Nethered Regions - An Anatomy of Mina Loy

Book excerpt: Mina Loy has long been recognised as a writer who insists on the primacy of the corporeal. Over two volumes, Sara Crangle excavates how Loy's relationship to the human body was inextricable from her esoteric understanding of the human soul. Nethered Regions - An Anatomy of Mina Loy develops new thinking on Loy's representations of the foundations of existence, exploring topics that include sentience, primitivism, evolution, vitalism and sensibility. Dubbing Loy an atavistic vanguardist, this book aligns sacrifice and satire, demonstrating how Loy devises an original feminist satirical mode by which sardonic aggression is aimed at generating intimacy and proximity, rather than ironised distance. Loy's articulations of 'low' body parts - feet, legs, genitals, bellies and wombs - are explored in chapters that theorise her deployment of 'dissident' sexualities (queerness, prostitution, women's pleasure) and censorship; pictorial-poetic cartographies of desire; and the accursed muse that is unsung counterpart to the poete maudit.