2005 Programme Session 10b

Session 10b: SAS Makes Trouble
Chair: Valerie Jenness

The Erotic in M. Yourcenar’s ‘Anna Soror….’ and ‘Alexis:’ Transgressions and Discretion
Andrea Hynynen
Department of French, Åbo Akademi University, Fabriksgatan 2, Åbo, Finland

Marguerite Yourcenar (1903-1987) is best known for her grand historical novels, such as Memoirs of Hadrian (1951). In my presentation, I will focus on two of the author’s shorter novels, also placed in a historical context, but focusing more exclusively on questions of desire, sexuality and love, namely Alexis from 1929 and Anna soror… from 1982. The themes of love, passion and desire are important in most of Yourcenar’s fiction, but they are nowhere as explicit as in these texts. Alexis takes the form of a letter written by Alexis to his wife in order to explain that he has abandoned her and their son, because of his hitherto repressed homosexuality. The letter returns to Alexis’s childhood and traces his internal evolution until the final revelation of his forbidden desire and the separation from his wife. Anna soror… is the story of the passionate love between Miguel and his sister Anna. The novel focuses primarily on Miguel’s experience of their relationship. The reader follows his development from a state of undefined restlessness and emotional trouble until the realization that the cause of his trouble is his suppressed passion for his sister, a passion which is subsequently consummated. Both novels thus break a cultural taboo by addressing a forbidden subject: homosexuality on the one hand, and incest on the other. In each case there is no condemnation of the forbidden passion on the part of the author or the narrator, on the contrary it is represented as pure and sacred. At the same time, the author’s description of their passion is primarily allusive, almost evasive, in the sense that no details are ever revealed. By studying the representation of the erotic in the two novels, I intend to illuminate this blend of transgression and discretion, which is characteristic of much of Yourcenar’s fiction.

Downlaod Conference Paper -

Love and Passion in J. Winterson’s The Passion
Tamás Bényei
University of Debrecen, Hungary

I read this novel as a parable of passion that is also a retelling of the passion. In a sense the novel is ’about’ the definite article in its title, about the way in which every trajectory of passion is inevitably a repetition of what our culture knows as the ’original’ passion. The definite article intimates that which deprives the subject of passion of individuality, of her/his experience of singularity as the repetition of an archetypal narrative pattern.
In search of traces of the passion, I read the novel in the light of Georges Bataille’s theory of eroticism and unproductive expenditure (also drawing upon Barthes’s Fragments of a Lover’s Discourse and René Girard’s anthropological theory of desire). The text works like the fictional city of Venice, containing an excess or a spilling over (from what is on the other untellable side of passion, the side which Henri, one of the narrators, inhabits). The excess is evident in an underwater textual process of spilling that destabilizes separate identities as well as chronological linearity through a series of floating attributes, images that settle on any of the characters without any apparent logic (the most important instance of merging, that between the two narrators, occurs also on the level of the narration, in the repetition of sentences or phrases). In my reading, I explore the link between passion and gambling (as theorized by Bataille), looking at the way the novel reworks cultural myths of love and passion by presenting two stories, those of Henri and Villanelle, both of which are informed by a paradoxical double desire: Henri wants absolute passion in stillness, while Villanelle wants to descend into the world of passion while remaining on the surface. I conclude by discussing how, although both characters seem to reject the possibility of agape, in a reenactment of sacrifice as a necessary nodal point of every love story, another, more ritualistic and more archaic aspect of Christian is revindicated.

Trouble Making/Pleasure Taking: Negotiating Repetition, Imitation, and Performance in the Work of Ghada Amer
Megan Dahn
University of Connecticut, USA

Since the first time I saw one of Ghada Amer’s multi-media paintings I have wondered how I might come to grips with the notion of “pleasure” in the images. They address this on several levels: the pleasure that modern (western) art wants the viewer to have when consuming art, the pleasure of women’s work (embroidery), and sexual pleasure. Added to this is the artist’s concern with the right to pleasure of the modern, “liberated” woman.
Butler’s book, Gender Trouble, and her essay, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” were penned within one year. They both take as a focus the subordination of naturalized identity categories. The book focuses on feminism’s methods toward this aim and the article focuses on the GBLT movement. I propose to work through Butler’s publications and Amer’s art fostering a reciprocal gaze between the two.
The paper examines Butler and Amer through five sections: the first, “Pleasure I: Uncovering a Creative Tradition,” examines the implications of the recovery of a tradition of women’s (creative) work; the second, “Pleasure II: the Marks of Sexual Gratification,” considers another form of “women’s work”—sexual labor—and in what senses the postures of pornographic performers work as signs for identity categories; the third, “Imitation and Repetition: the Sincerest Mode of Subversion,” examines the way the imitative acts that constitute Amer’s art mirror the imitative acts of identity categories, as well as what function repetition has in the work; the fourth, “Trouble I: the Phallic Act of Amer’s Art,” considers her work in relation to Butler’s discussion of Lacan’s theory of being or having the Phallus; and the final section, “Trouble II: Drag Shows,” asks several questions: Is Butler’s description of the subversive power of drag accurate? Is it transferable to other art forms? Does Amer’s work constitute a drag show of sorts?



