Feminist Writing

Commentators have suggested that Nella Larsen’s Passing rejects the view that there is some sort of black essence. I want to challenge this reading. Since Irene is the most vocal advocate of an essence in respect to which all blacks are homogeneous, much of the evidence for thinking that Passing is skeptical about such an essence amounts to evidence for not trusting Irene’s judgment in general, and for not trusting her judgment on this matter in particular. My arguments, then, will often involve explaining why Passing is not leading the reader to mistrust Irene’s judgment on this matter. Now, what exactly is meant by a black essence is, explicitly in this book, mysterious. Nevertheless, I hope to shed some light on how Passing understands the nature of this something, this je ne sais quoi, peculiar to blacks. My tentative interpretation is that this something is an intangible and indefinite manner of being that is neither a conscious choice nor an inborn fact of biology, but rather a given of culture. I take this, in effect, blackness manner to be, so Passing seems to indicate, a function of one’s belief that one is black in a milieu of pervasive anti-black prejudice. Passing, as I see it, thus has something to offer those of us today who struggle to adjudicate between a pull towards essentialism and a pull towards constructionism. What Passing emphasizes in this discussion is the possibility that, in addition to biological and societal influences, one’s mind state is a crucial ingredient to one’s racial identity.

An introduction to the critical edition of Kathy Acker's early, mostly unpublished typescripts. In her introduction, Finch contextualizes Acker's literary experimentation in the early '70s within the frame of ongoing queer literary technologies.

This research contributes a detailed personal account of a FEMEN activist. It presents an autophenomenographic analysis of cultural artefacts, including a Retrospective Diary, resulting from the activity of Yelena Myshko in FEMEN between 2012 and 2014. Previously FEMEN has been used as raw material for external analysis by press and academics to fit their individual agendas. To counteract this, Myshko’s research proposes an insider perspective on FEMEN activism. She writes herself in response to academics and FEMEN leader Inna Shevchenko who ignore the contribution of FEMEN Netherlands. Myshko merges author/researcher/researched and uses evocative storytelling to provide an introspective account of sextremism, connecting it to relevant embodiment concepts that illustrate its technology of empowerment and unintended side effects.

Through an autophenomenographic analysis of her personal experience, Myshko suggests how FEMEN employs sextremism to create soldiers of feminism. Her research proposes that sextremism is an attitude, a way of life and technology of resistance. For Myshko, sextremism embodies feminist polemic that turns against patriarchy through topless protest. Through personal accounts she illustrates how she internalized this aggressive femininity during physical and mental training. Myshko argues that in protest FEMEN activists communicate to the public and mobilize new activists through feminist snap. In addition, Myshko observes that sextremism produces visual activism that internalizes feminist polemic and transforms it into figurative storytelling. Myshko explains how she reproduced sextremism through body image that made her assertive and empowered her in action.

In turn Myshko demonstrates how personal accounts of sextremist embodiment and problems encountered as a woman in the world reproduce FEMEN’s fight in the media. Myshko analysis interviews with the press where she pinpoints topical feminist issues, making FEMEN real and relevant in Western society. Myshko observes that the media appropriated the spectacle created by FEMEN Netherlands but often distorted it and bend the news to fit its own agenda. In addition, the media criticized FEMEN Netherlands for cross-passing national values and power symbols. For Myshko, sextremism is empowering but also destructive. It promotes an unapologetic self-critical attitude that accumulates collateral damage in battle. The sporadic and restrained relationships between activists does not allow intimacy. Because of the eye of the media, tenderness is perceived as weakness and is not aloud. The combination of criticism, media scrutiny and police persecution hurt Myshko’s feelings. These unresolved feelings of hurt led to resentment and disengagement from FEMEN.

This paper is interested in rekindling a conversation on the politics of
form in feminist fiction (briefly) and critical writing (largely). While early debates on a women’s language or gynocriticism might seem so eighties now, what of the politics of location and embodiment? What remains of such ideological and optimistic ideals that seek to make visible the links between knowledge production and pedagogy, personal and political, subjectivity and scholarly apparatus, in the very form of writing? This paper poses fictocriticism as a possible remnant of such debates. Claimed as an ‘Australian’ form of writing, fictocriticism has competing narratives about its origins, attributed either to French feminist ideas of embodied writing practices or to male postmodernists through ideas of hybridity and pastiche. While inherently more interested in its feminist heritage, function and form, I suggest that recent manifestations of fictocritical work produced by feminists is more often in the service of examining racism and whiteness, where origins don’t necessarily matter but bodies and the politics of writing do.

