Bumping as a way of life: the pursuit of a queer relationality to come in the work of Jacques Derrida, Hélène Cixous, and Christopher Isherwood

Thesis

My doctoral thesis, ‘Bumping as a Way of Life: The pursuit of a queer relationality to come in the work of Jacques Derrida, Hélène Cixous, and Christopher Isherwood’, provides a radical, queer revaluation of Cixous and Derrida’s philosophical writings on their loving friendship (aimance). At a juncture when the vividness of ‘la pensée 68’ (to which Cixous and Derrida’s writing belongs) is, if not extinct, repeatedly ‘cancelled’ within the Anglo-American academy, I champion a reassessment o...

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Authors: Watson, EA

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-aggznbdo4
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: American literature; Jacques Derrida; post-45; Aimance; deconstruction; queer literature; gay liberation; Christopher Isherwood; bumping; fag hag; kinship; Hélène Cixous; queer theory; queer; friendship; relationality
• Subjects: Homosexuality and literature; English Literature; Queer Literature; Feminist theory; Queer theory; Continental philosophy; Deconstruction