Abject's Time: Temporal Antagonism in Tennessee Williams's Sweet Bird of Youth

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Professor of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.

2 Associate Professor of English Literature and Language, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.

3 Ph.D. Candidate of English Literature and Language, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

This article examines Tennessee Williams's reformulation of Gothic's central convention in Sweet Bird of Youth. Following the convention of American Gothic, this play dramatizes the return of the nation's repressed Other as a nuisance. However, Williams positions this abject figure as temporally disjunctive, that is, out of sync with the political figure who functions as the allegorical rendition of national time and History. Drawing on an expanded form of Julia Kristeva’s concept of “women’s time”, this article argues that the abject's circular and monumental temporalities place him outside the linear as well as teleological temporality of the nation. In addition to that, the abject's temporal conflict with the state runs parallel to his analogous conflict with the process of aging. These intersecting tensions expose how national time acts as a castrating agent akin to the devastating power of physiological time. By dint of temporal asynchronism and the final castration of the abject, Williams exposes the histories and identities that are otherwise doomed to dissolve in the homogenizing force of the national History. 

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References

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  • Receive Date: 03 January 2025
  • Revise Date: 06 June 2025
  • Accept Date: 27 October 2025

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