My Account Log in

1 option

Out of touch : skin tropes and identities in Woolf, Ellison, Pynchon, and Acker / Maureen F. Curtin.

Van Pelt Library PS374.S56 C87 2003
Loading location information...

Available This item is available for access.

Log in to request item
Format:
Book
Author/Creator:
Curtin, Maureen Frances, 1969-
Series:
Literary criticism and cultural theory
Language:
English
Subjects (All):
Pynchon, Thomas.
Acker, Kathy, 1948-1997.
American fiction--20th century--History and criticism.
American fiction.
Skin in literature.
Acker, Kathy, 1948-1997--Criticism and interpretation.
Acker, Kathy.
Woolf, Virginia, 1882-1941. Mrs. Dalloway.
Woolf, Virginia.
Pynchon, Thomas--Criticism and interpretation.
Identity (Psychology) in literature.
Ellison, Ralph. Invisible man.
Ellison, Ralph.
Human skin color in literature.
Human body in literature.
Touch in literature.
Criticism and interpretation.
Physical Description:
xvi, 172 pages ; 24 cm.
Place of Publication:
New York : Routledge, 2003.
Summary:
"Out of Touch" investigates how skin has become a crucial but disavowed figure in twentieth-century literature, theory, and cultural criticism. These discourses reveal the extent to which skin figures in the cultural effect of changes in visual technologies, a development argued by critics to be at the heart of the contest between surface and depth and, by extension, Western globalization and identity politics. The skin has a complex history as a metaphorical terrain over which ideological wars are fought, identity is asserted through modification as in tattooing, and meaning is inscribed upon the human being. Yet even as interventions on the skin characterize much of this history, fantasy and science fiction literature and film trumpet skin's passing in the cybernetic age, and feminist theory calls for abandoning the skin as a hostile boundary.
Contents:
Skin's eclipses in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway
Materializing invisibility as x-ray technology : skin matters in Ralph Ellison's Invisible man
Skin harvests : automation and chromatism in Thomas Pynchon's "The secret integration" and Gravity's rainbow
Scratching the sensory surface in Kathy Acker's Empire of the senseless.
Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 155-163) and index.
ISBN:
0415940192
OCLC:
49824681

The Penn Libraries is committed to describing library materials using current, accurate, and responsible language. If you discover outdated or inaccurate language, please fill out this feedback form to report it and suggest alternative language.

Find

Home Release notes

My Account

Shelf Request an item Bookmarks Fines and fees Settings

Guides

Using the Find catalog Using Articles+ Using your account