{"id":457,"date":"2024-11-26T21:09:19","date_gmt":"2024-11-26T20:09:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.urz.uni-halle.de\/zsbblog2024\/?p=457"},"modified":"2024-12-04T13:27:28","modified_gmt":"2024-12-04T12:27:28","slug":"sterling_loy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.urz.uni-halle.de\/zsbblog2024\/sterling_loy\/","title":{"rendered":"Mina Loy: Between Feminism and Futurism – Sarah Sterling"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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Mina Loy\u2019s Life and Literature<\/strong> <\/strong>
Between Feminism and Futurism<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Feminist and futurist, wife and lover, militant and pacifist, actress and model, Christian Scientist and nurse, she was the binarian\u2019s nightmare. She was a Futurist, Dadaist, Surrealist, feminist, conceptualist, modernist, post-modernist, and none of the above.<\/span><\/em>1<\/sup><\/span> <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\nMina Loy, today scarcely known for her poetry, was an avant-gardist writer and painter that\nshaped the literary modernist world in the first half of the twentieth century. While she crossed\npaths with many different groups, ideologies and causes during her lifetime, Loy refused clear\nidentification. Loy cannot be fixed upon one identity since she wore \u00bbmask upon mask\u00ab\n(Conover LLB<\/i> xiv) and often wrote in \u00bbdialectical opposition\u00ab (Galvin 53) to the beliefs of\nthose she surrounded herself with. Born in England as Mina Gertrude L\u00f6wy, Loy spent the\nleast amount of her lifetime in the country of her birth, settling instead for Germany, Italy,\nMexico, France, and finally the United States (Burstein). Before Loy engaged with literature\nand writing, she studied art in Paris, was a member of the Paris Salon d\u2019Automne and exhibited\nat multiple art galleries across Europe. As her biographer Carolyn Burke points out, Loy was\nmildly successful with her painting, her art mostly being judged as a good example for feminine\naesthetics (94, 97).\n\n<\/p>\n\n

In her poetry, which Loy started writing in 1913, she was perceived by her contemporaries as\na radical: She polarised the literary public across Europe and in the United States since she\n\u00bbbroke every rule on the page\u00ab (Conover LLB<\/i> xv). Most striking about Loy\u2019s poetry is her way\nwith words \u2013 be it her use of pseudonyms or complex vocabulary:\n<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\nOne of her fiercest advocates, Roger Conover, refers to Loy\u2019s \u00bbpseudonymania.\u00ab\nThe term is aptly inventive; it honors the fact that Loy neologized alongside her\nself-maskings, making up words alongside names. There is a philosophy here.\nNames were words, and words were for Loy opportunities. Her dictum seems to\nhave been: no simple words. When she wrote \u00bbcymophanous\u00ab, she didn\u2019t mean\npale; come-hither looks were \u00bbamative\u00ab, and when she was truly pitching woo,\nher lover\u2019s body was \u00bbetoliate\u00ab. (Burstein)\n\n<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\nAdding to her unusual and complex choice of words, Loy also went against traditions of poetry,\ndismissing established structures \u00bbin order to affirm newness as an expression of the modern\u00ab\nand overall rejecting simplistic modes of representation (Scuriatti, Mina Loy\u2019s Critical\nModernism<\/i> 6). Not relying on literary tradition, Loy includes experimental metre and free verse\ninstead of strict traditional metre, rhyme or syntax. She made up her own grammar and used\nimprovised punctuation. The topics Loy discussed were just as provocative as her literary form:\nShe \u00bbpresented sex with the expediency of an invoice\u00ab and created \u00bbsatirical portraits of her\nformer lovers, or songs of disillusions about sex, childbirth, or romance\u00ab (Conover LLB<\/i> xiv-\nxv). With this kind of poetry, Loy\u2019s work was considered to be \u203anot feminine\u2039 and provoked a\nlot of polarising interest. But not only did Loy\u2019s writing stir up the accepted norms for female\nwriters, her whole avant-garde lifestyle evoked interest: her \u00bbeccentric clothing, entanglement\nwith the futurists and the unconventional romantic relationships\u00ab (Scuriatti, Negotiating\nboundaries<\/i> 72). Her way of living contrasted with the expected behaviour for women in the\ntwentieth century, making her be seen as the prototypical \u203anew woman\u2039 of the early twentieth\ncentury (Scuriatti, Mina Loy\u2019s Critical Modernism<\/i> 15).\n<\/p>\n\n

