Subversive Intent – Gender, Politics & the Avent–Garde: Gender, Politics and the Avant-garde - Hardcover

Suleiman, Sr

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674853830 ISBN 13: 9780674853836

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1990

Synopsis

With this important new book, Susan Suleiman lays the foundation for a postmodern feminist poetics and theory of the avant-garde. She shows how the figure of Woman, as fantasy, myth, or metaphor, has functioned in the work of male avant-garde writers and artists of this century. Focusing also on women's avant-garde artistic practices, Suleiman demonstrates how to read difficult modern works in a way that reveals their political as well as their aesthetic impact.

Suleiman directly addresses the subversive intent of avant-garde movements from Surrealism to postmodernism. Through her detailed readings of provocatively transgressive works by André Breton, Georges Bataille, Roland Barthes, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, and others, Suleiman demonstrates the central role of the female body in the male erotic imagination and illuminates the extent to which masculinist assumptions have influenced modern art and theory. By examining the work of contemporary women avantgarde artists and theorists--including Hélène Cixous, Marguerite Duras, Monique Wittig, Luce Irigaray, Angela Carter, Jeanette Winterson, Leonora Carrington, Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer, and Cindy Sherman--Suleiman shows the political power of feminist critiques of patriarchal ideology, and especially emphasizes the power of feminist humor and parody.

Central to Suleiman's revisionary theory of the avant-garde is the figure of the playful, laughing mother. True to the radically irreverent spirit of the historical avant-gardes and their postmodernist successors, Suleiman's laughing mother embodies the need for a link between symbolic innovation and political and social change.

About this title

Review

Surely one of the most important recent books on women and modernism. A dense and witty, cultivated and bold, serious and high-spirited volume...Rich in the historical and critical insight of at least fifteen years' work in the field, responsive to two disparate women's movements--the French and the American--neither one of which is itself homogeneous, this series of eight interconnected essays offers a kaleidoscopic literary history--of texts, contexts, pretexts, and perspectives--which challenges...not only the maps, but the mappings of modernism/postmodernism that have been setting agendas in cultural studies and in the art world over the last half dozen years...The brilliance, agility, and wisdom of this book will give readers of any persuasion who are looking for a 'politically, ' or 'humanistically' correct program plenty of reason to feel challenged. -- Marguerite R. Waller "English Language Notes" A compelling account of the way gender has shaped the historical avant-garde, above all in France. She investigates both how the material experience of gender informed men and women's participation in avant-garde movements and the use of gender in avant-garde representations. Her discussion is nuanced, careful to situate the problematic of gender and the avant-garde in its broader social and aesthetic contexts...It is clear that the book will continue to occupy an important place on the shelf of anyone studying the history and theory of the avant-garde both for its scholarship and for its fine close analyses of art and literature.--Margaret Cohen "Annals of Scholarship " [A] dense and witty, cultivated and bold, serious and high-spirited volume...Rich in the historical and critical insight of at least fifteen years' work in the field, responsive to two disparate women's movements--the French and the American--neither one of which is itself homogeneous, this series of eight interconnected essays offers a kaleidoscopic literary history--of texts, contexts, pretexts, and perspectives--which challenges...not only the maps, but the mappings of modernism/postmodernism that have been setting agendas in cultural studies and in the art world over the last half dozen years...The brilliance, agility, and wisdom of this [book] will give readers of any persuasion who are looking for a 'politically, ' or 'humanistically' correct program plenty of reason to feel challenged.--Marguerite R. Waller "English Language Notes " Well aware of the manifold ironies that attend the notion of an avant-garde tradition, Suleiman carefully deconstructs many of the paradoxes that accompany such a presumably radical enterprise. Through close examinations of the French writers Andre Breton, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Georges Bataille, she goes on to uncover a sexual-political dimension to the work of the male avant-garde that has been left unexplored...A dauntingly comprehensive demonstration of the way different feminist approaches may be combined to engage a wide range of readings...A deep and moving insight.--Perry Meisel "New York Times Book Review "

About the Author

Susan Rubin Suleiman was born in Budapest and emigrated to the U.S. as a child with her parents. She obtained her B.A. from Barnard College and her Ph.D. from Harvard University, and has been on the Harvard faculty since 1981, where she is the C. Douglas Dillon Professor of the Civilization of France and Professor of Comparative Literature. Suleiman is the author or editor of many books and articles on contemporary literature and culture, published in the U.S. and abroad. Her books include Crises of Memory and the Second World War (2006), Subversive Intent: Gender, Politics, and the Avant-Garde (1990), Risking Who One Is: Encounters with Contemporary Art and Literature (1994), and the memoir Budapest Diary: In Search of the Motherbook (1996). She has edited several influential collective volumes, including French Global: A New Approach to Literary History (with Christie McDonald, 2010), .Exile and Creativity: Signposts, Travelers, Outsiders, Backward Glances (1998), and The Female Body in Western Culture (1986). Suleiman has won many honors, including the Radcliffe Medal for Distinguished Achievement and a decoration by the French Government as Officer of the Order of Academic Palms (Palmes Académiques). She has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Radcliffe Institute, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among others. She has been invited to lecture at major universities in England, France, Spain, Hungary, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, Israel, Canada, China, and Taiwan, as well as every region of the United States. She has served as an elected member of the Executive Council of the Modern Language Association, and as Vice-President and President of the American Comparative Literature Association. In her spare time, Suleiman enjoys swimming and tennis, movies, theater, and opera. The mother of two sons and grandmother of three grandchildren, she lives in Belmont, Massachusetts.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674853830
• ISBN 13: 9780674853836
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272