2nd Global Conference Wednesday 30th November - Saturday 3rd December 2005 Vienna, Austria Conference Programme, Abstracts and Papers
Session 10b: SAS Makes Trouble Chair: Valerie Jenness The Erotic in M. Yourcenar’s ‘Anna Soror….’ and ‘Alexis:’ Transgressions and Discretion Andrea Hynynen Department of French, Åbo Akademi University, Fabriksgatan 2, Åbo, Finland Marguerite Yourcenar (1903-1987) is best known for her grand historical novels, such as Memoirs of Hadrian (1951). In my presentation, I will focus on two of the author’s shorter novels, also placed in a historical context, but focusing more exclusively on questions of desire, sexuality and love, namely Alexis from 1929 and Anna soror… from 1982. The themes of love, passion and desire are important in most of Yourcenar’s fiction, but they are nowhere as explicit as in these texts. Alexis takes the form of a letter written by Alexis to his wife in order to explain that he has abandoned her and their son, because of his hitherto repressed homosexuality. The letter returns to Alexis’s childhood and traces his internal evolution until the final revelation of his forbidden desire and the separation from his wife. Anna soror… is the story of the passionate love between Miguel and his sister Anna. The novel focuses primarily on Miguel’s experience of their relationship. The reader follows his development from a state of undefined restlessness and emotional trouble until the realization that the cause of his trouble is his suppressed passion for his sister, a passion which is subsequently consummated. Both novels thus break a cultural taboo by addressing a forbidden subject: homosexuality on the one hand, and incest on the other. In each case there is no condemnation of the forbidden passion on the part of the author or the narrator, on the contrary it is represented as pure and sacred. At the same time, the author’s description of their passion is primarily allusive, almost evasive, in the sense that no details are ever revealed. By studying the representation of the erotic in the two novels, I intend to illuminate this blend of transgression and discretion, which is characteristic of much of Yourcenar’s fiction. Downlaod Conference Paper - Love and Passion in J. Winterson’s The Passion Tamás Bényei University of Debrecen, Hungary I read this novel as a parable of passion that is also a retelling of the passion. In a sense the novel is ’about’ the definite article in its title, about the way in which every trajectory of passion is inevitably a repetition of what our culture knows as the ’original’ passion. The definite article intimates that which deprives the subject of passion of individuality, of her/his experience of singularity as the repetition of an archetypal narrative pattern. In search of traces of the passion, I read the novel in the light of Georges Bataille’s theory of eroticism and unproductive expenditure (also drawing upon Barthes’s Fragments of a Lover’s Discourse and René Girard’s anthropological theory of desire). The text works like the fictional city of Venice, containing an excess or a spilling over (from what is on the other untellable side of passion, the side which Henri, one of the narrators, inhabits). The excess is evident in an underwater textual process of spilling that destabilizes separate identities as well as chronological linearity through a series of floating attributes, images that settle on any of the characters without any apparent logic (the most important instance of merging, that between the two narrators, occurs also on the level of the narration, in the repetition of sentences or phrases). In my reading, I explore the link between passion and gambling (as theorized by Bataille), looking at the way the novel reworks cultural myths of love and passion by presenting two stories, those of Henri and Villanelle, both of which are informed by a paradoxical double desire: Henri wants absolute passion in stillness, while Villanelle wants to descend into the world of passion while remaining on the surface. I conclude by discussing how, although both characters seem to reject the possibility of agape, in a reenactment of sacrifice as a necessary nodal point of every love story, another, more ritualistic and more archaic aspect of Christian is revindicated. Trouble Making/Pleasure Taking: Negotiating Repetition, Imitation, and Performance in the Work of Ghada Amer Megan Dahn University of Connecticut, USA Since the first time I saw one of Ghada Amer’s multi-media paintings I have wondered how I might come to grips with the notion of “pleasure” in the images. They address this on several levels: the pleasure that modern (western) art wants the viewer to have when consuming art, the pleasure of women’s work (embroidery), and sexual pleasure. Added to this is the artist’s concern with the right to pleasure of the modern, “liberated” woman. Butler’s book, Gender Trouble, and her essay, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” were penned within one year. They both take as a focus the subordination of naturalized identity categories. The book focuses on feminism’s methods toward this aim and the article focuses on the GBLT movement. I propose to work through Butler’s publications and Amer’s art fostering a reciprocal gaze between the two. The paper examines Butler and Amer through five sections: the first, “Pleasure I: Uncovering a Creative Tradition,” examines the implications of the recovery of a tradition of women’s (creative) work; the second, “Pleasure II: the Marks of Sexual Gratification,” considers another form of “women’s work”—sexual labor—and in what senses the postures of pornographic performers work as signs for identity categories; the third, “Imitation and Repetition: the Sincerest Mode of Subversion,” examines the way the imitative acts that constitute Amer’s art mirror the imitative acts of identity categories, as well as what function repetition has in the work; the fourth, “Trouble I: the Phallic Act of Amer’s Art,” considers her work in relation to Butler’s discussion of Lacan’s theory of being or having the Phallus; and the final section, “Trouble II: Drag Shows,” asks several questions: Is Butler’s description of the subversive power of drag accurate? Is it transferable to other art forms? Does Amer’s work constitute a drag show of sorts?
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