Reading Vulnerability in the Novels of Anna Kavan, Ann Quin, and Kathy Acker

本项目通过对二十世纪世纪三位重要的女性文学实验家：安娜·卡万（1901-1968）、安·奎因（1936-1873）和凯西·阿克（1947-1997）的比较阅读，论证了诗学和脆弱政治的当代意义。它认为，他们的不同形式的创新预测和细微差别的关注和概念的脆弱性在法律，政治和哲学领域的最新理论。它试图发展一种超越颠覆性内容的脆弱性理论，而是作为一种重新思考性别政治的历史和理论的方法。支持拟议项目的关键研究问题是：-“脆弱性”作为“反应性条件”的含义是什么（Ahmed，2016：485），以及如何将最近的脆弱性政治理论转化为文学批评背景？Kavan、Quin和阿克的特定文本是如何通过挪用、切割、碎片化和自我虚构实验等形式化策略，在文本层面上描绘“表演”和制定脆弱性的？这些策略如何突出“响应性”和“渗透性”？他们的主题关注如何消除性别差异的脆弱性体验？通过这条脆弱的主线，对这三位作家的比较分析能告诉我们什么关于他们个人的文学项目，与女权主义的关系以及不同的遗产？如何使用国际框架来探索这三位作者文本中心理、语言和地理流离失所之间的联系？这些形式的流离失所如何反映和折射脆弱性作为一种文学政治实践？创新的文学实践如何将脆弱性理论作为一种批判范式和性别政治策略？

This project argues for the contemporary relevance of a poetics and politics of vulnerability, via a comparativereading of three key female literary experimentalists of the twentieth century: Anna Kavan (1901-1968), Ann Quin(1936-1873) and Kathy Acker (1947-1997). It contends that their diverse formal innovations anticipate and nuancethe concerns and concepts of more recent theorizations of vulnerability in the spheres of law, politics, andphilosophy. It seeks to develop a theory of vulnerability that goes beyond the recognition of subversive content andworks instead as a method to rethink the history and theory of gender politics.The key research questions underpinning the proposed project are:- What are the meanings of 'vulnerability' as a 'condition of responsiveness' (Ahmed, 2016: 485), and howmight recent theorizations of the politics of vulnerability be translated into a literary-critical context?- How do particular texts by Kavan, Quin, and Acker depict 'perform' and enact vulnerability on a textuallevel, through formal strategies of appropriation, cut-up, fragmentariness and autofictionalexperimentation? How do these strategies foreground 'responsiveness' and 'permeability'? How do theirthematic concerns unpick gendered experiences of vulnerability?- What can comparative analyses of these three authors, by way of this throughline of vulnerability, tell usabout their individual literary projects, fraught relationships to feminism and diverse legacies?- How might an international framework be used to explore the connections between psychic, linguistic, andgeographic displacement in these three authors' texts? How might these forms of displacement reflect andrefract vulnerability as a literary-political practice?- How might innovative literary practices serve to nuance vulnerability theory as a critical paradigm andgender-political strategy?