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NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research

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Swelling, Leaking, Merging— A Material FeministReading of August Strindberg's A Madman'sManifesto

Ann-Sofie Lönngren

To cite this article: Ann-Sofie Lönngren (2014) Swelling, Leaking, Merging— A Material FeministReading of August Strindberg's A Madman's Manifesto, NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist andGender Research, 22:1, 4-19, DOI: 10.1080/08038740.2013.814301

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08038740.2013.814301

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ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Swelling, Leaking, Merging–A Material Feminist Reading of AugustStrindberg’s A Madman’s Manifesto

ANN-SOFIE LONNGREN

Department of Literature and Center for Gender Research, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

ABSTRACT In this article, I revisit my own doctoral thesis–a queer reading of Swedishmodernist author August Strindberg–in order to discuss what materialist feminism’s activeconcept of matter might have entailed for this project. In doing so, I reflected on the possibilitythat material feminism’s notion of “other worldling” and material agency does not just takeplace in science fiction, but can be seen on the level of textual meaning in all kinds of literature,including “realist”. To discuss this, I turned to previous research (including my own) aboutStrindberg’s novel A Madman’s Manifesto (1887–1888), focusing on the handling of thenovel’s monstrous, active, and changing female bodies. The humanist situatedness of theseprevious studies, where discourse is presumed to be active and matter passive, meant that thesebodies stood out as “absurdities” and were often being handled via “gatekeepers of reality”, i.e.arguments and designations with the aim of determining what is “real” in literature. But what if,I asked, the “absurdities” in the novel can be seen as depictions of material agency?In a renewed reading of A Madman’s Manifesto, I employed Karen Barad’s concept of

“intra-activity”, according to which “meaning” is jointly produced by matter and discourse.Thus, it became apparent that literary discourse alone did not have the power to alter the bodiesin the novel, but had to intra-act with literary matter in the shape of alcohol. Furthermore, theliterary matter in the novel turned out to be able to intra-act with different discourses at thesame time and in different ways, e.g. by “kicking back”. Thus, focusing on processes of literarymaterialization in the novel enabled a story of female bodily resistance to be told in spite of thefact that it was silenced by the heteronormative discourse of the narrator.

Introduction

When writing my PhD thesis in comparative literature in Sweden during the firstdecade of the twenty-first century, all my readings were about discourse. In employinga queer perspective on erotic triangles in the works of Swedish modernist literary and

q 2013 The Nordic Association for Women’s Studies and Gender Research

Correspondence Address: Ann-Sofie Lonngren, PhD. Email: ann-sofie.lonngren@gender.uu.se

NORA–Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 2014

Vol. 22, No. 1, 4–19, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08038740.2013.814301

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dramatic author August Strindberg (1849–1912), I found one heteronormativediscourse after another, as well as resistances against them (Lonngren, 2007). Thestudy was fairly well received as a theoretically updated re-reading of a number of textsproduced within Strindberg’s highly canonized authorship. Since achieving mydoctoral degree in 2008, however, something has happened within the Scandinavianfield of gender studies. Queer theory is accompanied and partly challenged by“transgender studies”, and social constructionism has been problematized within the“material feminist turn” that has occurred over the past 5–10 years on a wider scale (atleast in a Scandinavian context). This change has instigated in me a curiosity to revisitmy old readings of Strindberg’s texts, in order to discuss what implications thistheoretical turn might have had for a project like mine.

Partly, this curiosity is accompanied by frustration, since the literary genre that isoften referred to within material feminism is science fiction, which with its scientificand technological focus offers manifold examples of what Donna Haraway(following Barbara Noske) has called “other worldling” (Haraway, 2008: 174–182).As a literary scholar, I am sceptical of the notion that such making possible of otherworlds would only occur within a certain genre, although of course it is possible thatit intensifies there. But what could the insights that have been won within feministmaterialism possibly entail for readings of literature in general–e.g. of a renownednineteenth-century author like Strindberg? A discussion of that question would, Iargue, suggest a literary interpretational praxis that might be part of the ballast thatKaren Barad has claimed needs to be created as a counterweight against previoustendencies within feminism to define theory as disconnected from materialcircumstances (Barad, 1998, 2003, 2007).

Of course, one objection to this would be that literary scholarship is a materiallyconditioned field of research and that matter is thus constantly present and alreadyacknowledged within this discipline. And it is undeniably true that the book as amaterial entity, with its solid covers and fixed printed symbols on the pages, andfurthermore its history of and dependence on printing devices and publishing houses, isthe foundation for all the operations within this field. But also, from a less sociological,more literary, interpretational perspective, material circumstances constantly call forattention, not least the author with his or her body, experiences, psychology, andidentity; this author that literary scholarship has been trying to kill since RolandBarthes’s The Death of the Author (1968) and the birth of post-structuralism.

