Here and Now: The Politics of Social Space in D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf (Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory)

Working at the crossroads of contemporary geographical and cultural theories about social space and questions of modernity and modernism, this book explores how social space functions as sites which foreground D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf's critiques of the social order and longings for change. Looking at various social space - in its manifestations as rooms in a home; as home versus nation; and as utopic space brought into the here and now - Youngjoo Son demonstrates the ways in which these writers criticize and deconstruct the contemporary symbolic, physical and discursive spatial "topoi "of the dominant socio-spatial order and envision a more liberating and inclusive human geography. In addition, the work calls for the need to readdress the tendency of some spatial theories to underestimate the political potential of literary discourse about space, instead of simply and mechanically appropriating some theoretical concepts to literary criticism. One of the central findings in the work is that literary texts perform subversive politics of intervening in the production of social space through their critical interaction with dominant spatial codes. Working at the crossroads of contemporary geographical and cultural theory, the book explores how social spaces function as sites which foreground D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf's critiques of the social order and longings for change. Looking at various social spaces from homes to nations to utopian space brought into the here and now the book shows the ways in which these writers criticize and deconstruct the contemporary symbolic, physical, and discursive spatial topoi of the dominant socio-spatial order and envision a more liberating and inclusive human geography. In addition, the book calls for the need to redress the tendency of some spatial theories to underestimate the political potential of literary discourse about space, instead of simply and mechanically appropriating some theoretical concepts to literary criticism. One of the central findings in the book, therefore, is that literary texts can perform subversive interventions in the production of social space through their critical interaction with dominant spatial codes.