"Gender Trouble and Lesbian Desire in Djuna Barnes's "Nightwood
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11241928 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Susana S Martins (0000-0002-7504-9832, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1999 |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 108 |
| Publication date | 1999-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Frontiers A Journal of Women Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0160-9009 • E-ISSN: 1536-0334 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/3347225 |
| OpenAlex | W2314460530 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 1 |
Djuna Barnes has always been a troublemaker. Or, to be more precise, her public persona and artistic output have proved troublesome on a number of levels. As a friend or acquaintance, Barnes could be hard to get along with; those who knew Barnes admired her wit, intelligence, and forceful character but occasionally winced at the harshness of her judgments. She was not afraid, it would seem, to say exactly what she thought on almost any topic. As a journalist, she conveyed her political and social viewpoints spectacularly: In 1914, she allowed herself to be force-fed for The New York World in simulation of the force-feedings which the English suffragists were then undergoing.' Her description of the physical experience and its acutest horror is damning-of the patriarchal institutions administering that treatment represented by the doctors in their white coats holding down Barnes's arms and legs, despite her supposed acquiescence, and, potentially, of herself as well. She put herself in the position of torture, submitting to the political and social structures she wished to critique. Barnes's staged yet real enactment of the dominant power structure becomes a problematic critique at best; at worst, it's an affirmation, even if unwitting, of patriarchal mastery. Recent scholarship on Djuna Barnes has concerned itself with precisely those aspects of her work and life that are most troubling, which is to say, without being entirely facetious, all of them. Most criticism before the 1980s focuses on placing Barnes within a modernist tradition, examining her complex, metaphorical language and working out some of the most obvious trouble spots for readers
Aesthetics · Art · Criticism · Lesbian · Literature · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Psychoanalysis · Scholarship · Sociology · White (mutation · American and British Literature Analysis · Cultural Studies and Interdisciplinary Research · Gender Studies · Law · Philosophy · Poetry Analysis and Criticism · Psychology
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.25 |
| Citation span | 2014 - 2017 (4) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |