La comunidad desobrada y la novela modernista. El caso de Katherine Mansfield

Abstract

This essay sets out to explore the theoretical framework used by the authors in their research around the concept of “community” in modernist fiction.
Such framework is inspired by the so called “Nancy debate”, a series of intellectual interventions around the work of the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, in dialogue with other thinkers such as Maurice Blanchot, Roberto Esposito, Jacques Rancière or Alain Badiou. Taking as a departure point the traditional reading of the modernist novel as a space for solipsistic individualism that has become dominant in much academic criticism in the English-speaking world, the authors seek to vindicate the role of the communal in modernist fiction, focusing on the work of the New Zealand author Katherine Mansfield. The second part of this essay analyses the representation of communities of artists in her work, devoting special attention to her relationship to Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.