Theory and Interpretation of Narrative James Phelan, Peter J
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THEORY AND INTERPRETATION OF NARRATIVE James Phelan, Peter J. Rabinowitz, and Robyn Warhol, Series Editors All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. NARRATIVE THEORY UNBOUND Queer and Feminist Interventions EDITED BY Robyn Warhol AND Susan S. Lanser THE OHIO STATE UNIVersITY PRESS • COLUMBUS All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. Copyright © 2015 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Narrative theory unbound : queer and feminist interventions / edited by Robyn Warhol and Susan S. Lanser. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8142-1280-6 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8142-9385-0 (cd-rom) 1. Discourse analysis, Narrative. 2. Queer theory. 3. Feminist theory. I. Warhol, Robyn R., editor. II. Lanser, Susan Sniader, 1944– editor. III. Series: Theory and interpretation of narrative series. P302.7.N3824 2015 809'.923—dc23 2014046216 Cover design by Janna Thompson-Chordas Text design by Juliet Williams Type set in Adobe Minion Pro Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American Na- tional Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. CONTENTS List of Illustrations viii Acknowledgments ix Introduction ROBYN WARHOL and SusAN S. LANSER 1 PART I • NARRATIVE DisCOURSE UNBOUND 1 Toward (a Queerer and) More (Feminist) Narratology SusAN S. LANSER 23 2 Out of the Bind: From Structure to System in Popular Narratives JUDITH Roof 43 3 Giving an Account of Themselves: Metanarration and the Structure of Address in The Office and The Real Housewives ROBYN WARHOL 59 H 4 ypothetical Focalization and Queer Grief PEGGY PHELAN 78 PART II • N I TERSECTIONAL NARRATIVE THEORIES 5 Religion, Intersectionality, and Queer/Feminist Narrative Theory: The Bildungsromane of Ahdaf Soueif, Leila Aboulela, and Randa Jarrar SusAN STANFORD FRIEDMAN 101 All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. vi • Contents I 6 ntersectional Narratology in the Study of Narrative Empathy SUZANNE KEEN 123 7 Empathy and 1970s Novels by Third World Women Sue J. KIM 147 PART III • E LIF WRITING, GENDER, SEX 8 Screenshots in the Longue Durée: Feminist Narratology, Digital Humanities, and Collective Biographies of Women ALISON BootH 169 9 The Space of Graphic Narrative: Mapping Bodies, Feminism, and Form HILLARY CHUTE 194 0 1 The Narrative Case for Queer Biography WENDY MoffAT 210 1 1 “No Future” vs. “It Gets Better”: Queer Prospects for Narrative Temporality JESSE MATZ 227 PART IV • EMPLOTMENT, OR THE SHAPES OF STORIES 2 1 Maurice, or Coming Out Straight PAUL MorrISON 253 3 1 Strange Influence: Queer Etiology inThe Picture of Dorian Gray VALERIE ROHY 275 4 1 Gendered Narratives in Animal Studies SusAN FRAIMAN 293 5 1 Sex—Text—Cortex KAY YouNG 312 PART V • CHALLENGES: UN/DOING NARRATIVE THEORY 6 1 Towards a Queer Feminism; Or, Feminist Theories and/as Queer Narrative Studies ABBY COYKENDALL 325 All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. Contents • vii 7 1 Queer/Feminist/Narrative: On the Limits of Reciprocal Engagement MArtIN JOSEPH PONce 334 8 1 Critically Affirmative Reconfigurations CLAUDIA Breger 340 N 9 1 arrative Causes: Inside and Out ELLEN PEEL 348 0 2 The Human Problem SHALYN CLAGGETT 353 A fterword IRENE KACANDES 361 About the Editors and Contributors 373 Index 377 All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. I LLT US RATIONS 8.1 Frontispiece Uniting Sister Dora with Frances Willard, Agnes Weston, and Catherine Booth 175 8.2 R-Graph of Selected Siblings of Sister Dora in Four Biographical Collections 179 9.1 Page from Alison Bechdel, Are You My Mother? 203 9.2 Page from Phoebe Gloeckner, A Child’s Life and Other Stories 205 viii All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. A CKNOWLEDGMENTS his book began as a conversation among the presenters and par- T ticipants who gathered in Columbus, Ohio, from May 12 to May 14, 2011, to explore new directions in queer and feminist narrative theory. We are grateful to all who organized and participated in this Project Narrative Symposium sponsored by The Ohio State University for their vital contribu- tions to the intellectual substance of this project. In addition to those whose essays appear this volume, we want to thank everyone else who was actively involved in the symposium, including presenters Frederick Luis Aldama, Ann Cvetkovich, Helena Michie, James Phelan, Sangeeta Ray, and Rebecca Wanzo; respondents Chad Allen, David Herman, Brian