Capacious Feminism: Intimacy and Otherness in Mina Loy's Poetry
Abstract
This dissertation explores Loy’s interest in the “woman’s cause” to interrogate how the poet was recaptured as an early feminist figure by the academy. After Virginia Kouidis “rediscovered” Loy’s work in the 1980s, the poet has been consistently drafted as a central feminist figure despite her lack of commitment to organized feminist movements of her time. This retrospective lens offers a catachrestic view of Loy’s feminism. I use “catachresis” to refer to the slightly inaccurate use of “feminism,” tinted by current perceptions of the term, but also to hint at Loy’s capacious feminine poetics. While the rise of feminist theories in modernist studies has deplored the period’s rejection of the female Other, Loy’s poems define women’s identity through the liberating dialogue with otherness. I draw on Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity and textual studies to engage with how Loy’s conception of the page as the space of feminine intimacy and otherness cements her as a multifaceted woman modernist and a model for contemporary modernist studies. I open my analysis with Loy’s contentious “Feminist Manifesto” to understand the framework the poet associates with feminism. I discuss the manifesto as an aesthetic document that seemingly only performs vague demands for political and social reforms but rhetorically asserts women’s marginal status as the ideal artistic identity. Her resistance to traditional reading patterns and gender topoi disturbs the poetic fabric and predicates textual creation on alienation. This leads me to the question of Loy’s publication history and editing practices: the field of Loy’s studies is mostly developed by women yet Loy’s voice has been consistently mediated by men. This dissertation scrutinizes Loy’s archives to propose editing techniques that foster Loy’s feminist resistance. The last chapter takes stock of the modernist anxieties with gender Loy seems to use to draw parallels between Loy’s feminist intentions and that of instapoets. Such a comparison sheds light on the situated nature of Loy’s feminism and her engagement with modernist notions of authorship.