^{2 George Lukacs, "Marxist Aesthetics and Literary Realism," in Essentials of the Theory of Fiction, ed. Michael Hoffman and Patrick Murphy, Durham: Duke University Press, 1983. p. 231}

^{3 Lukacs, p. 251-217}

^{4 David Simpson notes that the use of "voices" as the sign for people is a linguistic choice indicative of the self-sufficient individual: Whitman prefers metonymy over metaphor. " ' metonymy tends to remind us of what we already know; metaphor of what we do not know or had not thought of until that moment. ' Metonymy is thus less aggressive. It suits Whitman's democratic imperative, in that it is less prone than metaphor to surprise a reader into a posture of admiring subservience to a poet who might then seem to be something more that 'one of the roughs.' " The choice of metonymy is also a cunning rhetorical choice, since " metaphor can also invite a reader to ponder the act of comparing and relating tow otherwise disparate things; and any close scrutiny of this process is likely to lead to judgment about the propriety of the comparison... Whitman's (relative) avoidance of metaphor therefore also an avoidance of dealing with the problems of integration and difference of which it is the stylistic correlative and vehicle. Metonymy, or synecdoche, s the trope of self-sufficient independence each person or thing is imagined y a part of attribute of himself. The worker is complemented by his tool or voice. It is the poet's eye and mind that hold them together in a non-competitive series." David Simpson, " Destiny made Manifest," in Nation and Narration, London: Routledge, 1990. p. 191.}

^{5"As described by Julia Kristeva, abjection is `what disturbs identity, system, order. What odes not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite,' The theory of abjection draws from two key elements: a blurring of boundaries between self and other, which relates to psychoanalytic ideas of the `visceral unconscious' and the `bodily ego.'; and the notion of base materialism,' introduced by Georges Battaille, which challenges dominant conceptions of social taboos through an investigation of degraded elements." from , "Abject Art: Repulsion and Desire in American Art, " selections from the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1993.}

^{6Barbara Novak, Nature and Culture, New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.}

^{7cited in Novak, p. 38..}

^{8 Elizabeth Grosz, "Intolerable Ambiguity," in Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body, New York U. Press: New York, 1996. p. 55-66.}

^{9Abject Art, p.2}

^{10 David Reynolds says of Whitman's sexual utopia: Whitman creates in his poetry a utopian space where "the current prurient, conventional treatment of sex" is overturned. Minimized in his poems are the flaws in gender relations he perceived all around him: declining health and fertility among women; trickery and misogyny on the part of men; legal discrimination against women; mockery of prostitutes; the contrasting extremes of prudish repressiveness and pornographic lasciviousness. Maximized are physiological acceptance of the body and sex; fertility and athleticism for both men and women; and an all-pervasive personal attraction. 11} Kristeva, 5

¹² Simpson, 192. Simpson goes on to say,: "only when the `other is recognized as having different needs or interests do we worry over the consequences of our actions or words; only when it is admitted that there isdebat, and that our words might have a pursuasive effect within it, do we concern ourselves with not publishing contradictions."