Gendered Pathology in Modernist Literature Alisa Allkins Wayne State University
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Wayne State University Wayne State University Dissertations 1-1-2016 After The linic:C Gendered Pathology In Modernist Literature Alisa Allkins Wayne State University, Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_dissertations Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Allkins, Alisa, "After The lC inic: Gendered Pathology In Modernist Literature" (2016). Wayne State University Dissertations. 1619. https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_dissertations/1619 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. AFTER THE CLINIC: GENDERED PATHOLOGY IN MODERNIST LITERATURE by ALISA ALLKINS 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 2016 MAJOR: ENGLISH LITERATURE Approved By: ______________________________ Advisor Date ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ © COPYRIGHT BY ALISA ALLKINS 2016 All Rights Reserved DEDICATION To Kyle, Elsa, and our little boy ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my committee members, Professors Barrett Watten, renée hoogland, Jonathan Flatley, and Ben Lee, for their productive feedback toward the completion of this project. I would especially like to thank Barrett for his support of my research: his encouragement and wealth of knowledge have been invaluable for situating myself in the discourse of academia. Much appreciation to the English Department, particularly Caroline Maun and the Graduate Committee, for the Rumble Dissertation Completion Fellowship. Thank you to my peer cohort at Wayne State who have offered their intellectual and emotional support in innumerable ways, particularly Tara Forbes, Peter Marra, Jon Plumb, Melanie Zynel, Judith Lakamper, Erin Bell, and many others. I have received a lot of constructive feedback on these chapters as they have been in process. Thank you to the wonderful junior academics and graduate students who offered me comments and critiques at the Bavarian American Academy through the years. Thank you to my fellow Williams scholars, particularly Daniel Burke, Ian Copestake, Kate Schnur, and others, who heard my work on the Baroness for the first time and have offered feedback on my topic as well as insights concerning Williams’s medical works. Finally, I would like to thank my support system beyond my academic circle who have gotten me over the finish line. Thank you to Andrea Knutson, whose encouragement has helped me through some rough waters during the dissertation composition process. Thank you to my extended family members who have offered me enthusiastic support through the years. And finally, to my little family. Thank you, Elsa, for giving my schedule a structure and purpose that I’m not sure I would have had without you, and a space to step away from the process and gain perspective. And Kyle, for all of the mornings, and evenings, and late night talks, and long read- aloud sessions of my chapter drafts: thank you is not enough, but it’s what I have. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication ....................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments.......................................................................................................................... iii Introduction ......................................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1 “Modernist Pathology in Berlin Alexanderplatz” .........................................................29 Chapter 2 “Feminist Dispersions in Palimpsest” ...........................................................................69 Chapter 3 “Critical Madness in Williams and the Baroness ........................................................107 Chapter 4 “Dismantling Clinical Authority in Paterson” ............................................................146 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................179 References ....................................................................................................................................184 Abstract ........................................................................................................................................194 Autobiographical Statement.........................................................................................................196 iv 1 INTRODUCTION After the Clinic: Gendered Pathology in Modernist Literature demonstrates the ways in which formal innovations of modernism construct a relationship between sexual pathology and modernity. I read a selection of canonical and lesser known modernist works through their investments in overturning hierarchical relationships constructed through the clinical institution, focusing on their depiction of clinical types such as the traumatized male veteran, the hysterical woman, and the often-patriarchal figure of the doctor. Modernist prose and hybrid works by Alfred Döblin, William Carlos Williams, and H.D. depict sexological and psychoanalytic definitions of pathology as gendered products of clinical discourse and the chaotic reality of modern life. These prominent modernist authors draw on their experiences as doctors and patient, respectively, to take sexual pathology out of the limited field of clinical discourse and contextualize it within modern experience.1 Lesser known or marginal artists Marcia Nardi and the Baroness Elsa von Freytag- Loringhoven confront the hypocrisy of clinical alienation from modern experience through their position as hystericized or “mad” women. Through their works, modernist artists both adopt and challenge the perspectives of Sigmund Freud as well as cultural sexologists such as Richard von Krafft- Ebing, Havelock Ellis, and Otto Weininger, among others. While Freudian psychoanalysis examines the psychological components of sexual development and its ties to cultural norms perpetuated through family structures, sexology focuses on sexual behaviors through biological development. Although these fields are distinct, they both rely on structures of scientific observation and the genre of the case 1 My use of “clinical discourse” is in reference to Michel Foucault’s work on discursive constructions in The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language in which he writes, “Clinical discourse was just as much a group of hypotheses about life and death, of ethical choices, of therapeutic decisions, of institutional regulations, of teaching models, as a group of descriptions,” and “that this description has constantly been displaced” (33). Rejecting the concept that clinical discourse is a unified set of statements or “corpus of knowledge,” Foucault reads the discipline of medicine as a decentered and ever-unfolding system of theories, observations, and practices. 2 study to make claims about larger trends in sexual behaviors and explore the parameters of normal and pathological. Modernist novels such as Berlin Alexanderplatz, Palimpsest, and various prose and hybrid works by William Carlos Williams use montage, non-narrative forms, and experimental poetics to challenge how pathology is defined through cultural expectations of normative sexual behaviors and reproduced through medical discourse. They counter the methodology of the clinic, particularly the concentration of power and interpretation in the doctor, and reject the division between the normal and pathological as a framework for representing modern life. Rather than adopt psychoanalytic and sexological perspectives of pathological sexual behaviors, I argue, modernist texts show pathology to be dialectically constructed by medical discourse and the conditions of modernity in which medical discourse is produced. Furthermore, these works draw attention to how the cultural construction of pathology is a gendered one, in which expectations of normative yet divergent sexual functioning in men and women cast aspersions on those whose sexuality lies outside the confines of “normal.” The authors’ reorientation of pathology creates an ethical relationship between doctor and patient, creating space for madness to “speak” out of a clinical context. My project takes two approaches to demonstrating the ways in which works by Döblin, Williams, and H.D. challenge clinical definitions of sexual pathology. My first two chapters examine opposing perspectives of clinical discourse, from Döblin’s experience as a practicing male physician and H.D.’s experience as a female patient. In Chapter 1, “Modernist Pathology in Berlin Alexanderplatz,” I argue that Franz Biberkopf’s pathology is not only shaped by the predatory conditions of modernity, but is simultaneously constructed by a sexological discourse that attempts (and fails) to serve a diagnostic function. In Chapter 2, “Feminist Dispersions in Palimpsest,” I read H.D.’s use of the mirror image along with her fractured, non-narrative style as strategies of destabilizing clinical perspectives of female narcissism and maternal identification. In each novel, the authors draw from their experiences in clinical settings and their knowledge