|
|
 |
|
Viewing report
|
|
|
|
An Orgasm and an Atom: Performing Passion and
Freedom. Edition No. 1
VDM Publishing House, June 2009, Pages: 88
Margaret Sweatman’s novel, When Alice Lay Down With
Peter, plays with the British Empire’s adventure
story and its creation of manhood. Mimicking this
creative process in the Canadian Northwest, Sweatman
conceives and births a woman’s previously erased
passion back into the adventure story in a playful,
erotic and politically-charged presentation of the
performing female body as its own 'big bang'. Since
a woman’s contingency and agency within the Empire’s
gender performative has been vigorously debated by
postmodern and cultural theorists, Sweatman chooses
to birth her characters into a world of/as
performance. Sweatman arms the McCormack women with
performance strategies and frees them to explore
passion beyond Imperial and textual constraints.
Four generations of McCormack women mimic, mock, and
sidewind their way into, around, and beyond the
Empire’s warring narrative and its heterosexual
imperative. They are savvy, sexy, and provocative,
playing simultaneously as shameless voyeurs,
plagiarists, and war artists.
|
|
|
|
