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Final Copy 2021 05 11 Amor This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from Explore Bristol Research, http://research-information.bristol.ac.uk Author: Amoretti, Chiara Title: Sacred Bodies Reading the Female and Queer Divine in Mina Loy, Kathy Acker and Maggie Nelson General rights Access to the thesis is subject to the Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International Public License. A copy of this may be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode This license sets out your rights and the restrictions that apply to your access to the thesis so it is important you read this before proceeding. Take down policy Some pages of this thesis may have been removed for copyright restrictions prior to having it been deposited in Explore Bristol Research. However, if you have discovered material within the thesis that you consider to be unlawful e.g. breaches of copyright (either yours or that of a third party) or any other law, including but not limited to those relating to patent, trademark, confidentiality, data protection, obscenity, defamation, libel, then please contact [email protected] and include the following information in your message: •Your contact details •Bibliographic details for the item, including a URL •An outline nature of the complaint Your claim will be investigated and, where appropriate, the item in question will be removed from public view as soon as possible. This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from Explore Bristol Research, http://research-information.bristol.ac.uk Author: Amoretti, Chiara Title: Sacred Bodies: Reading the Female and Queer Divine in Mina Loy, Kathy Acker and Maggie Nelson General rights Access to the thesis is subject to the Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International Public License. A copy of this may be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode This license sets out your rights and the restrictions that apply to your access to the thesis so it is important you read this before proceeding. Take down policy Some pages of this thesis may have been removed for copyright restrictions prior to having it been deposited in Explore Bristol Research. However, if you have discovered material within the thesis that you consider to be unlawful e.g. breaches of copyright (either yours or that of a third party) or any other law, including but not limited to those relating to patent, trademark, confidentiality, data protection, obscenity, defamation, libel, then please contact [email protected] and include the following information in your message: •Your contact details •Bibliographic details for the item, including a URL •An outline nature of the complaint Your claim will be investigated and, where appropriate, the item in question will be removed from public view as soon as possible. Sacred Bodies: Reading the Female and Queer Divine in Mina Loy, Kathy Acker, and Maggie Nelson Chiara Amoretti A dissertation submitted to the University of Bristol in accordance with the requirements for award of the degree of PhD in the Faculty of Arts School of Humanities, Department of English January 2021 Word Count: 78,949 Abstract This thesis investigates the depiction of a female and queer divine in the work of 20th and 21st century women writers Mina Loy, Kathy Acker, and Maggie Nelson. Using an interdisciplinary lens combining feminist theory, embodiment studies, and feminist/queer theology, this thesis adds to existing knowledge by highlighting the authors’ alignment with feminist and queer theology through their vision of embodied divinity. The thesis develops through six chapters, with two chapters dedicated to each author, in chronological order. The first two chapters analyse Mina Loy’s work, focusing on her early and mid-period poetry (Chapter 1) and her only published novel, Insel (Chapter 2). I argue that her work envisions a divine mystical embodiment, which destabilizes male divinity’s centrality and foregrounds female creation. I then analyse Kathy Acker’s novels The Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula by the Black Tarantula and My Mother: Demonology (Chapter 3) and Pussy, King of the Pirates (Chapter 4). Drawing on archive material, I argue that Acker queers certain aspects of Christianity, and draws on diverse extra-European spiritual languages to imagine a divine through the lesbian or bisexual female body. The last two chapters focus on Maggie Nelson’s The Red Parts and Bluets (Chapter 5) and The Argonauts (Chapter 6), which I understand to develop a relational queer divine through relationships, sexuality, grief, and queer family-making. The thesis shows Loy, Acker and Nelson envisioning female and/or queer bodies as sacred, as sites of divine encounter. Starting from Loy, whose conception of divine embodiment remains largely heteronormative, I trace the concept’s expansion by looking at the queer iterations of Acker (lesbian/bisexual body) and Nelson (gender- fluid, queer bodies). The thesis affords new insight into modern and contemporary women’s writing, highlighting a sustained use of experimentation to imagine new spiritual horizons for women and queer people. Key Words: Divine, embodiment, feminist, queer, body, contemporary, experimentation, Christianity, sexuality, theology, modernist, avant-garde, spiritual. 