Those who are familiar with Loy\u2019s work are often unaware that she did not only write poetry\nbut also produced narrative texts, as well as criticism and cultural commentary (Crangle SE<\/i>\nXII). This essay will evaluate her position between futurism and feminism, focusing mostly\non her essayistic text Feminist Manifesto<\/i> while incorporating themes of her poetry that mirror\nher observations and declarations in this manifesto. The poems and essays discussed are taken\nmostly from Roger Conover\u2019s second edition of Loy\u2019s work. As a writer and editor Conover\nrecovered many of Loy\u2019s lost and unpublished texts and made them accessible to the public in\nhis two editions The Last Lunar Baedeker<\/i> (1982) and The Lost Lunar Baedeker<\/i> (1996). A\ncollection of Loy\u2019s short stories and essays have been published by the literary studies\nprofessor Sara Crangle with the support of Roger Conover in 2011.\nThe opus of Loy engages with questions of gender imbalance, male egocentrism and the\nillusion of romantic relationships. Her literary subjects are often unstable and unsure in their\nidentities, and Loy\u2019s writing reflects this \u00bbquest for identity or a stable position of female\nselfhood\u00ab (BM<\/i> 132). Her writings on female identity often deal with restrictions as well as\noutbursts from expected female categories. Loy permanently constructs and deconstructs what\nit means to be a woman, and her illustrations of female identity vary from complete negation\nto exaggeration. Although Loy was quintessentially a modernist, she is now \u00bbincreasingly\nperceived as a writer whose skepticism and indeterminacy anticipate postmodern aesthetics\u00ab\n(Crangle SE<\/i> XI). This becomes obvious when evaluating her relationship with the futurist\nmovement and how it influenced her writing: Between 1907 and 1916, Mina Loy lived in\nFlorence with her husband Stephen Haweis and her two daughters. She had come to Italy with\nHaweis, unable to proceed with a divorce at this point in her life due to her husband\u2019s refusal.\nDuring these years, Loy got in contact with the Italian futurists and soon became influenced\nand motivated by their way of thought (BM<\/i> 104, 137).\n<\/p>\n\n

Futurist Influence\n<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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\n\nJust as literature so far praised pensive immovability, ecstasy and slumber, we\nwant to praise aggressive movement, feverish insomnia, gymnastic pace, the\nperilous leap, the slap and the punch. (Marinetti 1912, own translation)\n\n<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\nObjecting to the supposed slowness and immobility of tradition, the Italian futurists strived for\naggressive movement and unapologetic speed at the beginning of the twentieth century. The\nfuturists were a \u00bbgroup of cultural revolutionaries said to worship change\u00ab with the urge to\ndefy and destroy European artistic tradition. They deemed this destruction necessary in order\nto move forward and to not limit themselves as artists in a constantly modernising society (BM<\/i> 151). The futurists saw it as indispensable to keep up with the tempo of innovation: Speed is\nassessed as desirable in sharp contrast to inactivity or languishment.2<\/sup> This transfers to the\nunderstanding of art and artistic employment, where the so-called \u00bbdynamic sensation\u00ab was\nmost important. Art was envisioned as a public happening. Futuristic thinking and rhetoric\ninspired many different forms of art, including fine arts, literature and music all over Europe\n(BM<\/i> 151\u2013153). Filippo Tommaso Marinetti is claimed to be the founder and leader of the\nfuturist movement in Italy. In 1909, he published the first futurist manifesto \u2013 a form that would\nbecome the preferred form of written expression for the futurists (179).\n\n<\/p>\n\n

Loy got in contact with Marinetti and indulged in a love affair with the Italian artist, poet and\nactivist. While she was attracted to his \u00bbrevolutionary creative energy\u00ab, she also struggled with\nhis \u00bball-consuming ego and misogyny\u00ab (Prescott, Poetic Salvage<\/i> 22-23). Mina Loy\u2019s\nbiographer argues that Loy did not bother to take Marinetti\u2019s ideas seriously, instead having a\ngood time teasing him. For instance, in his misogynist novel Marfarka<\/i> Marinetti expressed his\nlament that procreation needed woman at all (Kelly 143). The protagonist fantasises about the\npossibility to join man and machine, circumventing reproduction and claiming procreation as\na strictly masculine sphere. Loy ridiculed Marinetti for his desire to bear his own son (BM<\/i> 154),\nincorporating this theme ironically in her own writing: \u00bbYou will go to war, as of now I am out\nof your life […] Woman woman has nothing to do with war\u2013and yet there might have been\nsomething for me to do, […] I might have had your son, but Marfarka forbade it\u00ab (SE<\/i> 76-77).\nIn sharp contrast to this, Loy\u2019s poem Parturition<\/i>, written in 1915, reclaims the female bodily\nexperience by \u00bbrecasting it as creative and explosive potential rather than […] a machine in a\nproduction line\u00ab (Kelly 143). Loy states: \u00bbI am the centre \/ Of a circle of pain \/ Exceeding its\nboundaries in every direction\u00ab (LLB<\/i> 4). Loy\u2019s Parturition<\/i> thus foils Marinetti\u2019s misogynistic\nview on female reproduction by intertwining the transformations of a female body while giving\nbirth with the ability of the female mind to \u00bbspan worlds and time\u00ab (Prescott, Moths and\nMothers<\/i> 198).3<\/sup> The baby itself only appears as a \u00bbtouch of infinitesimal motion\u00ab (LLB<\/i> 4)\nagainst the woman\u2019s thigh. \u00bb[H]ard, clinical, scientific, [and] visceral\u00ab vocabulary is used to\ndescribe this experience of childbearing (Prescott, Moths and Mothers<\/i> 198):\n<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\n\nIn my congested cosmos of agony
\nFrom which there is no escape
\nOn infinitely prolonged nerve-vibrations
\nOr in contraction
\nTo the pin-point nucleus of being […]
\nI am the false quantity
\nIn the harmony of physiological potentiality
\n(LLB<\/i> 4)\n<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\nThis use of scientific vocabulary, usually associated with masculinity at the time, to describe a\nfemale experience in a society where childbirth was not talked about, makes this poem unique\nand modernist in its approach (Prescott, Moths and Mothers<\/i> 198). The speaker opens \u00bbintimate\nbodily spaces\u00ab (Kelly 141) while also referencing life cycles such as birth, death, decay and\nregeneration.4<\/sup> By intertwining birth and death, the poem declares that everything is a part of a\n\u00bbcycle of decomposition, fertilization, and renewal\u00ab (142). In a moment of realisation, the\nwoman then recognises her new identity as a mother:\n\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\n\nMother I am
\nIdentical
\nWith infinite Maternity
\nIndivisible
\nAcutely
\nInto
\nThe was\u2013is\u2013ever\u2013shall\u2013be
\nOf cosmic reproductivity
\n(LLB<\/i> 7)\n\n<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\nThe speaker obtains the identity of mother (Mother I am<\/i>) and spiritually connects with the\nendless cycle of maternity and motherhood. The woman, as an individual, connects to the\ngeneral concept of reproduction (Kelly 142) when \u00bb[i]mpressions of a cat \/ With blind kittens\u00ab\nrise from her subconscious (LLB<\/i> 7). She then finds identification with the image: \u00bbI am that\ncat\u00ab (7). Through this, the individual experience of becoming a mother is embedded in the\nlarger imagery of life. The reclaiming and reevaluation of childbirth as a creative act of agency\nmarks this female experience as important for Loy\u2019s literary concept of female identity. What\nLoy also proclaims in her Feminist Manifesto<\/i> \u2013 which will be discussed later \u2013 is illustrated on\na personal and individual level in Parturition<\/i>: that every woman has the right to maternity,\nwhich could re-establish women\u2019s creative potential.\n<\/p>\n\n

With the beginning of the Great War, the misogyny of the Italian futurists got infused with pro-\nwar rhetoric. In his second manifesto of futurism, Marinetti expresses his disdain for women\nalong with his longing for joining the war:\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\nCertainly, our nerves demand war and despise women! Certainly, because we\nfear their flowery arms wrapped around their knees on the morning of farewell!\nWhat do we care for women, these domestic invalids […]? We prefer violent\ndeath to their inconstant slumber, trembling with gloomy fights, and horror-\ndissected lives […]. (Marinetti 1913, own translation)\n\n<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\nMarinetti disdained women and the concept of love that was attributed to them. He portrays\nhis disregard for everything feminine, favouring a violent death over being loved by a woman.\nLoy\u2019s short story Pazzarella<\/i>, which was published posthumously, mirrors this intertwinement\nof futurist hatred of women with war euphoria: The male protagonist Geronimo, who is further\ncharacterised as a futurist author, also uses military metaphors to describe his relationship with\nthe young woman Pazzarella. Geronimo describes Pazzarella\u2019s first letter as a \u00bbhysterical\nexplosion\u00ab (SE<\/i> 76) and when he learns of her sexual liaison with another man, he asks himself\n\u00bbwhether it was my war or his I must henceforth wage upon her. Was he not my brother in\narms?\u00ab (SE<\/i> 71). The war between the genders blends with experiences of the Great War, a\ntypical futurist trope.\n\n<\/p>\n\n

