Ziarek - Feminist Aesthetics and the Politics of Modernism

FEMINIST AESTHETICS AND THE POLITICS OF MODERNISM

FEMINIST AESTHETICS AND THE POLITICS OF MODERNISM

Ewa Ponowska Ziarek

Columbia University Press New York

Columbia University Press

Publishers Since 1893

New York Chichester, West Sussex

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Copyright 2012 Columbia University Press

All rights reserved

E-ISBN 978-0-231-53090-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ziarek, Ewa Plonowska, 1961

Feminist aesthetics and the politics of modernism / Ewa Plonowska Ziarek.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-231-16148-0 (cloth: alk. paper)ISBN 978-0-231-16149-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)ISBN 978-0-231-53090-3 (e-book)

1. Feminist criticism. 2. Aesthetics. 3. Modernism (Aesthetics) 4. Feminist theory. I. Title

HQ1190.Z556 2012 2012006808

305.4201dc23

A Columbia University Press E-book.

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References to Internet Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

For Halina Ponowska and ukasz Ziarek

Contents

It is my pleasure to acknowledge many colleagues and friends who read or discussed various parts of my book. I am indebted to Kalliopi Nikolopoulou, Devonya N. Havis, Alison Ross, Andrew Benjamin, Barbara Green, Kelly Oliver, Elizabeth Presa, and Krzysztof Ziarek for their helpful comments, suggestions, and support. I am especially grateful to Penelope Deutscher and Graham Hammill, who read the manuscript in its entirety and offered invaluable suggestions for revisions. I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of Columbia University Press for their thoughtful engagement with my work and Wendy Lochner for her patience and support of this project. I am especially grateful to James Kurt for his expert help in the final preparation of the manuscript for production.

My mother Halina Ponowskas help and support was invaluable in the last stages of the manuscript preparation . Conversations with my son, ukasz, about his dissertation was a source of loving companionship and inspiration for my own work. Krzysztofs patience, support, and intellectual insights made it a better book.

Earlier versions of several sections of this book have already appeared in print and I am grateful for permissions to use these materials in their revised form:

An earlier version of section 1 of chapter 1 appeared as Right to Vote or Right to Revolt? Arendt and the British Suffrage Militancy, differences 19 (Fall 2008): 127, revised by permission. Section 4 of chapter 2 appeared as Towards a Feminist Aesthetics of Melancholia: Kristeva, Adorno, and Modern Women Writers, Critical Horizons: A Journal of Philosophy and Social Theory 11, no. 3 (April 2011): 443462, copyright 2010 Equinox Publishing Ltd. Section 2 of chapter 3 was published as Woolf Feminist Aesthetics: On the Political and Artistic Practice in A Room of Ones Own, Parallax 57 (December 2010): 7083, used by permission of the publisher, Taylor and Francis, Ltd. An earlier version of section 1 of chapter 4 was published as Women on the Market: On Sex, Race, and Commodification in Re-Writing Difference: Luce Irigaray and the Greeks (Albany: SUNY Press, 2010), all rights reserved, revised by permission; section 3 was published as Bare Life on Strike: Notes of the Biopolitics of Race and Gender, SAQ (Winter 2008): 89105, revised by permission. Section 3 of chapter 6 appeared as Nella Larsens Feminist Aesthetics: On Curse, Law, and Laughter in Oren Ben-Dor, ed., Law and Art (London: Routledge, 2011), revised and expanded by the permission of the publisher, Taylor and Francis, Ltd.