Virginia Woolf Miscellany, Issue 82, Fall 2012

NUMBER 82 FALL 2012 To the Readers does not take for granted the presumptions that – TABLE of CONTENTS – are often made about the naturalness of identity, See page 8 Queering Woolf—an Introduction of sex, of gender, or of desire. As an adjective, “queer” announces this critical/epistemological It is a pleasure to bring to you this special issue International Virginia Woolf predisposition. on Queering Woolf, an outgrowth of several Society Column illuminating conversations we have had on the See page 32 (continued on page 31) II. “VS.” is a symptom of the problem place of queer studies in Woolf studies and/or the For reasons that have more to do with the ways that Woolf herself was “queering” before – EVENTS, INFO and CFPs – institution(s) of scholarly production and less the terms “queer theory” and “queer studies” About MLA 2013 in Boston to do with lived experience—the messy and were coined in the early 1990s. The first of See page 4 and page 31 pragmatic realities of our daily co-existence with our conversations began on the Virginia Woolf About the 2013 others—“queer theory” has been often set out as an listserv ([email protected]) Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf alternative to, often an alternative against lesbian with a lively debate about whether queer studies See page 5 and gay studies, LGBT politics, and even feminism. indeed had anything to offer Woolf studies beyond It is our position that queer and GLBT scholarly earlier work on Woolf from lesbian feminist and/ Louisville 2014 CFP See page 4 efforts and political movements are far more likely or gay and lesbian studies perspectives. (We to be contiguous or overlapping than in direct purposely have left out the “B” and the “T” from – Virginia Woolf Miscellany – opposition to each other. As Jacob Hale notes, the now ubiquitous “GLBT” above because, in Guest Editors & CFPs our estimation, it is only recently that work on Issue #83—Spring 2013 Identity is always doubly relational (at a Woolf from a transgender studies perspective— Sara Sullam and Emily Kopley minimum). We form and maintain our identities focusing mainly on Orlando—or a bisexual “Virginia Woolf and Literary Genres” by making continually reiterated identifications studies perspective has made it into the repertoire Issue #84—Fall 2013 as members of some category U(s). This is of critical work on Woolf, and, due in part to “Woolf and Animals” accomplished both positively and negatively their more recent scholarly establishment, both From the animal nicknames she shared with loved by repeated identificationswith some (not ones to the purchase of “a beautiful cat, a Persian transgender and bisexual studies have been more cat” with her first earnings as a writer; from the necessarily all) members of U, and by reiterated imbricated with queer studies since their inception.) cawing rooks in To the Lighthouse to the complex identificationsas not-members of some other Inspired by the debate on the listserv, we decided life of Flush to the disturbing animal imagery category T(hem). (330) to host a breakfast roundtable discussion on “Queer in Between the Acts, animals play a key role in Woolf’s life and writing. We invite submissions “U” and “T” are often closely related, not opposite Bloomsbury, Queer Studies, and Woolf’s Place discussing animals in Woolf both fictional and in Both” Virginiaat the Twentieth Annual International Woolfactual. We also welcome articles that alignMiscellany Woolf to each other, and counter identifications serve to Conference on Virginia Woolf at Georgetown with animal elements in the work and lives of denote relatively fine gradations of distinction. others. Please send papers of up to 2500 words to: Following Chela Sandoval, we believe it has College. Kristin Czarnecki, the conference Kristin Czarnecki organizer, graciously added the session to the <[email protected]> always been a more practical option (indeed program at the last minute, and (especially for and Vara Neverow <[email protected]> a more livable option) to move between and a breakfast session) the roundtable was packed by February 1, 2013. among seemingly fixed ideological or theoretical positions with what Sandoval calls “differential with a number of scholars and common readers Issue #85—Spring 2014 interested in pursuing the question of Woolf studies’ “Woolf and Materiality” consciousness” than to maintain an unlivable relationship with queer studies. We resumed the The VWM invites discussion of how Woolf’s allegiance to theoretical purity (62). Sandoval conversation in Glasgow the following year, thanks writings explore the material world. Articles seems to be on the same wavelength as Woolf, who to the generosity of Jane Goldman, the conference that directly address the relationship between proposed an “outsider” society in Three Guineas, meaning and materiality are particularly insofar as the “intellectual liberty” practiced by organizer of the twenty-first annual conference. The welcome, and potential topics include fresh plenary roundtable