A particular model of masculine desire has traditionally been evoked in an effort to understand the subordinate role of women in male-authored fiction. Because of this, the belief that male-authored texts are unfailingly built upon the denial of feminine difference has come to dominate many aspects of literary studies. "Surfacing" the Politics of Desire re-examines the "myths" of masculine desire in order to challenge this premise, placing literature at the centre of recent feminist debates over the ontology and politics of sexual difference.
Citing examples of textual resistance to analytical feminist thought, Rajeshwari S. Vallury argues that literature is expressive of desires that are not always configured in terms of oppression or the denial of difference. In other words, a particular politics of reading obscures the multiplicity of desire that literature is capable of affirming and risks sacrificing the possibilities of both literature and desire. Through a re-evaluation of the sexual politics practiced by nineteenth-century male writers such as Balzac, Gautier, and Maupassant, Vallury moves towards a reconfiguration of the relationship between aesthetics and politics.
"Surfacing" the Politics of Desire calls into question dominant feminist approaches to the literary representation of gender. Enlisting the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari, Vallury calls for a different method of reading, one based on a deeper understanding of the politics of literature.

motw/Surfacing the Politics of Desir - Rajeshwari S. Vallury.pdf

Vallury, Rajeshwari S.

University of Toronto Romance Series, 2008

Canada - English Language, Canada

1, 20080809

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Contents 8
Acknowledgments 10
Introduction 14
1 Pierre et Jean, or the Erring of Oedipus 19
2 The Error of Narcissus 53
3 The Three Virtues of Imperceptibility, Indiscernibility, and Impersonality 91
4 Becoming-flower, Becoming-imperceptible: Oedipus, Narcissus, and Their Lines of Flight in Sarrasine and Le chef-d’oeuvre inconnu 110
5 Beyond the Dialectic of Self and Other: Towards a Thought of the Surface 147
6 ‘Une jouissance d’épiderme’: From Platonic Height and Depth to the Deleuzian Surface in Gautier’s Mademoiselle de Maupin 165
Conclusion 194
Notes 204
Bibliography 234
Index 242

2025-10-27