During her sexual liaison with Marinetti, Mina developed romantic feelings for his futurist\nopponent Giovanni Papini. Like other futurists, Papini also expressed his antifeminist thoughts,\ncomparing women to animals and reducing them to their sexual organs (BM<\/i> 161f-162, 166).\nPapini confessed that he had been in love with Mina but had fallen out of love when he learned\nabout her sexual affair with Marinetti and felt betrayed. Regardless of this conflict, they became\nsexually intimate. However, this incident was not fulfilling for Loy and Papini condemned her\ninfidelity (181). This difficult affair led Mina to disparage love, seeing sexual intercourse\nmerely as a \u00bbcollision of bodies\u00ab and love as mechanical interaction. During this period in her\nlife, these thoughts find expression in her poem Human Cylinders<\/i> (182):\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\n\nThe human cylinders
\nRevolving in the enervating dust […]
\nHaving eaten without tasting
\nTalked without communion
\nAnd at least two of us
\nLoved a very little
\nWithout seeking
\nTo know if our two miseries
\nIn the lucid rush-together of automatons
\nCould form one opulent well-being
\n(LLB<\/i> 40)\n\n<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\nThis poem furthermore mirrors Loy\u2019s skepticism and \u00bbanxiety about the effects of technology\nand industrialization on human life\u00ab (Scuriatti, Mina Loy\u2019s Critical Modernism<\/i> 6). Here, she\nclearly goes against the futuristic excitement for machines and modernity when using the\nindustrial language and metaphor to express her sexual miseries of two people who are no more\nthan automatons. Such biographical reference is typical for Loy\u2019s writing. Her treatment of real\npersons and events are mostly quite apparent to an informed reader, since she had the tendency\nto \u00bbconceal while also revealing the name\u00ab (BM<\/i> 190) of her lovers as well as her own. When\ndealing with male avant-gardists, Loy\u2019s portraiture often turned into satire (201). An example\nof this satirising of real-life love affairs is the long poem The Effectual Marriage or The Insipid\nNarrative of Gina and Miovanni<\/i>5<\/sup> in which Mina expressed her imaginations about her union\nwith Papini. Loy switched the initial letters of herself to become \u203aGina\u2039 and of Giovanni Papini\nto become \u203aMiovanni\u2039. The poem portrays the married domestic life of these two within\ntraditional \u00bbsocio-economic organization of space\u00ab (Scuriatti, Negotiating Boundaries<\/i> 73):\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\nIn the evening they looked out of their two windows
\nMiovanni out of his library window
\nGina from the kitchen window
\nFrom among his pots and pans
\nWhere he so kindly kept her
\n(LLB<\/i> 36)\n\n<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\nThese themes of \u00bbdomesticity, faithful love, and docile femininity\u00ab (Scuriatti, Negotiating\nBoundaries<\/i> 77) are then satirised and exposed as products of an economic and patriarchal\nsystem when Ginas identity as a woman becomes unstable:\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\nGina being a female
\nBut she was more than that
\nBeing an incipience a correlative
\nan instigation of the reaction of man
\nFrom the palpable to the transcendent
\nMollescent irritant of his fantasy.
\n(LLB<\/i> 36)\n\n<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\nGina cannot only exist as being a female, for Miovanni\u2019s fantasy she has to be more than that.\nWhat exactly she is more remains unclear, as is typical for Loy\u2019s writing about female identity.\nIn dichotomous contrast to the stability represented by Miovanni, Gina is characterised as\nfluctuating. Her identity is depicted as \u00bbillogical, inconsistent […] and insubstantial\u00ab (Harris\n35). Her composition is described with the contradictory term \u00bbchangeant consistency\u00ab,\nchangeant<\/i> being a word used for describing fabric that shines in multiple colours through visual\nillusion. She is furthermore \u00bbintangible\u00ab, not clearly defined, and this indeterminacy is marked\nas \u00bbunexpected\u00ab (LLB<\/i> 38), overall emphasising her mysterious and unclear identification. In\nThe Effectual Marriage<\/i> Loy undermines tradition and the designated societal gender roles.\nThrough contrasting the elaborate use of syntax and diction with the simplicity of Gina\u2019s\ndomestic sphere,6<\/sup> Loy conveys a sense of \u00bbknowingness\u00ab (Harris 37) of the actual\nineffectiveness of this patriarchal and confined relationship.\n<\/p>\n\n

While futurism\u2019s biggest credo was the urge to destroy and defy tradition, this defiance did not\ninclude instruments for the subversion of traditional women\u2019s roles. While futurist interests\nsuch as speed and technology were located in the terrain of men, women were relegated to a\nstatus of static continuance (Kelly 137). Marinetti thought that even with the right to vote, the\n\u00bbaverage woman would continue to exist within the \u203aclosed circle\u2039 of femininity, \u203aas a mother,\nas a wife, and as a lover\u2039\u00ab (qtd. in BM<\/i> 178-179). Futurists such as Marinetti saw the only\npossible identification for women in being a mother, wife or lover \u2013 identities that are created\nin relation to a man. Through contact with these misogynistic ideas of male dynamism and\nfemale stasis, Loy understood \u00bbthe threat posed to a modern woman by immobility\u00ab (Kelly\n137). It provided her with a substantial foundation for her own arguments on the \u203awoman\nquestion\u2039, to participate in the \u203asex wars\u2039 with her writing. Still, Loy\u2019s early writing in the\nFlorentine years is starkly influenced by futurist thought and form. A good example for the\nways in which Loy combined her influences from futurism with her stance as a woman can\nalso be seen in her Feminist Manifesto<\/i>, using feminist rhetoric and thought ahead of her time.\n<\/p>\n\n

