Zoë Brigley Thompson
Ohio State University, English, Department Member
- Latin America (Regional Country Studies), Welsh Literature, Luce Irigaray, Regionalism in British Literature, Cymraeg - the Welsh language, Feminist Philosophy, and 21 moreMexican Art, Julia Kristeva, British Literature, US-Mexico Borderlands, Welsh poetry, Postcolonialism and Literary Representations of the British Regions (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), French Feminism, Ecocriticism, Twentieth-Century and Contemporary Poetry, Postcolonial Feminism, Human Rights, World Literatures, Transnational Feminism, Domestic Violence, Rape, Sexual Violence, Literary Representations of Violence, Violence Against Women, Feminist Art, Body Art, and Frida Kahloedit
- Zoe Brigley Thompson is an academic and creative writer. She has two poetry collections The Secret (2007) and Conques... moreZoe Brigley Thompson is an academic and creative writer. She has two poetry collections The Secret (2007) and Conquest (2012), both of which were Poetry Book Society Recommendations. She also edited the volume Feminism, Literature and Rape Narratives (2010).
For her creative writing, she has won an Eric Gregory Award for the best British poets under 30, the English Association's Poetry Fellows' Award, and a Welsh Academy Bursary. She was long listed for the Dylan Thomas Prize for the best international writers under 35, and she was a finalist for the Autumn House Books Poetry Prize. Her poems and articles have been published in Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Review, PN Review, Platte Valley Review, The Manhattan Review, English Studies, Women's Studies Quarterly, Frontiers: A Journal of Women's Studies, The Manifest Station, Calyx, Mslexia, Maintenant, Agenda, Magma, The New Welsh Review, Poetry Wales, Planet: The Welsh Internationalist, Blossombones, Writing from Below, Southword, Pirene's Fountain, Poetry Salzburg, and The Times Higher Education.
In her academic research, she approaches representations of sexuality and violence in literature, film, and culture. Recent peer reviewed publications include:
—The Journal of Gender Studies: ‘Happiness (or Not) After Rape: Hysterics and Harpies in the Media versus Killjoys in Black Women’s Fiction’;
—Feminist Formations: ‘Beyond Symbolic Rape: The Insidious Trauma of Conquest in Marguerite Duras’s The Lover and Eileen Chang’s “Lust, Caution”’;
—Contemporary Women’s Writing: ‘Breaking the Bonds of Domination: Subverting the rape script in short stories by Isabel Allende and Rosario Castellanos’ (with Sorcha Gunne);
—and Orbit Litterarum: ‘The Death and Life of Language: a Kristevan Reading of the Poetry of Gwyneth Lewis in Wales and Medbh McGuckian in Northern Ireland.’
Recent book chapters include:
—‘Still Devouring Kahlo: Reading Beyond Psychobiography’
in Narratives of Difference;
—‘Displacing and Redefining Trauma: Pascale Petit’s Deer, Birds and Butterflies’ in Devolutionary Readings;
—‘Écriture Féminine’ inThe Edinburgh Companion to Poststructuralism;
— and 'Rape and the Mystery of the Femme Fatale: Gender Politics in the new Noir Detective Story' in Rape in Anglophone and Scandinavian Crime Fiction.
She received a fellowship from the Humanities Research Center, and she is a member of two international, collaborative research projects funded by the Spanish Ministry, "Globalized Cultural Markets" and "Bodies in Transit."
She is originally from Wales and was featured by the Devolved Voices project at the University of Aberystwyth as one of the the key Welsh poets in the post-devolutionary flowering. She was featured by the Manhattan Review and the Best American Poetry Blog as one of the best young British poets writing now.edit
Moving from the violent to the erotic, Conquest describes women questing to rediscover their own desire. Split into three sections, the collection begins in the 19th-century England of the Brontë sisters, travels through the vast... more
Moving from the violent to the erotic, Conquest describes women questing to rediscover their own desire. Split into three sections, the collection begins in the 19th-century England of the Brontë sisters, travels through the vast continent of the USA, and finally finds the answer to women’s longing in a walled garden in the decorous city of Paris. In America and Europe, the heroines struggle against the conquest of bodies and of place, facing issues like miscarriage, lost love and domestic violence. Consolation comes, however, by discovering their own desires and independence.
The collection begins with ‘My Last Rochester’, a sequence devoted to the Brontë sisters and their struggle to meet expectations of them as women, lovers and wives. The English Gothic gives way later to a story of American immigration in the title-sequence. ‘Conquest’ pans to the wide open spaces of the USA, where pioneering women still quest to satisfy the sweetness of their own longings. Such satisfaction is only unravelled by retreating to a walled garden in the final sequence, ‘The Lady and the Unicorn’.
Original in its use of form, Conquest questions the brutal aspects of Western society, especially violence against women and the colonial mind-set. Inspired by the tapestries at the Musée Cluny in Paris and the artwork of Victoria Brookland, the poems visualise women rediscovering their own pleasures, desires, loves. Bridging the personal and the universal, Conquest offers a compelling vision of healing and consolation.
‘Conquest is a fascinating study of women’s sexuality’ – Pascale Petit
1 85224 930 7. 64pp. 2012.
The collection begins with ‘My Last Rochester’, a sequence devoted to the Brontë sisters and their struggle to meet expectations of them as women, lovers and wives. The English Gothic gives way later to a story of American immigration in the title-sequence. ‘Conquest’ pans to the wide open spaces of the USA, where pioneering women still quest to satisfy the sweetness of their own longings. Such satisfaction is only unravelled by retreating to a walled garden in the final sequence, ‘The Lady and the Unicorn’.
Original in its use of form, Conquest questions the brutal aspects of Western society, especially violence against women and the colonial mind-set. Inspired by the tapestries at the Musée Cluny in Paris and the artwork of Victoria Brookland, the poems visualise women rediscovering their own pleasures, desires, loves. Bridging the personal and the universal, Conquest offers a compelling vision of healing and consolation.
‘Conquest is a fascinating study of women’s sexuality’ – Pascale Petit
1 85224 930 7. 64pp. 2012.
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The essays in this volume discuss narrative strategies employed by international writers when dealing with rape and sexual violence, whether in fiction, poetry, memoir or drama. In developing these new feminist readings of rape... more
The essays in this volume discuss narrative strategies employed by international writers when dealing with rape and sexual violence, whether in fiction, poetry, memoir or drama. In developing these new feminist readings of rape narratives, the contributors to this volume aim to incorporate arguments about trauma and resistance in order to establish new dimensions of healing. This book makes a vital contribution to the fields of literary studies and feminism, since while other volumes have focused on retroactive portrayals of rape in literature, to date none has focused entirely on the subversive work that is being done to retheorize sexual violence.
Split into four sections, the volume considers sexual violence from a number of different angles. 'Subverting the Story' considers how the characters of the victim and rapist might be subverted in narratives of sexual violence. In 'Metaphors for Resistance', the essays explore how writers approach the subject of rape obliquely using metaphors to represent their suffering and pain. The controversy of not speaking about sexual violence is the focus of 'The Protest of Silence', while 'The Question of the Visual' considers the problems of making sexual violence visible in the poetic image, in film and on stage. These four sections cover an impressive range of world writing which includes curriculum staples like Toni Morrison, Sarah Kane, Sandra Cisneros and Yvonne Vera.
If you have your librarian's e-mail address, you can use Routledge's online recommendation form and order a copy for your library: http://www.routledge-ny.com/info/librarian.asp?isbn=978-0-415-80608-4&title=Feminism,%20Literature%20and%20Rape%20Narratives&author=Sorcha%20Gunne,%20Zoe%20Brigley%20Thompson
Split into four sections, the volume considers sexual violence from a number of different angles. 'Subverting the Story' considers how the characters of the victim and rapist might be subverted in narratives of sexual violence. In 'Metaphors for Resistance', the essays explore how writers approach the subject of rape obliquely using metaphors to represent their suffering and pain. The controversy of not speaking about sexual violence is the focus of 'The Protest of Silence', while 'The Question of the Visual' considers the problems of making sexual violence visible in the poetic image, in film and on stage. These four sections cover an impressive range of world writing which includes curriculum staples like Toni Morrison, Sarah Kane, Sandra Cisneros and Yvonne Vera.
If you have your librarian's e-mail address, you can use Routledge's online recommendation form and order a copy for your library: http://www.routledge-ny.com/info/librarian.asp?isbn=978-0-415-80608-4&title=Feminism,%20Literature%20and%20Rape%20Narratives&author=Sorcha%20Gunne,%20Zoe%20Brigley%20Thompson
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POETRY BOOK SOCIETY RECOMMENDATION: http://www.poetrybooks.co.uk/PBS/pbs_selections.asp Nominated for the Long List of the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2008: http://www.thedylanthomasprize.com/longlist-2008.html The Secret is a book of mystery... more
POETRY BOOK SOCIETY RECOMMENDATION: http://www.poetrybooks.co.uk/PBS/pbs_selections.asp
Nominated for the Long List of the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2008: http://www.thedylanthomasprize.com/longlist-2008.html
The Secret is a book of mystery and magic. Opening on familiar ground – retelling stories from the Bible, Celtic mythology, small-town rumours and urban mythologies – it gradually moves beyond its borders to narratives of Central America, drawing on figures such as the Spanish conquistador, Hernán Cortés, and the Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo.
‘This is a daring collection, and unlike any other I have read. It is musical, strange, intelligent, original poetry. The thought and structure and the textual layering are complex, but the simplicity of the language (which weaves Spanish, Aztec and Welsh into the English) carries the reader through and over the tangled currents of history, mythology, science, and stories from everywhere’ – GILLIAN CLARKE
Nominated for the Long List of the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2008: http://www.thedylanthomasprize.com/longlist-2008.html
The Secret is a book of mystery and magic. Opening on familiar ground – retelling stories from the Bible, Celtic mythology, small-town rumours and urban mythologies – it gradually moves beyond its borders to narratives of Central America, drawing on figures such as the Spanish conquistador, Hernán Cortés, and the Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo.
‘This is a daring collection, and unlike any other I have read. It is musical, strange, intelligent, original poetry. The thought and structure and the textual layering are complex, but the simplicity of the language (which weaves Spanish, Aztec and Welsh into the English) carries the reader through and over the tangled currents of history, mythology, science, and stories from everywhere’ – GILLIAN CLARKE
Research Interests:
"It's always fascinating to see how the same spark of inspiration ignites in so many different ways in the minds of different writers. Give a number of poets the same starting point, ask them to write something, and what each of them ends... more
"It's always fascinating to see how the same spark of inspiration ignites in so many different ways in the minds of different writers. Give a number of poets the same starting point, ask them to write something, and what each of them ends up with will be unique, as this collection amply demonstrates. In many ways it is a more organic book than a lot of poetry collections I've come across - the idea to collect all the poems together came after Bartok's Duke Bluebeard's Castle, and the Bluebeard myth in general, inspired these writers to be so prolific". -Sophie Hannah in the Foreword to Bluebeard's Wives
Bluebeard's Wives is an anthology of poetry from women in the West Midlands which was published by the Heaventree Press in August 2007. The Bluebeard’s Wives are: Jo Bell, Julie Boden, Rosemary Bosworth, Zoë Brigley, Sue Brown, Christine Coleman, Jane Commane, Rachel David, Helen Dennis, Roz Goddard, Natasha Godfrey, Penny Harper, Helena Hempstead, Hazell Hills, Jane Holland, Rosie Miles, Anouk Mishti, Cathy Perry, Emma Pursehouse, Connie Ramsay-Bott, Jo Roberts, Dorothy Rose, Sibyl Ruth, Jane Seabourne, Judy Tweddle, Catherine Whittaker, Diane Wiggett, Jan Wild, Helen Yendall and Diyan Zora. Although not everyone was able to get a poem ready in time for the anthology, they are all valuable members of this collective of women writers from the West Midlands, UK.
""The June 2005, the ENO performance of Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, starring John Tomlinson and Sally Burgess, seemed to call out to women for a response and so in January that year I gathered together 21 women writers from around the Midlands area. We met, in January 2005, at Symphony Hall to tour the building, listen to a recording and to discuss the possibilities of the project; Jan Wild came prepared with sketches of the seven doors to inspire us. We exchanged contact details and then went our separate ways in order to allow time for our own ideas to arise and to mull over the germs of poetic inspiration. My own journey took me to Hawthornden Castle in Scotland where, as a fellow, I was able to write in splendid isolation and lose myself in the search for Bluebeard. Upon my return to the Midlands in February I read the resulting sonnet sequence at Symphony Hall and at the Poetry Café in Shrewsbury, making one or two minor adjustments before its performance and publication. After the lunchtime concert performance of The Amorous Organ ( February 14th, 2005) and before the evening reading of Bluebeard’s Wife a group of us met again to listen to each other’s work and to offer advice."
-Julie Boden in the afterword of the book
Bluebeard's Wives is an anthology of poetry from women in the West Midlands which was published by the Heaventree Press in August 2007. The Bluebeard’s Wives are: Jo Bell, Julie Boden, Rosemary Bosworth, Zoë Brigley, Sue Brown, Christine Coleman, Jane Commane, Rachel David, Helen Dennis, Roz Goddard, Natasha Godfrey, Penny Harper, Helena Hempstead, Hazell Hills, Jane Holland, Rosie Miles, Anouk Mishti, Cathy Perry, Emma Pursehouse, Connie Ramsay-Bott, Jo Roberts, Dorothy Rose, Sibyl Ruth, Jane Seabourne, Judy Tweddle, Catherine Whittaker, Diane Wiggett, Jan Wild, Helen Yendall and Diyan Zora. Although not everyone was able to get a poem ready in time for the anthology, they are all valuable members of this collective of women writers from the West Midlands, UK.
""The June 2005, the ENO performance of Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, starring John Tomlinson and Sally Burgess, seemed to call out to women for a response and so in January that year I gathered together 21 women writers from around the Midlands area. We met, in January 2005, at Symphony Hall to tour the building, listen to a recording and to discuss the possibilities of the project; Jan Wild came prepared with sketches of the seven doors to inspire us. We exchanged contact details and then went our separate ways in order to allow time for our own ideas to arise and to mull over the germs of poetic inspiration. My own journey took me to Hawthornden Castle in Scotland where, as a fellow, I was able to write in splendid isolation and lose myself in the search for Bluebeard. Upon my return to the Midlands in February I read the resulting sonnet sequence at Symphony Hall and at the Poetry Café in Shrewsbury, making one or two minor adjustments before its performance and publication. After the lunchtime concert performance of The Amorous Organ ( February 14th, 2005) and before the evening reading of Bluebeard’s Wife a group of us met again to listen to each other’s work and to offer advice."
-Julie Boden in the afterword of the book
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In 2004, Zoe Brigley was one of the Heaventree new poets along with Michael McKimm and George Ttoouli. Limited edition.
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This article contrasts two visions of trauma: a symbolic imaginary on film where women’s violated bodies stand in for philosophical ideas about sex, violence, and politics; and a more complex literary imaginary using what Ann Cvetkovich... more
This article contrasts two visions of trauma: a symbolic imaginary on film where women’s violated bodies stand in for philosophical ideas about sex, violence, and politics; and a more complex literary imaginary using what Ann Cvetkovich calls an “archive of trauma.” The starting point for discussion is troubling representations of women on film; The Lover (1992, dir. Jean-Jacques Annaud) and Lust, Caution (2007, dir. Ang Lee) both portray their heroines falling in love with their abusers, men whose shame and vulnerability are expressed through a symbolic rape. Rather than dwelling on this dubious aspect of the films, the main discussion returns to the more nuanced view of trauma in the source texts: The Lover (1984) by Marguerite Duras (1914–1996) and “Lust, Caution” (1979) by Eileen Chang (Zhang Ailing) (1920–1995), neither of which include sexual violence in an obvious way. Duras’s traumatic portrait of French colonialism and Chang’s sinister portrayal of the Japanese occupation of Shanghai refuse symbolic rape as shorthand for conquest. Instead, these stories present an archive of trauma through a series of objects that represent emotional value, and provoke affective responses. Duras and Chang lament what Cvetkovich labels “insidious” or everyday trauma—the impossible histories—carried by women as a result of colonialism and war.
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This paper argues that Sara Ahmed’s theorizing of the feminist killjoy is very relevant to the treatment of the rape victim in public discourse. The analysis draws on Ahmed’s categorization of different kinds of killjoys to consider how,... more
This paper argues that Sara Ahmed’s theorizing of the feminist killjoy is very relevant to the treatment of the rape victim in public discourse. The analysis draws on Ahmed’s categorization of different kinds of killjoys to consider how, in media representations, rape victims are confronted with particularly reductive and simplistic happiness scripts. These scripts present victims as being unreliable, because they are seen as irrevocably harmed, or they supposedly cause their own unhappiness with their refusal to move on from the pain of their experiences. Having established the ambivalences of the media framing of rape survivors, fictional representations reveal the true complexities of happiness for rape survivors in the discussion of two novels: The Color Purple by Alice Walker (born 1944) and Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat (born 1969). Walker and Danticat emphasize that heteronormative scripts of happiness are inadequate in such cases, and that survivors must be allowed the right to be unhappy in a quest for justice. Ultimately, a more complex understanding of happiness admits that while the process of healing is not necessarily simple or swift for victims, there are possibilities for joy beyond normative understandings of what contentment might mean.
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This paper interrogates representations of rape survivors and their perceived unhappiness. The discussion begins by outlining the ethics of happiness for the survivor of sexual trauma, drawing on Sara Ahmed’s Promise of Happiness. As in... more
This paper interrogates representations of rape survivors and their perceived unhappiness. The discussion begins by outlining the ethics of happiness for the survivor of sexual trauma, drawing on Sara Ahmed’s Promise of Happiness. As in Ahmed’s analysis of the feminist killjoy and the angry black woman, the rape survivor is often constructed as a disturbing reminder of sexual violence, a figure who can never be happy, and a person who detracts from the general happiness of accused perpetrators and society at large. Drawing on real, recent case studies, this paper begins by questioning how and why institutions like the media and the courtroom present the survivor of rape as broken, bitter, hysterical and incapable of happiness. Having established the ambivalences of institutional views of rape survivors, this paper uses fictional representations to reveal the complexities of happiness for rape survivors. The paper compares two novels: The Color Purple by Alice Walker and Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat. Both novels describe the difficulties for rape survivors in the aftermath of trauma, and they establish that while happiness is possible, it is also difficult to reach and may involve choices that seem to direct the heroines away from happiness: what Ahmed might call moments of deviation. both novels present black women negotiating race in the United States and in both cases, the authors challenge any reductive stereotype of the angry black woman, which in such a case might be conflated and amplified by the heroine’s experiences as survivors of sexual trauma. By comparing these two fictional accounts of rape survivors, this paper seeks to undermine institutional representations of such figures as harbingers of unhappiness. What Walker and Danticat reveal however is that, in Ahmed’s words, beyond conventional happiness, “joy, wonder, hope and love are ways of living with rather than living without unhappiness” (196).
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Agenda 45.4/46.1.
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Part of the Global Cultures project for its forthcoming collection of essays.
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Introduction to the ideas of Hélène Cixous.
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This article explores representations of rape culture in short stories by two iconic Latin American women writers: Fleeting Friendships and Cooking Lesson by Rosario Castellanos (1925–74); and Revenge and The Judge’s Wife by Isabel... more
This article explores representations of rape culture in short stories by two iconic Latin American women writers: Fleeting Friendships and Cooking Lesson by Rosario Castellanos (1925–74); and Revenge and The Judge’s Wife by Isabel Allende (born 1942). Though Castellanos and Allende have different theoretical and stylistic approaches, both writers initially present uncomfortable pictures of women’s disempowerment and sexuality. This, however, unease with women’s sexual agency interrogates, challenges, and ultimately subverts the rape script. To address the question of whether the heroines of the stories comply or resist sexual domination and violence, two related feminist theories of intersubjectivity and embodiment frame the analysis: Jessica Benjamin’s intersubjective space and Ann Cahill’s theory of intersubjectivity and embodiment. These models are placed firmly in the context of Latin American gender archetypes, such as La Malinche and La Virgen de Guadalupe, with cultural observations by Latin American writers like Octavio Paz and Gabriela Mistral.
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This essay explores Corcoran’s unique blend of postmodern and Romantic ekphrasis. Corcoran's poems work on one level to undermine simplistic ideas about the relationship between the life of an artwork, its artist and the viewer who... more
This essay explores Corcoran’s unique blend of postmodern and Romantic ekphrasis. Corcoran's poems work on one level to undermine simplistic ideas about the relationship between the life of an artwork, its artist and the viewer who beholds that work. What makes his poems unique, however, is the political aspect that rejects crude or one-dimensional stories of historic or individual legacies. The first section of analysis discusses Corcoran’s responses to art that interrogate British history and Western colonial legacies, analyzing further poems from Your Thinking Tracts or Nations. As in Shelley’s “Ozymandias,” Corcoran undermines any “would-be embodiment of transcendental power,” so he can “convert the face of power into an object of ridicule” and “transform signifiers of absolute authority” into “marks and signs of desperation” (Heffernan, Museum of Words: 117). The second section investigates Corcoran’s poems about individual artistic legacies, focusing in particular on Roger Hilton’s SugRar. Corcoran’s poems about the post-war abstract artist, Roger Hilton (1911-1975), refuse typical sensational biographies of the artist and through mingling the voice of the poet and Hilton’s monologues, Corcoran questions easy biographical summaries that seek to create meaning out of art through studying the personal life of the creator. Hilton’s artworks and Corcoran’s poems are the breathing statuary conjured by Byron, and, as in Byron, the poems “radically revise[s] the traditional condition of [art] as the embodiment of life” (Heffernan 132). The ideal here is not that of Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” the lovers “[f]or ever panting,” their ecstatic flirtation memorialized for perpetuity. Instead, Corcoran undermines the myth of Hilton – the erratic, sensual, alcoholic artist – emphasizing that though art “radiates a life-like energy,” it is also “perpetually fixed, and therefore perpetually lifeless”; it wears, in Heffernan’s words, “the face of fixation – the face of death” (132). The artist remains absent and unknowable, and Corcoran emphasizes that the otherness projected onto the other artist in an other room is in fact the otherness within ourselves.
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Covering three novels: _Bodywork_ by Sara Paretsky, _Bury Me Deep_ by Megan Abbott, and _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson.
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"Sorcha Gunne and Zoë Brigley Thompson explain that they study rape and its narratives to understand and demythologise a difficult and unpleasant subject. But such is the taboo, it's tough to discuss their work openly." This article in... more
"Sorcha Gunne and Zoë Brigley Thompson explain that they study rape and its narratives to understand and demythologise a difficult and unpleasant subject. But such is the taboo, it's tough to discuss their work openly."
This article in the Times Higher Education Supplement anticipates the launch of our edited collection Feminism, Literature and Rape Narratives: Violence and Violation. The essays in this volume discuss narrative strategies employed by international writers when dealing with rape and sexual violence, whether in fiction, poetry, memoir, or drama. In developing these new feminist readings of rape narratives, the contributors aim to incorporate arguments about trauma and resistance in order to establish new dimensions of healing. In this article, however, titled ‘Why not choose a happier subject?’,we talk about the problematic nature of researching rape narratives and we consider the attitudes of other academics as well as friends and family to our work.
This article in the Times Higher Education Supplement anticipates the launch of our edited collection Feminism, Literature and Rape Narratives: Violence and Violation. The essays in this volume discuss narrative strategies employed by international writers when dealing with rape and sexual violence, whether in fiction, poetry, memoir, or drama. In developing these new feminist readings of rape narratives, the contributors aim to incorporate arguments about trauma and resistance in order to establish new dimensions of healing. In this article, however, titled ‘Why not choose a happier subject?’,we talk about the problematic nature of researching rape narratives and we consider the attitudes of other academics as well as friends and family to our work.
Research Interests:
This introduction to Feminism, Literature and Rape Narratives: Violence and Violation considers the potentialities of a feminist project to retheorize rape, whilst also admitting the pitfalls in traversing such a field. The introduction... more
This introduction to Feminism, Literature and Rape Narratives: Violence and Violation considers the potentialities of a feminist project to retheorize rape, whilst also admitting the pitfalls in traversing such a field. The introduction begins with analysis of Seamus Heaney’s seminal poem, ‘Act of Union’, and it considers the symbolism of rape in postcolonial settings like Ireland. From this starting point, the introduction moves on to consider the ethics of feminists reading and analysing representations of rape, noting that while the project of second-wave feminists was to encourage talking about rape, present day feminism(s) must consider how we speak about rape and to what end. Having explained this project as related to feminist ethics, we outline the inclusive scope of the collection which encompasses narratives from around the world, because in the spirit of ‘feminism without borders’, we wish to create a broader scope that does not privilege Western narratives of white, middle-class women. We argue that transnational feminist conversations are useful in interrogating how different narratives can reject the conventional rape script(s) by transcending the conventional victim/perpetrator binary. The efficacy of such a strategy can be seen in the introduction alone, which draws on Gloria Anzaldúa’s poem ‘We Call Them Greasers’ and Mahasweta Devi’s short story, ‘Draupadi’ to show how narrative can work to subvert and transcend dominant hegemonies, refusing the category of victim.
The book is to be published in December 2009. See Routledge website: http://www.routledge-ny.com/books/Feminism-Literature-and-Rape-Narratives-isbn9780415806084
If you have your librarian's e-mail address, you can use Routledge's online recommendation form and order a copy of Feminism, Literature and Rape Narratives for your library: http://www.routledge-ny.com/info/librarian.asp?isbn=978-0-415-80608-4&title=Feminism,%20Literature%20and%20Rape%20Narratives&author=Sorcha%20Gunne,%20Zoe%20Brigley%20Thompson
The book is to be published in December 2009. See Routledge website: http://www.routledge-ny.com/books/Feminism-Literature-and-Rape-Narratives-isbn9780415806084
If you have your librarian's e-mail address, you can use Routledge's online recommendation form and order a copy of Feminism, Literature and Rape Narratives for your library: http://www.routledge-ny.com/info/librarian.asp?isbn=978-0-415-80608-4&title=Feminism,%20Literature%20and%20Rape%20Narratives&author=Sorcha%20Gunne,%20Zoe%20Brigley%20Thompson
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This chapter discusses the poet Pascale Petit (born 1953) and the cult Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), and it begins by noting that in the introduction to The Diary of Frida Kahlo (under the subtitle ‘Youth: A Streetcar Named... more
This chapter discusses the poet Pascale Petit (born 1953) and the cult Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), and it begins by noting that in the introduction to The Diary of Frida Kahlo (under the subtitle ‘Youth: A Streetcar Named Rape’), Carlos Fuentes describes how in Kahlo's trolley accident in 1925, ‘A handrail crashed into [Kahlo’s] back and came out through her vagina. At the same time, the impact of the crash left Frida naked and bloodied, but covered with gold dust’ (1995: 12). For Fuentes, Kahlo becomes a subject both who is broken open in trauma (her accident being comparable to rape in
Fuentes’s view) and who becomes a work of art in her own right as the gold dust settles over her broken body. It is this conundrum that inspires Petit in her poetry chapbook, The Wounded Deer: Fourteen Poems after Frida Kahlo (2005). This chapter argues, however, that Petit’s interpretation of Kahlo as the figure of the wounded woman offers an alternative narrative that resists the binary of powerful male aggressor and passive female victim. Providing detailed analysis of Petit’s poems and Kahlo’s paintings, the chapter considers the dialogue between the symbolism of the wound, a metaphor for being opened up to a voyeuristic gaze, and the mask which is symbolic of a defensive strategy that deflects the curiosity of the viewer. Initial discussion focuses on the concept of the chingada as described by Octavio Paz (1914-1998) in his study of Mexican culture, Labyrinth of Solitude (1985). Like mythologies of rape, the chingada employs particular scripts of power, since ‘The person who suffers this action is passive, inert and open, in contrast to the active, aggressive and closed person who inflicts it’ (Paz 1985: 77), and this identification of womanhood with the act of being broken open is certainly a preoccupation of Kahlo’s My Birth (1932), The Suicide of Dorothy Hale (1935), A Few Small Nicks (1935) and Remembrance of an Open Wound (1938), and of Petit’s poems ‘My Birth’ and ‘Remembrance of an Open Wound’. Working against the symbolism of the wound, however, the mask-like face of Kahlo’s paintings repels the curious gaze of macho culture, and it works in Petit’s poems to reject readings of the abused woman as a victim. In discussion of Kahlo’s Self Portrait with Monkey (1938; 1940) and Self Portrait with Monkey and Parrot (1942) along with Petit’s poems in response to these paintings, this chapter argues that Petit and Kahlo reject scripts of power that represent the wounded woman as victim. Drawing on theories of the femme fatale in film and art, the argument suggests that the wounded woman is cast instead as an epistemological trauma: unknowable, impenetrable and ultimately, powerful.
The book is to be published in December 2009. See Routledge website: http://www.routledge-ny.com/books/Feminism-Literature-and-Rape-Narratives-isbn9780415806084
If you have your librarian's e-mail address, you can use Routledge's online recommendation form and order a copy of Feminism, Literature and Rape Narratives for your library: http://www.routledge-ny.com/info/librarian.asp?isbn=978-0-415-80608-4&title=Feminism,%20Literature%20and%20Rape%20Narratives&author=Sorcha%20Gunne,%20Zoe%20Brigley
Fuentes’s view) and who becomes a work of art in her own right as the gold dust settles over her broken body. It is this conundrum that inspires Petit in her poetry chapbook, The Wounded Deer: Fourteen Poems after Frida Kahlo (2005). This chapter argues, however, that Petit’s interpretation of Kahlo as the figure of the wounded woman offers an alternative narrative that resists the binary of powerful male aggressor and passive female victim. Providing detailed analysis of Petit’s poems and Kahlo’s paintings, the chapter considers the dialogue between the symbolism of the wound, a metaphor for being opened up to a voyeuristic gaze, and the mask which is symbolic of a defensive strategy that deflects the curiosity of the viewer. Initial discussion focuses on the concept of the chingada as described by Octavio Paz (1914-1998) in his study of Mexican culture, Labyrinth of Solitude (1985). Like mythologies of rape, the chingada employs particular scripts of power, since ‘The person who suffers this action is passive, inert and open, in contrast to the active, aggressive and closed person who inflicts it’ (Paz 1985: 77), and this identification of womanhood with the act of being broken open is certainly a preoccupation of Kahlo’s My Birth (1932), The Suicide of Dorothy Hale (1935), A Few Small Nicks (1935) and Remembrance of an Open Wound (1938), and of Petit’s poems ‘My Birth’ and ‘Remembrance of an Open Wound’. Working against the symbolism of the wound, however, the mask-like face of Kahlo’s paintings repels the curious gaze of macho culture, and it works in Petit’s poems to reject readings of the abused woman as a victim. In discussion of Kahlo’s Self Portrait with Monkey (1938; 1940) and Self Portrait with Monkey and Parrot (1942) along with Petit’s poems in response to these paintings, this chapter argues that Petit and Kahlo reject scripts of power that represent the wounded woman as victim. Drawing on theories of the femme fatale in film and art, the argument suggests that the wounded woman is cast instead as an epistemological trauma: unknowable, impenetrable and ultimately, powerful.
The book is to be published in December 2009. See Routledge website: http://www.routledge-ny.com/books/Feminism-Literature-and-Rape-Narratives-isbn9780415806084
If you have your librarian's e-mail address, you can use Routledge's online recommendation form and order a copy of Feminism, Literature and Rape Narratives for your library: http://www.routledge-ny.com/info/librarian.asp?isbn=978-0-415-80608-4&title=Feminism,%20Literature%20and%20Rape%20Narratives&author=Sorcha%20Gunne,%20Zoe%20Brigley
Research Interests:
This reading of Gwyneth Lewis (born 1959) and Medbh McGuckian (born 1950) considers language and identity through the frame of Julia Kristeva's ideas about foreignness, strangeness and abjection. For Lewis, the focus is the loss of... more
This reading of Gwyneth Lewis (born 1959) and Medbh McGuckian (born 1950) considers language and identity through the frame of Julia Kristeva's ideas about foreignness, strangeness and abjection. For Lewis, the focus is the loss of Cymraeg (the Welsh language), while McGuckian's key poems present lost languages and minor modes of speaking. The death of Cymraeg and Gaelige (the Irish language) is read through Kristevan theory, which helps to explore the consequent abject breakdown of selfhood. For both poets, the death of language is worked through European poetics, in which a metaphysical distance allows fresh comment on culture and identity. For Lewis, this dictates a dialogue with Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926), while McGuckian gestures to the poetics of Osip Mandelstam (1891–1938). What emerges is ekstasis, a state that Kristeva describes as going beyond oneself, and ekstasis is represented by both poets through the figure of the angel. The appearance of the angel after the breakdown of language and identity represents possibilities in being exiled from a stable sense of self, which in itself reflects the potential of minor or marginal cultures.
Access it at: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122581781/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
Access it at: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122581781/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
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In this extract from Agenda Magazine (Vol. 44.2-3), the Welsh poet Gillian Clarke is interviewed by Patricia McCarthy and Zoe Brigley is interviewed by Peter Carpenter. See Agenda's website for more information:... more
In this extract from Agenda Magazine (Vol. 44.2-3), the Welsh poet Gillian Clarke is interviewed by Patricia McCarthy and Zoe Brigley is interviewed by Peter Carpenter. See Agenda's website for more information: http://www.agendapoetry.co.uk/index.php
For more about Gillian Clarke, see her website: http://www.gillianclarke.co.uk/home.htm
For more about Gillian Clarke, see her website: http://www.gillianclarke.co.uk/home.htm
This essay works to review the poetry of the Welsh-French writer Pascale Petit through the lens of recent theoretical scholarship relating to women, violence, and confession. More specifically, through a detailed analysis of two of her... more
This essay works to review the poetry of the Welsh-French writer Pascale Petit through the lens of recent theoretical scholarship relating to women, violence, and confession. More specifically, through a detailed analysis of two of her collections, The Zoo Father (2001) and The Wounded Deer (2005), I examine the ways in which Petit attempts to extricate confessional poetry from the stereotype of self-indulgent, ‘awful’ femininity outlined by Deryn Rees-Jones in Consorting with Angels (2005). It is my view that by recapitulating stories of women and violence in a variety of new contexts, Petit is able to reconfigure the politics of sexual violence, radically reconceptualizing the traditional meaning of victimhood, the relationship between victims and perpetrators, and the stubbornly gendered notions of activity and passivity. This, I argue, is demonstrated most explicitly in the mythological poems of The Zoo Father, and in Petit’s poems about Frida Kahlo in The Wounded Deer. Locating the poetry of Petit alongside the painting of Frida Kahlo, I analyze the extent to which these artists are identified as ‘confessional’, and interrogate the validity, as well as the usefulness, of this problematic (and gendered) descriptor.
Keywords: Confession; poetry; visual arts
Keywords: Confession; poetry; visual arts
Research Interests:
This paper explores the relationship between the linguistic experiments in the Marx Brothers’ scripts and the poetics of the American L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E movement. In an untitled poem from his collection Poetic Justice (1979), Charles... more
This paper explores the relationship between the linguistic experiments in the Marx Brothers’ scripts and the poetics of the American L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E movement. In an untitled poem from his collection Poetic Justice (1979), Charles Bernstein describes an elephant that ‘appears without the slightest indication that he is demanded’, a device that works to expose poetic linguistic practice as one kind of convention and to deny the authority of words as a means for an experiential journey. In the Marx Brothers’ scripts too, the image of the elephant is an irrelevancy, a red herring, a nonsensical diversion, a non-sequitur or an illusion that reveals the play of language and challenges its transparency. Bernstein recognizes a parallel between his poetic practice and the Marx Brothers’ wit in his own commentaries, and this paper seeks to explore this connection by comparing key speeches in Marx Brothers movies like The Cocoanuts (1929) Animal Crackers (1930), Horse Feathers (1932) and Duck Soup (1933), with poems from Bernstein’s Rough Trades (1991), With Strings (2001) and his libretto Shadowtime (2005) (which features Groucho Marx as a character). I conclude that the Marx Brothers’ dedication to undermining authority and releasing the comic potential of language is not so dissimilar to the Bernstein’s view that poetry must challenge the transparency of conventional language.
See details here: http://www.c-s-p.org/Flyers/A-Century-of-the-Marx-Brothers.htm
See details here: http://www.c-s-p.org/Flyers/A-Century-of-the-Marx-Brothers.htm
Research Interests:
In this thesis, I discuss how three poets with a connection to Wales, Gwyneth Lewis (born 1959), Pascale Petit (born 1953) and Deryn Rees Jones (born 1968), develop their poetic practice beyond ordinary notions of home and belonging.... more
In this thesis, I discuss how three poets with a connection to Wales, Gwyneth Lewis (born 1959), Pascale Petit (born 1953) and Deryn Rees Jones (born 1968), develop their poetic practice beyond ordinary notions of home and belonging. Drawing on Wendy Wheeler's <i>New Modernity? Change in Science, Literature and Politics</i>, this project is described as a poetics of `ecology,' using the broader meaning of the term, which refers not only to the study of plants and animals, but also to institutions and people in relation to their sense of place. I argue that Lewis, Petit and Rees Jones promote an awareness of ecology or interconnectedness and they achieve this project by going beyond personal or individual concerns in a kind of poetic exile. This poetic exile entails the rejection of a `whole' and `bounded' selfhood and the acceptance of otherness or difference in one's own identity means that the boundaries between the self and other disintegrate or blur.
I proceed in the general introduction to the thesis to consider the problems of modernity as described by Wheeler and I use her model to identify the melancholy modernity of R. S. Thomas; Dylan Thomas' poetic mourning; and the preoccupation with maternity in Gillian Clarke's poetry. Wheeler suggests that such phases emerge from anxiety about lost teleologies or insecurity of the ontological self, and ecology is the acceptance that human beings are never hermetically sealed, secure units. In the body of the thesis, I explore how Lewis, Petit and Rees Jones exile themselves from ordinary selfhood to discover ecology with others. The chapter devoted to Lewis discusses her commitment to decreation, a project that unravels the dominance of the centre over the margin through poems praising angels of the minor, the diminutive and the bathetic. The next chapter considers Petit's exile to Latin America and I arguethat by interrogating the strangeness in other cultures, she forces Western culture to recognise its own strangeness unravelling the clear distinction between `civilised' and `barbaric' cultures. Rees Jones similarly focuses on the strangeness of the human self in her representation of liminal, marginal subjects, such as the clone passing for human. I conclude that the angel, Latin America and the clone are all poetic tropes by which these poets dissolve the oppositional binary of self versus other.
I proceed in the general introduction to the thesis to consider the problems of modernity as described by Wheeler and I use her model to identify the melancholy modernity of R. S. Thomas; Dylan Thomas' poetic mourning; and the preoccupation with maternity in Gillian Clarke's poetry. Wheeler suggests that such phases emerge from anxiety about lost teleologies or insecurity of the ontological self, and ecology is the acceptance that human beings are never hermetically sealed, secure units. In the body of the thesis, I explore how Lewis, Petit and Rees Jones exile themselves from ordinary selfhood to discover ecology with others. The chapter devoted to Lewis discusses her commitment to decreation, a project that unravels the dominance of the centre over the margin through poems praising angels of the minor, the diminutive and the bathetic. The next chapter considers Petit's exile to Latin America and I arguethat by interrogating the strangeness in other cultures, she forces Western culture to recognise its own strangeness unravelling the clear distinction between `civilised' and `barbaric' cultures. Rees Jones similarly focuses on the strangeness of the human self in her representation of liminal, marginal subjects, such as the clone passing for human. I conclude that the angel, Latin America and the clone are all poetic tropes by which these poets dissolve the oppositional binary of self versus other.
Access them here: http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/frontiers/v028/28.1brigley.html
Research Interests:
Rees-Jones' Quiver and Donna Haraway's 'A Cyborg Manifesto' explore how different mythologies of being can emancipate women from and create a dialogue with ordinary female reproduction. Haraway and Rees-Jones use advances in reproductive... more
Rees-Jones' Quiver and Donna Haraway's 'A Cyborg Manifesto' explore how different mythologies of being can emancipate women from and create a dialogue with ordinary female reproduction. Haraway and Rees-Jones use advances in reproductive and mechanical technologies to imagine new modes of being which are not simply products of the imagination, but a recycling of images and debates of concern to women and feminists. In Test-Tube Women: What Future for Motherhood?, Rita Arditti, Renate Duelli Klein and Shelley Minden ask a pertinent question: '[e]ach time a new technological development is hailed the same question arises: is this liberation or oppression in a new guise?' Both Haraway and Rees-Jones explore the rise of new technologies in relation to gender and maternity and gauge the emancipatory or oppressive possibilities.
Access it here: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/berghahn/csurv/2006/00000018/00000002/art00003
Access it here: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/berghahn/csurv/2006/00000018/00000002/art00003
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Sue Williams was born in Redruth, Cornwall, in 1956. After leading a peripatetic existence for many years, she now lives and works in Cardiff. She has held solo exhibitions in Wales and Europe and has contributed to international group... more
Sue Williams was born in Redruth, Cornwall, in 1956. After
leading a peripatetic existence for many years, she now lives and works in Cardiff. She has held solo exhibitions in Wales and Europe and has contributed to international group exhibitions. Poet Zoe Brigley, whose own creative work shares Sue Williams’s preoccupation with the role of women in contemporary society, went to interview Williams in her Cardiff studio as she put the final touches to the pieces that were on show at the Artes Mundi exhibition alongside the work of the other seven shortlisted artists – Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Thomas Demand, Mauricio Dias & Walter Riedweg, Leandro Erlich, Subodh Gupta and Wu Chi Tsung.
Buy the issue on The New Welsh Review website: http://www.newwelshreview.com/backissue_details.asp?issueID=17&issueNumber=71
leading a peripatetic existence for many years, she now lives and works in Cardiff. She has held solo exhibitions in Wales and Europe and has contributed to international group exhibitions. Poet Zoe Brigley, whose own creative work shares Sue Williams’s preoccupation with the role of women in contemporary society, went to interview Williams in her Cardiff studio as she put the final touches to the pieces that were on show at the Artes Mundi exhibition alongside the work of the other seven shortlisted artists – Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Thomas Demand, Mauricio Dias & Walter Riedweg, Leandro Erlich, Subodh Gupta and Wu Chi Tsung.
Buy the issue on The New Welsh Review website: http://www.newwelshreview.com/backissue_details.asp?issueID=17&issueNumber=71
Panel: Girl Interrupted: Criminal Girlhood Chair: Elena Avanzas Álvarez Zoe Brigley Thompson (The Ohio State University): ‘Reframing ‘Like a Girl’: The Subversive Power of the Teenage Girl in Megan Abbott’s Dare Me’ Maša Grdešić... more
Panel: Girl Interrupted: Criminal Girlhood
Chair: Elena Avanzas Álvarez
Zoe Brigley Thompson (The Ohio State University): ‘Reframing ‘Like a Girl’: The Subversive Power of the Teenage Girl in Megan Abbott’s Dare Me’
Maša Grdešić (University of Zagreb): ‘The Mystery of Girlhood in Tana French's The Secret Place’
Dunja Plazonja (University of Zagreb): ‘Girlhood as Mystery and Detection in Megan Abbott’s Novels Dare Me and The Fever’
Chair: Elena Avanzas Álvarez
Zoe Brigley Thompson (The Ohio State University): ‘Reframing ‘Like a Girl’: The Subversive Power of the Teenage Girl in Megan Abbott’s Dare Me’
Maša Grdešić (University of Zagreb): ‘The Mystery of Girlhood in Tana French's The Secret Place’
Dunja Plazonja (University of Zagreb): ‘Girlhood as Mystery and Detection in Megan Abbott’s Novels Dare Me and The Fever’
Research Interests:
This paper focuses on the exigencies of passing as a heteronormative subject using the example of Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel and autobiography, Fun Home. Bechdel tells the story of her childhood, her growing consciousness of having a... more
This paper focuses on the exigencies of passing as a heteronormative subject using the example of Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel and autobiography, Fun Home. Bechdel tells the story of her childhood, her growing consciousness of having a non-heteronormative sexuality, and her eventual “coming out.” Bechdel’s own bildungsroman is overshadowed, however, by her complex and troubled father Bruce Bechdel, and his suicide is the impetus for the whole book. Obsessed by perfecting the Victorian character of their Pennsylvania fixer-upper – the “fun home” of the book’s title, Bruce is portrayed as a master of artifice, acting and trickery. He is, on the one hand, oppressed by a disabling form of internalized oppression: the need to hide his homosexuality and pass in a more conventional heteronormative life. On the other hand, he is enlivened by simulations of a nineteenth-century home, of a heteronormative family, and both are “working” simulations as Bechdel points out. The representation of Bruce differs from other renowned portraits of gay passing such as in Annie Proulx’s short story, ‘Brokeback Mountain’. Proulx’s lovers, Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, are haunted by the threat of violence, and death in the end. Passing is a debilitating and oppressive way of life that challenges even Ennis’s sober stoicism. In contrast, Bruce’s construction of a picture-perfect life is seen as an artistic achievement and it perhaps replaces the novels that Bruce longed to but never wrote. This paper will explore Bruce’s passing as oppressive and yet transgressive too in terms of its artistry.
Research Interests:
This workshop is inspired by my experience of teaching the Sexuality Studies course “Sexuality and Violence” at Ohio State University. The course was designed to explore the relationship between sexuality and violence, drawing on current... more
This workshop is inspired by my experience of teaching the Sexuality Studies course “Sexuality and Violence” at Ohio State University. The course was designed to explore the relationship between sexuality and violence, drawing on current case studies such as footballer Ray Rice’s domestic violence case, the Columbia University rape protest by student Emma Sulkowitz, and the online harassment of women speaking against violence such as Anita Sarkeesian. Drawing on cutting-edge research, media texts, creative responses, cultural artefacts and testimonies, the course discussions touched on a number of hot button issues that provided a range of challenges in fostering discussion and yet maintaining consciousness of the need for self-analysis and an awareness of the intersectionality of violence and its causes.
Through a number of participatory exercises based around intersectionality and teaching, this workshop will outline possible problems in teaching a course of this nature, as well as strategies for dealing with triggering subject matter, high emotions, and heated discussions. Setting participants challenges similar to those I faced, we will review strategies on how to draw out issues surrounding sexual violence, domestic abuse, discrimination against LGBTQ communities, and the violence of war. Through such challenges, we will consider the potential problems of discussing hot button topics and share strategies as to how to deal with and defuse conflicts during student debates. I will suggest that a strong, in-depth understanding of intersectionality is an absolute necessity for students approaching these issues.
Through a number of participatory exercises based around intersectionality and teaching, this workshop will outline possible problems in teaching a course of this nature, as well as strategies for dealing with triggering subject matter, high emotions, and heated discussions. Setting participants challenges similar to those I faced, we will review strategies on how to draw out issues surrounding sexual violence, domestic abuse, discrimination against LGBTQ communities, and the violence of war. Through such challenges, we will consider the potential problems of discussing hot button topics and share strategies as to how to deal with and defuse conflicts during student debates. I will suggest that a strong, in-depth understanding of intersectionality is an absolute necessity for students approaching these issues.
Research Interests:
This paper seeks to challenge crude representations of sexual violence onscreen, and to consider instead a depiction of trauma that is far more nuanced. The starting point for the paper was viewing troubling representations of women on... more
This paper seeks to challenge crude representations of sexual violence onscreen, and to consider instead a depiction of trauma that is far more nuanced. The starting point for the paper was viewing troubling representations of women on film; The Lover (1992, dir. Jean-Jacques Annaud) and Lust, Caution (2007, dir. Ang Lee) both portray their heroines suffering sexual violence and falling in love with their abusers. In both cases, however, on consulting the source material for the stories – books written by female authors – there were no such scenes of sexual violence and the conclusions were far more ambiguous than the film narratives suggested. This paper interrogates the inserted scenes and contrasts two visions of trauma: a male imaginary on film where women’s bodies stand in for the violation of a land or people; and a more complex literary, female imaginary using what Ann Cvetkovich calls an “archive of trauma.” Whilst critiquing the dubious aspects of the films, the discussion also gestures to the more nuanced view of trauma in the source texts: The Lover (1984) by Marguerite Duras (1914-1996) and “Lust, Caution” (1979) by Eileen Chang (Zhang Ailing) (1920-1995). Neither story includes sexual violence in a prominent way. Duras’ traumatic portrait of French colonialism and Chang’s sinister portrayal of the Japanese occupation of Shanghai refuse symbolic rape as shorthand for conquest. Instead, these stories present an archive of trauma through a series of objects that represent emotional value and provoke affective responses. Duras and Chang lament what Cvetkovich labels “insidious” or everyday trauma – the impossible histories – carried by women as a result of colonialism and war.
Research Interests:
One of the foremost Welsh poets, Gillian Clarke (born 1937), represents a ‘Second Flowering’ which began in the 1980s. Drawing on traditional Welsh forms such as the ‘portrait poem’ and the ‘praise poem,’ the poets of the Second Flowering... more
One of the foremost Welsh poets, Gillian Clarke (born 1937), represents a ‘Second Flowering’ which began in the 1980s. Drawing on traditional Welsh forms such as the ‘portrait
poem’ and the ‘praise poem,’ the poets of the Second Flowering sought to represent an authentic picture of Wales rather than the stereotypes which were thought to be propagated by English writers.
Along with other Welsh women poets like Ruth Bidgood (born 1922) and Sally Roberts-Jones (born 1935), Clarke was influenced by the Second Wave feminist movement with its emphasis on matrilineage and ‘learning from our mothers’. Clarke’s matriarchal poetics undercut the melancholy, defeatist postcolonial writing by some Welsh male poets, and they offer new possibilities for the reconstruction of Welsh national identity. Specific poems such as ‘Letter From a Far Country’, are analyzed in relation to Freud’s ideas about maternity and oceanic feeling. Clarke’s poetics evade the English-Welsh colonial binary to create a postcolonial poetics where the subject is ‘informed of his connection with the world around him through an immediate feeling’ (Freud in _Civilization and its Discontents_).
The critical reception of Clarke’s mothering poetics, however, has brought some disproportionately scathing responses from some reviewers. This paper suggests that it is precisely Clarke’s use of maternity that instigates such hostile reactions. As Jessica Benjamin argues in _The Bonds of Love_, motherhood can be sentimentalized, and maternal figures are often not taken seriously. Comparing Clarke with poets such as Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, I consider the subversive possibilities of Clarke's maternal poetics, as well as the unspoken preconceptions in
some critical responses to the postcolonial ‘mother-poet’.
Key words: Gillian Clarke, poetry, maternity, postcolonial, nation-building, reception.
poem’ and the ‘praise poem,’ the poets of the Second Flowering sought to represent an authentic picture of Wales rather than the stereotypes which were thought to be propagated by English writers.
Along with other Welsh women poets like Ruth Bidgood (born 1922) and Sally Roberts-Jones (born 1935), Clarke was influenced by the Second Wave feminist movement with its emphasis on matrilineage and ‘learning from our mothers’. Clarke’s matriarchal poetics undercut the melancholy, defeatist postcolonial writing by some Welsh male poets, and they offer new possibilities for the reconstruction of Welsh national identity. Specific poems such as ‘Letter From a Far Country’, are analyzed in relation to Freud’s ideas about maternity and oceanic feeling. Clarke’s poetics evade the English-Welsh colonial binary to create a postcolonial poetics where the subject is ‘informed of his connection with the world around him through an immediate feeling’ (Freud in _Civilization and its Discontents_).
The critical reception of Clarke’s mothering poetics, however, has brought some disproportionately scathing responses from some reviewers. This paper suggests that it is precisely Clarke’s use of maternity that instigates such hostile reactions. As Jessica Benjamin argues in _The Bonds of Love_, motherhood can be sentimentalized, and maternal figures are often not taken seriously. Comparing Clarke with poets such as Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, I consider the subversive possibilities of Clarke's maternal poetics, as well as the unspoken preconceptions in
some critical responses to the postcolonial ‘mother-poet’.
Key words: Gillian Clarke, poetry, maternity, postcolonial, nation-building, reception.
Surrounding the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, there is a huge industry which fetishizes every belonging, letter or sketch that she ever produced. Kahlo’s face which dominates her self-portraiture has become iconic, yet the commodification... more
Surrounding the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, there is a huge industry which fetishizes every belonging, letter or sketch that she ever produced. Kahlo’s face which dominates her self-portraiture has become iconic, yet the commodification of her art detaches that infamous face from the politics that informed Kahlo’s art. Kahlo’s face becomes just another Che Guevara T-shirt logo.
This paper finds that Kahlo’s feminist and Marxist ideas are sidelined in exhibition commentaries, biographical materials and even academic analysis, while commentators make huge assumptions about her life and work. The story of Kahlo’s life is made more sensational, and her Mexican background is exoticized so that Mexico and Kahlo become subjects of Orientalism. Texts discussed in this analysis include the commentary on Kahlo’s work at the iconic Tate exhibition in London in 2005, Frida Kahlo: the book that accompanied the exhibition, The Diary of Frida Kahlo: an intimate self-portrait, Frida Kahlo “merchandise”, and “coffee-table” tomes such as Kahlo: Self-Portrait in a Velvet Dress (ed. Carlos Phillips Olmedo et al) and Finding Frida Kahlo: Diaries, Letters, Recipes, Notes, Sketches, Stuffed Birds and Other Newly Discovered Keepsakes (ed. Barbara Levine).
Some critics may argue that Kahlo’s art invites the uses of fetishism and commodification, indeed she even has objects of fetish such as the parrot and monkey in her paintings. Kahlo, however, reveals a deep ambivalence about intimacy with the viewer and the act of confessing, because in Mexican terms, it means an opening up: becoming chingada. Too many critics also ignore the iconography of Mexican and Aztec history that she uses in her paintings a means to ultimately explore what it is to be a female postcolonial subject. Perhaps only an art like poetry can ultimately re-present the importance of Kahlo, and I conclude the paper by commenting briefly on Pascale Petit’s poetry collection about Kahlo, What the Water Gave Me, published only this year.
Key words: Frida Kahlo, fetishism, commodification, marketing, postcolonialism.
This paper finds that Kahlo’s feminist and Marxist ideas are sidelined in exhibition commentaries, biographical materials and even academic analysis, while commentators make huge assumptions about her life and work. The story of Kahlo’s life is made more sensational, and her Mexican background is exoticized so that Mexico and Kahlo become subjects of Orientalism. Texts discussed in this analysis include the commentary on Kahlo’s work at the iconic Tate exhibition in London in 2005, Frida Kahlo: the book that accompanied the exhibition, The Diary of Frida Kahlo: an intimate self-portrait, Frida Kahlo “merchandise”, and “coffee-table” tomes such as Kahlo: Self-Portrait in a Velvet Dress (ed. Carlos Phillips Olmedo et al) and Finding Frida Kahlo: Diaries, Letters, Recipes, Notes, Sketches, Stuffed Birds and Other Newly Discovered Keepsakes (ed. Barbara Levine).
Some critics may argue that Kahlo’s art invites the uses of fetishism and commodification, indeed she even has objects of fetish such as the parrot and monkey in her paintings. Kahlo, however, reveals a deep ambivalence about intimacy with the viewer and the act of confessing, because in Mexican terms, it means an opening up: becoming chingada. Too many critics also ignore the iconography of Mexican and Aztec history that she uses in her paintings a means to ultimately explore what it is to be a female postcolonial subject. Perhaps only an art like poetry can ultimately re-present the importance of Kahlo, and I conclude the paper by commenting briefly on Pascale Petit’s poetry collection about Kahlo, What the Water Gave Me, published only this year.
Key words: Frida Kahlo, fetishism, commodification, marketing, postcolonialism.
Foucault’s definition of genealogy (in ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’) is a record of ‘what we tend to feel is without history’, remaining ‘not in order to trace the gradual curve of their evolution, but to isolate the different scenes... more
Foucault’s definition of genealogy (in ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’) is a record of ‘what we tend to feel is without history’, remaining ‘not in order to trace the gradual curve of their evolution, but to isolate the different scenes where they engaged in different roles’. Comparing three examples from world fiction, we consider the recurrence of scenarios that foreground the impact of violence on kinship and family ties after rape. The novels to be discussed are The Sound of One Hand Clapping (1997) by Australian director/writer Richard Flanagan, Breath, Eyes, Memory (1998) by the Haitian American Edwidge Danticat, and Bitter Fruit (2005) by the South African Achmat Dangor. These books all offer complex representations of life after rape, not only for the women survivors, but for their families. We argue that the exploration of rape legacies in these particular novels is especially significant in relation to negative assumptions and prejudices about motherhood.
In The Bonds of Love, Jessica Benjamin describes how the origins of sexual domination occur in the Oedipal model of the dominating father and all-sacrificing mother, a model predominant in most patriarchal societies. Such role models teach girls the nullity of their own value, while boys are taught that their mothers will sacrifice everything for their sons’ needs. This value system is reproduced in heterosexual relations, foregrounding the scripts of power that are so fundamental to the act of rape. The kind of vicious circle that Benjamin describes is particularly significant in the rape narratives by Flanagan, Danticat and Dangor, because their books consider the after-effects of rape and how rape survivors go on to be mothers. The mothers have been nullified, branded as worthless or as objects of shame, and, in the specific context of each novel’s historical and postcolonial location, the working through of this painful legacy contends with accepted scripts of kinship and self-sacrificing motherhood.
In The Bonds of Love, Jessica Benjamin describes how the origins of sexual domination occur in the Oedipal model of the dominating father and all-sacrificing mother, a model predominant in most patriarchal societies. Such role models teach girls the nullity of their own value, while boys are taught that their mothers will sacrifice everything for their sons’ needs. This value system is reproduced in heterosexual relations, foregrounding the scripts of power that are so fundamental to the act of rape. The kind of vicious circle that Benjamin describes is particularly significant in the rape narratives by Flanagan, Danticat and Dangor, because their books consider the after-effects of rape and how rape survivors go on to be mothers. The mothers have been nullified, branded as worthless or as objects of shame, and, in the specific context of each novel’s historical and postcolonial location, the working through of this painful legacy contends with accepted scripts of kinship and self-sacrificing motherhood.
This paper explores Alan Moore’s representations of rape, seduction and domination via the theories of Jessica Benjamin in The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism and the Problem of Domination (1988). In thinking through sexual... more
This paper explores Alan Moore’s representations of rape, seduction and domination via the theories of Jessica Benjamin in The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism and the Problem of Domination (1988). In thinking through sexual domination and the master-slave dynamic, Benjamin turns to Pauline Réage’s sadomasochistic fantasy, The Story of O (1954), a text that, for Benjamin, represents all that is problematic about sexual domination in Western culture. Domination of women by men exists ‘in the opposition between violator and violated’ where ‘one person maintains his boundary and the other allows her boundary to be broken’ (Benjamin, p. 64). What Benjamin uncovers in her study though ultimately is that the foundation of sexual domination is in Western society’s attitudes to women – especially mothers.
Explorations of sexual domination are integral to Moore’s work and Benjamin’s model is particularly suggestive in analyzing From Hell (1991-1996) and Lost Girls (2006). From Hell traces the history of Moore’s version of Jack the Ripper, Dr. Gull, and Moore represents the murders of London prostitutes as morbid rituals that reinvigorate male power and ensure the domination of women by men. Fear of the mother is obvious in Dr. Gull’s discussion of matriarchal figures like Boudicca who avenges her raped daughters. More possibilities exist, however, in Lost Girls as it traces a path from abuse to women re-discovering their own sexual desire. Benjamin notes that too often ‘women […] seek their desire in another’ turning to ‘a powerful other who remains in control’ (p. 131). The analysis of Lost Girls describes how the three fabled protagonists, Dorothy, Wendy and Alice, manage to overcome the problem of women’s desire to discover ‘another dimension’ of recognition between man and woman (Benjamin, p. 132).
Explorations of sexual domination are integral to Moore’s work and Benjamin’s model is particularly suggestive in analyzing From Hell (1991-1996) and Lost Girls (2006). From Hell traces the history of Moore’s version of Jack the Ripper, Dr. Gull, and Moore represents the murders of London prostitutes as morbid rituals that reinvigorate male power and ensure the domination of women by men. Fear of the mother is obvious in Dr. Gull’s discussion of matriarchal figures like Boudicca who avenges her raped daughters. More possibilities exist, however, in Lost Girls as it traces a path from abuse to women re-discovering their own sexual desire. Benjamin notes that too often ‘women […] seek their desire in another’ turning to ‘a powerful other who remains in control’ (p. 131). The analysis of Lost Girls describes how the three fabled protagonists, Dorothy, Wendy and Alice, manage to overcome the problem of women’s desire to discover ‘another dimension’ of recognition between man and woman (Benjamin, p. 132).
This paper examines how Isabel Allende’s two short stories, ‘The Judge’s Wife’ and ‘Revenge’ represent Allende’s strategy of feminist resistance against patriarchal domination within romantic relationships. Jessica Benjamin's The Bonds of... more
This paper examines how Isabel Allende’s two short stories, ‘The Judge’s Wife’ and ‘Revenge’ represent Allende’s strategy of feminist resistance against patriarchal domination within romantic relationships. Jessica Benjamin's The Bonds of Love examines the politics of domination underlying the heterosexual norm and interrogates the inevitability of gendered domination as she argues that society’s slavish adherence to a particular type of family unit dictates man’s positioning as active, detached, independent and woman’s subordination into object, passivity, sacrifice. We argue that, like Benjamin, Allende challenges the transparency of these binaries in the context of postcolonial Latin America. In using narrative strategies to undermine and disempower patriarchal domination, Allende’s writing builds upon a tradition of literary inheritance from writers like Rosario Castellanos. Both Castellanos and Allende present uncomfortable pictures of women’s disempowerment and sexuality. It is, however, this unease with women’s sexual agency that interrogates, challenges and ultimately subverts the rape script. Allende’s subversive strategy is controversial, since Casilda in ‘The Judge’s Wife’ and Dulce Rosa in ‘Revenge’ appear to adhere to the myth of rape as seduction - an assumption which legitimizes patriarchal control - by falling in love with their rapists. Far from reinforcing gender stereotypes and perpetuating social narratives of domination, however, Allende’s narrative strategies contextualize this ‘love’ to counteract the prevailing myth by complicating established binaries such as active/passive, masculine/feminine and dominator/dominated. By introducing notions of submission, female desire and female action, Allende challenges theoretical trends that reinforce or reverse categories of oppression.
‘Just tell me the truth. I'm not the police. I don't care what you've done. I'm not going to hurt you, but one way or another I'm going to know.’ (Chinatown, Polanski and Towne 1974). Much has been written about the gender politics of... more
‘Just tell me the truth. I'm not the police. I don't care what you've done. I'm not going to hurt you, but one way or another I'm going to know.’
(Chinatown, Polanski and Towne 1974).
Much has been written about the gender politics of the noir detective story, but the intimate relationship between the detective and the femme fatale deserves greater attention. In the noir genre, this relationship is a combative one, where the detective is always questing for intimacy and the femme fatale repels it. Mary Ann Doane confirms this dynamic when she notes that the femme fatale often works as an ‘epistemological trauma’, whose depths must be plumbed or fathomed by the hero. Early versions of the femme fatale in film and fiction are merely another challenge to the detective-hero, but Jack Boozer points out that as the femme fatale develops in movies like Marnie and Chinatown, she becomes associated with the intimate trauma of sexual violence and works to ‘unveil [society’s] brutish aspects through the illumination of her personal disasters’ (Boozer 1999: 24). This paper surveys the development of the femme fatale from classic hard-boiled detective novels to contemporary fiction, considering how the relationship of intimacy between the detective and the heroine serves to uncover a more traumatic kind of intimacy: rape, sexual abuse and sexual exploitation. A classic text is Raymond Chandler’s 1942 novel, The High Window, in which, as a knight-protector, Marlowe must delve into the past of the mysterious and man-hating Merle in order to help her to recover from her sexual trauma. Winston Graham’s noir-ish novel, Marnie (1961) features a male hero who forces a criminal, frigid femme fatale to face her sexual trauma, as does the 1964 film version. By the end of these narratives, the femme fatale is no longer a mysterious epistemological trauma; through intimacy with the detective-hero, her secrets are broken open. As sympathetic as such portrayals might be, women are still positioned in these texts as passive victims, incapable of recuperating themselves. There are, however, alternative narratives in contemporary noir fiction. Megan Abbott's Bury Me Deep (2009) is ostensibly a novel about sexual exploitation, but reversing the trends of the genre, Abbott poses the sophisticated noir hero, Joe Lannigan, as a fatal seducer, an epistemological trauma like the femme fatale. Rather than relying on the knight-detective, Abbott's heroine must save herself from the fatal intimacies of sexual abuse and exploitation. This alternative narrative suggests that the femme fatale is no longer a token to be exchanged and fought over by men, but an autonomous being creating her own narrative of healing and recuperation.
(Chinatown, Polanski and Towne 1974).
Much has been written about the gender politics of the noir detective story, but the intimate relationship between the detective and the femme fatale deserves greater attention. In the noir genre, this relationship is a combative one, where the detective is always questing for intimacy and the femme fatale repels it. Mary Ann Doane confirms this dynamic when she notes that the femme fatale often works as an ‘epistemological trauma’, whose depths must be plumbed or fathomed by the hero. Early versions of the femme fatale in film and fiction are merely another challenge to the detective-hero, but Jack Boozer points out that as the femme fatale develops in movies like Marnie and Chinatown, she becomes associated with the intimate trauma of sexual violence and works to ‘unveil [society’s] brutish aspects through the illumination of her personal disasters’ (Boozer 1999: 24). This paper surveys the development of the femme fatale from classic hard-boiled detective novels to contemporary fiction, considering how the relationship of intimacy between the detective and the heroine serves to uncover a more traumatic kind of intimacy: rape, sexual abuse and sexual exploitation. A classic text is Raymond Chandler’s 1942 novel, The High Window, in which, as a knight-protector, Marlowe must delve into the past of the mysterious and man-hating Merle in order to help her to recover from her sexual trauma. Winston Graham’s noir-ish novel, Marnie (1961) features a male hero who forces a criminal, frigid femme fatale to face her sexual trauma, as does the 1964 film version. By the end of these narratives, the femme fatale is no longer a mysterious epistemological trauma; through intimacy with the detective-hero, her secrets are broken open. As sympathetic as such portrayals might be, women are still positioned in these texts as passive victims, incapable of recuperating themselves. There are, however, alternative narratives in contemporary noir fiction. Megan Abbott's Bury Me Deep (2009) is ostensibly a novel about sexual exploitation, but reversing the trends of the genre, Abbott poses the sophisticated noir hero, Joe Lannigan, as a fatal seducer, an epistemological trauma like the femme fatale. Rather than relying on the knight-detective, Abbott's heroine must save herself from the fatal intimacies of sexual abuse and exploitation. This alternative narrative suggests that the femme fatale is no longer a token to be exchanged and fought over by men, but an autonomous being creating her own narrative of healing and recuperation.
This paper discusses three women poets with a connection to Wales, Gwyneth Lewis (born 1959), Pascale Petit (born 1953) and Deryn Rees-Jones (born 1968), who have developed their poetic practice beyond ordinary notions of home and... more
This paper discusses three women poets with a connection to Wales, Gwyneth Lewis (born 1959), Pascale Petit (born 1953) and Deryn Rees-Jones (born 1968), who have developed their poetic practice beyond ordinary notions of home and belonging. The poets’ approaches are related to what Welsh poet, Owen Sheers, describes as the ‘famously tricky border area’ of the poetic ‘I’ (Sheers 2005: 7). Introducing the concept of transnationalism, Alarcón, Kaplan and Moallem agree that ‘the notion of borders refers to two heterogeneous boundaries and not to a single “line”’ (1999, 5). The borderland offers a moment of subversion formed, situated in or related to openings, gaps or cracks in hegemonic logic.
Some recent studies of Welsh literature have usefully employed postcolonial theory to analyse the exigencies of Welsh writers, based on the fact that Wales is a former colony of England (cf. Knight 2004; Bohata 2004). Transnationalism, however, is appropriate in studying Wales, because it foregrounds ‘how patriarchies are recast in diasporic conditions of postmodernity – how we ourselves are complicit in these relations, as well as how we negotiate with them and develop strategies of resistance’ (Kaplan and Grewal 1999: 358). The key idea of this paper is "trans”-national. It suggests that the poets discussed do manage to create a strategy of resistance by wholly or partially exiling themselves from comfortable forms of identity or being in the world. By writing beyond their personal contexts, they discover a space beyond of inbetweenness and
liminality (a third space), and this discovery gives them a new and subversive perspective on questions of identity and difference. Exiling themselves from what is homely or familiar, these poets discover the possibility of moving beyond the binaries that privilege the homely over the unhomely, the native over the stranger, and the national over the transnational.
Key words: transnationalism, Welsh poetry, women’s poetry, borders, identity.
Some recent studies of Welsh literature have usefully employed postcolonial theory to analyse the exigencies of Welsh writers, based on the fact that Wales is a former colony of England (cf. Knight 2004; Bohata 2004). Transnationalism, however, is appropriate in studying Wales, because it foregrounds ‘how patriarchies are recast in diasporic conditions of postmodernity – how we ourselves are complicit in these relations, as well as how we negotiate with them and develop strategies of resistance’ (Kaplan and Grewal 1999: 358). The key idea of this paper is "trans”-national. It suggests that the poets discussed do manage to create a strategy of resistance by wholly or partially exiling themselves from comfortable forms of identity or being in the world. By writing beyond their personal contexts, they discover a space beyond of inbetweenness and
liminality (a third space), and this discovery gives them a new and subversive perspective on questions of identity and difference. Exiling themselves from what is homely or familiar, these poets discover the possibility of moving beyond the binaries that privilege the homely over the unhomely, the native over the stranger, and the national over the transnational.
Key words: transnationalism, Welsh poetry, women’s poetry, borders, identity.
This paper examines how Isabel Allende’s two short stories, ‘The Judge’s Wife’ and ‘Revenge’ represent Allende’s strategy of feminist resistance against patriarchal domination within romantic relationships. Jessica Benjamin's The Bonds of... more
This paper examines how Isabel Allende’s two short stories, ‘The Judge’s Wife’ and ‘Revenge’ represent Allende’s strategy of feminist resistance against patriarchal domination within romantic relationships. Jessica Benjamin's The Bonds of Love examines the politics of domination underlying the heterosexual norm and interrogates the inevitability of gendered domination as she argues that society’s slavish adherence to a particular type of family unit dictates man’s positioning as active, detached, independent and woman’s subordination into object, passivity, sacrifice. We argue that, like Benjamin, Allende challenges the transparency of these binaries in the context of postcolonial Latin America. In using narrative strategies to undermine and disempower patriarchal domination, Allende’s writing builds upon a tradition of literary inheritance from writers like Rosario Castellanos. Both Castellanos and Allende present uncomfortable pictures of women’s disempowerment and sexuality. It is, however, this unease with women’s sexual agency that interrogates, challenges and ultimately subverts the rape script. Allende’s subversive strategy is controversial, since Casilda in ‘The Judge’s Wife’ and Dulce Rosa in ‘Revenge’ appear to adhere to the myth of rape as seduction - an assumption which legitimizes patriarchal control - by falling in love with their rapists. Far from reinforcing gender stereotypes and perpetuating social narratives of domination, however, Allende’s narrative strategies contextualize this ‘love’ to counteract the prevailing myth by complicating established binaries such as active/passive, masculine/feminine and dominator/dominated. By introducing notions of submission, female desire and female action, Allende challenges theoretical trends that reinforce or reverse categories of oppression.