focused more specifically on considerations of Woolf’s engagement the “outsider” would require “freedom from unreal queering, Woolf, and pedagogy. with: the natural sciences; philosophical loyalties” (TG 78). Linda Camarasana, writing conceptualisations of materiality; non/human in this issue, focuses on the liberties garnered Because the conversation in this issue is a bodies and objects; fabrics and ‘things’; by outsiders who “trespass” and “transgress” in continuation of discussions that preceded it, we the materiality of language and art. Send Woolf’s work, especially the liberties taken and submissions of not more than 2500 words to wish to forego the usual practice of offering Derek Ryan <[email protected]>> used by the outsider La Trobe in Between the Acts a summative introduction in favor of offering by August 1, 2013 to resist the heteronormativity of nationalism. some observations, Wallace-Stevens-style, on the interwoven nature of Woolf’s queering and For information or questions about III. Beware the umbrella queering Woolf. the The colloquial use of the term “queer” to mean gay Virginia Woolf Miscellany or lesbian, or sometimes bi- or trans-, and rarely Thirteen Ways to Look at Queering WooLf contact: Vara Neverow intersexed or asexual, is probably unavoidable, I. “Queering” is a verb <[email protected]> but those of us who do queer studies do not use it as a catchall synonym for an identity term in our And “queer” is an adjective. It has become The VWM Online: scholarship. As clunky as the acronyms can get for commonplace to use “queer” as a synonym for <http://www.home.southernct. identity-based movements—GLBTQIA now being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or trans. But we mean edu/~neverowv1/VWM_Online.html> the acronym in common usage for Gay, Lesbian, queer as a kind of doing, even a way of living, that 1 Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, Intersexed, Asexual—using to dictate how others should live, what others should do. Queer Woolf “queer” as an umbrella term for all of the above draws it back into studies therefore tend to explore how Woolf’s works create or expose the vortex of identity-based ontology that denudes it of its critical possibilities for her readers. In this issue, Erin Douglas emphasizes force as a discourse that questions how identities are made (and the queer fantasy work Woolf’s fiction performs in the service of such un-made). possibilities. IV. Granite matters as much as rainbow VI. And “odour” in the public sphere That is, materiality matters to Woolf, and it matters to queer Wars and genocidal atrocities are connected epistemologically to the theory. One of the bad raps that queer theory has taken from “tyrannies and servilities” of the “private” world, which includes its detractors is the straw-person argument that queer theory sexual and gender-based ideologies. “Odour, then—or shall we call it suggests that “everything is discourse,” as if discourse were ‘atmosphere’?—is a very important element in professional life; in spite wholly immaterial or without material consequences. Embodied of the fact that like other important elements it is impalpable,” Woolf and experienced realities (granite) do matter to us as queer wrote in Three Guineas (52). Like dominant discourse, “atmosphere” scholars, as they did to Woolf, who was a committed socialist. To is not tangible, but its effects are materially significant: “Atmosphere say that embodied realities, even phenomena as solid-appearing plainly is a very mighty power,” Woolf continues. “Atmosphere not as identities, are made is to admit they are real, with material only changes the sizes and shapes of things; it affects solid bodies, like implications following from how those identities are interpreted salaries, which might have been thought impervious to atmosphere” (TG and experienced. Questioning how identities are made allows 52). Seemingly “private” arrangements like the relationship between for an investigation into the political, social, and cultural forces a husband and wife, are infused with heteronormative “atmosphere” that informed that making as well as the consequences thereof. which is “powerful” in part because it is “one of the most impalpable” Referring to the importance of remaining accountable to verifiable forces regulating the lives of “the daughters of educated men”—and, “facts” in the production of biography, Woolf nonetheless we might add, the lives of others, although in differential ways (TG highlights the necessity of contextualizing the facts employed in 52). As Abby Wilkerson argues in her development of the concept of the human sciences: “normate sex,” “If a given condition can be seen as a departure from But these facts are not like the facts of science—once they normate sex, then the primary target for intervention should be social are discovered, always the same. They are subject to changes norms and practices rather than individuals. Likewise, a critical notion of opinion; opinions change as the times change.

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