Feminisms

1. Feminisms 1. women's positions in patriarchal society and discourses 2. history of feminist movement & writings 3. Feminisms and Gender Studies:Radical Feminism, French Feminism, Post-Feminism, Lesbian Feminism, Taiwanese Feminisms

2. Feminist Movements • 1. Liberalist: equality in the public sphere (e.g. workplace, civil rights, education, money) --Mary Wollstonecraft A Vindication of the Rights of Woman -- John Stwart Mill “The Subjection of Women” --Charlotte Perkin Gilman Herland --Virginia Woolf “A Room of One’s Own”

3. Feminist Movements: The Second Wave since 1960’s • Emphases: the politics of reproduction, to women's 'experience,' to sexual 'difference.' • American Feminists: Radical Feminist, Psychoanalytic Feminist • French Feminists • Since the 80’s, Lesbianism, Postmodern Feminism, etc.

4. Central Issues in Contemporary Feminisms A. 60’s -70’s -- Women’s Studies: Women’s • 1) biology (next week) • 2) experience and social position • 3) writing (this and next week) B. 80’s – Gender Studies 1) genderrelations (cultural difference) • 2) gender constructions (next week)

5. Women’s writings in the 19th century • Very few of them got to write; write diaries or letters. • the use of pseudonyms to write, • The use of madness, death as tropes of self-preservation e.g. Christina Rossettie, Emily Dickenson, “Yellow Wallpaper,” etc. • General plot: exclusion+ death or domestication

6. Writings Bring about changes in both form and content. Content: Critique of patriarchal society, e.g. “A Room of One’s Own.” empowerment of female roles and female bonding. “Granny W” Discovery of female desires. Analysis of female psyche. Criticism’s main concerns: 1. Languistic 2. Cultural 3. Biological 4. psychoanalytic Feminist Writings and Criticism in the 20 century (gynocriticism)

7. Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own.” • Women’s position in fiction and in real life. • Why did not women write poetry in the Elizabethan age? • e.g. Shakespeare vs. Shakespeare’s sister– life in the living room, arranged marriage, not being able to work and survive by herself in London, with child. • Androgyny: manly woman, womanly man.

8. Katherine Ann Porter (1890-1980) “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” What does the title mean? p. 382;

9. “Jilting of GW” • How do you characterize Granny? What does she feel about being jilted? What is she proud of? P. 380; 381 • How does Granny relate to the people around her? Why is she impatient with the doctor as well as her daughter Cornelia? • Why is Granny pre-occupied with Hapsy? 383 • This story is, like 母親，composed partly of interior monologue, and in this story, Granny gets to be farther and farther away from reality. How is she different from the mother in 母親? How is Granny different from Emily in “A Rose for Emily”?

10. American Feminist Literary criticism: gynocriticism • A literature of their own • the contrast in style and subject matter between masculine and feminine writings • feminine writing--more concerned with community, open ending; associational logic; subjective • male--individualistic, closure, sequential, objective

11. Psychoanalytic Feminisms American: Nancy Chodorow • The Reproduction of Motherhood (an example of object-relations theory) • Males: have fixed ego-boundaries (rigid and defensive) because they define themselves through separation from their mother. • Females: have fluid and permeable ego-boundaries because they never break up their relationship with the mother. This sense of self-in-relationship and need for connection to others in turn underlies the desire to “mother” (be a mother).

12. French: Feminine ecriture • Biology feminine writing • Against the psychoanalysts’ emphasis on Oedipus complex and the Father. • Against the fixity of male writing and systems of thoughts • Cixous: phallogocentrism • writing from the body; write in white ink; in the Realm of the Gift vs. the Realm of the Proper (property-- appropriate--the fear of castration)

13. Irigaray • autoeroticism; plural sexuality; • an alternate discourse that is multiple, fluid, and heterogeneous, • feminine style: 1) mimicry; 2) "self-touching" and "self-affection" --

14. Kristeva: the semiotic • the feminine as the silence of the unconscious that precedes discourse; • its utterance is a flow or rhythm instead of an ordered statement; • expression is fluid like the free-floating sea of a womb or the milk of the breast.

15. Feminine Writing: an example夏宇 〈在陣雨之間〉 我正孤獨通過自己行星上的曠野我正 孤獨通過自己行星上的曠野我正孤獨 通過自己行星上的曠野我正孤獨通過 自己行星上的曠野我正孤獨通過自己 行星上的曠野我正孤獨通過自己行星 上的曠野 正孤獨 我正孤獨通過