Furthermore, historical, societal, political, and social contexts, as well as thereader’s own positioning, are material circumstances that every literary scholar,primarily under the influence of Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, andfeminist research at the end of the twentieth century, has been disciplined toacknowledge as important aspects of literary analysis. I do not argue with this, norwith the notion of literary meaning as situated and discursively produced, but Iwould like to point out the tendency to conceptualize and understand matter, notleast at the level of literary interpretation, as important and determinative only incertain ways, namely those that correspond with humanist notions of matter asdumb and discourse as communicative. As an extension of this, stabile and once-and-for-all-established borders between human and non-human are oftenpresupposed.

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This humanist foundation has left literary scholarship in general with a poor set oftools to conceptualize textual aspects that appear as absurdities within this discursiveframe, not least in so-called “realistic” texts. By absurdity, I mean basically anythingthat in a reading of a literary text appears to be unlikely, fantastic, or unrealistic,because it does not find its immediate point of reference in humanism’s concept of“reality”. My point here (partly inspired by French hermeneutic Paul Ricœur) is thatsuch fantastic aspects of literary texts do not only occur in specific genres or inexceptional cases, but rather they can always be seen somewhere; because the creationof other worlds is constantly and actively under way in literature and will, in someway or at some point, transgress the discourse within which it has been produced andunderstood. Absurdities can, thus, be detected in any literary text, regardless of how“realistic” it is claimed to be. Literature is science fiction.

Within the genre of science fiction, some of the “fantastic” aspects of literary textsare called “nova” and function as genre markers, but for texts that do not otherwisequalify for this genre the methods and tools that are offered to handle such“absurdities” are few and unsatisfactory. Symbol, allegory, analogy, metaphor, thegrotesque, intertextuality, and surrealism are some of the rhetorical and theoreticalconcepts that the literary scholar reaches for by reflex in order to conceptualize theunlikely, monstrous, fantastic, and impossible in literature; in short, the absurd. Butwhat if some of these “absurdities” could be read as descriptions of what withinmaterialist feminism is referred to as material agency? For sure, literature isconstantly transgressing literary scholarship’s discursive borders, and the potentialfor non-humanist aspects such as material agency to find their way into descriptionsin all sorts of literary texts thus constantly exists; even the ones that seem to be themost humanist and realist-conditioned. In this article, I aim to discuss these lines ofthought by focusing on a few, from a humanist point of view, “absurdities” within anotherwise realistic and biographically anchored text, namely the monstrous andchanging literary bodies depicted in one of Strindberg’s most well-known andscandalous texts, the modernist novel A Madman’s Manifesto. In doing so, I willrelate these phenomena to both previous research (including my own),1 andperformative and material feminist theory.

Transgressions and transformations in A Madman’s Manifesto: a research survey

A Madman’s Manifesto was written in French in 1887–1888 but first published inGerman in 1893, then in French in 1895, and in Swedish not until 1914, after theauthor’s death (Gedsø Madsen, 1971; Rossholm, 1999). The novel is generallyregarded as a depiction of Strindberg’s marriage to his first wife, Siri von Essen, andnotorious for its outspoken sexual content. As several researchers before me havenoted, the theme of same-sex sexuality in the novel circulates around the literarycharacter Maria (generally regarded as von Essen), described by the male narratorAxel (generally conceptualized as Strindberg himself), and entails interestingtransgressions of heteronormative notions of gender and sexuality. In my thesis, Iunderstood these transgressions partly within the dynamics of the power play in theerotic triangle within which they occurred (Sedgwick, 1985), and partly throughJudith Butler’s concept of performativity, in which she points to the surrounding

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system of norms as determinative regarding whether a certain act or certain words areto be understood as “real”, sane, and “natural” within a given context (Butler, 1990,1993, 1997). The transgressions regarding gender and sexuality in the novel Iconceptualized using Butler’s heterosexual matrix, which means that in order toqualify as a “real” woman it is not only necessary to display the biologicalpresuppositions, but also to express this presumably “naturally” given sex in a genderrecognized within the heteronormative framework. A crucial part of thisperformance is the display and practice of heterosexual desire (Butler, 1990: 23).

In following the connection between sex, gender, and sexuality that structures thisline of thought, I was satisfied to find that when the literary characterMaria expressessexual desire towards other women at the beginning of the novel, it affects the entire(probable) causal chain. Thus, Axel characterizes her early in the novel as being, likethe mythological goddess Diana, “too much of a boy, too little of a girl” (Strindberg,1971: 42), and later conceptualizes it as meaningful in relation to her same-sex desirethat at a masquerade she dresses up in a suit and dines with gentlemen (1971: 164).An ambivalent desire thus affects the category of gender, as well as the category ofgender affecting sexual desire–causality seems to go both ways.

