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Henry James's Oblique Possession: Plottings of Desire and Mastery in The American Scene

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Gert Buelens
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Abstract

The focus of this paper is on The American Scene, which is found to display a deep sensitivity to the spatiality of desire and to be motivated by a complex dynamic of erotic mastery and surrender: subjects assert their self-possession in the very act of submitting to the erotic power of another force—a force that may be human, non-human, or indeterminate. The desire for literal, physical mastery over the other is here rechanneled into an identification with the scene of desire that can dispense with the erotic object. This complex psychosexual mechanism, which I call oblique possession, thrives on a disruption of the dichotomies of sexuality and identity that queer theory has questioned. In tracing the circuits of oblique possession, the paper articulates a queer perspective on Henry James's work outside any necessary relationship between two individuals.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 116 , Issue 2 , March 2001 , pp. 300 - 313
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2001

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