>
><snip>
>As for me, I think the avant garde/cutting edge as self proclaimed in
>the 20C has always been hostile to women, and yet it has also always
>been energised by the contributions of women, whose contributions
>very often are later marginalised or sometimes (as in the case of
>Mina Loy) almost completely written out of history.
><snip>
>
>Yes, I think so too. There's that book Women of the Left Bank
>about the various women, Mina Loy, among them in the
>literary life of that period, who were a vital presence
>in the innovations of the time, in contrast to the remark
>of Hugh Kenner, who calling it The Pound Era, wrote
>"The young women strolled and talked; their talk is
>forgotten. After fifty years, though, one scrap of
>the master's survived."
Once again, I don't know what avant-garde (with all the problems the term
carries with it--we're not talking monolithic here, in any event) in the
present (say from 1980 onwards) you're talking about. Neither the social
world of the surrealists nor the New York School (whether painters or
writers) nor Black Mountain, nor, for that matter, Hugh Kenner, bear much
resemblance to the present situation, and none of those earlier movements
were involved in the shouting match at Skanky Possum (which is, however,
coedited by a woman).
Mark
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