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| author | Christopher C. Recio |
| title | Queer Negativity and Utopianism in Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence |
| abstract | This essay is an attempt to synthesize two seemingly opposing positions in recent queer theory through readings of two
British modernist literary texts. The two positions are the "anti-social turn" and queer utopianism. The former position is associated with the
psychoanalytically inflected work of Leo Bersani and Lee Edelman and is concerned with the rejection of heteronormative sociality. I identify theorists
such as José Esteban Muñoz, Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner as more closely aligned with queer utopianism, which seeks to engage in a queer worldmaking
project. The first section of this essay is a summary and a critical engagement with these theorists in addition to being an introduction to the later
sections in which I present readings of the literary texts. The second section is devoted to a reading of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. The third and
final section is a reading of D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love. I argue that both texts, in certain queer moments, not only reject a repressively heteronormative
social world, but also gesture utopically towards the potential for queerer ways of life.
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| school | The College of Liberal Arts, Drew University |
| degree | B.A. (2015) |
| advisor | Neil Levi |
| committee | Neil Levi
Edmond Chang
Edward Baring
Jennifer Kohn |
| full text | CCRecio.pdf |
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