One of the most innovative and interesting areas of contemporary literary production is feminist genre fiction - the feminist appropriation of the generic 'popular' literary forms, including science fiction, fantasy, utopian fiction, detective fiction and romance. This is genre fiction written frJPl a self-consciously feminist perspective, consciously encoding an ideology which is in direct opposition to the dominant gender ideology of Western society, patriarchal ideology. Not all women writers are feminist writers. Many writers work conscientiously within the dominant ideologies of gender, race and class; after all, that is the best way to make a living (Lovell, 1987 (A) f - and it does not preclude the expression of oppositional views within their texts, even if one suspects that these views are effectively subsumed by the conservatism which colours the text as a whole. The fiction in which I am interested here, however, does not admit this compromise.

कृष्णा सोबती के रचनाशील व्यक्तित्व में अवज्ञा का स्वर प्रमुख है. ज़िंदगी में गहरे पैठ, समाज की परंपरागत जकड़बंदियों को अस्वीकार करते हुए, जीवन के भिन्न पक्ष से साक्षात्कार करने की बेचैनी, उनकी कृतियों का केंद्र है. ‘डार से बिछुड़ी’, ‘मित्रो मरजानी’, ‘सूरजमुखी अँधेरे के’, ‘ऐ लड़की’, ‘दिलो दानिश’ आदि सभी रचनाओं में कुछ यादगार स्त्री छवियाँ उभरती हैं जिनमें परंपरागत मान्यताओं के प्रति अस्वीकार का बोध सामाजिक संरचनाओं के निषेध मात्र की अभिव्यक्ति नहीं बल्कि सामाजिक स्थितियों को पलटकर देखने और उनके भीतर के सत्य को उद्घाटित करने की कोशिश है. यह स्त्री आकांक्षा का वह सच है जो संस्कृति और नैतिकता के ढोंग में सदा अदृश्य रखा गया. कृष्णा जी का लेखकीय स्वभाव उन्हें साहित्यकारों की उस अलग पंक्ति में स्थापित करता है जिन्होंने जीवन में आसान समझौतों की राह कभी नहीं अपनाई.

The first wave of the feminist women’s movement has begun the mid-19th century and it has continued to the early 20th century. Women have struggled for women's suffrage, education and employment. They have wanted to find a position to themselves in society and to get rid of the oppression of male dominance. Women have been tired of being described as ‘the angel of the house’ and they have wanted to change the gender dynamics. Most influential women authors that we know today have come up in the 19th or 20th centuries such as Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman and Sylvia Plath. These two female authors have not written at the same time period, but having said before, they have created their works in the oppressed male-dominated society. Plath’s poem ‘‘Lady Lazarus’’ and Freeman’s short story ‘‘A New England Nun’’ represent women’s resistance to male dominance through creating independent and powerful female characters in their texts in order to show the power of women.

Lihaaf
Lihaaf or The Quilt, the controversial short story by Ismat Chughtai was published in 1941, way before Independence, in an Urdu Literary Journal titled Adaab-i-Latif. It is a story about repressed sexual desires, female sexuality and the exploitation of another's body to fulfil oneself. The story, which can be debated as a "Lesbian" text, landed Chughtai in an obscenity trial in Lahore court. The story's publication shadowed her later works and affected her life deeply, Chughtai writes in her book 'A Life in Words: Memoirs' ,"I am still labelled as the writer of Lihaaf. The story brought me so much notoriety that I got sick of life. It became the proverbial stick to beat me with and whatever I wrote afterwards got crushed under its weight." One can't help but wonder after reading the story how brave it was of Chughtai to write about same-sex desires in a time and society where the whole idea of female sexuality remained unaddressed and ignored under the quilt.