Although I was at this time one of the first to understand the events in AMadman’sManifesto through Butler’s theories of performativity, I certainly gained a solidbackground regarding Maria’s transgressions of heteronormativity from previousresearch. In fact, this aspect of the novel has been discussed in a range of ways fromthe 1950s onwards, e.g. against the background of literary history, the author’sbiography, history of sexuality, the gender system in Sweden at the end of thenineteenth century, and psychoanalysis (Lindstrom, 1952: 19; Foster, 1958: 97–99;Rinman, 1965: 70; Johannesson, 1968: 98, 105; Bergom-Larsson, 1978; Melberg,1980: 55, 65; Faderman, 1981: 285–288; Brandell, 1985: 264–268; Lutzen, 1986:125–131; Fahlgren, 1994: 71–73; Roy, 2001: 107; Castle, 2003: 570–571;Schnurbein, 2006: 49, 51; Westerstahl Stenport, 2010: 19–24, 33, 43). Thus, as adoctoral student, I felt on very secure ground in this part of my analysis.

This all changed, however, as I addressed the issue of bodily materiality in thenovel. Still following Butler’s line of thought regarding the heterosexual matrix, Iposed the question of whether transgressions of the heteronormative order in thenovel are all about constructs of gender and sexuality. What about the third categoryin Butler’s matrix: sex? Is the materiality of sex meaningless, or is it only significant asthe probable cause or starting-point for gender and sexuality, or as an effect of it? Inturning to A Madman’s Manifesto with these questions, I realized that bodies andmateriality are clearly issues that are being dealt with in the text. When, according toAxel, Maria fails to be a “true” woman (Strindberg, 1971: 214), and when she writesin a letter to Axel that she often “forgets” which sex she belongs to (1971: 92), Axelexplains that she is a “virago” (1971: 214) who suffers from “anomalies in thedevelopment of her physical and psychic nature” (1971: 41; italics are mine). This lastquote shows that the cause and implications of Maria’s transgressions are not onlyunderstood on a non-material, gendered level–psychology–or on the level of acting–e.g. clothing, sexual practices–but also on a somatic level–physiology. A questioningof sexual desire and gender constructs is thus followed by a questioning of thephysical (material) stability and conformity of sex.

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This is not only the case for Maria, however, but also for her presumed lover, MissDavid, who is said to have “a male face” and a “flat breast” (Strindberg, 1971: 205).But in the characterization of Miss David there is also made visible a connectionbetween such somatic transgressions on the one hand, and female emancipation andmonstrousness on the other. Indeed, at one point the male narrator claims that he hasnever seen “such a monstrosity in human form and my ideas on the emancipation ofwomen were thenceforth fixed” (1971: 205). The monstrous materialization of lesbianbodies reoccurs later in the novel, as Axel and Maria are about to divorce and hefears that his children will end up “under the thumb of a step-father or in the clutchesof a step-mother” (1971: 225). The male rival has thumbs, but the female has clutches,which means she is bundled off to a sphere of horror connected to somatictransformations. In the dissertation, I compared this to a well-known quote fromanother notorious novel by Strindberg, Black Banners (from 1904), where theemancipated and woman-loving character Hanna Paj is at one point viewed througha male character’s eyes as “the most horrid thing he had ever seen in human form.With red hair, bulging eyes, a mouth that looked as if cut with a straight razor, andlips that always seemed bloody and gave him the impression that she sucked blood”(Strindberg, 2010: 77).

In handling these issues in my dissertation, I again turned to Butler’s work, thistime to her proposal of “materialization” as an effect of the performative processthrough which a legitimate gender is enacted. This entails the possibility that mattermight be created and altered through discursive means (Butler, 1993: 1–23), which isexactly, I concluded, what is happening in Strindberg’s authorship. The fact thatMiss David and Hanna Paj both materialize as vampires or monsters rather thanhumans I illustrated through Peter Brooks’s definition of “monster” as “that whicheludes gender definition” (Brooks, 1993: 219), but also by Butler’s claim that “thematrix of gender relations is prior to the emergence of the ‘human’” (Butler, 1993: 7).This means that the human character who does his/her gender “wrong” inrelationship to the heterosexual matrix risks falling outside the category of “human”altogether, and instead becomes a form for something un-human, expressed throughalterations in the human body.

In turning to previous research regarding these issues, however, I soon discoveredthat, whereas discussions of sexual and gendered transgressions of heteronormativenotions in A Madman’s Manifesto are rich, the monstrous bodies and somaticalterations in the novel are barely dealt with; at least not on an explicit level. On thediscursive level, however, it was interesting to note that Swedish literary scholar SvenRinman sees Maria’s same-sex desire as an expression of the novel’s handling ofthemes of insanity, as well as the configuration of what he conceptualizes as agrotesquely distorted love-story (Rinman, 1965: 68, 74). American scholar TerryCastle makes a similar point, when she claims that “the volatile mixture of sexualgrotesquerie, burgeoning paranoia, and emotional violence is classically Strindber-gian” (Castle, 2003: 571). In all these labels–grotesqueries, paranoia, insanity,emotions, and violence–I see a circling around something that is of significance inA Madman’s Manifesto, but not quite grasped in the earlier studies of the novel.

