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This article proposes an ethical reading position by taking the author's sociohistoric censorious situation into account and by adopting a complicit reading strategy in order to expose silenced themes of intimacy. It does so through textual references to the 1883play Räddad (Saved) by the Swedish female playwright Alfhild Agrell. By taking the point of departure in Helen Freshwater's idea of an inclusive model of censorship, Judith Butler's theory of reiteration, and Toril Moi's claims ofthe political potential of a reading mode starting in the concerns of the text, I establish the theoretical basis for a complicit reading strategy. I then present the gendered period-specific censorious situation ofthe 1880s in Sweden, in which the aesthetics of idealism influenced censorship in the theatres and also regulated playwriting. I demonstrate a vacillation between self-censoring and exposing themes of intimacy in Agrell's play, proposing that this should be regarded as a specific rhetoric produced by an awareness of gendered censorship. Finally, by leaning on phenomenological and new materialist instruments of analysis, I present an embodied reading strategy for Agrell's play in response to its specific individual poetics and concerns, to expose its full gender/feminist potential.
Keywords: feminist literary criticism / women's writing / Swedish drama / Agrell, Alfhild / intimacy / censorship / self-censorship
Ključne besede: feministična literarna veda / švedska dramatika / Agrell, Alfhild / intimnost / cenzura / samocenzura
Članek predlaga etično bralno stališče, ki upošteva specifično družbeno-zgodovinsko cenzurno situacijo avtorice in uporablja strategijo zavezniškega branja, da bi razkrilo zamolčane teme intimnosti. Pri tem se opira na besedilne reference v drami Räddad (Rešena) švedske dramatičarke Alfhild Agrell iz leta 1883. Teoretična podlaga za strategijo zavezniškega branja so koncept o inkluzivnem modelu cenzure Helen Freshwater, teorija ponavljanja Judith Butler in trditve Toril Moi o političnem potencialu načina branja, ki se začne v skrbi za besedilo. Nato so predstavljene spolno specifične cenzurne razmere v osemdesetih letih 19. stoletja na Švedskem, v katerih je estetika idealizma vplivala na cenzuro v gledališčih in oblikovala tudi dramsko pisanje. Prikazano je nihanje med samocenzuro in izpostavljanjem teme intimnosti v igri A. Agrell in izpostavljen predlog, da bi to obravnavali kot specifično retoriko, ki je nastala zaradi zavedanja spolno pogojene cenzure. Na koncu s fenomenološkimi in z novimi materialističnimi analitičnimi orodji predstavim strategijo...