Ghost Words and Invisible Giants: H.D., Djuna Barnes, and the Language of Suffering
Lheisa Dustin
Ghost Words and Invisible Giants: H.D., Djuna Barnes, and the Language of Suffering
Lheisa Dustin
In Ghost Words and Invisible Giants, Lheisa Dustin engages psychoanalytic theory to describe the language of suffering of iconic modernist authors H.D. and Djuna Barnes, tracing disconnection, psychic splitting, and virulent thought patterns in creative works that have usually been read as intentionally enigmatic. Dustin imbricates Barnes and H.D.‘s sense of tenuous psychic boundaries with others - parent figures, otherworldly and divine beings, and ambivalent or malignant love objects - in their creative brilliance, suggesting that the writers’ works stage - and also help manage - their psychic suffering in language in which signifier (the sound or image of the word) and signified (what it means) are radically disconnected. The cryptic and ineffable styles of these texts thus involve attempts to embody the meanings that cannot be expressed through language. Dustin reads two of H.D.‘s later works as examples of language that does not differentiate words, thoughts, and people from one another, and instead tries to include everything in its formulations of meaning. However, H.D., she argues, also seeks an end to this mental proliferation- an end that she associates with the hallucinatory return of difference as such. In contrast, Dustin reads two novels by Barnes as invoking and denying childhood secrets through the use of fetishized words. To supplement her psychoanalytic readings, Dustin considers the authors’ familial and romantic histories and their broader social involvements or noninvolvement (for instance, H.D.‘s Occultist practices and psychoanalytic sessions, Barnes’s fascination with spectacle and her later reclusion), rendering a detailed and compelling analysis of the forces at play beneath enigmatic, difficult modernist literary works. Read in this light, the spectral and otherworldly figures and strange patterns of expression appearing in H.D.’s and Barnes’s writing, and perhaps much or our writing, signal the traumatic content that it tries to negate.
This item is not currently in-stock. It can be ordered online and is expected to ship in approx 2 weeks
Our stock data is updated periodically, and availability may change throughout the day for in-demand items. Please call the relevant shop for the most current stock information. Prices are subject to change without notice.
Sign in or become a Readings Member to add this title to a wishlist.