Here and Not Here - How Mina Loy reconciles Aesthetic Impersonality with the assertion of Female Subjectivity

Abstract

According to Christina Walter (2009), the tension between artistic conveyance of the universal and transcendent and the assertion of marginalized subjectivity particularly concerned Mina Loy. The aim of this study is to explore how Mina Loy understood and reconciled this tension. By surveying a selection of Loy’s nonfiction work, the present project will use a Jungian approach to literary criticism inspired by the work of Susan Roland (2019) to explore personhood and individual being, identify how those individuals are who they are by analyzing relationships, and treat culture through seeking what is lost, marginalized or yet to come into being. I map these three trajectories onto Loy’s work using the following concepts: understanding of the construction of a (female) self, the aesthetic/relative impersonality problem, and her idea of what could be if the contemporary social and artistic paradigm was shifted to include the female voice, before eventually moving past gender altogether. Relevant ideas from the “Feminist Manifesto” or “Pyscho-Democracy” are used to understand Loy’s theories, while sections from “Mi & Lo” are analyzed as examples of these theories in the context of artistic expression. Doing so illuminates not only the passive role the artist plays in relationship to artistic expression and the creative process, but also the ramifications of this passivity on the assertion of female subjectivity in a patriarchal society. Simply put: how can the female author achieve the disconnect required to be an authentic (modern) artist while simultaneously asserting the female perspective into the male-dominated discussion?