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Affect, Embodiment, and Ethics in Narratives of Sexual Abuse

Martin, Lindsay A
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1471719163

Abstract Details

2016, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, English.
In the field of rhetorical narrative theory, the study of affect has been oft-acknowledged but remains undervalued. Even as affect studies has burgeoned in other fields, affect in narrative theory continues to be discussed either as a product of ethical judgments or as a purely physical response that scientific studies can measure. Affect, Embodiment, and Ethics in Narratives of Sexual Abuse expands the vocabulary for affect in narrative theory, in particular focusing on expanding our awareness of the varying potential relationships between ethical judgments and affective dynamics. Turning to narratives that represent sexual abuse and taboo violation in late-twentieth-century American literature—Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, Kathryn Harrison’s memoir The Kiss, and Alexander Chee’s Edinburgh—I demonstrate that affective dynamics have a variety of possible relationships with the negative ethical judgments encouraged against the abuser figures and/or taboo violators. Specifically, I argue that in order to attend to affect as it appears in narratives of sexual abuse, we must attend to “embodiment”: the character’s shifting experiences of how closely tied he or she feels mind and body to be. I call this experiential embodiment and chart it by examining representation of characters’ emotions, trauma, and bodily experience. In Chee’s Edinburgh, Fee’s paradoxically embodied desire to transcend the body, as a result of his trauma, is a central instability that must be resolved through resolving his aesthetic and sexual identities. Fee’s embodied experiences encourage similar readerly feelings and ultimately revise the frameworks for ethically judging the abuser figure. That is, whereas Big Eric receives harsh, black-and-white judgments, Fee’s progression leads to a revised, more nuanced and understanding approach that resists similar judgments when he, as an adult, has sex with a teenage student. In Harrison’s The Kiss, I examine the representation of affectless prose to demonstrate that the memoir’s submerging of excessive trauma and deep feelings itself constitutes the ethical injunction to witness the author’s and narrator’s traumatic history. This witnessing, however, does not lead to simple identification, in that the narrative refuses access to some of the deepest levels of affect the narration only hints at. Moreover, I argue that the memoir’s affectless prose and request to witness is a more successful representation of affect than the recovery model it shifts into for the resolution. Turning last to Lolita, I demonstrate another relationship between affect and ethics, this time in a close attention to individual, isolated moments in the narrative. In moments of lyrical address, Lolita offers the opportunity for potential identification with Humbert and a setting aside of the negative ethical judgments that are emphasized elsewhere. Moreover, these moments can provide a temporary reprieve from reminders of Humbert Humbert’s unreliability—and thus from the need for readerly suspicion and judgment.
James Phelan (Advisor)
Robyn Warhol (Committee Co-Chair)
Brian McHale (Committee Member)
224 p.
American Literature; Literature
narrative; affect; ethics; sexual abuse; embodiment; lyric; narrator

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Martin, L. A. (2016). Affect, Embodiment, and Ethics in Narratives of Sexual Abuse [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1471719163

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Martin, Lindsay. Affect, Embodiment, and Ethics in Narratives of Sexual Abuse. 2016. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1471719163.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Martin, Lindsay. "Affect, Embodiment, and Ethics in Narratives of Sexual Abuse." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1471719163

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1471719163
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.