Returning the Gift: Modernism and the Thought of Exchange

282 Pages·2018·1.449 MB·English

by  Rebecca Colesworthy

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/08/18, SPi
RETURNING THE GIFT
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/08/18, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/08/18, SPi
Returning the Gift
Modernism and the Thought of Exchange
REBECCA COLESWORTHY
1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/08/18, SPi
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Rebecca Colesworthy 2018
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2018
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018935776
ISBN 978–0–19–877858–5
Printed and bound by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/08/18, SPi
Acknowledgments
The roots of this book run deep and have been nourished by more gifts than I can
hope to reciprocate here—though that’s no excuse not to try. Tamar Katz and the
late Robert Scholes sealed my fate as a lover of modernism during my undergradu-
ate years at Brown University. If I entered graduate school knowing what I wanted
to study, little else in these pages would have been conceivable without the
exceptional intellectual community I found at Cornell University. Thanks above
all to my committee members—Douglas Mao, Tracy McNulty, Molly Hite, Ellis
Hanson, and Natalie Melas. The generosity of Doug’s feedback, guidance, and
support over the years has been nothing short of saintly. The time and care he put
into every exchange not only shaped my thoughts about gifts but also served as an
example of the thoughtfulness that this book is in so many ways about. Tracy con-
sistently prompted me to articulate the stakes of this project and to imagine that
I actually could; perhaps most importantly, though, she encouraged me to plow
forward at a time when it seemed most impossible and most imperative. My schol-
arly debts to Molly are catalogued in these pages; I hope she knows the depth of
my personal debts, too. Ellis agreed to come on as co-chair at the eleventh hour
and my only regret is not having roped him in sooner. Natalie was an ideal early
interlocutor and her questions have continued to serve as a guide. For their friend-
ship and intellectual sustenance, throughout graduate school and well beyond,
I owe very heartfelt thanks to Audrey Wasser, Rob Lehman, and Aaron Hodges.
Conversations with Alexis Briley, Shanna Carlson, John Hicks, Charity Ketz,
Douglas McQueen-Thomson, Fernanda Negrete, Sarah Pickle, and Sonam Singh,
as well as my peers in the Psychoanalysis Reading Group, Theory Reading Group,
and Modernist Reading Group, fueled my thinking about this project and most
everything. Alan Young-Bryant and his gift for bringing people together were often
on my mind as I sat down to write.
A postdoctoral position at the Draper Master’s Program at New York University
was indispensable in helping me to turn this into a truly interdisciplinary project.
Thanks especially to Amber Musser for her early support and enduring enthusi-
asm. My thanks go, too, to Maia Ramnath, Nina Hien, Georgia Lowe, Larissa
Kyzer, and Robert Dimit; to my amazing students, whose engagement was a con-
stant reminder of what drew me to scholarly work in the first place; and to Ann
Pellegrini for generously inviting me to present some of the material here at the
Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality.
Many of the revisions and additions to this book were completed while I was an
independent scholar working outside academia. Above all, I am incredibly grateful
to Peter Nicholls at NYU for his institutional sponsorship, mentorship, and cama-
raderie throughout this period—not to mention his help devising the book’s title.
At the Harlem Children’s Zone, special thanks go to Anne Williams-Isom, Mindy
Miller, and Debbie Kim for giving me the precious gift of time when I most needed it.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/08/18, SPi
vi Acknowledgments
I am also hugely thankful for the many friends, in and beyond New York City, who
enabled this book’s completion, often by giving me a welcome break from writing
it: Megan Lynch, Vanessa Bohns, Paul Foster Johnson, Jennifer Dudeff Klein,
Dana Crosby McNamee, Sara Shumway, David Solomon, Sally Tamarkin, and
Catherine Zimmer. A big hug and salute must also go to my extended family from
the National Council for Research on Women: Linda Basch, Gwen Beetham, Lybra
Clemons, Liz Horton, Lotti Silber, and the much-missed Mariam Chamberlain.
In my new home in Albany, I have been lucky to benefit from the late-stage
reinforcements of Josh Tallent, Tara Needham, and Josh Bartlett.
