A01=Vicki Mahaffey
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Vicki Mahaffey
automatic-update
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=DSBF
Category=DSBH
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Format=BC
Format_Paperback
Language_English
PA=Available
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9780190623982
- Format: Paperback
- Weight: 420g
- Dimensions: 229 x 155mm
- Publication Date: 01 Jun 2017
- Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
States of Desire argues that what people desire is fundamentally connected to how they write and read. Not only do language and narrative shape desire (and vice versa), but because these processes are socially conditioned, some political circumstances, such as those present in Ireland at the turn of the century, foster experimental desire more successfully than others. Mahaffey's contribution to the critical discourse on literary modernism is to assign a political motive to the art of modernist wordplay; in doing so, she offers a more compelling and socially driven version of the oft-told tale of literary modernism. Irish writers, she argues, sought to disrupt the rigidity of political thinking and social control by turning language into a weapon; by opening up infinite new possibilities of meaning and association, linguistic play makes it impossible for thought to be monopolized by the state or any other institutional power. In this light, the text becomes a prism of political, cultural, and erotic desires: a fountain of conscious and unconscious linguistic suggestion. Defying semantic control and refuting societal repression, Wilde, Yeats, and Joyce literally fought, in their lives and in their work, for a freedom of expression which-as was painfully evidenced in the case of Wilde-was not to be had for the asking.
Vicki Mahaffey is Kirkpatrick Professor of English and Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
