Sapphic Primitivism: Productions of Race, Class and Sexuality in Key Works of Modern Fiction - Hardcover

Robin Hackett

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0813533465 ISBN 13: 9780813533469

Publisher: Rutgers University Press, 2004

Synopsis

In this book, Robin Hackett examines portrayals of race, class, and sexuality in modernist texts by white women to argue for the existence of a literary device that she calls """"Sapphic primitivism.i?1/2 The works vary widely in their form and content and include Olive Schreiner's proto-modernist exploration of New Womanhood, The Story of an African Farm ; Virginia Woolf's high modernist """"play-poem,i?1/2 The Waves ; Sylvia Townsend Warner's historical novel, Summer Will Show ; and Willa Cather's Southern pastoral, Sapphira and the Slave Girl . In each, blackness and working-class culture are figured to represent sexual autonomy, including lesbianism, for white women. Sapphic primitivism exposes the ways several classes of identification were intertwined with the development of homosexual identities at the turn of the century. Sapphic primitivism is not, however, a means of disguising lesbian content. Rather, it is an aesthetic displacement device that simultaneously exposes lesbianism and exploits modern, primitivist modes of self-representation. Hackett's revelations of the mutual interests of those who study early twentieth-century constructions of race and sexuality and twenty-first-century feminists doing anti-racist and queer work are a major contribution to literary studies and identity theory.

About this title

Review:

"Sapphic Primitivism is a fascinating and first-rate study that makes an exciting contribution to ongoing reassessments of modernism, literary lesbianism, and the cultural politics of the twentieth century. Hackett's notion of 'Sapphic primitivism' proves to be an excellent interpretive tool, a high-powered lens that brings into focus texts that have been misread or under-read."

Synopsis:

A study of race, class and sexuality in modernist texts by white women to argue the existence of a literary device termed as "Sapphic Primitivism", this text exposes the ways several classes of identification were intertwined with the development of gay identities at the start of the 20th century.

About this edition

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0813533465
• ISBN 13: 9780813533469
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 189