5 research outputs found
Becoming-Bertha: virtual difference and repetition in postcolonial 'writing back', a Deleuzian reading of Jean Rhysâs Wide Sargasso Sea
Critical responses to Wide Sargasso Sea have seized upon Rhysâs novel as an exemplary model of writing back. Looking beyond the actual repetitions which recall BrontĂ«âs text, I explore Rhysâs novel as an expression of virtual difference and becomings that exemplify Deleuzeâs three syntheses of time. Elaborating the processes of becoming that Deleuzeâs third synthesis depicts, Antoinetteâs fate emerges not as a violence against an original identity. Rather, what the reader witnesses is a series of becomings or masks, some of which are validated, some of which are not, and it is in the rejection of certain masks, forcing Antoinette to become-Bertha, that the greatest violence lies
Prophetic Reading: Sisterhood and Psychoanalysis in H.D.âs HERmione
This article offers a comparative reading of H.D.âs 1927 kunstlerroman Ă clef, HERmione, and Freudâs Dora alongside an intertextual close reading of its dense web of literary allusions in order to argue that it offers a sustained critique of Freudian psychoanalysis and an alternative origin story for the condition of hysteria. Drawing on the notion of prophecy as it is thematised in the novel, the article demonstrates H.D.âs prefiguring of Juliet Mitchellâs recent reconfiguration of hysteria as a response to, replacement by, or failure of identification with a sibling