Dissidence and Dissemblance in André Gide's the Immoralist

Masculinism in Twentieth-Century Literature: Dissidence and Dissemblance in André Gide’s The Immoralist, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, and Philip Roth’s Sabbath’s Theater Amanda Emanuel Smith Inauguraldissertation zur Erlangung des akademischen Doktorgrades (Dr. phil.) an der Neuphilologischen Fakultät der Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg 1 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The completion of this book would not have been possible without the insight and counsel of my friends and peers in Heidelberg. First and foremost, I would like to acknowledge the steadfast support of my Doktorvater, Dr. Stefan Herbrechter. He offered critical feedback during the research and writing phases of the project that pushed me to not only hone masculinist themes, but to construct an argument about their continued relevance in literary and cultural studies. Working with him has been a highlight of my academic career. I am also infinitely grateful to Dr. Kirsten Hertel for keeping me grounded, and keeping me laughing, throughout this crazy process. Her keen eye caught incongruencies and mechanical errors that might have otherwise gone unnoticed, and her humor afforded much-needed levity in difficult moments. I would also like to thank Dr. Klaus Kempter for answering my countless questions and walking me through the administrative facets of this project. Lastly, I would like to send a special thanks to Scott, Lizzy and Oliver, who saw this book being written and who never wavered in their support and encouragement. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION 4 2. TRUTH IN TRANSGRESSION 24 3. POLYMORPHOUS PERVERSITY 58 4. FREEDOM AND UNFREEDOM 106 5. RECOVERING THE LOST OBJECT 164 6. NOMADISM AND THE EROTICIZATION OF THE FOREIGN 193 7. CONCLUSION 231 8. BIBLIOGRAPHY 233 3 INTRODUCTION TO MASCULINISM IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY LITERATURE: DISSIDENCE AND DISSEMBLANCE IN ANDRÉ GIDE’S THE IMMORALIST, VLADIMIR NABOKOV’S LOLITA AND PHILIP ROTH’S SABBATH’S THEATER This dissertation is not rooted in assertions about or postulates of masculinity, maleness or manliness, as its title might suggest, but rather in the act of inquiry itself. It asks how certain works whose authors and themes point to a whiteness and maleness, which some within the academy now deem anachronistic and beside the point of literary studies, might be reinterpreted as precursors to queer and feminist theories, approaches to alterity, and explorations into the (postcolonial) eroticization of the foreign. It also asks how Arthur Brittan’s “myth of masculinism,” based on “an obsession with competition and achievement” and “the myth of the autonomous and independent penis”1, might account for, or at least help explain, the emergence of the gendered self in the twentieth century and its deconstruction in the twenty-first century. How might certain works, often censured for being pornographic, misogynistic, and even homophobic, actually open the door for meaningful discourse about race, religion, gender and sexuality – the very construction of self? In short, why do these masculinist works continue to matter and to what end should we continue to read and interpret them in our humanities departments? This project began as a thesis in Heidelberg, Germany. The purport of that exploration was to include a theory, or theories, that would neither condemn nor condone the perverseness, misogyny or machismo so often criticized in Philip Roth’s work and to instead pinpoint the sexual morality from which his characters brazenly deviate and identify the underlying social structures meant to keep human behavior, and perhaps even human nature, in check. It also endeavored to uncover the potential psychological effects of such control, or “containment,”2 on some of Roth’s more wanton protagonists, including David Kapesh and Mickey Sabbath. To accomplish this, the thesis hoped to establish a lens for reading writers whose work compare to Roth’s thematically. In essence, it 1 Brittan, Arthur. Masculinity and Power. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1989. Pg. 4, 16. 2 Cf. Theories of Subversion and Containment in New Historicism, especially: Greenblatt, Stephen. “Invisible Bullets: Renaissance Authority and its Subversion.” Political Shakespeare: Essays in Cultural Materialism. Eds. Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985. 