Are trees forms? On formalism, material feminism, and historical literature. Issue 3 (1st September 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Phillips, George Micajah
• Is Part Of: Feminist modernist studies. Volume 3:Issue 3(2020)
• Page Start: 252
• Page End: 266
• Publication Date: 2020-09-01
• Subjects: Ecocriticism -- modernist studies -- formalism -- material feminism -- Čapek -- Karel (1890–1938) -- Woolf -- Virginia (1882–1941); Feminism -- Periodicals; Women's studies -- Periodicals; Modernism (Literature) -- Periodicals; Women's studies; Modernism (Literature); Feminism; Periodicals; Electronic journals; 305.4205
• DOI: 10.1080/24692921.2020.1805676
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2469-2921

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This essay draws on formalist cultural studies and material feminism to argue for a new approach in modernist studies, which I call formalist materialism, that reads ecological forms alongside aesthetic forms. Such an approach may have distinct advantages. As a theoretical model working from these traditions, it illuminates a new direction for formalist attention to literature by connecting it to embodiment, ecology, and material substances, and a novel path for feminist materialists by suggesting historical objects and situations where human and nonhuman agencies might be clearer. As I demonstrate in readings of Karel Čapek and Virginia Woolf, this model of reading also might help reinvigorate ways of approaching early-twentieth-century modernism in our time of ecological crisis, but without looking for signs of our concerns and epistemologies in the past.