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ABSTRACT Title of Document: BRITISH MODERNIST ... - DRUM

ABSTRACT Title of Document: BRITISH MODERNIST ... - DRUM

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social component <strong>of</strong> thought only through the variety <strong>of</strong> discourses that weave their<br />

way through Pat’s stream <strong>of</strong> consciousness. However, this does not supply the social<br />

context in which these thoughts occur, nor is this a complete account <strong>of</strong> Pat’s psyche.<br />

The identity <strong>of</strong> that psyche is rooted firmly in the stability <strong>of</strong> the narrating “I,” yet we<br />

(and, seemingly Pat as well) know little if anything about its relationship to the social<br />

environment.<br />

While the first-person narrator certainly engages with multiple discourses—<br />

the multiple languages <strong>of</strong> the transit lounge, opera from the public-address system,<br />

formal logic—these are tools the narrator uses in an attempt to understand the world<br />

and the narrator’s place in it: epistemological questions, as, for example, when the<br />

narrator uses multi-linguistic play, the cultural precendent <strong>of</strong> opera, the narrator’s<br />

own Irish heritage, and a reference to the environment <strong>of</strong> the airport to explore new<br />

possibilities <strong>of</strong> the gendered state:<br />

I even blamed opera, which I Irished and reproached as O’Pera,<br />

O’Pera.<br />

For O’Pera it was that had introduced this confusion in the very first<br />

place – by its habit <strong>of</strong> so perversely running counter to the tenor <strong>of</strong> the<br />

secondary sex<br />

characteristics and send } ing up camp castrati to a contraltitude<br />

cast<br />

(cugini<br />

cognati<br />

castrati) . . .<br />

Was I, perhaps, castrato/a? Was the truth behind my oblivion that I<br />

had no sex? (75)<br />

285

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