Elsa Högberg - Virginia Woolf and the Ethics of Intimacy

Virginia Woolf and the Ethics of Intimacy

For David and William

In memory of my father, Peter Hgberg (19542007)

Virginia Woolf and the Ethics of Intimacy

Elsa Hgberg

Contents

This book would not have come about without the warm support, generous guidance and delightful company of two particular colleagues and friends: Ashleigh Harris, who supervised the doctoral research on which it is based, and Jane Goldman, whose field-defining scholarship and ground-breaking methods for pleasurable, intimate reading continue to be an unparalleled source of inspiration. For their insightful feedback at the early stages of this project, and for their support and encouragement, I am grateful to Robert Appelbaum, Randi Koppen, Christina Kullberg and Stuart Robertson. Many thanks to AnnKatrin Jonsson for her helpful commentary on an early draft of the manuscript, and to my colleagues at the Department of English, Uppsala University, for reading and engaging with my work.

I am immensely grateful to my colleagues and friends at the University of Glasgows School of Critical Studies, where I spent two wonderful years as a postdoctoral researcher. Apart from Jane Goldman, I want to thank, in particular, Amy Bromley, Vassiliki Kolocotroni, Bryony Randall and Mia Spiro for making my time in Glasgow so rewarding and enjoyable. Warm thanks also to the international community of Virginia Woolf scholars for many inspirational conferences, collaborations and happy moments. Among my fellow Woolfians, I am especially grateful to Judith Allen, Todd Avery, Sanja Bahun, Suzanne Bellamy, Claire Davison, Benjamin Hagen, Derek Ryan and Angeliki Spiropoulou.

An international postdoctoral fellowship from the Swedish Research Council made the completion of this project possible, while a second postdoctoral grant from ke Wibergs Stiftelse funded the very last stage. I am tremendously grateful to these foundations for their generous support and to Riksbankens Jubileumsfond for funding the symposium Intimate Modernism, which I organised in Uppsala in 2015. I want to thank the participants at this intellectually vibrant event, which significantly shaped the direction of the present book.

The anonymous readers for Bloomsbury offered welcome and substantial feedback, and it has been a pleasure to work with Bloomsburys editorial and production team. Thanks also to Nick Sergeant for his careful work formatting the final book manuscript and for his assistance in compiling the index. Earlier versions of material from the Introduction, Chapter 2 and Chapter 4 appeared in two journal articles: Voices against Violence: Virginia Woolf and Judith Butler. Le Tour critique , no. 2, 2013, pp. 42547, and Virginia Woolfs Poetics of Revolt. tudes britanniques contemporaines , no. 46, June 2014. I am much obliged to Richard Pedot and Jean-Michel Ganteau respectively for granting the permission to reprint.

Last but not least, I dedicate my deepest thanks to my family for their love and encouragement, and for many good times. I am grateful to my mother, Lena Hgberg, to my siblings, Oscar and Agnes Hgberg, and to my beloved grandmother, Barbro Hgberg. I owe more than I can say to my late father, Peter Hgberg, whose crystalline intelligence, warm generosity and steady conviction that every difficulty can be overcome have been a lighthouse for me all these years. How I wish that we could sit together once more, laugh and talk about life and books, including this one. Finally, to David Watson, my love, partner, most valued colleague and best friend: thank you for staying the course with me throughout the exacting process of bringing this book into being, for cooking way too many dinners while I was still at work, for your immeasurable intellectual input into this and other projects, and for our intimacy. This book was supposed to have seen the light of day before William Peter, my joy. But he came first, our beautiful, wise little boy, and always will.

Judith Butler

Roger Fry

Luce Irigaray

Julia Kristeva

Virginia Woolf

All italics in quotes are in the original unless otherwise indicated.

Sitting on the floor with her arms round Mrs. Ramsays knees, close as she could get, smiling to think that Mrs. Ramsay would never know the reason of that pressure, she imagined how in the chambers of the mind and heart of the woman who was, physically, touching her, were stood, like the treasures in the tombs of kings, tablets bearing sacred inscriptions, which if one could spell them out would teach one everything, but they would never be offered openly, never made public. What art was there, known to love or cunning, by which one pressed through into those secret chambers? What device for becoming, like waters poured into one jar, inextricably the same, one with the object one adored? Could the body achieve it, or the mind, subtly mingling in the intricate passages of the brain? or the heart? Could loving, as people called it, make her and Mrs. Ramsay one? for it was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscriptions on tablets, nothing that could be written in any language known to men, but intimacy itself, which is knowledge, she had thought, leaning her head on Mrs. Ramsays knee. ( TL 57)