Marguerite Yourcenar and the Phallacy of Indifference (original) (raw)
In this paper I examine how transgressive references to gender, sexuality and the body are translated in two texts by the Québécoise writer Nelly Arcan, her debut autofictional narrative Putain (2001) and her final (retroactively auto)fictional title Paradis, clef en main (2009). Throughout her oeuvre, Arcan seeks to liberate women from stereotypical frameworks of reference by asserting women’s gendered, sexual and corporeal subjectivities in previously taboo discourses on prostitution, incest, sexuality, anorexia, matrophobia and suicide. Through her candid and explicit writing style, Arcan elaborates her own specific écriture au féminin which incorporates a linguistic, thematic and physical visualization of women within her texts.These two novels have been translated into English as Whore (2005) by Bruce Benderson and Exit (2011) by David Scott Hamilton respectively. However, analysis of the target texts suggests that neither translator adopts a gender-conscious approach which compromises the specificity of Arcan's idiolect in the Anglophone context. Through a comparative analysis of examples from the source texts and translations under the categories of gender, sexuality and the body, I discuss how the translation practices work counterproductively to obfuscate Arcan’s textual visualisations of women. In terms of references to gendered identity, by removing or neutralising Arcan's grammatically feminised language in Putain, the translator obfuscates Arcan's idea of the importance gender plays in shaping maternal relationships. Similarly, in Exit, Arcan's subversive feminist wordplay is distorted resulting in women being reinserted into patriarchal frameworks of reference. My analysis on Arcan's portrayal of sexuality underlines how sexual euphemisms in the translation downplay the narrator's potential for sexual agency in Whore, while misleading translation choices for feminist neologisms relating to women's sexuality in Exit eschew Arcan's efforts to verbalise women's lived sexual realities. Lastly, inconsistency in the translation of female corporeal vocabulary distorts the neutral tone Arcan employs in Putain to ensure women's bodies are not eroticised and the translator's decision to condense references to the female body in Exit undermines the significance Arcan places on corporeal connections between women. Thereafter, I move on to consider the wider implications of the translative process such as how paratextual elements also have an impact upon Arcan's reception in the target culture. I argue that in both Whore and Exit, the paratranslators intentionally sensationalise the autofictional elements of Arcan's texts. In short, my analysis contends that through a non-gender conscious translation practice, the celebrity of Arcan is promoted in the Anglophone context but to the detriment of Arcan’s écriture au féminin.
In 1999, the Situationist-inspired collective Tiqqun publish Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl, a textual bricolage of political statements which polemically criticize capitalist “society of the Spectacle” through what for the author(s) consists its model citizen: the Young-Girl. Fifty years back, The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir is published, discussing the treatment of women throughout history and devoting a whole section on “The Young Girl” and the norms in which she is confined. These two cases provide a fertile ground for investigating the tensions and contradictions between abstract, theoretical constructions—like that of the Young Girl and theory’s political positioning. The purpose of this article is to highlight the political reverberations that revolve mainly around the decision of Tiqqun—a political collective and an anonymous-”incorporeal” author—and Simone de Beauvoir—an outspoken feminist activist and social theorist—to speak through/for the young girl. Starting from a feminist-queer point of view and talking as somatic readers of both works, we will problematise their choice of a name that refers to a gendered matter. Tiqqun explicitly deny the gendered dimension of their young girl, while de Beauvoir explicitly highlights it. What are the presuppositions behind such a concealment or exposure? Is an already traumatised identity the appropriate metaphor for a polemic critique and what does it tell us about the presumed “neutrality” of theory? Does this metaphor—signifying and referring to gendered bodies—attribute the Young Girl with essentialist qualities, even without intention? Does the exposed or hidden position of the author differentiate the answer to the above questions by creating dissimilar situated discourses, as Harraway puts it? Finally, what sort of politics do these texts legitimise and how is this legitimisation rationalised in the texts?
AN INTRODUCTION TO FEMINIST LITERARY CRITICISM: AT A BRIEF GLANCE
A type of literary criticism that became a dominant force in Western Literary studies in the late 1970 ‟ s, feminist theory more broadly conceived was applied to linguistic and literary matters. Since the early 1980 ‟ s, feminist literary criticism has developed and diversified in a number of ways and is now characterized by a global perspectives. It is nonetheless important to understand differences among the interests and assumptions of French, British and North America,(United States and Canada), feminist critics writing during the 1970 „ s, and early 1980 „ s, given the context to which their works shaped the evolution of contemporary feminist critical discourse.
