Getting some where.

I had a project a few weeks ago. One more cohesive, a bit easier to articulate, settled in period and nation . . . but empty. I kept thinking of dry toast when I thought of the project, thinking of that scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding when the Greek father bewails his daughter’s soon-to-be-in-laws for being about as exciting as “dry toast.” I have a terror of producing a work that reaches this pitch of crunchiness and crumbs. Despite my struggles to find the right project, I always had a sort of vision in mind: lots of texture, lots of color, lots of voice, permeable boundaries, a theme/theory bound loosely through a pastiche of texts.

The first project, which I really dragged from myself, for better or worse, was to be on female masochism in 19th century fantasy and narrative. Definitely approaches toastiness, though I would have fought to make it something provocative and something colorful.

Now, having talked with the Inland Emperor of Pastiche, I have less of an articulable project but there’s a layer cake in the works. (Apologies for the extended and painful metaphor, but it’s appropriate. I have promised myself that when I successfully defend my dissertation, I will treat myself to my favoritest cake in the whole wide world, from my old barista home, Zingerman’s Hunka Burnin’ Love Chocolate cake, where the layers are actual bars of Valhrona chocolate.) And I am amazed. I am happy and excited having layers (really) to explore, but no clear argument in mind.

The theme of this new project, loosely, is plots of sadomasochism; or when I’m feeling especially corny, plots of pain and pleasure. Or sadomasochism and story. What the project consists of at the moment is reading in three different areas and formulating what to me feel like only vague and abstract questions that I hope will get me somewhere specific. The reading list I’m growing is below. The top four texts in each list are what I will focus on over the course of this semester, on my way to a rough draft for the prospectus.

Literary Critics of the 19th Century (with direct or indirect interest in s/m themes)

1. D.A. Miller, Bringing Out Roland Barthes

2. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, “A Poem is Being Written”

3. Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot

4. Ellis Hanson, “Wilde’s Exquisite Pain”

5. more D.A. Miller, The Novel and the Police, Narrative and its Discontents

6. more Sedgwick, on James and Austen

. . . .

Theory on Narrative and/or sadomasochism

1. Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text

2. Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain

3. Lynda Hart, Between the Body and the Flesh

4. Deleuze, Coldness and Cruelty

5. Freud on the death drive and on sadomasochism

6. DeLauretis and Mulvey and their use of the phrase “sadism demands a story”

7. Rita Felski, “Female Masochism”

. . . .

19th century texts

1. Swinburne’s poems and life

2. Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre

3. relationship between Hannah Cullwick and Arthur Mundy

4. Charlotte Bronte’s Shirley

5. Charles Dickens’ Bleak House

I am very unsure of where these lists will take me. But I’m okay with that, for the moment.

Finally, here are the vague and naive questions, which really just trigger in me: read more. Think more.

• What are the genres of sadomasochism, genres of pleasure and pain? (???)
• What are the plots of sadomasochism; or, what is the relationship between sadomasochism and plot? Or sadomasochism and story?
• What is the relationship between plot and desire; between plot and fantasy; between plot and the erotics?
• What do I mean when I use the terms “sadomasochism” and “plot” and “erotics”?
• How and why do 19th century literary theorists deploy plots of sadomasochism?
• What stories get told in critical theory on the 19th century; on sadomasochism?
• What stories of sadomasochism are told in 19th century culture?
• What is the relationship between sadomasochism and reading, or reading practices; and sadomasochism and writing, or telling?
• What fantasies are created in criticism on the 19th century?
• Can we only access sadomasochism through a historical, literary, and/or critical imagination?
• And what do any of these questions have to do with queerness, or queer theory?