The Social Importance of How Bodies Inhabit Spaces with Others
A Queer Reading of Sarah Waters's The Paying Guests
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3971185 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Susana Onega (0000-0003-1672-4276, Universidad de Zaragoza, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 26 |
| Issue | 3-4 |
| Pages | 341-357 |
| Publication date | 2021-05-19 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The European Legacy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1084-8770 • E-ISSN: 1470-1316 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/10848770.2021.1878635 |
| OpenAlex | W3128267309 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 15 |
The article argues that, while the configuration of the lesbian body and of subjectivity in Sarah Waters’s first three novels—Tipping the Velvet (1998), Affinity (1999), and Fingersmith (2003)—is carried out in the discursive and performative terms of postmodernist feminism, her latest novels evince a move towards a queer phenomenological position characterised by a growing interest in the material and socioeconomic conditions of the body and subjectivity. Initiated in The Night Watch (2006) and The Little Stranger (2009), and culminating in The Paying Guests (2014), this phenomenological turn is observable in that these novels are centrally concerned with material issues of class and situated in periods of collective post-war trauma and political unrest that open up the possibility for cultural change and social transformation, thus suggesting a move towards a transmodernist position. The article offers a queer reading of The Paying Guests, based on Sarah Ahmed’s notions of “encounter” and “orientation” as a way to substantiate this assertion
Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Feminism · Lesbian · Performative utterance · Performativity · Political science · Political subjectivity · Politics · Queer · Situated · Sociology · Subjectivity · Contemporary Literature and Criticism · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Law · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,25 |
| Citation span | 2022 - 2022 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |