Marguerite Yourcenar and the Phallacy of Indifference (original) (raw)
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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.
Subjectivity and sexual difference: New figures of the feminine in Irigaray and Cavarero
Continental Philosophy Review, 2003
This paper argues that the metaphors of breath and voice as employed in the recent works of Luce Irigaray and Adriana Cavarero yield a reconceptualization of subjectivity as unique, embodied and relational. When interpreted in light of Cavarero's reorientation of the question of subjectivity from a what to a who, this newly configured notion of subjectivity can serve as the basis for a non-essentialist politics of sexual difference.
Encyclopedia of Feminist Literary Theory
have been outrageous. To bring this project to closure is, then, to acknowledge with gratitude the struggle of all those who worked to establish legitimacy for the field. A work like this, however massive in its proportion, can never do full justice to their accomplishment.
Pondering from Celia de Fréne's Works: Literary Genres and Sexual Gender at Stake
ABEI Journal
How can we go beyond historically constructed gender differences, as we read literary genres in the contemporary Irish context? In order to start finding responses to these questions, we aim at looking into how selves are constructed and identities represented as we read Celia de Fréine’s works. Indeed, concepts of identity in postmodernity, represented selves and literary genres, particularly related to the recent Irish literary context are fundamental points of convergence in the understanding of feminisms and literature today. Therefore, this article intends to show how fixed concepts of gender identity and literary genres are, in fact, unstable in contemporaneity. The paralleled, theoretical notions (of gender and genres) matter in the Irish context, because, apart from a few exceptions, women have been excluded from the public literary scene and many of the poets that appeared after the 1970’s account for their condition as women in a patriarchal society. Moreover, it matters d...