At this point I would like to make it clear that my aim is not to criticize previousresearch per se, but rather to point to their discursive foundations (including my

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own). In fact, it is apparent that all of the previous readings of A Madman’s

Manifesto are working with undeclared humanist starting-points, in which matter

is passive and discourse is active, and in which there are stable borders between

human and non-human. This is, I argue, what produces the need for such

denominations as those mentioned above, which in fact seem to be there to fill the

discursive vacuum produced by these humanist starting-points. Interestingly, the

fact that the descriptions in A Madman’s Manifesto transgress the discourse within

which they are studied is to a certain extent discussed in previous research, e.g.

when American scholar Lillian Faderman makes the interesting claim that Maria is

not “a living woman, but one of those moral monsters of French literature”. As

she goes on to note that Strindberg is so influenced by decadent European

literature that he seems to think that lesbian monsters exist in reality (Faderman,

1981: 285), it is apparent that her literary analysis contains a dictum of this

“reality”: a statement about what can possibly be “real” and exist within the

literary text.This discussion continues in Swedish scholarMargaretha Fahlgren’s reading of the

novel, as she claims that in A Madman’s Manifesto “reality is forced to deliver a

meaning that it does not have” (Fahlgren 1994: 83).2 This statement of what “reality”

can be and can deliver repeats itself in yet another quote by Castle, as she writes of the

male narrative ego’s experiences with Maria: “he finds her sporting with their

housemaid and begins to suspect her of ‘monstrous’ desires” (Castle, 2003: 571). The

quotation marks around “monstrous” are, of course, a way of signifying that this

choice of word is not Castle’s own, but a quote. But it also means a distancing from

its meaning: Castle does not think that same-sex female desires are monstrous.

Finally, the quotation marks can be understood as a dictum of reality: there does not

really exist anything that can be called monstrous, but both matter and the “human”

are always already stable and fixed.Thus, in these earlier readings it is possible to detect what might be referred to as

“gatekeepers of reality”, by which I mean expressions, formulations, reservations,

labels, and other circumstances that aim to maintain the boundary between what is

“real” and what is “fiction”. As well as Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman, who claim

that material feminism “wants to know how we can define the ‘real’ in science”

(Alaimo & Hekman, 2008: 7), this term was also inspired by transgender studies, and

more specifically Stephen Whittle’s discussion of the “gatekeepers” (e.g.

psychologists and other medical experts) whom transsexual individuals have to

pass in order to access medical treatment (Whittle, 2006: 197). As much as this

diagnosis has serious implications for people involved in the process, in this case it

also forms an apparent analogy with the handling of non-normative bodies and

somatic alterations in A Madman’s Manifesto: both have to go through an

investigation by experts who are to decide whether they are “real” or not. But what if

we were to conceptualize the active and changing bodies in A Madman’s Manifesto

not as representations of a “reality” defined in humanist terms, but rather as

depictions of material agency in the text?

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Material agency in literary interpretation

To be able to conduct such a reading, I will have to address a number of aspectsstructuring the research survey above, the first being the fact that what is discussed inprevious research is really how bodies in A Madman’s Manifesto are described (e.g.slim, fat, sexy, repulsive, active, passive), what discourses these descriptions are madeup of and what such literary matter signifies in the text. Thus, the research surveydisplays the same characteristics as Alaimo and Hekman note about feminist theoryin general, that in spite of the occasional inclusion of materially acknowledgingscholars such as Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari, it has “beenconfined to the analysis of discourses about the body” (Alaimo & Hekman, 2008: 3).In research about A Madman’s Manifesto, such descriptions have apparently beenprivileged over dealing with the actuality and agency of literary matter in the text.

The second aspect I would like to point out is the tendency to understand unrulyliterary bodies metaphorically and thus significant as something other thanthemselves. A concept with which it would be possible to do something other thanthis, and thus conceptualize monstrous bodies and somatic alterations in terms ofagency and effect rather than metaphor and signification, is the figuration,characterized by agency, siting, and resistance (Haraway, 1991; Braidotti, 1994,2002).3 Indeed, Rosi Braidotti states that it is crucial that the figuration is not seen asa metaphor, but rather as “a living map, a transformative account of the self”. Thismeans that it cannot be understood outside of societal power relations, at the sametime as it constitutes a platform from which possible resistance can be formulated. Incontrast to a metaphor, it is possible to inhabit the figuration, which means that thedifference between common sense and fantasy can be questioned (Braidotti, 2002: 3).In addition, Haraway has underlined the figuration’s character as a borderlandbetween fact and fiction, between lived social reality and (science) fiction (Haraway,1991: 149).

The concept of the figuration is interesting in that it stresses self-signification andissues of power, but also because it addresses yet another problematic aspect of theresearch survey, namely the notion that discourse is active and matter is passive, andthat there are stable limits between the human and the non-human. However, thisidea has also been criticized by physicist Karen Barad, who claims that it is generatedby modern, humanist notions of discourse as communicative and historicallysituated, and matter as dumb and a-historical. But what if matter has its ownpotential to be performative, Barad suggests, and “meaning” is thus constructedthrough intra-active encounters between situated discourse and matter? In this way,Barad proposes “a specifically posthumanist notion of performativity–one thatincorporates important material and discursive, social and scientific, human andnonhuman, and natural and cultural factors” (Barad, 2003: 808). This means thatmatter is deprived of its taken-for-granted passivity and becomes part of the culturalproduction of meaning.

Such a somewhat broader take on the issue of humanist conceptualizations ofmatter in literary analysis is also necessary, I argue, in relation to the last aspect of theresearch survey that I would like to address. This concerns the undeclared joint aimof these studies, which seems to be the making of the literary text intelligible,

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recognizable, and relevant within a humanist framework. Thus, research about AMadman’s Manifesto is all caught up in the self-reflection of humanist epistemology,which according to Barad functions “much like an infinite play of images betweentwo facing mirrors” (Barad, 2003: 802–803). Making the text unintelligible,meaningless, and irrelevant would thus be the first step towards an escape from thehumanist framework, and, furthermore, towards new knowledge not restricted by itsdiscursive borders. Can there ever be a quantum physics of literary interpretation?

Before I move on to discuss the possible consequences of these lines of thought in areading practice, I would like to emphasize the fact that such an active concept ofmatter as the one I propose in textual interpretations could of course also beemployed on the level of literary materiality, i.e. ink, paper, book covers, printingdevices, and publishing houses. Indeed, it would probably make sense to payattention to the number of bacteria, viruses, or cellular organisms that thrive on thestructured surfaces of paper touched by human fingers, wood or forests cut down tomake paper mass, means of transportation for distribution, etc. However, in thisarticle I limit the discussion of material agency to the level of interpretationalpractices; a starting-point that I think will serve at least two different purposes.

Firstly, it makes possible a critical perspective on knowledge, which entails thepointing out of yet another axis of power that structures literature and literaryreadings. This means an adding on to previously established perspectives suggestedby feminist, queer, post-colonial, and other power-focused theories, with theacknowledgement of taken-for-granted conceptualizations of meaningful discourseand meaningless matter. Literary and feminist scholars do indeed claim thatstructures reinforcing unequal differences between men and women, heterosexualsand homosexuals, different ethnic groups, etc. can be seen in literature as well asliterary scholarship, but also that resistance against such categories can be detected.Why would this not be true regarding the relationship between matter and discourse?In this, I imagine the humanist discourse to be simultaneously both established andundermined in the literary text, thus constantly revealing its own constructed status;a notion that should generate further questionings of the humanist foundations that(most often) structure literature as well as literary analysis.

Secondly, it serves further power-critical purposes in that it entails a possibility forthe literary text to tell more than one story, and in different ways. Thus, stories mightbe told that are otherwise silent (or silenced), which means that the literary characterswho do not have a voice or a subject-position from which to speak can also makethemselves heard. Indeed, in this way literary analysis could attend to that whichwithin transgender studies is called “body narratives” (Prosser, 1998), thus makingpossible aspects of bodily resistance and emancipation in literary texts. The samepurpose would be served with this approach, I suggest, as Alaimo and Hekman statewould be the case in studying abuse against women in different cultures from theperspective of a material ethics (Alaimo & Hekman, 2008: 7). Just as matter mattersin feminist material theory, it matters in literature, and the notion of material agencycan thus be employed to highlight as well as undermine dominant discourses andoppression in the literary text.

Regarding Strindberg’s authorship, this latter reflection immediately brings backto mind A Madman’s Manifesto, as the book entails some of the modern, Western

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literary canon’s most enigmatic and silenced literary characters, namely Maria andher emancipated, woman-loving friends. These characters are almost exclusivelydescribed through the eyes and words of the male narrator, Axel, which means thattheir intentions, words, actions, motives, and aspirations are filtered through hismind and therefore already interpreted within his frame of understanding (see e.g.Brandell, 1985: 171–172). Thus, words and language are not available to Maria andher friends, and this is certainly a dilemma they share with the majority of femalecharacters within the history of literature. I would like to try and see if an activeconcept of matter and body–which can both take part in the novel’s production ofmeaning, and resist oppressive discourses operating within the literary text–mightconstruct a story told by these characters in the novel, in spite of the fact that they aresilenced by the narrative’s dominant discourse.

