Androgynous Imagination of Difference

Revision with unchanged content. Over the last years, the interest in androgyny has reemerged. Androgyny as a literary ideal of a dual-sexed imagination has been revisited by Hoeveler, Rado, and Weil, to name the most current and prominent scholars in the field. Researchers have pointed out the vitiating factors that the androgynous ideal presents, including the inherent dichotomy of the androgynous mentality, institutionalized ideology of gender inequality, and an artist's anxiety over the loss of identity. While the critics alert to serious problems in the artists' attempts at establishing a valid androgynous model, this book provides a new theoretical and critical understanding of androgyny as a dialogized consciousness of sexual/gendered difference. The study views androgyny as a rhetorical embodiment of male-female interactivity which mirrors the self-positing of the psychological, ontological, and sexual differences as captured in language, in a dialogue with the other. The book can help enrich and diversify the existing theories and readings of androgyny and be useful to professionals in Literary Criticism and Literary Studies, or anyone who is interested in the dynamics between gender, society, and art.