Feminist Manifesto \u2014 Negation of Self\n<\/h2>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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\n\nShe [Mina Loy] was especially concerned with the exceptional-yet-unaccepted\nfemale, and through her conflicted poems, fraught with anger and sensuality,\nreaders can experience Loy\u2019s discovery, critique, and redefinition of her identity\nas a woman. (Prescott, Moths and Mothers<\/i> 196)\n\n<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\nLoy\u2019s interest in gender equality resulted from her own observations and refusals made in both\nher middle-class origins as well as in the bohemian and avant-garde circles she later frequented\n(Scuriatti, Negotiating Boundaries<\/i> 71). She expressed her thoughts of feminism in a futuristic\nform, a manifesto, which was her \u00bbopponents\u2019 weapon of choice\u00ab (BM<\/i> 179). Loy\u2019s Feminist\nManifesto<\/i> was written in 1914 but only published posthumously in 1982 in the collection The\nLast Lunar Baedeker<\/i>. Roger Conover calls it \u00bbone of the most radical polemics ever written\non feminism\u00ab (xiv). Loy\u2019s Feminist Manifesto<\/i> can be contextualised within the misogynistic\nprovocations made by the futurists as well as in the context of first-wave feminism during\nwhich Loy wrote this text. In the context of futurism, Loy\u2019s manifesto can be read as a reply to\nValentine de Saint Point\u2019s futurist and anti-feminist Manifesto of the Futurist Woman<\/i> (1912),\nin which Saint Point pressed for more masculine women (Scuriatti, Negotiating Boundaries<\/i>\n71). Concerning first-wave feminism, Loy was concerned with the efforts and demands made\nby her contemporaries. She judged the approach by the suffragists as insufficient and not\nsystematic enough: \u00bbToo concerned with legislated inequalities, they [first-wave feminists]\nwere fighting for changes within a system that would remain inherently male-centric, whether\nor not women were given the right to vote\u00ab (Claveria 2). In reaction to both the feminist and\nfuturist discourse of her time, Loy felt compelled to write an \u00bbabsolute resystemization of the\nfeminist question\u00ab, criticising the current feminist movement as inadequate (BM<\/i> 179):\n\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\nCease to place your confidence in economic legislation, vice-crusades & uniform\neducation\u2013\u2013you are glossing over Reality<\/u>. […][B]e Brave<\/u> & deny at the outset\u2013\u2013\nthat pathetic clap-trap war cry Woman is the equal of man<\/u>\u2013for She is NOT<\/u>!\n(LLB<\/i> 153)\n\n<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\nFor Loy, the claim that women are now equal to men was still an illusion. No amount of\ndisavowal of gender stereotypes or the individual will could \u00bbwish away the political, social,\nand biological components that accrue to gendered subjectivity\u00ab (Lyon 386). Instead, she states\nthat men and women are enemies, having a mutual relationship of \u00bbparasite\u00ab and his or her\n\u00bbexploited\u00ab counterpart (LLB<\/i> 154). Against Marinetti\u2019s declaration of women\u2019s \u00bbparasitical\nsentimentality\u00ab, the exploitation can go in both directions for Loy (Lyon 398). The only \u00bbpoint\nat which the interests of the sexes merge\u00ab is their \u00bbsexual embrace\u00ab (LLB<\/i> 154). Rejecting\nreformism and change within the system, Loy demands more radical action, an \u00bbabsolute\ndemolition\u00ab (153) of \u00bbthe [patriarchal] system\u00ab (Claveria 2). This differentiated Loy from her\nfirst-wave feminist contemporaries, making her analysis of the situation and demands more\nradical. The text has an awareness that this task will be difficult, and that personal sacrifices\nare necessary to realise equality \u00bbbeyond the legislative scope\u00ab (2). With this aim, Loy\u2019s\nfeminism seeks the possibility for women to \u00bbemerge as autonomous modern subjects\u00ab (Harris\n17):\n\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\n[A]ll your pet illusions must be unmasked\u2013\u2013the lies of centuries have got to go\u2013\nare you prepared for the Wrench<\/u>\u2013\u2013? There is no half-measure\u2013\u2013NO scratching\non the surface of the rubbish heap of tradition, will bring about Reform<\/u>, the only\nmethod is Absolute Demolition<\/u>\n(LLB 154)\n\n<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
\n

\nNot only through the form (a manifesto) but also through the mediated content, Loy brings into\npractice what futurism praised. She applies the principles of denial of tradition and aggressive\nmovement to the woman question when she demands the total demolition of gender norms and\nrules. The female protagonist in Pazzarella<\/i> serves as a \u00bbcautionary tale\u00ab (Crangle SE<\/i> XVI) of\nwhat happens if a woman tries and fails at achieving this absolute demolition. The woman,\nPazzarella, is named and defined through her male lover: \u00bbBeing a creator, I realized I can\ncreate woman. I decided to \u2018create\u2019 Pazzarella\u00ab (SE<\/i> 96). When Pazzarella dies a metaphorical\ndeath, Geronimo seizes his chance in defining her a second time before she could form her own\nsubjectivity. Through this, Pazzarella symbolises the kind of woman that Loy criticises in her\nmanifesto: an undefined woman that clings to the desire to be unconditionally loved by a man.\nAccording to Loy\u2019s manifesto, in order to \u00bbobtain results\u00ab, the \u00bbfirst & greatest sacrifice\u00ab\nwomen have to make is of their virtue (LLB<\/i> 154). With virtue, which is put into parentheses\nmarking her doubts regarding this word, Loy means the moralising restrictions regarding\nfemale sexuality. Especially the \u00bbfictitious value\u00ab (154) Loy attributes to female virtue and\nvirginity is in need to be destroyed. She radically demands an \u00bbunconditional surgical\ndestruction of virginity through-out the female population at puberty\u00ab (155). This call for a\nsurgical destruction should be read and understood in a metaphorical way, in the sense of\ndeconstruction of virginity as a concept, in order to \u00bbnegate that bodies and sex are essentially\ngiven\u00ab (Scuriatti, Negotiating Boundaries<\/i> 79). Loy deals with the concept of virginity and its\nimpact on women in her poem Virgins Plus Curtains Minus Dots<\/i>. Here, Loy portrays the\nsituation of young unmarried women (virgins<\/i>) lacking dowries and awaiting their next step in\nlife (marriage<\/i>). Even though the female identity established in the poem is largely shown as\nrestricted, it also offers possibilities for breaking out, granting the virgins more agency:\n\u00bb[B]ehind curtains\u00ab, the virgins throb and they \u00bbmight scratch\u00ab (LLB<\/i> 22) at the door, trying to\ndissolve the barrier that these \u00bbboundary areas\u00ab (Scuriatti, Negotiating Boundaries<\/i> 73), where\ninside and outside world meet, represent. Similarly, the female protagonist of Pazzarella<\/i>\nquestions her fictitious value in connection to her identification: \u00bbI weighed in advance my\npossible coquetries, dignities, the fictitious value I could assume, the pretentious gestures I\ncould make in the luckless position of being\u2013what am I?\u00ab (SE<\/i> 83)\n<\/p>\n\n

