QUEER THEORY MARXIST CRITICISM Week 10

Lesbian-gay Criticism  L-G literary theory is a new one and became a distinct field by the 1990s.  A multidisciplinary field – cultural studies  It is not of exclusive to gays and lesbians (feminism-male writers)  Sexual orientation is a fundamental category of analysis and understanding.  Has social and political aims – an oppositional design upon society  Resistance to homophobia and heterosexual privilege

 Feminism was accused of ignoring orientations  Patriarchal exploitation in feminism  There is an “essential” female identity in feminism (without any distinguishing factors)  Is sexuality sth. natural or subject to change?  Opposing ideas in feminism  lesbian criticism  A less essentialist notion of lesbianism: “queer theory”

 Paulina Palmer broke away from feminism made new allegiances with gay men rather than with other women:  Queer Theory (Queer Studies): Rejects female separatism and sees an identity of political and social interests with homosexual men.  Deconstructs hetero/homo hierarchy and questions its stability and ineradicability  There is an anti-essentialist view.

 “Other” or “normal” notions are questioned and rejected  It is difficult to decide what a L/G text is. Some possibilities:  Written by a lesbian  Written about lesbians  Expressing a lesbian “vision”

 Literary realism is devalued by queer theory (since it relies much upon fixed identities)  Works with anti-realist elements are favored (Oranges are not the only fruit – Jeanette Winterson, 1985)

Lesbian/gay critics…  Identify and establish a canon of l/g writers (Woolf, Richardson, Lehmann).  Identify l/g episodes in mainstream work and discuss them as such (Helen and Jane in JANE EYRE).  Set up an extended, metaphorical sense of lesbian/gay – fluidity of identities.  Expose the homophobia of mainstream literature and criticism.  Foreground literary genres significantly influencing the ideals of masculinity and femininity.

MARXIST CRITICISM

Marxism  Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels  Communist Manifesto (1848)  Aims to bring about a classless society, common ownership of production, distribution and exchange.  A materialist philosophy – it looks for concrete, scientific, logical explanations of the world (unlike idealist philosophy)

 A constant struggle for economic, political and social power leads to class struggle. (at its peak in 19th)  Exploitation of one social class by the other leads to “alienation”.  Thus, workers become just hands/labor force – “reification”  Marxist model of society: base + superstructure  Superstructures are determined by the “base”: economic determinism

Marxist literary criticism  “Good art always has a degree of freedom…”  Writer’s social class and its dominant ideology have a major bearing on the works.  Authors are constantly formed by their social contexts in many ways. – both form and content  The “fragmented” and “absurdist” forms of drama and fiction of Beckett and Kafka are seen as a response to the contradictions and divisions of late capitalist society.  Also deals with history to discuss conflicts between social classes and clashes of large historical forces in a generalized way… (unlike cultural materialism and historical criticism)

Leninist literary criticism  “Literature must become part of the organized, methodical, and unified labors of the social-democratic party” – Lenin,  Experimentation was banned, Socialist realism was imposed; art was to be committed to the political cause of the Left.  Some foreign writers with Left views also tried to follow this Moscow line (see Tennyson and Browning example)

Marxist criticism and Althusser  A French Marxist theoretician  “Overdeterminism”: an effect-a variety of causes  “Relative autonomy”: art is, to a degree, independent from economic forces.  “Ideology”  “Decentering”: structures with no essence, focus or centre.

 State power is maintained by “repressive structures”.  Power of state is maintained by “ideological structures”.  “Interpellation”:  “You can have any color you like as long as it is black” says capitalism.  Literature is not just a helpless, passive reflector of the economic base – has its own value!  Marxist criticism vs. psychoanalytic criticism ?

Marxist critics…  Make a division between overt and covert content and relate the covert to basic Marxist theme. (King Lear)  Relate the context of the work to the social-class of the author.  Explain the nature of the whole literary genre in terms of the social period of production. (tragedy speaks for the monarchy, Ballad speaks for the rural or semi-urban working class)  Relate the work to social assumptions –cultural materialism.  “Politicisation of literary form”: literary realism-conservative social structures, iambic pentameter-social stability

 Please see the examples in the pack…