This paper presents an analysis of the detective fiction genre and its use by feminist writers to reveal the practices of race, class, and sexual politics in contemporary society. I begin with a brief survey of the conventions of detective fiction, against which I then conduct a detailed analysis of three detective novels by women, Amanda Cross's Death in a Tenured Position (1981), Valerie Miner's Murder in the English Department (1982), and Barbara Wilson's Murder in the Collective (1984). In each case the political practice of the text is evaluated, particularly in relation to the writer's particular inflection of generic convention. Death in a Tenured Position is found to be a predominantly conservative text with the detective performing many of the roles of the traditional male detective. Both Murder in the English Department and Murder in the Collective work more innovatively with genre conventions to produce highly politicized texts, though Murder in the Collective capitulates finally to the lure of convention with a surprisingly conservative ending. Murder in the English Department is the most radical text and succeeds as "political fiction" though without the suspense of the classic Whodunnit. © 1988.

In the article the author analyzes selected poems by Kazimiera Komierowska. The text begins with the delineation of the situation of women as authors in the 19th century. Thereafter a brief biography of Komierowska is presented. In the last part of the article three texts by Komierowska (Los kobiety, Troistość przeznaczeń kobiety, Bóg-niewiasta) are subject to an analysis in the context of feminism.

The play Top Girls written in 1982 is primarily based on women and their success, showing their experience from a modern point of view, discussing work, in relation to other women, questioning the success, and how far are they really successful.

Και γιατί δεν γράφεις; Γράψε! Η γραφή είναι για σένα, εσύ για εσένα∙ το σώμα σου είναι δικό σου , πάρ’το.
Ελέν Σιξού

Το σημείο εκκίνησης για το πειραματικό εργαστήρι φεμινιστικής ανάγνωσης και γραφής είναι το κάλεσμα της γαλλίδας φιλοσόφου και συγγραφέα Ελέν Σιξού να εγγράψουμε την εαυτή μας. Στο φεμινιστικό κείμενο αναφοράς "Το γέλιο της Μέδουσας" η Σιξού πλάθει μια φεμινιστική γλώσσα καλώντας τις γυναίκες να γράψουν, αντιμετωπίζοντας με τη γραφή τους το νόμο, τη σιωπή, το φόβο και τελικά το θάνατο.
Εμπνεόμενες από το κάλεσμα για μια δική μας  γραφή, εγγραφή και συγγραφή, σε κάθε συνάντηση, χρησιμοποιούμε ως καμβά κείμενα γραμμένα από γυναίκες και φεμινιστικά αναγνώσματα προκειμένου να πειραματιστούμε δημιουργώντας τα δικά μας γραπτά. Κατά τη διάρκεια των συναντήσεων διαβάζουμε και συζητούμε συλλογικά, αντλούμε μοτίβα, ανακαλύπτουμε μεθοδολογίες, επινοούμε μια δική μας γραμματική και μέσα από ένα συνειρμικό παιχνίδι ελεύθερης γραφής γράφουμε τις δικές μας ιστορίες. Σε κάθε συνάντηση εντοπίζουμε τα σημεία που μας εμποδίζουν να γράψουμε αλλά και εκείνα που μας κάνουν ανεξάντλητες. Κατά τη διάρκεια των συναντήσεών μας αναζητούμε τρόπους να απελευθερώσουμε τη γραφή μας προσπαθώντας να απαντήσουμε στο ερώτημα: πώς να γράψω την εαυτή μου;
Καθώς βιώνουμε τη γυναικεία ορθογραφία και τη μουσική δεκαοχτώ γυναικών,  ανάμεσά τους της Ελέν Σιξού, της Μαργκερίτ Ντυράς, της Βιρτζίνια Γουλφ, της Audre Lorde, της Λένας Πλάτωνος, της Νεσιέ Γιασίν και της Μάγκι Νέλσον, δημιουργούμε σταδιακά ένα πολυφωνικό κείμενο. Κατά τη διάρκεια του εργαστηρίου κάποιες από τις συγγραφείς, μας στέλνουν τα δικά τους μηνύματα προτείνοντας πιθανές απαντήσεις στο ερώτημα πώς να γράψουμε τις εαυτές μας. Στο τέλος των δέκα συναντήσεων αποχωριζόμαστε το συλλογικό μας κείμενο αφήνοντάς το να αποφασίσει πώς θέλει να ζήσει μετά την συγγραφή του.