In connection with the concept of virginity that Loy wants abolished, she challenges a\n\u00bbcollective resistance to the idea of marriage as a bargain made\u00ab (BM<\/i> 179), pointing out the\neconomic purpose of marriage in her Feminist Manifesto<\/i>. Parallel to this, the young unnamed\nfemale protagonists in Loy\u2019s Virgins<\/i> experience that their virginity is their \u00bbmost sought-after\ngood\u00ab (Scuriatti, Negotiating Boundaries<\/i> 78). The poem furthermore shows how this\neconomical construct of marriage and virginity is concealed through a romantic narrative (80):\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

\nWe have been taught
\nLove is a god
\nWhite
\nwith soft wings
\nNobody shouts
\nVirgins for sale
\n(LLB<\/i> 22)\n\n<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
\n

\nIn her manifesto, Loy concludes that, for women, marriage would only offer \u00bbridiculously\nample\u00ab (LLB<\/i> 155) advantages. In modern times, she argues, women can and should accept\nluxuries from men without having to give anything or trading their virginity for it. Women\nshould indulge in free love and sexuality outside of marriage. Realising \u00bbthat there is nothing\nimpure in sex\u2013except the mental attitude to it\u00ab (156), Loy asks women to decline \u00bbsociety\u2019s\nmoralization of sex\u00ab (Claveria 2). According to Loy, every woman should have a right to sexual\nexperiences as well as motherhood (BM<\/i> 179). Women who could not secure a marriage are\nultimately \u00bbprohibited from any but surreptitious re-action to Life-Stimuli\u2013& entirely debarred\nmaternity. Every woman has a right to maternity\u00ab (LLB<\/i> 155), and executing this right would\nconsequently \u00bbreturn women their creative powers\u00ab (Scuriatti, Negotiating Boundarie<\/i>, 78).\nLoy\u2019s right to maternity, however, does not extend to every woman, only to what she calls the\n\u00bbsuperior woman\u00ab (LLB<\/i> 155). She brings forth one of the \u00bbnastiest components of the birth\ncontrol movement\u00ab, the eugenic argument that certain \u203anon-superior\u2039 members of a population\nshould not propagate (Lyon 387).\n<\/p>\n\n

Loy furthermore expresses the thought that a woman is seen as the Other and that this\nconstitutes her as the object \u00bbthrough which the man situates himself in the world\u00ab (Claveria\n3).7<\/sup> Loy states accordingly:\n<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

\nThe value of man is assessed entirely according to his use or interest to the\ncommunity, the value of woman, depends entirely on chance<\/u>, her success or\ninsuccess in manoeuvering a man into taking the life-long responsibility of her \u2013
\n(LLB<\/i> 155)\n\n<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
\n

\n\n\n

The value of men reflects on his subjectivity, while women\u2019s value is arbitrary and can only\nbe \u203aachieved\u2039 through marriage in which the man is superior and responsible for his wife.\nAligning with the \u00bbsubject-object dynamic\u00ab (Claveria 3) between the genders, female identity\nis polarised into two archetypes which relate to the male: mistress and mother (LLB<\/i> 154).\nFurther female identification possibilities lie between \u00bbParasitism, & Prostitution\u2013\u2013or –\nNegation\u00ab (154). The favourable option presented in the Feminist Manifesto<\/i> is negation of\nnormative femininity, for instance by destroying the desire to be loved by a man (155-156).\nLoy criticises women for defining themselves in relation to men building a \u00bbrelative\nimpersonality\u00ab (153) and men, conforming to being protective of this relational \u00bbfemale\nelement\u00ab (153). So she pleads: \u00bbLeave off looking to men to find out what you are not \u2013\u2013seek\nwithin yourselves to find out what you are\u00ab (154). Women should find an identity which allows\nthem to \u00bbrealise concrete values in themselves\u00ab (Harris 17).\n<\/p>\n\n

Loy\u2019s Feminist Manifesto<\/i> is a radical text on feminism that shows how female identity is\nconstructed in relation to men and how gender equality requires a full deconstruction of identity\narchetypes. In stark contrast to the demands made by first-wave feminists, such as the right to\nvote, Loy radically questioned the gendered identity of women altogether. This makes her\nFeminist Manifesto<\/i> appear more in line with thoughts provoked by second wave feminists to a\nmodern reader. Construction of female identity as mother or mistress is unmasked as being\nbased on the subject-object relationship between the genders. A woman is defined (and defines\nherself accordingly) and finds value by chance if she restricts herself to the constructed,\navailable identities. Changes within this system through granting more rights or professional\nopportunities are judged as not extensive enough. Instead, a deconstruction through negation\nof female identity archetypes is demanded.\n<\/p>\n\n

