Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-55f67697df-xlmdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-05-09T08:43:41.808Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 21 - Orientations

from Part III - Applications and Extensions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Elizabeth Evans
Affiliation:
Wayne State University, Detroit
Get access

Summary

In this chapter, Eve Sorum asks what happens when a reader or writer tries to orient herself toward an othered body or distant place in a text, only to have the object of that gaze turn and look back. What can disorienting literary moves – changes to both poetic and narrative form and perspective – reveal about how space determines who can speak and how one can speak in a text? This chapter explores the disorientation and subsequent transformation of literary spaces – the spaces of the page and the physical geographies explored within the texts – in Zora Neale Hurston’s Barracoon (1931) and Mina Loy’s poem “Parturition” (1914). In both works, the “objects” of orientation seize control of not only the narrative gaze, but also the space and form of the text itself. Such reorientation transforms the geographic and spatial power dynamics in the texts: Africa turns toward and speaks to the United States, while the laboring female body transcends domestic space and achieves a cosmic view of men. These acts of disorientation and reorientation demand reexamining the spaces from which we read and write, as well as the literary space of the page itself.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Works Cited

Ahmed, Sara. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Duke University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd edition. Edited by Benson, Larry D.. Houghton Mifflen, 1987.Google Scholar
Conover, Roger. “Introduction.” The Last Lunar Baedeker: Poems of Mina Loy, edited by Conover, Roger L.. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1996, pp. xixx.Google Scholar
Harris, Rowan. “Futurism, Fashion, and the Feminine: Forms of Repudiation and Affiliation in the Early Writing of Mina Loy.” The Salt Companion to Mina Loy, edited by Potter, Rachel and Hobson, Suzanne. Salt Publishing, 2010, pp. 1746.Google Scholar
Hurston, Zora Neale. Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo.” Edited by Plant, Deborah G.. Amistad, 2018.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. “What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking? (1786).” Religion and Rational Theology, edited by Wood, Allen W. and Di Giovanni, George. Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loy, Mina. The Last Lunar Baedeker: Poems of Mina Loy. Edited by Conover, Roger L.. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1996.Google Scholar
Marshall, Alan. “The Ecstasy of Mina Loy.” The Salt Companion to Mina Loy, edited by Potter, Rachel and Hobson, Suzanne. Salt Publishing, 2010, pp. 166–87.Google Scholar
Ngai, Sianne. Ugly Feelings. Cambridge University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
“orient, n. and adj.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, December 2022. www.oed.com/view/Entry/132525. Accessed February 5, 2023.Google Scholar
Plant, Deborah. “Introduction.” Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo”, edited by Plant, Deborah G.. Amistad, 2018, pp. xiixxv.Google Scholar
Spillers, Hortense. “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book.” 1987. Feminisms Redux: An Anthology of Literary Criticism and Theory, edited by Down, Robyn Warhol and Herndl, Diane Price. Rutgers University Press, 2009, pp. 443–64.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Orientations
  • Edited by Elizabeth Evans, Wayne State University, Detroit
  • Book: Space and Literary Studies
  • Online publication: 07 May 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009424264.025
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Orientations
  • Edited by Elizabeth Evans, Wayne State University, Detroit
  • Book: Space and Literary Studies
  • Online publication: 07 May 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009424264.025
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Orientations
  • Edited by Elizabeth Evans, Wayne State University, Detroit
  • Book: Space and Literary Studies
  • Online publication: 07 May 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009424264.025
Available formats
×