In approaching A Madman’s Manifesto from this perspective, I would like to tryand employ Barad’s concept of “intra-activity” in a renewed reading of themonstrous bodies and somatic alterations in the novel, as an alternative to previousstudies where literary matter is a taken-for-granted passive description. In relating toand criticizing Butler’s privileging of discourse over matter, Barad suggests a“reworking of Butler’s notion of performativity from iterative citationality toiterative intra-activity” (Barad, 1998: 106), which entails the notion of meaning-production as a joint event between active discourse and active matter. I am,however, well aware that Barad’s concept of active and acting matter is not a modelfor literary readings (but neither is e.g. Butler’s), and also that Barad is probablyreferring to something very different from discursive representations of matter andmaterialization in literature. I still think that this notion would be interesting to tryand apply in a literary reading, not least because of the connection with my ownprevious studies, through Butler. Applied to literature, it seems that Barad’sdiscussion entails the possibility of giving literary matter the means to be mutuallymeaning-productive with discourse, but also to “kick back” against it (Barad, 1998:116), in joint as well as conflicting processes of literary materialization.4 Indeed, thiswould mean that literary scholarship’s term “realism” as the denomination of agenre, mode of writing, and time period gives way to the more dynamic term“agential realism” (Barad, 2003: 21; 2007: 26–27, 132–185).

Material agency and “kicking back” in A Madman’s Manifesto

In the first part of this article I claimed, in accordance with earlier research, that thecourse of events in A Madman’s Manifesto is structured by a heteronormativediscourse, where the stipulated connection between sex, gender, and sexualityentailed somatic alterations of the lesbian women’s bodies. This means that there is aperformative, materializing connection between (textual) matter and (textual)discourse, where discourse is active and carves its marks on the passive body, whichsoon enough no longer appears to be human but rather monstrous. Are there anypossibilities of complicating, problematizing, or contradicting this notion of asuperior one-way impact from discourse to matter in A Madman’s Manifesto?

One such possibility is the fact that discourse alone is not forceful enough to breakdown the literary bodies; this has to be done through intra-action with matter in the

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shape of alcohol. Indeed, Miss David’s monstrous and gender-transgressive somatic

alterations are at least partly explained as the result of too much alcohol: “a

redheaded type, male face, hooked, hanging nose, fat chin, yellow eyes, cheeks puffed

out from an excess of drink, with a flat breast, crooked hands, the most detestable, the

most execrable thing it is possible to imagine” (Strindberg, 1971: 205; italics are

mine). As I noted before, Miss David is clearly depicted as manly, but also as a type

and a thing–not human–and is besides detestable and execrable with the classical

features of a witch. But none of these changes are created by discourse alone; at the

same moment as the novel’s heteronormative framework apparently alone alternates

the lesbian body, there is a revelation of its shortcomings and its dependence on

intra-action with literary matter. In previous research, the role of alcohol in the

descriptions of Miss David have sometimes been mentioned, but only briefly and in

relation to the biographical background of the novel (e.g. Brandell, 1985: 111); not as

something working on the level of literary materialization.Miss David’s bodily and discursive monstrosity is underlined when she and Maria

say farewell after Maria has sung a farewell song; but so is the role of alcohol in the

somatic alterations:

Her romance sung, Maria went to sit down beside the monster, who got up in

her turn, took her head between her hands and with wide open mouth, sucked

her lips by way of a kiss. “It’s carnal love at least”, I said to myself, and clinking

glasses with the redhead, I got her dead drunk.

She fell on her knees, looked at me with her big frightened eyes, with the

hiccuping laughter of a cretin, with her body bundled up against the wall.

(Strindberg, 1971: 205)

In this quote, the kiss betweenMiss David andMaria is described as a very somatic

event; indeed, explicitly in the text as “carnal”, which points to the significance of

matter in the story. Thus, it is apparent that the non-normative somatic contact

between these literary bodies–the lesbian kiss–materializes an alternative to the

power-laden discourse of the narrator. Here, it is interesting to note that Maria’s

resistance is accomplished through submission, as she voluntarily sits down beside

“the monster” and agrees to be kissed. But it is also interesting to note that the

heteronormative discourse of the narrator alone cannot eradicate the alternative that

is thus literarily materialized, but has to intra-act with literary matter in order to

achieve this. Through intra-action between alcohol (matter) and the culturally

meaningful act of toasting (discourse), the lesbian body is broken down to its knees; a

process in whichMiss David’s materiality becomes insufficient in itself, wherefore she

is forced to support herself against the wall and thus against matter separate from her

own body.This connection between alcohol and somatic transformations is not only visible in

the case of Miss David, but also with other emancipated women in the novel. One

example is the description of the artistic coterie that Axel and Maria encounter in

France:

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The society that I met there was composed of young Scandinavian painters

[ . . . ] and, what was worse, of women painters, without scruples, emancipated

from everything, frantic admirers of hermaphroditic literatures, so that they

believed themselves the equals of man. To distract attention from their sex, they

attributed certain male exteriorities to themselves, smoked, got drunk, played

billiards, etc., and indulged in the game of love between one another.

