1st Global Conference
Thursday 14th October - Saturday
16th October 2004
Salzburg, Austria
Session 6a:
Literary Sexualities II
Chair: Serena Petrella
Catastrophic Sexualities in Barker’s Theatre
Of Transgression
Karoline Gritzner
Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies,
The University of Wales, Aberystwtyth, Wales, United Kingdom
This paper
considers the significance of sexuality and eroticism in the
recent work of major contemporary English dramatist, Howard Barker.
Barker
calls his tragic drama a ‘theatre of catastrophe’ in which
individuals
wilfully encounter the self-transforming power of desire and audiences
are
exposed to spectacles of pain and ecstasy. With reference to Barker’s
interpretation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in GERTRUDE THE CRY and
his reading
of the folk tale Snow White in KNOWLEDGE AND A GIRL (both 2002) I propose
to examine the theatrical manifestations and culture-critical significance
of sexual desire in Barker’s tragedies.
In Barker’s plays sexual desire necessarily complicates life;
it signifies
a tragic encounter with the Other and catapults individuals into an
awareness of their own limitations and possibilities. Acts of sexual
transgression are often performed against a backdrop of political,
cultural, and spiritual revolution and war, which intensifies the
characters’ willingness to step beyond the known and even take
the risk of
self-destruction. The sexual experience is an experience of disintegration
and différance, a crisis experience which generates a negation
of the
discourse of modern reason. I will draw on Theodor W. Adorno’s
concept of
aesthetic negativity, which is central to his theory of the aesthetic
as a
critique of reason, to illuminate the aesthetic quality of sexual
experience in Barker’s speculative theatre of promiscuity. If
according to
Adorno (and Derrida) aesthetic experience is essentially autonomous,
negative and subversive, sexual experience in Barker’s dramatic
universe
is aesthetic par excellence because it insists on its radical negativity
and offers subversions of political, moral and indeed aesthetic validity
claims (as made manifest in Barker’s rejection of theatrical
naturalism).
Experiences of transgression, transformation and disintegration resulting
from dramatic characters’ passionate and catastrophic pursuits
of sexual
desire, which often coincide with experiences of death and suffering,
are
exemplary (theatrical) expressions of the crisis of meaning in the
post-modern condition.
The Hidden Bisexual Tradition in English Literature
Polly Mackwood
Same-sex romances among adolescent females are a common
theme in the literature of two seemingly contrasting cultures, English
and Chinese, where the ways in which such narratives are approached
prove to be surprisingly similar. The inclusion of lesbian characters
in the literature of both nations has become increasingly familiar
to readers in recent decades. Yet the bisexual woman in English literature
is still an elusive character that can rarely be found outside specialist
writing. She does not seem a popular choice for writers, so she is
the last person we as readers are expecting to encounter, let alone
attempt to seek out.
My paper asks if she really is absent from the
action, and if so, why? Identifying two ways in which the same-sex
romance genre commonly resolves itself in both cultures – by
demonstrating proof at the end either of confirmed homosexuality or
heterosexuality of the character(s) concerned – I have discovered
that they do not allow for the existence of a third category: a conclusion
at which the character is confirmed to be neither completely homosexual
or heterosexual, but bisexual. Through the creation of this third alternative
outcome, that of bisexuality, I have re-examined in detail prominent
works of fiction in which different types of female same-sex romances
play a part to see if their protagonists may, in fact, have been bisexual
all along. In doing so I hope to demonstrate a new option to writers,
readers and critics alike that seeks to liberate the bisexual female
character from the confines of her literary closet.
