Going the Distance: Dissident Subjectivity in Modernist American Literature (review)

There is something distant about David Jarraway's rich and complicated reading of 'dissident subjectivities' in modernist American literature. By combing the literary work of Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Langston Hughes, Frank O'Hara, and Elizabeth Bishop with a mélange of theoretical and philosophical ideas, Jarraway develops a reading protocol reliant on 'distance' - a term that is at once spatial, temporal, and very aesthetic, providing a conceptual framework that opens 'up a new space for subjectivity, beyond its Cartesian lineaments.' In other words, distance exposes familiar identities, objects, and ideologies to greater scrutiny; it 'holds out the promise of politicizing thinking in the very act of defamiliarizing it.'

With such a large, distant concept, Jarraway dwells in confusing and perhaps slippery intellectual territory, to be sure. But his close readings flesh out his deliberately nebulous concept of 'distanciated formlessness' more precisely. In many ways, he, much like the writers he studies, relies not only on a new space for subjectivity, but also on a new space for thinking and writing about subjectivity. His readings of Frank O'Hara, for instance, are compelling, especially as they try to negotiate debates about the uses (and in some instances, abuses) of queer theory. Just listen: 'If, after having ventured several further clarifications of the original effort, the final "form" of my chapter-essay has sacrificed some of its initial pleasure of freedom ... I feel the sacrifice would have been worth it if an actual argument for methodological interpretation has come to take the place of its mere exemplification. Nonetheless, the queer perversities of O'Hara have conditioned me sufficiently, I hope, to retain some of my original naïveté about the pleasure of his poetry, and the "more" that that object might still continue to give "of itself."'

I can anticipate that some readers might not enjoy the 'top heavy' effect of making methodology such a primary part of his close reading efforts. But, as we all should know by now, there's intellectual and political value in giving us some 'distance' from the immediacy of our own reading pleasures. Jarraway believes, probably rightly, that the 'resistant and ultimately uncontainable sense of self in America today' has literary antecedents that arrive much earlier on the scene than the political 1960s that helped create, develop, and popularize so much work on the dissident subject. One of the primary strengths and pleasures of this book is that he places the high theory and political insights of the past thirty years in a longer literary historical context. And the almost effortless manner in which Jarraway slides between theory, philosophy, and his modernist literary archive convinces one that dissident subjectivity - dare we say 'poststructuralist' subjectivity? - is a crucial part of his writers' aesthetic products. What his book does best, I feel, is to demonstrate that while we are in the midst of a deep theory backlash, there's still so much we can learn from philosophical and theoretical thinking. And we can and should bring that thought to our studies of modernist American authors. For Jarraway wants us to 'understand how rich the possibilities are when the gates of Modernism are at last heard to turn upon the self, thereby suggesting the multiplicity we are permitted to make of that self, if we could only find the courage and stamina to go on listening.' He's got my ear.