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Book Cover
Book
Author Suleiman, Susan Rubin, 1939- author

Title Subversive intent : gender, politics, and the avant-garde / Susan Rubin Suleiman
Published Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1990
Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, ©1990

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Location Call no. Vol. Availability
 W'PONDS  846.9103535 S9493/S  AVAILABLE
Description xviii, 276 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Contents A Double Margin : Women Writers and the Avant-Garde in France -- Aggressions and Counteraggressions : Readability in Avant-Garde Fiction -- Reading Robbe-Grillet : Sadism and Text in 'Projet pour une révolution a New York' -- Transgression and the Avant-Garde : Bataille's 'Histoire de l'oeil' -- Love Stories : Women, Madness, and Narrative -- The Politics and Poetics of Female Eroticism -- Feminist Intertextuality and the Laugh of the Mother -- Feminism and Postmodernism : In Lieu of and Ending
Summary With this book, Susan Suleiman lays the foundation for a postmodern feminist poetics and theory of the avant-garde. She shows how the figure of Woman, as fantasy, myth, or metaphor, has functioned in the work of male avant-garde writers and artists of this century. Focusing also on women's avant-garde artistic practices, Suleiman demonstrates how to read difficult modern works in a way that reveals their political as well as their aesthetic impact. Suleiman directly addresses the subversive intent of avant-garde movements from Surrealism to postmodernism. Through her detailed readings of works by André Breton, Georges Bataille, Roland Barthes, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, and others, Suleiman demonstrates the central role of the female body in the male erotic imagination and illuminates the extent to which masculinist assumptions have influenced modern art and theory. By examining the work of contemporary women avant garde artists and theorists--including Héléne Cixous, Marguerite Duras, Monique Wittig, Luce Irigaray, Angela Carter, Jeanette Winterson, Leonora Carrington, Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer, and Cindy Sherman--Suleiman shows the political power of feminist critiques of patriarchal ideology, and especially emphasizes the power of feminist humor and parody
Analysis French literature
Notes Includes index
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 253-268) and index
Subject Erotic literature -- History and criticism.
Feminism and literature -- History -- 20th century.
Feminism and literature -- 20th century.
French literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism.
Literature, Experimental -- History and criticism.
Postmodernism (Literature)
Sex role in literature.
Social norms in literature.
Women and literature -- History -- 20th century.
Women and literature -- 20th century.
LC no. 89027458
ISBN 0674853830
0674853849
9780674853836
9780674853843
Other Titles Gender, politics, and the avant-garde