I am finally making my first real forays into dissertation research. Well, not my first exactly… I have done a lot of compiling of resources over the past little while. But this week marks the beginning of my serious reading. Since I have to study for exams my dissertation reading will be limited for a few months, but for now I’d like to get a start on it so that I can write a proposal.
Today I read a good chunk of Ben Highmore’s book Everyday Life and Cultural Theory: An Introduction. Just trying to get a sense of the theoretical field, since I haven’t actually read all of the primary texts, nor will I be able to for quite a few months. So far I’ve found his discussion of Walter Benjamin the most compelling. Benjamin’s critique of Surrealism was that it failed to use the available tools to mobilize a political critique of modernity, but instead remained in thrall to modernity. Following Surrealism, his project was to find an appropriate form within which to represent the everyday that would capture the experience of everyday modernity and render it meaningful. This form would then make possible a political critique of modernity and of the history of progress. Though his precise politics remains abstract and undeveloped, I find the idea of an appropriate form for critique very interesting. It will be interesting to see if the literary forms of my primary dissertation texts could possibly fall into this category. Particularly Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage. As a novel (or series of novels) that is all about experimenting with form and capturing the everyday life of a modern woman, I wonder if Benjamin would see political potential in it.
What Highmore comes to in his discussion of Georg Simmel, Surrealism, and Benjamin is that all three were concerned with finding new forms to represent the changed and changing experience of everyday modernity. He also notes that all three privileged the urban experience as the true arena of everyday modernity. This then begs the question of what other kinds of modern experience are left unexplored. He continues to ask another more specific question that will be very relevant to my own project, one that I hope to at least partially answer:
How would the everyday lives of women feature in this project? For the most part women are absent. Part of the project of developing ‘theories of the everyday’ is going to be rescuing pre-feminist theory from its gendered orientation. There is much here that may be useful: Simmel’s emphasis on spheres of sociability (the meal, for instance) might be reworked in a way that articulates the gendering of the everyday; Benjamin’s work on interiors might similarly be explored. (74)
I was left with the feeling that I am venturing into an area ripe for research, and that got me pretty excited! I’m looking forward to finishing the book and writing my proposal now.
