRITING, AND SADOMASOCHISM JORDANA M. GREENBLATT A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN ENGLISH YORK UNIVERSITY, TORONTO, ONTARIO APRIL 2010 Library and Archives Bibliothgque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de l'6dition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-68344-6 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-68344-6 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Biblioth&que et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par Nnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non- support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conform£ment a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. Canada Words Like That: Reading, Writing, and Sadomasochism by Jordana Greenblatt a dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of York University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ©2010 Permission has been granted to: a) YORK UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES to lend or sell copies of this dissertation in paper, microform or electronic formats, and b) LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA to reproduce, lend, distribute, or sell copies of this dissertation anywhere in the world in microform, paper or electronic formats and to authorize or procure the reproduction, loan, distribution or sale of copies of this dissertation anywhere in the world in microform, paper or electronic formats. The author reserves other publication rights, and neither the dissertation nor extensive extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's written permission. iv Abstract What is it that draws us to texts that are both persistent and notoriously difficult, known for being picked up and put down unfinished? My project focuses on such texts, texts that compel painful and pleasurable relationships between author and text and reader and text that we can couch as sadistic and/or masochistic. I posit such acts of writing and reading as erotically charged relationships with language and textuality— textual perversion, varying according to our own reading practices and the proclivities of each author or imagined reader. Focusing on seven authors, varied in terms of period, nationality, and nominal genre—Gertrude Stein, James Agee, Monique Wittig, Peter Handke, Anne Carson, Lynn Crosbie, and Sarah Kane—I examine works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, lectures, and essays, though each author's texts blur generic categories. Six of these writers also specifically address the difficulties of writing; their analyses inform my framing of perverse textual relationships. In their work, violence does not depend on narrative events, nor is it only or always a manifestation of oppressive forces operating through text. Rather, these perverse texts constitute spaces in which negative and positive affect coexist—spaces where violence is both painful and pleasurable, where bliss is both possible and necessary. My work distinguishes itself from most writing on sadomasochism by positioning perversity as a specifically textual dynamic and treating our affectively mixed relationships with perverse texts as potentially reparative. Much of the existing writing on sadomasochism addresses sexual practice, often arguing for or against its political acceptability. Literary analysis tends overwhelmingly to focus on gender, primarily in relation to masochism. In positioning perverse textual dynamics as not limited to issues of oppression, I address a broad range of theoretical writing on eroticism, textuality, and the sublime. Drawing on the work of Roland Barthes, Helene Cixous, Georges Bataille, Steve McCaffrey, Leo Bersani, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Longinus, Immanuel Kant, Harold Bloom, Herbert Marcuse, and Karmen MacKendrick, I develop a framework for analyzing the seeming contradictions of our perverse relationships with difficult texts. vi Acknowledgements This project would not be complete without thanking the numerous people who have helped me along the way. First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor, Julia Creet, who has provided endless intellectual, academic, and emotional support throughout this entire lengthy process, and throughout my doctoral studies as a whole. I have never heard of anyone else having such a pleasant and amicable supervisory experience. Julia immediately both understood and encouraged my unconventional project and text selection and, indeed, introduced me to a number of wonderfully perverse texts that I might not otherwise have encountered. She also went above and beyond, in the final stages of this project, to ensure that it would be the best that it could be. I also owe many thanks to my other committee members, Tom Loebel and Darren Gobert. Grammar authoritarians both, it is thanks to them that I now get asked whether I copyedit professionally. During Julia's tenure as department chair, both Tom and Darren were far more attentive and involved with my work than their positions normally require; I truly appreciate the time and effort that this took. Particularly, I would like to thank Tom for his extensive comments, which were both challenging and immediately inspiring—and also included references to Pat Benatar. Darren, whose involvement in my work throughout the degree as a whole was second only to Julia's, I would particularly like to thank for his uncanny ability to only and always suggest reading material that I both love and want to make use of immediately. That's a rare skill indeed. vii Thanks go as well to a number of other faculty members, both at York and at UBC, whose support contributed substantially to my reaching this stage. These include Art Redding, Andy Weaver, Jonathan Warren, Leslie Saunders, Ross Arthur, Pamela Dalziel, Susanna Egan, and Stephen Guy-Bray. And, of course, this project would never have been conceived had not Adam Frank chosen to read out that key passage from "Poetry and Grammar" in his graduate seminar, "Lines From Stein." There are some non-academics who also contributed significantly, in their professional capacities, to the completion of this project. Thanks go to David and Lena, who opened the Linux Caffe in Toronto a month before I started my doctoral studies, providing the space in which I completed a substantial percentage of the work of this project. They are lovely, friendly people, and they have created a space in which vast quantities of work, both academic and otherwise, gets done and unlikely but interesting encounters between people happen regularly. I would also like to thank Janine Fuller, at Little Sister's Bookstore in Vancouver, who along with being consistently friendly and insightful, hand-sold me Wayne Koestenbaum's Cleavage during the prehistory of this project; his writing on Stein remains the secondary criticism on that author most relevant to my work. I would also like to thank a number of friends, old and new. The people I have encountered in the English Program at York are overwhelmingly pleasant, interesting, witty, and inspiring—I cannot hope to list everyone here, so I'm not even going to try. Thank you all. I would also like to thank Kate Betts-Wilmott, Mike Baker, Mike Harris, viii Mike Kwag, Greg Polakoff, and Leah McKenzie-Brown. I would particularly like to single out Drew Belsky, art star and fellow fan of late-night work and socializing; Jean Broughton, experimental poetry enthusiast, grammar nerd, and ideal travel companion; and Amanda Paxton, fellow traveler at York and in drama, whose sweet exterior conceals a deeply perverse core. And, of course, thanks go to Lesley Hoyles, who tells me I'm brilliant and who seems unperturbed, and even pleased, when I insist on reading her lengthy excerpts from excitingly difficult texts over the phone. Thanks to her, strangers listen to songs about me. Apparently I'm "so cynical, but oh so sweet or something." My family, of course, also deserves my sincerest thanks and appreciation. My parents, Jack and Anna Greenblatt, have given me immeasurable emotional and financial support and encouragement throughout my entire education. They raised me in a home where intellectual pursuits were promoted and valued and that was full of books and reading. Thanks to them, I always wanted to be an academic, even when I also wanted to be a ballerina and a professional baseball player. Thanks also to my brother, Josh, who turned out great, despite his incomprehensible enthusiasm for Bret Easton Ellis. It's nice to have a brother to whom one can suggest Kathy Acker without concern.
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