Rethinking Subjectivity after Postmodernism: The Many Faces of Henry James in the Contemporary Literary Imagination

The early 2000s have confronted the literary world with a plethora of fictions responding to the person, life, and legacy of Henry James. Seeking to explain this phenomenon, previous studies have focused almost exclusively on biofictional James novels (Lodge, Toibin), highlighting their supposed potential for invoking the author after Barthes without offending postmodern sensibilities. This article challenges this faith in the reconciliatory potential of biofictional "returns," arguing that their life-writing frame remains inhibitive to their project. By contrast, works evoking James by interrogating his stylistic legacy (Banville, Hollinghurst, Ozick) manage a return of the subject that is uniquely compatible with a postmodern critique of humanist subjectivity. By examining each text's distinct approach to James, this article demonstrates that representing the author's subjectivity as clusters of stylistic choices and aesthetic sensibilities offers a productive way of working through the creative stasis of postmodernism. In turning to James, these fictions mobilize a modernist aesthetic that postmodernity declared impossible, thus replacing a lack of faith in the sign with renewed optimism for the potential of particular aesthetics and of formal coherence. Thus, they suggest distinct possibilities for overcoming a postmodern "crisis of representation" without rejecting its theoretical and formal legacies.