Summarising Thoughts\n<\/h2>\n\n

\u00bbThe secret of woman is that she does not yet exist\u00ab (SE<\/i> 96) concludes the male protagonist in\nLoy\u2019s short story Pazzarella<\/i>. How should a woman instead define herself, or should she negate\nher identity entirely? How can women be freed from patriarchal structures? For Simone de\nBeauvoir, there is no essential truth to be found in the question of what a woman constitutes\n(323). In pure subjectivity the human is nothing, meaning that there is no essence that precedes\nthe human existence. Ergo, there is no female truth to be found, neither in constructed\nstereotypes nor in nature. Looking into Loy\u2019s assessment of \u203athe woman question\u2039, one can see\na similar undefinedness and struggle for clear identification in her female figures. Influenced\nby the drastic demand for movement and urge to defy traditions made by the futurists, Loy\nproclaimed absolute demolition in her Feminist Manifesto<\/i>. Stating that reforms are not\nsufficient enough, she demands a total de(con)struction of the patriarchal system, thereby\ncriticising marriage as well as the concept of virginity and the longing of women to be loved\nand valued by a man. In this, Loy went against the futurists\u2019 anti-feminist thinking, calling for\nwomen to free themselves from any fictitious values while using the futurists\u2019 form of\nexpression. Loy also called for a right to maternity independent from marriage and illustrated\nthe creative potential of a parturient woman in her poem Parturition<\/i>. Placing the woman at the\ncentre of the universe, she created worlds and life with her mind and body. Maternity and the\nidentity as a mother become spiritually and intellectually re-evaluated against the futurist\ndream of male reproduction connected to technological progress. As Mina Loy deploys the\narchetypes of female myths (virgins, lover\/mistress, wife and mother) with possibilities of\noutbreak, constructions of female identity become unstable. If one turns to the female figure of\nPazzarella hoping to find a truth, one is disillusioned. Loy\u2019s portraiture of female identity\ncorrelates heavily with the male conception of \u203awoman\u2039, varying between ironic depictions,\nreal implications and the prospect of a deconstructed, negated female identity that in itself\ncannot be grasped. Herein lies the deconstructive narrative and potential proclaimed by Loy:\nthe negation of female identity as a whole.\n<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
\n
\n
\"\"
Sarah Sterling<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n

Nach einem Bachelorabschluss in Germanistik und Anglistik, gefolgt von einem Bachelorabschluss in Sprechwissenschaft, studiert Sarah<\/strong> (geb. 1998) nun Sprechwissenschaft im Master. Sarahs wissenschaftliche Interessen fokussieren sich auf feministische Literaturwissenschaft, Mythosrezeption in der neueren deutschen Literatur, transgenerische Aspekte postdramatischer Theatertexte sowie literaturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven im Kontext der Sprechkunst.<\/i><\/p>\n

Kontakt: sarah.sterling@student.uni-halle.de; sarahsterling@posteo.de<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Notes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

1<\/sup>Loy, Mina. The Lost Lunar Baedeker: Poems of Mina Loy<\/i>, edited by Roger Conover, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999. In the following, this citation will be abbreviated to LLB<\/i>.
2<\/sup>\u00bbThe world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed! It saves humans from decomposition, which is a consequence of inertia, remembrance, analysis, stagnant calm and habit\u00ab (Marinetti 1925, own translation).
3<\/sup>\u00bbThe lines of the poem pulse and contract like the uterine muscles \u2013 both the body and the work are intimately linked as creative processes as the mother births a child in the same moment as the writing contracts and births itself a poem\u00ab (Kelly 142).
4<\/sup>\u00bbThrough the subliminal deposits of evolutionary processes \/ Have I not \/ Somewhere \/ Scrutinized \/ A dead white feathered moth \/ Laying eggs?\u00ab (LLB<\/i> 6).
5<\/sup>In the following, this title will be abbreviated to The Effectual Marriage<\/i>.
6<\/sup>When Gina cooks, she prepares \u00bb[a]ll sorts of sialagogues\u00ab (LLB<\/i> 36), a substance or medication that is usually
used as medical treatment to increase the flow rate of saliva. She prepares \u00bbSaccharine [type of sweetener] for his cup\u00ab and \u00bb[w]hen she was lazy\u00ab she writes poetry on the milk bill that is \u00bbnot too difficult to \/ Learn by heart\u00ab (LLB<\/i> 39).
7<\/sup>This thought is also described by Simone de Beauvoir in her well-known study The Second Sex<\/i>: Beauvoir states that the conception of the world we have is produced by men. They describe their surroundings from their own viewpoint. Through this, they set themselves as a subject and construct woman as \u2018the other\u2019, making them into their objects (Beauvoir 95).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Primary Sources<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

BM<\/i><\/strong> Burke, Carolyn. Becoming Modern<\/i>. Picador, 1996.