Acta Slavica Iaponica, 2005
The Ukrainian feminist writer Olha Kobylians'ka (1863-1942), who lived almost all of her life in Bukovyna, occupies a well-established place in three different literary canons that were created in Ukrainian literature during the first half of the twentieth century, namely the modernist, populist and socialist canons. This does not mean that Kobylians'ka's writing was neutral and transparent, and thus suitable to any ideological and critical interpretation. It only signifies the ambivalent, multi-leveled character of women's writing interpreted in each canon according to its own ideological and aesthetic paradigm. At the dawn of the twentieth century Kobylians'ka's symbolically-styled stories stimulated a discussion about the fate of modernist high culture in Ukraine. 1 The populist critic Serhii Iefremov accused her of emulating Nietzsche's cult, expressing an aristocratic spirit, and abandoning populist themes. 2 The young modernist critics, namely Ostap Lutsky and Mykola Ievshan, praised her modern symbolism and individualism. 3 The social-realist critics of the official Union of Ukrainian Writers appreciated Kobylians'ka only as an author depicting the hard life of the Bukovinian people working the land. Soviet literary criticism completely neglected Kobylians'ka's neo-romantic collisions between nature and culture, aristocratism and populism, paternalism and individualism in the process of a subject's identification. To explain these critical polarities is a phenomenon of women's literature. By the notion of women's literature we mean the social, cultural and aesthetic functioning of texts written by women. In general, women's literary works look marginal in relation to "the imagery of succession, of paternity, of hierarchy" 4 represented by the male-dominated literary tradition. The paternalist models usually define the character of literary imagination. To enter into literature as an author a woman must redefine both the literary tradition and the character of representation of social, cultural and gender identities in literature. 1 See Ãóíäîðîâà Ò. Rites de passage: íàðîäaeåííÿ «íîâî¿ ae³íêè» // Femina melancholica. Ñòàòü ³ êóëüòóðà â åíäåðí³é óòîﳿ Îëüãè Êîáèëÿíñüêî¿. Êè¿â: Êðèòèêà, 2002. Ñ. 18-47. 2 Åôðåìîâ Ñ.  ïîèñêàõ íîâîé êðàñîòû // Ñ. ªôðåìîâ. ˳òåðàòóðíî-êðèòè÷í³ ñòàòò³.
Journal of the College of languages, 2021
Stylistics is the analysis of the language of literary texts integrated within various approaches to create a framework of different devices that describe and distinct a particular work. Therefore, feminist stylistics relied on theories of feminist criticism tries to present a counter- image of a woman both in language use and society, to draw attention , raise awareness and change ways that gender represents. Feminist stylistic analysis is related not only to describe sexism in a text, but also to analyze the way that point of view, agency, metaphor, and transitivity choices are unanticipatedly and carefully connected to issues of gender(Mills,1995:1) The study tries to discuss matters of gender representation in stylistic analysis and how questions and messages of gender are deducted and exposed when reading and interpreting a text. Moreover, the concept of transitivity and how meaning is encoded and adopted by different patterns of transitivity will be analyzed and investigated. ...
French Feminist Literature Yesterday and Today
This course explores feminist literary voices in France throughout the ages. It discusses the theory that the power of feminist writing lies in its ability to translate maledominant language into a language of one's own. Studies lifestyles, family norms, political representation, social movements, as well as the relation to the body.
On ne naît pas femme: On le devient: The life of a sentence
Contemporary Political Theory, 2018
Yes, this book is based upon a single sentence: Beauvoir's renowned sentence: 'one is not born: one becomes (a) woman.' Yet it manages to spawn nineteen articles that cover multiple themes from numerous perspectives and disciplinary interests. Its four sections, Intellectual History; History of Scandal; the Philosopher's Debate; the Labor of Translation, include interventions on the sex/gender debates (Karen Offen, Judith Butler, Bonnie Mann, Meagan Burke), diverse philosophical interpretations of Beauvoir, as well as concrete and convincing demonstrations of how poorly translated passages promote misunderstandings (Toril Moi, Margaret Simons, Nancy Bauer). Since it is impossible to do justice to the breadth and wealth of this text in a short review, I have chosen to focus upon a few of the articles that I found particularly interesting. The brilliance of the collection lies in its interdisciplinary and meticulous analysis of this single sentence. Needless to say, its multiple interpretations don't fit together, but provide compelling arguments that can't be easily dismissed. The new translation of The Second Sex in 2011 initiated a fervent debate amongst feminists. In dropping the article 'a' from Parshley's original English translation, Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevalier believed they were honoring Beauvoir's feminist legacy. They reasoned 'this best captures women as an institution, a construct, a concept; femininity determined and defined by society, culture and history' (p. 281). The presence of the 'a' stresses the existential tradition that one is free to choose irrespective of one's situation. Bonnie Mann's 'Beauvoir against Objectivism' provides an excellent introduction to the volume by offering a concise summary of Beauvoir's philosophic concerns, which furthers the project of thinking philosophically about the tensions arising from the translation of this sentence. Unlike Butler, whose discursive theory swings towards objectivism, Beauvoir's notion of embodied engagement avoids subjectivism and rationalism, without lapsing into objectivism or materialism. Mann brings Butler's performative theory of gender into conversation with
SUMMARY Dialectics of Sexual Difference
This book introduces the philosophy of Luce Irigaray (1930) and sketches her position within the philosophical tradition. Luce Irigaray is a representative of the feminist critique of philosophy from the seventies and eighties. Her attention to the examination of the gender neutrality of philosophy is special for it encompasses critique on a metaphysical level. She not only questions the structures of philosophical discourse, but carefully reconstructs them, thereby developing an alternative, namely a philosophy of sexual difference. In this book I investigate Irigaray's strategy of analyzing the masculine philosophical tradition. The alliance in the eighties between poststructuralism and feminism, along with criticism within feminism of the notion of a female subject, forms the background for interpreting Irigaray's work. Because Irigaray aims at developing possibilities for female subjectivity (the early works) and gendered identity for both sexes (the later works) conflict with the poststructuralist and feminist tradition seems inevitable. The goals of her project raise questions concenring Irigaray's often supposed poststrycturalism and pave the way for my interpretation of her philosophical position. investigates Irigaray's strategy of analyzing the masculine philosophical tradition, namely mimesis, and presents an overview over her entire project. It concentrates on her later works, in which she develops a dialectics of sexual difference.