At Oxford University Press, I am grateful to Jacqueline Norton for her interest
in and shepherding of the project, to Aimee Wright for her editorial assistance,
and to the wonderful production and marketing teams. The insightful feedback of
two anonymous readers gave me the push I needed to expand the book’s scope,
further clarify its argument, and create a finished product much closer in kind to
the thing I had always hoped it would be.
While this book is largely about gifts with conditions, I could write a whole sep-
arate one about the unconditional love and support my family has given me during
the long process of its creation. Thanks foremost to my Mom: you inspired me to
return to this book and enabled me to stick with it in more ways than you know.
You’re the best. To my Dad: without your encouragement and your sensitivity to
the travails of scholarship I never could have finished it. And to Scott: thank you
for your patience, your pep talks, your unwavering faith in me, your willingness to
make coffee for me in the morning and to eat dinner with me far too late at
night—for everything. At long last I can return the gift. Bound though it may be
to fall short, this book is dedicated, with my love, to you.
Chapter 2 is a revised and expanded version of my essay, “‘The Perfect Hostess’:
Mrs. Dalloway, Gift Exchange, and the End of Laissez-Faire.” Modernist Cultures
9.2 (2014): 158–85. Copyright © Edinburgh University Press, 2014. Chapter 3 is
a revised and expanded version of my essay, “Jean Rhys and the Fiction of Failed
Reciprocity.” Journal of Modern Literature 37.2 (Winter 2014): 92–108. Copyright
© Indiana University Press, 2014.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/08/18, SPi
Contents
Acknowledgments v
Abbreviations ix
Introduction 1
1. Marcel Mauss and the Turn to the Gift 21
2. Virginia Woolf and the Limits of Feminine Hospitality 63
3. Jean Rhys and the Fiction of Failed Reciprocity 106
4. Gertrude Stein and the Politics of Literary Genius 147
5. H.D. and the Promise of Queer Kinship 198
Coda: For New York 1941 from London 1941 242
Bibliography 249
Index 263
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/08/18, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/08/18, SPi
Abbreviations
ALMM Jean Rhys, After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1997).
CD Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. and ed. James Strachey
(New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1961).
CF Virginia Woolf, “Character in Fiction,” The Essays of Virginia Woolf, vol. 3, ed.
Andrew McNeillie (San Diego, CA: Harcourt, 1988).
CSS Jean Rhys, The Collected Short Stories (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1992).
EA Gertrude Stein, Everybody’s Autobiography (Cambridge, MA: Exact Change,
1993).
ESK Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Elementary Structures of Kinship, trans. James Harle
Bell, John Richard von Sturmer, and Rodney Needham, ed. Rodney Needham
(Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1969).
G Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies,
trans. W. D. Halls (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990).
GHA Gertrude Stein, The Geographical History of America, or The Relation of Human
Nature to Human Mind (Baltimore, MD, and London: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1995).
GT Jacques Derrida, Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, trans. Peggy Kamuf
(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994).
HWIW Gertrude Stein, How Writing Is Written, Volume II of the Previously Uncollected
Writings of Gertrude Stein, ed. Robert Bartlett Haas (Los Angeles, CA: Black
Sparrow Press, 1974).
I Gertrude Stein, Ida A Novel, ed. Logan Esdale (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2012).
IL Virginia Woolf, “Introductory Letter to Margaret Llewelyn Davies,” The
Collected Essays of Virginia Woolf, vol. 5, ed. Stuart N. Clarke (Boston, MA, and
New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009).
IWMM Claude Lévi-Strauss, Introduction to the Work of Marcel Mauss, trans. Felicity
Baker (London: Routledge, 1987).
LA Gertrude Stein, Lectures in America (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1985).
MD Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (San Diego, CA: Harcourt, 1953).
MM Marcel Fournier, Marcel Mauss: A Biography, trans. Jane Marie Todd (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006).
NTV H.D., Notes on Thought and Vision (San Francisco, CA: City Lights, 1982).
TG H.D., The Gift: The Complete Text, ed. Jane Augustine (Gainesville, FL: University
Press of Florida, 1998).
TTF H.D., Tribute to Freud (New York: New Directions, 1974).