Έναρξη Σεμιναρίου:
Δευτέρα 28 Φεβρουαρίου και κάθε Δευτέρα (εξαιρουμένων των αργιών), 19.00 - 21.30

https://www.faro.gr/what-we-do/seminars/194-peiramatiko-feministiko-ergastiri-anagnosis-grafis.html

Αριθμός Συναντήσεων: 10

Born into a society vehemently opposed to female education, Rassundari Devi (1810-1899) was a woman of her own kind at the time. The proposed essay intends to discuss Devi's autobiographical account, Amar Jiban (My Life, 1876), in the context of the broader South Asian framework and how it stood not only as a testament of the women's position at the time but also reflected on the struggles that women were to undertake in the time that followed. Being the first ever full-length autobiography in the Bangla literary space, Amar Jiban received praise and warm welcome, especially so as it was authored by a woman with extremely restricted economic means in a time when female literacy was not even a spared thought. Apart from this fact, what makes the autobiography a valuable treasure is its commentary on the changing times of the then Bengal and the author's own viewpoints on the same. The paper will primarily focus on this narrative that runs through the text, which, at that point of time, echoed the voice of dissent in a heteronormative environment characterized by imperialism and reigned by the upholders of patriarchy. The paper further extends its cynosure to the realm of a fierce struggle of creating an identity of her own, as undertaken by Devi herself in her lifetime, and her enduring experiences as a reflection of the striving of women writers in the time to come. The paper shall culminate the discussion by tracing the economic and social vulnerabilities, and socio-religious-political constructs behind these vulnerabilities, which restrict women's voices while situating Devi's struggle as a universal one rather than individual in the wider South Asian narrative of both women writers and their writings.

The article examines how representations of late socialism, seen through the eyes of adolescent girls, function in ‘quasi-autobiographical novels’ by Izabela Filipiak ("Absolutna amnezja" [Absolutne Amnesia], 1995) and Joanna Bator ("Piaskowa Góra" [The Sandy Hill], 2008). The authors, born in the 1960s and self-identified feminists, became voices of the women’s movement in post-1989 Poland. From their novels, the picture of late socialism emerges as either nightmarish (Filipiak) or grotesque (Bator). Examining family relations, but also intimate relations (understood as political), the author argues that the novels’ focus on gender/sexual differences is consistent with the dominant message of the women’s movement in Poland, which after 1989 lost sight of class differences, contributing to their naturalization and taming. Through the aforementioned examples, the author demonstrates that late socialism is an essential component of the founding story of contemporary feminism in Poland, and that the topos of the conflict between mothers and daughters is a useful tool of its anti-communist identity politics. Discussing the issue of the literary genre, the article proves that the choice of a quasi-autobiographical novel, based on the Bildungsroman scheme, harmonizes with the biographical, artistic and political settlements of the ‘breakthrough generation’ with late socialism and transformation.

During the early 20th century when white English women were writing by using pseudonyms, Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain a Muslim married woman (institutionally uneducated) wrote a science fiction. Despite barriers like gender, religion, language, and subordination from both Western feminists as well as her counterparts from non-Muslim backgrounds, she didn’t cry for equality rather claimed her voice and became one of the most significant feminist voices in the history of the twentieth century world literature.

