Rules of Engagement: Modernism's Impersonal Interior
Rives, Rochelle Lea
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Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/2142/81409
Description
Title
Rules of Engagement: Modernism's Impersonal Interior
Author(s)
Rives, Rochelle Lea
Issue Date
2004
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Janet Lyon
Department of Study
English
Discipline
English
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Women's Studies
Language
eng
Abstract
"This study begins by elaborating what I understand to be the ethical paradox impersonality poses, particularly in the dissolution of individuality it supports. As shown in Wyndham Lewis' command that we impersonally ""substitute ourselves everywhere for the animal world,"" the potential collectivity established by an impersonal engagement may in fact end up subsuming the object of that connection into the subject who initiates it, thereby reaffirming personality in its most authoritative dimension. Yet variants of modernist impersonality found in work by writers such as H.D., Elizabeth Bowen and Mary Butts discern the ethical dangers of this impersonal collapse of subject and object by engaging the question of how to preserve meaningful aesthetic space. The answers often lie in the realm of affective attachments to aesthetic objects. By examining these variants of impersonality, ""Rules of Engagement"" identifies the junctures where the politically progressive, empathic logic of impersonality slips into authoritarian fantasies of invasion and control."
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