Maternal Pasts Feminist Futures

Download or read book Maternal Pasts, Feminist Futures written by Lynne Huffer and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the relations among nostalgia, gender, and foundational philosophies through a critique of the lost mother as a ground for thinking about sexual difference. More specifically, the author critiques the nostalgic tendencies of feminist theory, arguing that an emancipatory system of thought must move beyond a maternally oriented structure. Through close readings of works by Maurice Blanchot, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, and Nicole Brossard, the book elucidates the many dimensions of nostalgic paradigms—literary, psychoanalytic, epistemological, ontological, and sociopolitical. This critique ultimately confronts postmodernism, and especially the burgeoning field of performative theory, as an intellectual paradigm that claims to subvert systems of meaning. Analyzing the writings of J. L. Austin, Judith Butler, and Irigaray, the author argues that despite its antinostalgic structure, performative theory provides an inadequate model for understanding the connections among language, identity, and the social bonds that constitute the ethical and political sphere. Asserting, through the example of performative theory, that a critique is not enough, the book examines the possibility of a constructive model that is both non-nostalgic and informed by ethical constraints. One such model is offered through a reading of the Quebecois writer Nicole Brossard, which explores her work in relation to the question of lesbian writing. Demystifying nostalgia, Brossard not only uncovers and subverts the structures through which a concept of origins is produced, but also provides a different, visionary way of thinking about the relationship between subjectivity and language. Finally, the book argues for further feminist work on the relationship between narrative and ethics, a field whose future lies in the elaboration of a bridge between the moral commitments of ethical theory and the fractured realities that find their expression in literary forms.

Download or read book Gender and Archiving: Past, Present, Future written by Noortje Willems and published by Uitgeverij Verloren. This book was released on 2017 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 37th volume of the Yearbook of Women's History focuses on the meaning and potential of archiving for enhancing gender equality and the position of women worldwide. More than just storehouses of knowledge, archives offer new ways for understanding the past, debating the present and creating the future. Focusing on both traditional and non-traditional archival practices, in various parts of the world, the Yearbook of Women’s History explores the meaning of archiving for women and women’s history. Besides investigating the feminist potential of the archive, it also examines questions of erasure and forgetting. While archives may have emancipatory or democratizing potential, practices of discarding equally shape the histories that can be written, and the stories that can be told. The articles in this volume are alternated with descriptions of collections and institutes, and the topics addressed cover a full range of archival theory and practice. This volume has been produced by the editorial board of the Yearbook of Women's History in collaboration with Atria, institute on gender equality and women's history in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Download or read book Diamela Eltit written by Mary Green and published by Tamesis Books. This book was released on 2007 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thirty-five years after her death, this book reassesses the Argentinian poet Alejandra Pizarnik (1936-72) in the light of recent publications of her 'complete' poetry and prose, diaries, and previously unavailable archive material.The essays in this volume explore Pizarnik's work from new angles: they examine her production as a literary critic, revealing her intense identificatory strategies as a reader, and the impact of such activities upon her own creative process. They also weigh up the influence of her ambiguous attitudes towards sexuality on her poetic personae, as well as the ways in which her concern with sex inspires her experimentation with humorous prose. New approaches are taken to key texts and themes: in the case of the much-studied work, 'La condesa sangrienta', through a detailed philosophical reading involving comparisons with Kafka, and, in the case of the theme of the split subject, through the lens of translation.By broadening the scope of Pizarnik studies, this book will act as a catalyst for further research into the work of this compelling poet.

Download or read book Beyond Écriture Féminine written by Cathy Helen Wardle and published by MHRA. This book was released on 2007 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Beyond 'Ecriture feminine' is the first book to be published exploring the work of the contemporary French author Jeanne Hyvrard (1945-) from her early novels of the 1970s up to some of her most recent texts. Moving critical accounts of Hyvrard beyond a focus upon ecriture feminine, it identifies the patterns though which her writing repeats and transforms creation mythology, her own oeuvre, and her own life, examining how intertextual repetitions bind her work together into a complex and ever expanding web of allusions and resonnances which engages the reader in a process of constant re-interpretation, challenging notions of linearity and reflecting the 'chaotic' reality of life in the Hyvrardian world."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book Algeria and France, 1800-2000 written by Patricia M. E. Lorcin and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2006-10-19 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The relationship between Algeria and France that formed during the 132 years of colonial rule did not end in 1962 when Algeria gained its independence. This long period of occupation left an indelible mark on the social fabric of both societies, one that continues to influence their cultures, identities, and politics. Wide-ranging in scope yet complementary in focus, the essays deftly convey the extent to which the French colonial experience in Algeria resonates on both sides of the Mediterranean. Young and established scholars shed light on the linguistic, cultural, and social mechanisms of violence, remembrance, forgetting, fantasy, nostalgia, prejudice, mythmaking, and fractured identity. Addressing the nature of Franco-Algerian relations through such topics as migration, displacement, settler colonialism, racism, and sexuality, these essays provide an important contribution to postcolonial studies, cultural studies, and North African history. With renewed public debate surrounding the two countries’ shared past and their interwoven communities today, this volume will be indispensable for anyone with an interest in the relations between Algeria and France and the literature on memory and nostalgia.

Download or read book Luce Irigaray: Key Writings written by Luce Irigaray and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2004-06-22 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Luce Irigaray is one of the world's most influential theorists. From her early ground-breaking work on linguistics to her later revolutionary work on the ethics of sexual difference, Irigaray has positioned herself as one of the essential thinkers of our time. This collection of key writings, selected by Luce Irigaray herself, presents a complete picture of her work to date across the fields of Philosophy, Linguistics, Spirituality, Art and Politics. An indispensable work for students of philosophy, literary theory, feminist theory, linguistics and cultural studies.

Download or read book Birth Passages written by Theresa M. Krier and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Birth Passages offers a provocative and eloquent challenge to the nostalgia for the maternal, sometimes influenced by classic Freudian theory, which pervades many discourses. Theresa M. Krier suggests an alternative to the common characterizations of "the maternal" as a force inspiring both desire and dread, a force that must be repressed if subjectivity and culture are to be established. Instead, drawing on the work of Melanie Klein, D. W. Winnicott, and Luce Irigaray, Krier seeks to establish a new model of the relationship between mother and infant, one in which birth is seen not as the tragic ending to the prenatal union but rather as the child's claiming both distance from and proximity to this parent. Krier's insightful readings of poetic works from antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance show these texts in opposition to their cultures' insistent nostalgia for the maternal. Their authors, she maintains, recognize such longing as a symptom of a glamorous but false and disabling fantasy. In her analysis of the Song of Songs, Lucretius's De rerum natura, Chaucer's Parlement of Foules, Spenser's Amoretti and Faerie Queene, and Shakespeare's Love's Labor's Lost and The Winter's Tale, Krier details how the writings represent the intersubjective nature of birth.