That was the last straw! (Strindberg, 1971: 197)

An interesting aspect of this quote is that in comparing it to the French original,

the English translation is stumped. Where it says “etc.” in the English quote above,

the following information is to be found in the original text: “font leur cas dans la rue,

derriere une porte, vomissent sans gene publiquement [et], selon leur proper aveu”

(Strindberg, 1999: 486, in English “smoked, got drunk, played billiards, did their

deed in the street behind a door, vomited unashamedly in public and, according to

themselves”; my translation). In this passage, it is apparent that alcohol is only one of

several material means in intra-action with which discourse materializes. But we also

see that the text depicts a clash between at least two different discourses: the

heteronormative structuring of the text, and the emancipated one that these women

are said to favour. Matter apparently intra-acts with both of these discourses at the

same time–in resistance against the former (e.g. by swelling and leaking), and in a

cultural production of meaning with the latter (by materializing an emancipated

alternative). Thus, it is apparent that the literary bodies in the quote are beyond the

materializing control of the narrator’s normative discourse, and instead employ a

counter-discourse as well as their own somatic agency to materialize an alternative,

and thereby challenge and resist the heteronormative discourse that demands certain

forms of literary materialization.From this point of view, it is furthermore interesting to note the plurality of

somatic and material means and agency in these simultaneous processes: from bodily

movements (playing billiards) to inhalation (smoke), consumption (alcohol), ejection

(shit, spew), touch and potential penetration (fingers and tongues; or whatever they

prefer). Finally, I would like to draw attention to the fact that this quote also entails

an explicit, simultaneous pointing out and annulment of the limit between discourse

and matter. When the literature the women have read (that is, words on paper), is

described as “hermaphroditic”, this means that it is given a simultaneous status as

discourse and sex (body). Thus, the border between literary matter (depictions of

matter in literature), and literary materialization (processes of textual material

formation), is crossed within the text itself, rendering the intra-active production of

meaning visible to the reader. This aspect of resistance in the transformative matter

presents itself once again at the end of the novel, when Maria and Axel meet one last

time to discuss their divorce. Axel has just decided that he wants to continue the

marriage when he is struck by her appearance:

in a flash, while eyeing Maria carefully and more closely, I discovered a striking

resemblance in her to her friend, the Dane. Everything was there; the mien, the

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pose, the gesture, the arrangement of the hair, the expression of physiognomy!Had the tribad played this last trick on me? Did Maria not come from the armsof her mistress? (Strindberg, 1971: 226)

Here,Maria appears tomerge into a lesbian identity with her own body, in amannerthat somatically unites herwithMissDavid. Thismeans thatMaria’s bodymaterializesitself in intra-actionwith a discourse that is not the heteronormative one represented bythe author, but rather a counter-discourse of lesbian resistance. I would like tounderline that it is through the somatic agency of Maria’s body that an alternative ismademanifest, in spite of the fact that the novel’s patriarchal narrative ego refuses herthe words to express herself. On yet another occasion, Maria’s body resists in anotherway, namely when she sings a song she has herself written to Miss David:

She had sung with zest, with such a true feeling, with her almond-shaped eyes,moistened with tears, sparkling in the reflection of the candles, she had openedher heart so widely, that, upon my word, I myself was moved and charmed byit! There was such a touching naıvety and sincerity in her song that everylicentious idea disappeared on hearing that woman sing amorously of woman!A strange fact, she had not the manner nor the physiognomy of the man-woman, no, she was the loving and tender, mysterious, enigmatic,unfathomable woman. (Strindberg, 1971: 204–205)

In this quote, Maria sings a love-song to another woman, and yet her body (to thenarrator’s surprise) refuses to materialize itself as the deviation within theheteronormative context, and instead makes claim to be understood as intelligiblewithin the humanist framework, thus materializing as human, gender-specific, anddemarcated. This circumstance can be understood in connection with her song, assounds such as music and song, but also different kinds of art, according to Braidottiand Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, have an important role to play in the materialprocess of becoming human (Braidotti, 2002: 153–156; Deleuze & Guattari, 2004).When Maria composes and sings a love-song to another woman it is thus an act ofresistance, as it means that she demands to be heard as human in spite of the novel’sexcluding and dehumanizing discourses. In this way, Maria’s somatic agency in intra-action with the lesbian discourse produces significance which is so valid that for ashort, lovely moment it silences the novel’s heteronormative discourse.

