Negotiating boundaries : the economics of space and gender in Mina Loy’s early poems

Feminismo/s

卷:0

Laura Scuriatti¹ 

[1] European College of Liberal Arts, Berlin;

关键词: loy, mina;    género;    feminismo;    espacio doméstico;    futurismo;    vanguardias;    virginidad;    economía sexual;   

DOI  :  10.14198/fem.2005.5.05

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

This paper investigates Mina Loy’s early poems Virgins Plus Curtains Minus Dots (1915) and The Effectual Marriage (1914 ca.) in the light of recent theories which read social and built space as a container for, a product and producer of power relations and their representations, including gender identity. In these poems the representation of the claustrophobic binary division of public and private space, both at the level of content and form, is shown to be product and agent of a similarly binaristic conception of gendered identity. Moreover, the literary tropes of domesticity, faithful love and docile femininity are exposed as the product of a ruthless economic system of exchange, of which the architectural spaces of daily life are part. The control of visual experience effected in these texts through the agency and experience of the liminal spaces is shown to be part of a «technology of power», which reinforces gender identity. Loy’s poems, however, by exposing the dialectic mechanisms of this paradigm, manage to deconstruct it and to empty out its normative power.

【 授权许可】

Unknown