McHale, Guisela Latorre, James Braxton Peterson, Hilary Schor, Maurice Stevens, and Marlene Tromp; and discussion leaders Adéléké Adééko, Katra Byram, Helen Davis, Tommy Davis, Molly Farrell, Lynn Itagaki, Sandra Macpherson, Linda Mijezewski, Sean O’Sullivan, Delores Phillips, and Karen Steigman. We can hear echoes of all their voices throughout this book. Co-workers at The Ohio State University, including Kelli Fickle, Lauren Parkins, Nicole Cochran, and Lizzie Nixon, helped with the administrative details that made the symposium possible. Equally crucial was the moral sup- port we received from English Department chairs Valerie Lee and Richard Dutton, as well as the financial support from Arts and Humanities Dean Mark ix All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. x • Acknowledgments Shanda for the symposium and from former dean John Roberts for Project Narrative. Working with The Ohio State University Press, we feel lucky to have col- laborated with series co-editors Jim Phelan and Peter Rabinowitz, acquisitions editors Sandy Crooms and Lindsay Martin, and the extraordinary Malcolm Litchfield, former director of the press. We also received a brilliant response from an anonymous external reader, to whom we are indebted for improve- ments in the book’s conception and execution. As always we are grateful to our families for their good-natured sup- port in all our efforts. Robyn thanks her boys Seth Warhol-Streeter and Max Kriff, and especially her astonishingly understanding partner, Peter Kriff. Sue thanks her spouse Jo Radner, oral historian and storyteller, for her fresh and challenging perspectives on a genre that we share as a field of study and that she practices so brilliantly. Sue is also grateful to Robyn for creating the 2011 symposium that gave birth to the book and for inviting her to co-edit this vol- ume. And finally, we thank each other for patience, flexibility, and diligence in getting this work done in the face of pressing personal, medical, professional, and familial obligations. We took turns being the one who needed to apolo- gize to the other for slowness in responding to an email or a call, ultimately reaching the balance that made this book a profoundly collaborative and sat- isfying effort. All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. I NTRODUCTION ROBYN WARHOL and SusAN S. LANSER nbound: a term of Promethean audacity for a field that is no stranger U to derivations from the Greek. We choose this name, with admitted hubris, to loose some chains of narrative thinking, to transgress some theo- retical boundaries, to unbind some narratological constraints. Our subtitle makes a second bold move by claiming for queer and feminist approaches the power to intervene in narrative theory tout court. If both of these bold moves are intentional, they are also provisional. Our subtitle recognizes that “queer and feminist” are not the only sites for intervention in narrative study. But we do aim to place gender and sexuality at the center of an inquiry about the production and reception, forms and functions of narrative texts. And we believe that the range, depth, and innovation that characterize this collection show why gender and sexuality belong at the heart of all narrative inquiry and how unbinding these concepts can unbind narrative theory as well. Under the rubric of Narrative Theory Unbound, then, we gather a diverse and sometimes dissonant spectrum of theoretical challenges. Although the two of us have long preferred the term “feminist narratology” to describe our own practice, the more capacious and less contentious rubric of “narrative theory” better reflects the diversity of approaches gathered here. In this intro- duction as in the essays that follow, the terms “narratology” and “narrative theory” will both appear. Within the field, the two terms are sometimes used 1 All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. 2 • Introduction interchangeably to refer to the systematic study of how narrative forms make meaning. But the phrase “feminist narratology” remains under pressure from two directions: from echt narratologists who assert that culturally invested and category-resistant approaches cannot properly be called narratological, and from scholars of gender and sexuality who remain suspicious of narra- tology’s formalist priorities and binary frames. Indeed, narratology’s roots in an ahistorical structuralism seemed at first to preclude a feminist or queer approach. When analysis depends on “either-or” categorizations, as it did in the narratology of the