Alan Moore’s representations of sex and love are controversial and complex. This paper seeks to explore his representations of rape and seduction via the notion of ‘ideal love’ posited by Jessica Benjamin in *The Bonds of Love:... more
Alan Moore’s representations of sex and love are controversial and complex. This paper seeks to explore his representations of rape and seduction via the notion of ‘ideal love’ posited by Jessica Benjamin in *The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism and the Problem of Domination* (1988). In chapter two of this study titled ‘Master and Slave’, Benjamin discusses Pauline Réage’s sadomasochistic fantasy, *The Story of O* (1954), and she suggests that the master-slave dynamic between O and René represents all that is problematic about sexual and emotional relations between men and women in Western culture. Benjamin explains, ‘Excitement resides in the risk of death, not in death itself. And it is erotic complementarity that offers a way to simultaneously break through and preserve boundaries: in the opposition between violator and violated, one person maintains his boundary and the other allows her boundary to be broken’ (p. 64). I will argue that explorations of this dynamic are characteristic of Moore’s work and I will study the torture scene of Evey Hammond in *V for Vendetta* (1988-89) (with David Lloyd) as an example of the master/slave relationship. More possibilities exist in *The Lost Girls* as it traces a path from molestation and abuse to women re-discovering their own sexual desire. In ‘Women’s Desire’, the third chapter of The Bonds of Love, Benjamin notes that too often ‘women […] seek their desire in another […] being released into abandon by a powerful other who remains in control’ (p. 131). What I seek to discover in my more lengthy analysis of *The Lost Girls* (2006) (with Melinda Gebbie) is to what extent the three fabled protagonists, Dorothy, Wendy and Alice, manage to overcome the problem of women’s desire. I hope to find what Benjamin describes as the possibility of finding ‘another dimension of desire’ that ‘can transform that opposition into the vital tension between subjects – into recognition between self and other self’ (p. 132).
This workshop is designed to explore how creative writing can work in the classroom to unravel problems of language, culture and identity. Drawing on her experience teaching in a "multi-cultural" city school, Jude Brigley provides... more
This workshop is designed to explore how creative writing can work in the classroom to unravel problems of language, culture and identity. Drawing on her experience teaching in a "multi-cultural" city school, Jude Brigley provides practical ways to harness students’ imaginative power to develop creative thinking. With the help of poet, Zoe Brigley, the workshop will present a variety of approaches to poetry and offers examples from diverse cultural settings.
This paper uses a Kristevan model to explore the poetics of women poets in Wales and the choice to move away from the privileging of traditional Welsh landscapes, cultural mores and literary tropes. The three writers to be discussed are... more
This paper uses a Kristevan model to explore the poetics of women poets in Wales and the choice to move away from the privileging of traditional Welsh landscapes, cultural mores and literary tropes. The three writers to be discussed are Gwyneth Lewis, Pascale Petit and Deryn Rees-Jones, all of whom have an interest in creating a dialogue with landscapes, mythologies and tropes beyond or adjacent to their own culture. My model derives from Julia Kristeva's study, Strangers to Ourselves, in which she explores notions of the 'foreigner', 'foreignness' and the stranger within us. To Kristeva, it is important to recognise and empathise with the 'foreigner' or the 'stranger'. As Kristeva states, 'The foreigner is within me, hence we are all foreigners'. Through discovering the stranger in themselves, these Welsh women poets can write politically about difference.
The body of this paper explores the three poets in detail. First I compare three extracts from their statements of poetics and then I give a detailed analysis of a short poem from each poet. In 'Dissociation', Lewis explores how losing the Welsh-language and denying her Welsh self invokes a new identity – the archetypal mad woman artist. In comparison, I study how Petit projects her own poetic concerns into the biographical telling of the life of Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo ('Henry Ford Hospital'). Finally, I juxtapose these with Rees-Jones' poet-heroine of 'Cemetery' , who projects herself into the persona of the English Victorian poetess.
The body of this paper explores the three poets in detail. First I compare three extracts from their statements of poetics and then I give a detailed analysis of a short poem from each poet. In 'Dissociation', Lewis explores how losing the Welsh-language and denying her Welsh self invokes a new identity – the archetypal mad woman artist. In comparison, I study how Petit projects her own poetic concerns into the biographical telling of the life of Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo ('Henry Ford Hospital'). Finally, I juxtapose these with Rees-Jones' poet-heroine of 'Cemetery' , who projects herself into the persona of the English Victorian poetess.
This paper explores Deryn Rees-Jones’ use of the clone-poem in her novel-in-verse, Quiver. Using Estelle Irizarry’s definition, I explore the history of the clone-poem and I contrast the technique of ‘cloning’ with parody and pastiche. I... more
This paper explores Deryn Rees-Jones’ use of the clone-poem in her novel-in-verse, Quiver. Using Estelle Irizarry’s definition, I explore the history of the clone-poem and I contrast the technique of ‘cloning’ with parody and pastiche. I briefly explore Irizarry’s case studies of Federico García Lorca and the Nicaraguan poet, Ernesto Cardenal, and I explore the new terms that were invented to describe their strategies: such as ‘téchnica de sustituciones alucinantes’ (the technique of hallucinating substitutions) and ‘arte de injerto’ (the art of graft). Rees-Jones has adopted similar methods to the Spanish-language poets discussed. Focussing on Rees-Jones' essay, ‘Nothing That is Not There and Nothing That Is’, I explore the echo of voices in her poetry. I examine Rees-Jones' reference in her poem, ‘Song for Winter’, to the rhythms of Rilke’s first ode.
The collection, Quiver, is the culmination of Rees-Jones’ poetics as it privileges the clone-trope. I discuss a number of key poems in detail, including‘A Dream’ which clones S.T. Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’. Using R.L. Brett’s interpretation of the mariner as poet and albatross as inspiration, I examine how doubling can be a means to find inspiration.
I also discuss the poem ‘Clone’ which doubles Paul Muldoon’s poem ‘As’. Rees-Jones corrupts Muldoon’s riddling original and its specific references to history, linguistics, Britain and macho culture. Rees-Jones retains the riddling tone but transplants the references with the image of the clone. Consequently, ‘Clone’ becomes a declaration of the spirit of her collection and her postmodern poetics.
The collection, Quiver, is the culmination of Rees-Jones’ poetics as it privileges the clone-trope. I discuss a number of key poems in detail, including‘A Dream’ which clones S.T. Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’. Using R.L. Brett’s interpretation of the mariner as poet and albatross as inspiration, I examine how doubling can be a means to find inspiration.
I also discuss the poem ‘Clone’ which doubles Paul Muldoon’s poem ‘As’. Rees-Jones corrupts Muldoon’s riddling original and its specific references to history, linguistics, Britain and macho culture. Rees-Jones retains the riddling tone but transplants the references with the image of the clone. Consequently, ‘Clone’ becomes a declaration of the spirit of her collection and her postmodern poetics.
I discuss in this short paper my own development of blogging as a tool of educational and research value. I summarise my initial uses of blogs, my attitude to audience and my development of a research and a teaching blog. Using detailed... more
I discuss in this short paper my own development of blogging as a tool of educational and research value. I summarise my initial uses of blogs, my attitude to audience and my development of a research and a teaching blog. Using detailed examples I describe how these new technologies can support teaching and learning.
The purpose of this paper is to explore how changes in British feminism have influenced the poetics of British women writers. With criticism by Showalter and Segal as my basis, I begin with analysis of feminism’s increasingly separate... more
The purpose of this paper is to explore how changes in British feminism have influenced the poetics of British women writers. With criticism by Showalter and Segal as my basis, I begin with analysis of feminism’s increasingly separate projects: gynocritics or difference feminism and feminist critique or equality feminism. I focus first on gynocritics citing Hélène Cixous and Michéle Roberts, but Medbh McGuckian is suggested as a prime example of a British woman poet in this vein. A close analysis of McGuckian’s poems, ‘From the Weather Woman’ and ‘Killing the Muse’, is conducted in relation to difference feminism’s claims for a female language and the drawbacks of such essentialism.
In relation to feminist critique, I argue for the importance of conveying a political message. Here I use the example of Carol Ann Duffy with analysis of ‘Girl Talking’ and ‘Mrs Darwin’ as polemical texts. These poems are considered in terms of their political efficacy, didacticism and the problem of portraying a vulnerable female subject.
Though McGuckian and Duffy appear to be at odds in their approaches, more recent work suggests that as Third Wave Feminism has developed, so have British women’s poetics. In recent years, the demands of some types of British feminist politics have been restrictive, because they limit the scope of the writing to issues of essentialist ideas of the white, Western women, or demand a simple polemical message. I find, however, in later works (McGuckian’s Book of the Angel and Duffy’s Rapture) that the poets discussed have moved away from the divisive choice of gynocritics or feminist critique and they seem to signal that feminist poetry’s horizons need to be broadened and developed rather than isolating women’s poetry in a category of its own.
In relation to feminist critique, I argue for the importance of conveying a political message. Here I use the example of Carol Ann Duffy with analysis of ‘Girl Talking’ and ‘Mrs Darwin’ as polemical texts. These poems are considered in terms of their political efficacy, didacticism and the problem of portraying a vulnerable female subject.
Though McGuckian and Duffy appear to be at odds in their approaches, more recent work suggests that as Third Wave Feminism has developed, so have British women’s poetics. In recent years, the demands of some types of British feminist politics have been restrictive, because they limit the scope of the writing to issues of essentialist ideas of the white, Western women, or demand a simple polemical message. I find, however, in later works (McGuckian’s Book of the Angel and Duffy’s Rapture) that the poets discussed have moved away from the divisive choice of gynocritics or feminist critique and they seem to signal that feminist poetry’s horizons need to be broadened and developed rather than isolating women’s poetry in a category of its own.
The purpose of this paper is to interrogate the treatment of the city of Liverpool in Quiver, a novel-in-verse by the Welsh writer, Deryn Rees-Jones. Drawing on key psychoanalytical texts by Ernst Jentsch and Sigmund Freud, I outline the... more
The purpose of this paper is to interrogate the treatment of the city of Liverpool in Quiver, a novel-in-verse by the Welsh writer, Deryn Rees-Jones. Drawing on key psychoanalytical texts by Ernst Jentsch and Sigmund Freud, I outline the features of the uncanny, before turning to the theories in Anthony Vidler’s The Architectural Uncanny and in the writings of Homi Bhabha. With these texts as my foundation, I construct an analysis of Rees Jones’ Liverpool emphasising its portrayal in terms of what Vidler calls ‘haunting absences’. These haunting absences include the uncanny omission of origins for Rees Jones’ Liverpudlian metropolitans and the lack inherent in post-industrial spaces. I interrogate Rees-Jones’ fascination with Liverpool’s immigrant communities from Wales, Ireland and China and the haunting absences of Liverpool’s history. I analyse the spectres of poverty-stricken children, refugees and African slaves that stalk the narrative. The interaction between the real and spectral occupants of Liverpool creates an uncanny effect as it seems unclear as to whether a particular subject is real, imagined or a ghost. I conclude that Rees-Jones’ setting is a haven for marginals who exist here in a limbo of diaspora.