Upon seeing the CFP for the David Foster Wallace panel, I was immediately drawn to the question: Does Wallace’s work challenge or reinforce patriarchy? What I like about this question is that it is not about David Foster Wallace, the man; it’s about his writing.
It’s no secret that Wallace’s reputation is tied to ideas of sexism and misogyny. Mary Karr’s recent accusations against Wallace are even more damning and make the complete dismissal of the man and his work all the more tempting. While the #metoo movement is important in reminding us NOT to celebrate hideous men, and to hold them accountable, dismissing Wallace’s work completely, blocks any insight we might gain about the world from which Wallace was writing, about the world he created in his fiction, and most importantly, about our current world. More than gathering evidence to convict an author of sexism or misogyny, the power and value of feminist inquiry is that it gives readers the tools to challenge patriarchy, making it less important what Wallace’s intentions were for Infinite Jest.
In this paper, I will use a range of feminist theorists including Judith Fetterley, Toril Moi, Simone De Beauvoir, and Luce Irigaray to put Infinite Jest “on trial.” To the female reader especially, Infinite Jest is a seemingly hostile text devoid of a positive or genuine representation of femininity. Fortunately, feminist inquiry “disrupts the old game in order to initiate new ones, ‘jamming the theoretical machinery’ in order to enable new ‘tools,’ inventions and knowledge to be possible,” thereby transforming what was once ‘a hostile void’ to ‘a bubble,’ now briming to the surface.
About the presenterDanielle S. Ely
Danielle S. Ely received her Master’s Degree in English Literature from The College of Saint Rose in 2011. She teaches Composition and Literature at Dutchess Community College. She is currently the Vice President of the International David Foster Wallace Society and lives in upstate NY.