I do I undo I redo: The Textual Genesis of Modernist Selves

This book is a study of writing processes of six modernist authors: Hopkins, Yeats, Conrad, Forster, Joyce, and Woolf, from the 'golden age of manuscripts'. Finn Fordham examines how these processes relate to selfhood and subjectivity, both of which are generally considered to have come under an intense examination and reformulation during the modernist period. The study addresses several questions: what are the relations between writing and subjectivity? To what extent is a 'self' considered as a completed product like a book? Or how are selves, if considered as things 'in process' or 'constructs', reflections of the processes of writing? How do the experiences of writing inform thematic concerns within texts about identity? There are three theoretical and methodological chapters (about 'genetic' criticism, about critical studies of selfhood within modernism, and the 'effacement' of manuscripts in philosophies of the subject). There then follow chapters on each of the six authors, with a different topic on each - compression, selection, doubling, hollowing out, multiplying and class. The study comprises much new material from archives, and many fresh ideas stemming from the combination of different critical approaches: genetic, psychological, political criticism and close reading. Readers of its contents described it as 'excellent', 'a very creative study', 'original, timely and extremely suggestive'.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Part I: Critical Frameworks 1: Texts and Selves in Process 2: The Self in Modernism and Modernist Studies 3: Descartes and Heidigger: Overlooking Drafts, Erasing Process Part II: Genetic Explorations 4: Hopkins and Compression 5: Yeats and Selection 6: Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness: 'Doubling and Doubling Back 7: Forster's A Passage to India: Hollowing Out 8: Joyce's Ulysses and Multiplying Personalities 9: Woolf's The Waves and Classes of Writing Conclusion

About the Author :
Finn Fordham took studied English at Trinity College Cambridge and then went on to work with Steven Connor at Birkbeck College London. He wrote a thesis on Joyce's Finnegans Wake (which, unfortunately, ran into copyright problems) but then, with a Leverhulme Fellowship, wrote a different study of Finnegans Wake (which, fortunately, didn't). He has published widely and edited volumes on 'transcultural hoaxes', on Joyce and the 19th Century French Novel. He has been invited to give talks around the world, including in Poland, Beijing, Belgrade, Trieste, Dublin, St Andrew's, Oxford, Chicago. He is currently a lecturer in English at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Review :
an essential addition to the corpus of Joycean genetic criticism. Excellently researched and sensitively argued... Fordham's study says something highly original and persuasive about the self, and about the role modernism plays as a moment in its historical self-understanding. Because of the sensitivity of analysis and the novelty of the thesis, Fordham's book is a contribution to the list of modern literature that should be read by all students Finn Fordham... is a meticulous enquirer... This is an elegant, ambitious book on key modernist works... it comprises an exceptionally full account... One of the central attractions... is its spirited defence of genetic criticism as a scholarly enterprise, and Fordham's analyses of manuscripts are models of seriousness and subtlety... The overall feel is of a searching, energetic study.... Fordham manages the difficult balance of conceptual speculation and biographical narrative with real dexterity... Fordham has produced a deeply impressive case for the possibilities of genetic criticism. The extraordinary analytical capacity of Fordham's critical approach becomes abundantly apparent... when he moves to examine the practices and products of six major writers of the 'long modernist' period... Fordham's attentiveness to the intertwined historical biographical, psychological, and thematic implications of manuscript revisions lends exceptional richness and depth to his account... In modelling a phenomenology of the writing process that is as rigorous as it is imaginative... Fordham has written one of those rare books that offers a genuinely innovative way of doing literary studies. As such, it deserves the widest possible audience. I do I undo I redo addresses a phenomenally ambitious set of questions about writing and subjectivity. Finn Fordham's central hypothesis is a fascinating and original one: that there is a formative relationship between the processes and experiences of textual composition and authorial articulations of the self in writing-or, to use a formula that echoes throughout this study, that 'Formation shapes content'... Fordham has infused his study with a rare and compelling sense of relish and excitement. The prose scintillates... Fordham's book does what it knows it can do exceptionally well: lucid, meticulous and daring, it is one of the most engaging works of literary criticism published in recent times. This book, then, is not only a contribution to theories of selfhood, but to philosophies of technology, broadlyrichlyconstrued