Subjectivity

ISBN-13: 9780333752791 / Angielski / Miękka / 2005 / 232 str.

Ruth Robbins

Opis

Subjectivity is a multiple and complex term; it moves between theoretical or philosophical abstractions and the apparently empirical evidence of lived experience. In Subjectivity, Ruth Robbins examines the diverse factors which shape the self in language. Through readings of autobiographical texts written during the last three centuries, Robbins argues for a concept of subjectivity that takes account of the material world in which selves come into being, and places this psychoanalytic concept in a broader theoretical framework. This book is essential reading for all those studying Autobiography or Autobiographical Writing.

Spis treści

General Editor's Preface.- Acknowledgements.- Introduction: Who Do You Think You Are?.- Pamela, Rousseau and Equiano: Trousseaux, Confessions and Tall Tales.- Two Romantic Egos: Wordsworth's Prelude and De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater.- Victorian Individualisms and its Limitations.- James Joyce and Self-Portraiture.- In Prison and in Chains: Oscar Wilde's De Profundis and Brian Keenan's An Evil Cradling.- Talking Proper: Class Acts in Carolyn Steedman and Alan Bennett.- China Women: Maxine Hong Kingston and Jung Chang.- The Sense of an Ending? Living with Dying in Narratives of Terminal Illness.- Glossary.- Annotated Bibliography.- Bibliography.- Index.

O autorze

RUTH ROBBINS is Senior Lecturer in English Studies at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK. She is the author of Literary Feminisms and Pater to Forster, 1873-1924, both also in the Palgrave Macmillan Transitions series.

Blurb

Who do you think you are? In Subjectivity, Ruth Robbins explores some of the responses to this fundamental question. In readings of a number of autobiographical texts from the last three centuries, Robbins offers an approachable account of formations of the self which demonstrates that both psychology and material conditions - often in tension with one another - are the building blocks of modern notions of selfhood. Key texts studied include:
- William Wordsworth's Prelude
- Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater
- James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- Oscar Wilde's De Profundis
- Jung Chang's Wild Swans

Robbins also argues that our subjectivity, far from being the secure possession of the individual, is potentially fragile and contingent. She shows that the versions of subjectivity authorized by the dominant culture are full of gaps and blindspots that undo any notion of universal human nature: subjectivity is culturally and historically specific - we are, in part, what the culture in which we live permits us to be.

Concise and easy-to-follow, this introduction to the concept of subjectivity, and the theories surrounding it, shows that, in spite of the insecurity of selfhood, there is still much to be gained from the textual encounter with other selves. It is essential reading for all those studying 'autobiography' or 'autobiographical writing'.