German-language writer Franz Kafka (hereinafter Franz) has gained popularity and reached his eminence after the publication of his worldwide influential oeuvres, such as Metamorphosis and Castle. A stern patriarch is often demonstrated in front of readers as Franz’s father, Hermann Kafka (hereinafter Hermann), ascended to an irreplaceable position in Franz’s heart. Franz’s awe to his father enabled him to write, as another form of communication, this book-length letter Dearest Father as verbal discourse failed in their daily lives.
    This paper aims to argue that how Dearest Father is considered feminine writing (l’écriture feminine) in terms of Hélène Cixous’s theorization. This paper embarks with the differentiation of writing and speech in order to foreground the use of epistle as a means of communication. Then it elucidates how Cixous’s conceptualization of feminine writing defies and subverts phallogocentrism. This paper ends with the argument of Franz’s application of feminine writing to defy patriarchal hegemony or phallogocentric monopoly in a greater sense.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, is a contemporary Nigerian writer. I choose her work Dear Ijeawele, Or, A Feminist Manifesto In Fifteen Suggestions, as it gives suggestion for parenting in a feminist manner. A series of personal letter accommodated in a book are refreshing take on parenting and can be studied as an initial guide to understand feminism as an ideology. My main focus with this paper is to focus on two different kinds of parenting suggested by her and by Lois Gould, from her short story The story of X, where she creates a narrative revolving around gender-neutral parenting, and how these two can be read together to give a refreshing take on parenting, which is radical in nature because it dissects the norms. Literary traditions in Nigeria, as throughout Africa are highly based on the opposition of colonialism and Euro-American Literature. The theories of the development of the Africa literature is divided into the age of Anti-colonial struggle, the age of independence and the age of neo-colonialism. The writers like Chinua Achebe wrote before or after the independence and writings were based on the themes of struggle and oppression of colonisation. These ages have been divided by many Nigerian critics in three generations.

Durch seine Kritik konventioneller Geschlechterverhältnisse kann das literarische und journalistische Werk Marianne Ehrmanns als repräsentativ für den Anspruch weiblicher Emanzipation zur Zeit der Aufklärung gelten. Zu Ehrmanns Lebenszeit gelang es ihr, eine wichtige Stimme im Geschlechterdiskurs zu sein und schließlich unter ihrem eigenen Namen zu schreiben – eine Errungenschaft, die zu ihrer Zeit für Frauen äußerst ungewöhnlich war. Mit einer selbstbewussten Stimme und Autorität forderte Ehrmann in ihrem Werk Frauen dazu auf, rational zu denken, ohne dabei ihre sozial gezogenen Grenzen unvorsichtig zu überschreiten. Ehrmanns Leben zeichnet sich nicht nur durch die einzigartige Situation als Herausgeberin zweier Frauenzeitschriften im 18. Jahrhundert aus, sondern auch durch ihre Position als weibliche Schriftstellerin, die mit ihrem Werk ihr grundlegendes Anliegen konsequent vertreten hat – Frauen ein Recht auf Bildung einzuräumen und ihre weiblichen Leserinnen zu selbstbestimmtem, kritischem Denken zu motivieren.

Link to the paper: https://meiner-elibrary.de/aufklarung-band-32-feministische-aufklarung-in-europa-the-feminist-enlightenment-across-europe.html

Manjula Padmanabhan has been one of the most potent literary voices in contemporary India. An artist, cartoonist, playwright, short story writer, journalist, children's author, novelist, she has always pursued us to rethink what it means to be a woman in modern nation state and to interrogate women's relationship with technology and state power. My paper will do a textual analysis of one such work by her – Escape (2008), her first attempt at writing fiction for adults. The novel is a dark dystopian fable which introduces the reader to a post-apocalyptic scenario in which women have been almost completely eradicated by the phallogocentric state apparatus and human beings are substituted for a new, genetically-engineered, race. The protagonist Meiji is the only survivor of the near-complete femicide and the novel documents Meiji's and her uncle Youngest's quest to escape the tyranny of the state machinery. The paper will examine the feminist dystopia as Padmanabhan&#39...

Powerful writing as writing ‘with’ What are the alternatives? Organising for a socially and ecologically sustainable world By Jannick Friis Christensen Sarah Dunne Melissa Fisher Alexander Fleischmann Mary McGill Florence Villesèche Marta Natalia Wróblewska

Blue is the quintessential novel of young adults in NYC – exploring friendships, jobs, life, family, relationships, and finding themselves. Set in current times with a love of the 1980s, it’s both a nostalgic look back (for those of us who grew up then, as well as those, like my teen daughter, who can’t get enough of that time period) and a deeply researched sociological novel about growing up and finding your place in the world. Blue includes music, art, film, tv, and aspects of daily life for a 20-something in New York. Here’s the thing: while this is a short book, it’s an eminently readable, thoughtful, satisfying one – the kind of book where you start and then just read until you’re done, no interruptions and much joy. It can – and should – be used in university classrooms for a variety of subjects, but it is also meant to be read outside of the university – for yourself, or with your book club. There’s much to ponder, and discuss, but also much to ingest, reflect upon, and relate to your own life. I couldn’t put it down, absolutely loved it, and can’t stop thinking about it. Highly recommended.
We were lucky enough to catch up with Dr. Leavy, and ask her about Blue, inspiration, finding your tribe, memory, and more. Here’s what she had to say…

“We don’t publish women’s literature”: censorship and auto-censorship of
writing by women in Uganda

KEYWORDS: Ugandan women’s writing. FEMRITE. African feminism. Censorship. Auto-censorship.

