No End to Romance? Sexual Economies in Inez Baranay's Between Careers

Abstract

Inez Baranay's Between Careers is innovative in its simultaneous use and interrogation of the romance plot as a device for narrative drive. By exploring firstly Vita's prostitution, then romance and beyond, Baranay maps the ideological operations of those activities and the ways in which their intersections are inscribed in our lives and on our bodies through language and story. More equivocally, Baranay also dares to go beyond the ending of those (hetero)sexual relationships and have Vita writer, in an effort to imagine alternative plots for our life-stories. Recent feminist theories, which consider the part women's bodies can play in the inscription of power relations, and our agency to invent new narratives through writing the body, illuminate the significance of this strategy.