Mimesis and ekphrasis as rhetoric of contestation in Chris Kraus's I love Dick
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21814/diacritica.6042Keywords:
Mimesis, Gaze, Description, Irigaray, IntertextualityAbstract
This article investigates Chris Kraus’s work, I Love Dick (2019), through the lens of feminist theory. It presents a gender discussion, examining how the author deploys concepts of femininity and the dynamics of the gaze. Initially, we adress the way Kraus enacts a strategic mimicry that appears to support male-centric logic, which ultimately mocks the limitations of femininity by exaggerating them. This discussion is based on Irigaray’s writings (1985, 2017), highlighting women’s relationship with language and Western epistemology. Subsequently, we demonstrate how Kraus mobilizes visual description that reconfigures the gaze relationship between subject and object. For this purpose, references include Heffernan (1993) and Mulvey (2018). In the end, it is concluded that Kraus offers a significant contribution to the debates on literary works’ formal structures, as I Love Dick suggests alternative ways of producing meaning, forming alliances, through its political intersections.
References
Assmann, A. (2011). Espaços da recordação: formas e transformações da memória cultural (P. Soethe, Trad.). Editora da Unicamp. (original publicado em 1999).
Berger, J. (2022). Modos de ver (H. Mader, Trad.). Fósforo. (original publicado em 1972).
Beauvoir, S. (2019). O segundo sexo: fatos e mitos (S. Milliet, Trad.). Nova Fronteira. (original publicado em 1949).
Bloom, H. (1997). The anxiety of influence: a theory of poetry. Oxford University Press. (original publicado em 1973).
Bronfen, E. (1996). Over her dead body: death, femininity and the aesthetic. Manchester University Press. (original publicado em 1992).
Butler, J. (2019). Corpos que importam. n-1 edições. (original publicado em 1993).
Clüver, C. (1997). Estudos interartes: conceitos, termos, objetivos. Literatura e Sociedade, 2(2), 37–55. https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2237-1184.v0i2p37-55 DOI: https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2237-1184.v0i2p37-55
Costa, L. A. (2006). A ilusão da imagem: a écfrase, da Antigüidade ao século XX. Revista USP, 71, 82–84. https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2316-9036.v0i71p82-84 DOI: https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2316-9036.v0i71p82-84
Deleuze, G. (2011). Francis Bacon: lógica da sensação (J. M. Justo, Trad.). Orfeu Negro. (original publicado em 1981).
Ferreira, E. M. A. (2012). De musa à medusa: presença do feminino na literatura e nas artes plásticas. PPGL/UFPE.
Gilbert, S., & Gubar, S. (2020). The madwoman in the attic: the woman and the nineteenth-century literary imagination. Yale University Press. (original publicado em 1979). DOI: https://doi.org/10.12987/9780300252972
Heffernan, J. (1993). Museum of words: the poetics of ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbury. University of Chicago Press.
Homero. (2020). Ilíada (T. Vieira, Trad.). Editora 34.
Irigaray, L. (1985). Speculum of another woman. Cornell University Press. (original publicado em 1974).
Irigaray, L. (2017). Este sexo não é só um sexo: sexualidade e status social da mulher (C. Prada, Trad.). Editora Senac São Paulo. (original publicado em 1977).
Irigaray, L. (1993). An ethics of sexual difference (C. Burke & G. C. Gill, Trads.). Cornell University Press. (original publicado em 1984).
Kraus, C. (2019). Eu amo Dick (T. C. & D. Galera, Trads.). Todavia. (original publicado em 1977)
Kraus, C. (Diretora). (1996). Gravity and grace [Vídeo]. Produção independente.
Mulvey, L. (2018). Prazer visual e cinema narrativo. In I. Xavier (Org.) A experiência do cinema (antologia). Paz e Terra. (original publicado em 1975).
Zembla, N. (1997). “See Dick Sue: A Very Phallic Novel Gets a Rise out of a Beloved Professor”, New York Magazine, vol. 30, no. 44.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Isabella Giordano Bezerra
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