The article analyzes cultural prejudices faced by women writers in Uganda since their belated entry into Ugandan literature in the 1990s, facilitated by the non-governmental literary organization FEMRITE. The censorship discussed is not official or institutional, but is part of
traditional cultural discourses about women. Drawing on Judith Butler’s (1998) theorization of implicit censorship present in the social regulation of discourse and her term foreclosure, the article analyzes the ways in which this censorship works to create norms of constructing
a social and political female subject. It is created, on the one hand, by an atmosphere of trivializing women’s experience (which simultaneously masks and normalizes patriarchal violence against women) and on the other by perceiving fiction as personal confession, i.e., overvaluing
its meaning. The article shows that despite the explicit feminist orientation of FEMRITE publications, these texts often reveal the authors’ internalization of traditional patriarchal discourses.

"Zestawienie tych książek może budzić zdziwienie, a nawet sprzeciw wielu czytelników, którzy – słusznie – dostrzegają fundamentalne różnice dzielące oba utwory. A jednak obie te niewielkich rozmiarów książeczki mają w sobie wielką moc. To wyraziste, bardzo osobne głosy. Zawarte w tych książkach opowieści o wyzwoleniu to właściwie historie zmagań z własną sytuacją i niegasnącą nadzieją na ostateczne wyzwolenie. Obie drogi ku tej niemalże utopijnej perspektywie przebiegają w niełatwy i nieprzewidywalny sposób. Także finały obu książek każą nam się zastanawiać, do czego w istocie dochodzą bohaterki, w jaki sposób definiują moment przekroczenia i wybicia się na – ostrożnie deklarowaną – niezależność. Proza Lavant przeszywa swoją precyzją i oszczędnością, wyciszonym dramatem kobiety dobrowolnie zgłaszającej się do austriackiego szpitala psychiatrycznego w latach trzydziestych. Literatura Darrieussecq cechuje się zupełnie inną poetyką. Jest rozbuchana, przerysowana i nie skrywa się za drobnymi sugestiami czy subtelnością obserwacji."

RESUMO

Este artigo pretende, sob uma nova ótica, discutir o que por muito tempo se abordou sobre a existência de uma escrita feminina mesmo de natureza essencialista e muitas vezes relegadas à margem da autoria masculina, bem como caracterizada por discursos com marcas genuínas de voz de autoria feminina levando-se em conta variações possíveis de análise de uma nova literatura de resistência feminista. Sendo que a produção literária de autoria feminina é um dos lugares possíveis para se traçar uma história do papel desempenhado pelo feminino no contexto social e cultural através dos séculos, no qual a mulher, na medida do possível, se revela através de sua escrita presente nas diversas áreas da sociedade. Ao falar de si, ela, a mulher, escritora, reflete uma condição feminina imposta pelo masculino, não condizente com seus anseios e necessidades e que devem ser mudados, levando em conta o trânsito entre o espaço privado e o público.

ABSTRACT

This article intends, upon a new view, to debate what for a long time has been approached about the existence of a feminist writing even been of essentialist way and also pretermited about the masculine authorship, as well as characterized by speeches with genuine spots of feminist authorship voice, taking into account possible variations related to the analyze of a new feminist resistance literature. The literacy production of female authorship is one of the possible places in order to trace the history of the interpreted role by social and cultural feminist context throughout centuries, in which woman, in a possible way, reveals herself with her writings shown at different fields of the society. When talking about herself, the woman, the writer, thinks over her condition commanded by men which it does not have to do with her aspiration and necessities and may be changed, taking into account the space between private and public conditions.