LLB<\/i><\/strong> Loy, Mina. The Lost Lunar Baedeker: Poems of Mina Loy<\/i>, edited by Roger Conover, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999.

SE<\/i><\/strong> Loy, Mina. Stories and Essays of Mina Loy<\/i>, edited by Sara Crangle, Dalkey Archive Press, 2011.

Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso. \u00bbDas neue Tempo.\u00ab Innendekoration<\/i>, no. 6, 1925, p. 211.

Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso. \u00bbDie futuristische Literatur. Technisches Manifest.\u00ab Der Sturm<\/i>, no. 133, 1912, pp. 194\u2013195.

Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso. \u00bbTod dem Mondschein! Zweites Manifest des Futurismus.\u00ab Der Sturm<\/i>, no. 111, 1913, pp. 50\u201351.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Secondary Sources<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Beauvoir, Simone de. Das andere Geschlecht: Sitte und Sexus der Frau<\/i>. Translated by Uli Aum\u00fcller and Grete Osterwald, 25th ed., Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 2022.

Burke, Carolyn. \u00bbSupposed Persons: Modernist Poetry and the Female Subject.\u00ab Feminist Studies<\/i>, vol. 11, no. 1, 1985, pp.131\u2013148. JSTOR<\/i>; doi:10.2307\/3180142.

Burstein, Jessica. Mina Loy: Lunar Baedeker. Poetry Foundation<\/i>, https:\/\/www.poetry-foundation.org\/articles\/69437\/mina-loy-lunar-baedeker [Accessed 3 December 2022].

Claveria, Marina. \u00bbMina Loy and Bikini Kill: Hidden Identities in Feminist Politics.\u00ab Oregon Undergraduate Research Journal<\/i>, vol. 6, no. 1, 2014, pp. 15\u201324.

Galvin, Mary E. \u00bbThe Rhythms of Experience: Mina Loy and the Poetics of \u203aLove\u2039.\u00ab Queer Poetics. Five Modernist Women Writers<\/i>, Greenwood Press, 1999, pp. 51\u201382.

Lyon, Janet. \u00bbMina Loy\u2019s Pregnant Pauses: The Space of Possibility in the Florence Writings.\u00ab Mina Loy: Women and Poet<\/i>, edited by Maeera Shreiber and Keith Tuma, National Poetry Foundation, 1998, pp. 379\u2013401.

M\u00fcller, Birgit. K\u00f6rper \u2013 (De)Konstruktionen \u2013 Praxen: \u00dcberlegungen zu neueren Diskursen<\/i>. Logos Verlag, 2000.

New, William Herbert. \u00bbIdentifying Identity.\u00ab Caliban<\/i>, no. 14, 1977, pp. 3\u20139. Pers\u00e9e<\/i>, https:\/\/doi.org \/10.3406\/calib.1977.1065.

Kelly, Jacinta. \u00bbHuman Cylinders: Mina Loy and the Technological Age.\u00ab Pockets of Change: Adaptation and Cultural Transition<\/i>, edited by Tricia Hopton, Lexington Books, 2011, pp. 133\u2013144.

Prescott, Tara. \u00bbMoths and Mothers. Mina Loy\u2019s Parturition.\u00ab Women\u2019s Studies<\/i>, vol. 39, no. 3, 2010, pp. 194\u2013214.

Prescott, Tara. Poetic Salvage. Reading Mina Loy. Bucknell University Press, 2017.

Roberts, Andrew Michael. \u00bbRhythm, Self and Jazz in Mina Loy\u2019s Poetry.\u00ab The Salt Companion to Mina Loy<\/i>, edited by Rachel Potter and Suzanne Hobson, Salt Publishing, 2010, pp. 99\u2013128.

Scuriatti, Laura. Mina Loy\u2019s Critical Modernism<\/i>. University Press of Florida, 2019.

Scuriatti, Laura. \u00bbNegotiating boundaries. The Economics of Space and Gender in Mina Loy\u2019s Early Poems.\u00ab Feminismo\/s, no. 5, 2005, pp. 71\u201384. RUA<\/i>, doi:10.14198\/fem.2005.5.05.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Feminist and futurist, wife and lover, militant and pacifist, actress and model, Christian Scientist and nurse, she was the binarian\u2019s nightmare. She was a Futurist, Dadaist, Surrealist, feminist, conceptualist, modernist, post-modernist, and none of the above.1 Mina Loy, today scarcely known for her poetry, was an avant-gardist writer and painter that shaped the literary modernist […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6132,"featured_media":458,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.urz.uni-halle.de\/zsbblog2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.urz.uni-halle.de\/zsbblog2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.urz.uni-halle.de\/zsbblog2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.urz.uni-halle.de\/zsbblog2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6132"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.urz.uni-halle.de\/zsbblog2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.urz.uni-halle.de\/zsbblog2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1117,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.urz.uni-halle.de\/zsbblog2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457\/revisions\/1117"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.urz.uni-halle.de\/zsbblog2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.urz.uni-halle.de\/zsbblog2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.urz.uni-halle.de\/zsbblog2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.urz.uni-halle.de\/zsbblog2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}