Catherine Howell-Dinger, University of Utah
English
While feminist projects have often acknowledged that discourse creates specific material conditions and lived realities, it has rarely been asked how these conditions might influence discourse itself. This paper investigates the politics of textual production and argues that some texts have thought of the material conditions of the narratives which they disclose as inseparable from, and present in, the text itself; however, other texts show a high level of anxiety about their relationship to materiality, and ultimately attempt to suppress this relationship as a means of ensuring a particular privileged position. For example, Toni Morrison’s Beloved has been read by some critics as an example of Kristeva’s semiotic. Pursing this reading further, I argue that a more active conception of the body is present in Morrison’s work than was previously observed by these critics. In Morrison’s work, the body is not simply something that is written; rather, it is something that actively shapes and inflects the text vis-a-vis its own disruption of the text. On the other hand, although the body seems to figure prominently in the work of some authors, such as James Tiptree’s “The Girl Who was Plugged In,” its relationship to textual production is eclipsed in order to maintain political power and hegemonic masculinity. The authorial voice in Tiptree’s work ultimately attempts to cover over its own connection to the feminine body of its composer, Alice Sheldon, in order to give its own feminist message authority.