4 attempted to locate, if not construct, a working theoretical apparatus for analyzing sexual conformity and dissidence in the characters of writers like Roth. Ultimately, the thesis, “Eros and Mortality in the Works of Philip Roth,” accomplished part of what it was meant to: it neither condemned nor condoned the perverseness, misogyny or machismo so often denounced in Roth’s work. It also integrated a theoretical apparatus conducive to reading not only Roth’s oeuvre, but those of thematically comparable writers. The apparatus was both explicitly Freudian and relentlessly self-critical. It did build bridges between masculinist writers and works, however tenuous those bridges would eventually prove to be, but it also exposed the precariousness of the foundation it so wanted to establish. While the thesis could relate Roth to other writers, it fell short of defining what masculinism as a literary mode (rather than mere cultural myth) might be or how it might work. It examined Roth and drew connections to D.H. Lawrence and James Joyce, both of whom were obvious choices, but neither of whom fully embodied the working theory it hoped would eventually, miraculously, materialize. It analyzed Roth largely through Herbert Marcuse’s comprehensive (and deservedly lauded) study, Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry Into Freud, drawing literary correlations to Freudian concepts such as the Oedipal Complex, the cultural sublimation of the instincts, and civilization’s monopolization of time. It argued that Kapesh and Sabbath were driven by the pleasure principle and that their obstinate negation of reality had cost them meaningful relationships and mental stability. They were outsiders, it insisted, of a system that prescribed heterosexual monogamy and proscribed polymorphous perversity. Essentially, the analysis made one sweeping claim: Roth’s characters, like those of Lawrence and Joyce, exist in self-made (anti-)social structures beyond the decided morality of their time and milieu. They are individualists. isolatos, who are utterly, and often irrationally, committed to gratification and decidedly adverse to (sexual) conformity. The relationship between individualism and the ‘revolution’ for (artistic/sexual) authenticity would become apparent through later readings of Saint Augustine, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oscar Wilde, and Jonathan Dollimore, among others. But one thing, even throughout extended readings and analyses, would remain evident: masculinism, as a literary mode, is irrefutably anarchic. 5 Although masculinist literature may appear to be about masculinity as such or (often explicit) articulations of male carnality or even crudeness, it is actually about the use of masculinity, or gender performance, and prurience as rebellion; it is a means to undercut a sexually sublimating, artistically stifling system of values whose primary aim is to erect unseen, virtually undetectable, impediments to freedom. Masculinism is about man shackled by invisible but palpable chains, trying not only to break free, but to be free. At first glance, there is little revelatory in this abbreviated definition; in fact, the very attention given the implied man in masculinism seems overtly patriarchal, dated. But, man first needed to be centered in order to be decentered; masculinism knows this. If the prominence of man seems archaic, it is of course because it is. This is why this definition of masculinism belongs if not in then to the twentieth century: it is indicative of a timespan that experienced the continued eminence of man with his connotations of strength, virility, and savvy; but, it is also indicative of an era that felt first the rise of woman in particular, then otherness in general. The precariousness of ‘man’s moment’ accounts for the palpable angst of masculinist literature; there is a feeling of being ousted, an impulse to retreat. There is something heroic, on a literary level at least, about the masculinist protagonist’s willed isolation. For he, not entirely unlike Homer’s Odysseus or even Hesse’s Siddhartha, is on a quest. But he seeks neither home nor enlightenment; instead, he seeks that which can never be achieved: autonomy. This theme, this want of freedom that manifests itself as the timeless rebellion of man against the civilization in which he is embedded (and which he himself envisioned, designed, built), is echoed throughout literature, theory, philosophy. Yet in The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault maintains that “there is no single locus of great Refusal, no soul of revolt, source of all rebellions, or pure law of the revolutionary.”3 Perhaps, then, the very idea of a timeless rebellion is a misrepresentation or illusion; perhaps there are as many refusals as there are people. But for a refusal to become or to instigate a rebellion or revolution, it must reconfigure itself, join an alliance. In this way, masculinism can be understood as the conflation of similar disavowals. What differentiates masculinism from other rebellions, however, is the awareness of its own futility. It sees a certain erasure of self in its quest for freedom; in this, the subject that was once ‘human,’ and the product of ‘humanism,’ transforms into an aesthetic artifact. ‘Man,’ in

Load more