2 Acknowledgments This thesis would not exist without the help and encouragement of so many people. I am not the same person that I was when I started writing it, and this is thanks to the transformative impact the following people have had on me. My biggest thanks go to my supervisors: Dr Hester Jones, Dr Maria Vaccarella, and Dr Rowena Kennedy-Epstein. Thank you for your guidance, patience and kindness, and for sharing your expertise so generously with me. Thanks also to Dr Jane Wright for her insightful comments on my upgrade and APM material. Thank you to the University of Bristol Faculty of Arts for funding my PhD with a Research Scholarship, without which this project would not have been possible. Endless thanks to the Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University for awarding me a Mary Lily Research Grant in 2018, which allowed me to visit the Kathy Acker Papers. This visit had a huge influence on my work, visible especially in Chapter 4. Thank you to Kelly Wooten and Laura Micham for their guidance before, during and after my visit. Thank you to the Special Collections at University of California, San Diego for allowing me to consult the Jerome Rothenberg papers and to quote part of Kathy Acker’s correspondence with him. My utmost gratitude also to Matias Viegener, director of the Kathy Acker Literary Trust, for granting me permission to use the archival material quoted or reproduced in this thesis, and for his kind interest in my work. So much gratitude goes to the PGRs in the Department of English/School of Humanities at Bristol for their companionship, laughter and commiseration. Most of all I’d like to thank Alex, Emma, Gaia and Penny for being my PhD sisters, without whom I would not have survived it. You are some of the most brilliant women I know, and I am forever grateful for our friendship. Thank you, Pam, for the life-changing writers’ retreats, and for letting me hang out with your beautiful cat, Morty! Thank you to my Bristol housemates, past and present, especially Lina, Fanny and Beatriz – you have made me feel at home and inspired me with your fierceness. Thank you to the friends who have somehow put up with me since childhood: Nene, Chiara, Edo, Elena and Ludo. You are my home. Thank you Greta, Rose, Charlie, Bianka, Andy, Ylfa, Victoria, and too many others to name, who have made my life in the UK so wonderful. Thank you, Omar, for loving me even when I don’t love myself. You make everything better. Thank you Sue, Yousouf, Steve, Adam, Sam, Jason, Rose, and Finn of course, for making me feel part of your family. Finally, thank you to my parents, Giovanni and Maria, and my sister Beatrice. I am so lucky to be able to rely on your unconditional love every day. It never gets easier to be far from you, but you are present in everything I do. This thesis is for you. 3 Author’s declaration I declare that the work in this dissertation was carried out in accordance with the requirements of the University's Regulations and Code of Practice for Research Degree Programmes and that it has not been submitted for any other academic award. Except where indicated by specific reference in the text, the work is the candidate's own work. Work done in collaboration with, or with the assistance of, others, is indicated as such. Any views expressed in the dissertation are those of the author. SIGNED: CHIARA AMORETTI DATE: 06/01/2021 4 Table of Contents Introduction: A Female Act of Creation…………………………………………………………………… 6 Key Terms…………………………………………………………………………………………………… 8 Interdisciplinary Context…………………………………………………………………………….. 17 Authors………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 23 Chapter 1: Mystical Embodiment in the Poetry of Mina Loy …………………………………… 31 ‘There is no Life or Death’: Mysticism, Apophasis, and the Female Body…………36 Eroticism, Mysticism, and Communion: ‘Songs to Joannes’………………………….....40 Childbirth, pain and mysticism in ‘Parturition’ and ‘Aid of the Madonna’………..50 Chapter 2: Loy’s Insel: Female Divine Vision through a Pathology of the Male Artist….66 The increate creation of Insel’s body …………………………………………………………….70 The ‘Visitation of Insel’: Mrs. Jones’ divine vision………………………………………….. 83 Chapter 3: Queering Christianity in Kathy Acker’s The Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula by the Black Tarantula and My Mother: Demonology………………………………… 91 Acker’s religious and literary Creation…………………………………………………………. 93 The drag Madonna of The Black Tarantula…………………………………………………… 99 ‘In my dreams, the cunt was triangular: Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost’: A Demonology of the female body as queer iconography…………………………………..108 Chapter 4: The Queer Divine in Kathy Acker’s Pussy, King of the Pirates………………….
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