Concluding remarks

In this article, I have revisited my own doctoral thesis in order to discuss whatmaterialist feminism’s active concept of matter would possibly have entailed for sucha project. In this, I proposed that the “other worldling” of science fiction is constantlyunder way in all kinds of literature, as humanistic-defined absurdities such as materialagency can always be found somewhere. Then, I moved on to scrutinize my own aswell as others’ analyses of August Strindberg’s novel A Madman’s Manifesto (1887–1888), thus identifying the humanist discourse of passive matter and active discourseto be determinative of what was addressed in these studies. Indeed, in some areas of

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previous research I detected “gatekeepers of reality”, i.e. arguments anddenominations whose sole aim seemed to be to determine what is “real”, or not, inliterature. But what if, I suggested, some of these absurdities can in fact be seen asdescriptions of material agency?

In discussing this, I moved on to address a number of issues being raised in theresearch survey in relation to concepts and thoughts within material feminism. Theconcept of figuration was considered as entailing possibilities of understandingmatter and bodies in literature as something other than metaphors or passivedescriptions, as well as Karen Barad’s notion of post-humanist performativity as ameans of engaging with matter as meaning-productive in intra-action with discourse.Furthermore, I addressed what I perceived to be the overarching aim in all of thestudies discussed, namely to make A Madman’s Manifesto relevant and significantwithin a humanist discourse.

Finally, in employing a critical perspective on knowledge and power, I conducted arenewed reading of A Madman’s Manifesto; a reading that conceptualized activematter as a way of making visible the (male) oppression as well as the (female)resistance in the novel. Through focusing on the novel’s intra-action between matterand discourse it was apparent that the heteronormative discourse in A Madman’sManifesto did not have the power to materialize without the aid of literary mattersuch as alcohol, thus in a peculiar way being confronted with the limits of its ownperformative powers. Furthermore, the literary matter in the novel turned out to beable to intra-act with several different discourses at the same time and in manydifferent ways, e.g. “kicking back” to normative discourses by swelling, leaking,merging with other bodies or in other ways transgressing its humanist borders, butalso by materializing in accordance with other discourses, or refusing to change whenapparently expected to do so. Thus, a focus on processes of literary materialization inthe novel enabled a body narrative to be told in spite of the fact that it was formulatedin opposition to the heteronormative discourse of the narrator.

Notes

1 Some of the discussions in this section were previously published in Lonngren (2010).2 “verkligheten skall avtvingas en mening som den inte ager” (my translation).3 Indeed, in literary and cultural studies scholarship in the Nordic region the figuration has been employed

as an analytical tool in two Swedish dissertations over the past five years, namely Lundberg (2008) and

Osterholm (2012).4 These different levels of materiality in literary studies–literary matter (descriptions of bodies and matter in

the text), literary materiality (ink, paper, book covers, etc.), and literary materializations (the intra-active

processes by which literary matter is produced and formed)–have previously been briefly discussed in

Lonngren (2011). Besides Barad’s “intra-activity”, Haraway and Braidotti’s concepts of “figuration”, and

Prosser’s concept of “body narratives”, the term “literary materialization” was also inspired by

Haraway’s concept “materialized refiguration” (Haraway, 1997), Elisabeth Grosz’s “corporeal feminism”

(1994), and Prosser’s “material reconfiguration” (Prosser, 1998).

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1980 and 2005], dissertation (Stockholm: Rosenlarv Forlag).

Ann-Sofie Lonngren was accepted to the PhD programme at the Department of

literature at Uppsala University on 1 January 2003, and she got her PhD degree in

January 2008. Her dissertation was a queer-theoretical analysis of erotic triangles in

selected works by August Strindberg. The project she has been working on since then

deals with literary transformations from human to animal in Nordic literature after1880, financed by Kungliga Humanistiska Vetenskapssamfundet i Uppsala

and Markus och Amalia Wallenbergs minnesfond (Department of Literature,

Uppsala University). She is also affiliated with the Humanimal research group at

Center for Gender Research, Uppsala University, where she takes part in the

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project Becoming human–gender and animals in a more-than-human world, financed byVetenskapsradet. Furthermore, during 2011–2012 she was an affiliated researcher atHugo Valentin Center, Uppsala University, where she co-ordinated the networkDINO (Diversity in Nordic Literatures) and arranged the international conferenceAmbiguities, Alterations, Alternatives–transforming Nordic literatures.

Ann-Sofie Lonngren has edited the Nordic anthology Queera lasningar–litteraturvetenskap moter queerteori (with Katri Kivilaakso and Rita Paqvalen;Rosenlarv forlag, Stockholm 2012), as well as the special issues “Animals” (2011) and“Inte ett Strindbergsnummer–tillagnat Siri von Essen 1850–1912” (2012) of theNordic LGBTQ journal lambda nordica. Since 2010, she is also the book-editor ofthis journal. She has been an invited speaker to symposiums in among other placesUmea, Gothenburg, Stockholm, Tartu (Estland), Groningen (Holland), and Zurich(Schweiz).

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