The Changeling Legend and Queer Kinship in Caitriona Lally’s Eggshells

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 296-311
Author(s):  
Molly Ferguson
Keyword(s):  
Family Violence ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
Adult Woman ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Trauma Survivor ◽  
Gender Presentation

In Caitriona Lally's debut novel Eggshells (2015), the narrator Vivian Lawlor is an adult woman with a quirky personality living in North Dublin, who believes herself to be a changeling. Throughout the novel, Vivian travels various paths in Dublin looking for specific ‘thin places,’ creating ‘an alternative map of Dublin’, as Claire Kilroy's review puts it. Folklore is often used as a code for hiding aspects of Irish life that are unspeakable, and in Eggshells the changeling story is a coded testimony of family violence in which the changeling figure is labelled as nonhuman. Rejected by family, she looks to queer models of kinship as outlined by Judith Butler, through transformative portals and a companion who is a fellow trauma survivor. This essay argues that, while her experience of traumatic family violence is silently coded within the changeling story, Vivian strategically deploys changeling legend to embody a nonconforming gender presentation.

scholarly journals Cassandra Rios e a lésbica genuína em Eu sou uma lésbica (1980)

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolina Castellanos Gonella
Keyword(s):  
Judith Butler ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Adult Woman ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Love Relationship ◽  
Lesbian Sexuality ◽  
Class Hierarchies ◽  
Children’S Sexuality

In this article, I analyze the novel, Eu sou uma lésbica (1980), by Brazilian author Cassandra Rios (1932-2002). I examine how Rios's text discusses the lesbianism and sexuality of Flávia, the protagonist of the novel, as well as the sexual and love relationship that the seven-year-old Flávia has with an adult woman. The work of authors such as Judith Butler, Marilyn R. Farwell, Teresa De Lauretis, Adrianne Rich, Gayle Rubin, and Jeffrey Weeks informs my theoretical framework. I propose that the novel presents Flávia's sexuality as natural and genuine in order to challenge traditional discourses surrounding lesbianism and children’s sexuality. While the representation of lesbian sexuality in children is transgressive and empowering, as it establishes same-sex desire among women as natural and dating back to infancy, I contend however that the novel’s treatment of adult lesbian sexuality perpetuates traditional corporal, racial, and class hierarchies.

scholarly journals Rewriting the Past: Gerard Mannix Flynn’s Nothing to Say and James X

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-121
Author(s):  
Victoria Connor
Keyword(s):  
Traumatic Events ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Past ◽  
Trauma Survivor ◽  
Trauma Fiction

If, as Anne Whitehead suggests, the term ‘trauma fiction’ represents a paradox, that violence resists containment through language, then writers who engage and attempt to represent traumatic events in their work can never fully render the horror of trauma through their writing. Yet artists such as Gerard Mannix Flynn, a survivor of trauma himself, still attempt to translate the experience of trauma into language. In the novel Nothing to Say and the play James X, Flynn explores the ways in which trauma is both experienced and recalled and the cathartic effects that ‘containing’ trauma through language can have. The impetus to write, to express the trauma one has suffered through language, offers the victim agency over his or her own narrative. The agency that the trauma survivor gains is not literal; rather, they have finally gained control over what Cathy Caruth identifies as the ‘haunting power’ of repressed trauma, and in doing so are able to take the first steps towards recovery. In both works, Flynn attempts to traverse the paradox that Whitehead presents: he attempts to represent that which is deemed unrepresentable, and put the violence inflicted upon the protagonists into words.

Precariousness, kinship, and care: Becoming human in Claire Cameron’s The Last Neanderthal

2020 ◽  
pp. 002198942096798
Author(s):  
Rūta Šlapkauskaitė
Keyword(s):  
Female Subject ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
The Body ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Human Origins ◽  
Shared Experience ◽  
Donna Haraway ◽  
Female Protagonists ◽  
Twenty First Century

This article employs Christine L. Marran’s notion of “obligate storytelling” to examine the poetic structures of vulnerability in Canadian author Claire Cameron’s novel The Last Neanderthal (2017). The theoretical backbone of ideas on the materiality of being suggested by Judith Butler, Donna Haraway, Erinn C. Gilson, and Matt Edgeworth, among others, solicits a reading which foregrounds the moral upshot of conceiving the body as an affective centre of life and an arc of anthropogenesis. By following this trajectory, I attempt to show how in troping the archeological dig as a biosemiotic archive, Cameron exposes the structural homologies between the lives of her two female protagonists, a twenty-first-century scientist and a Neanderthal, whose bones she has unearthed. The novel’s use of narrative bifocality offers a visceral construction of subjectivity, which takes its bearings from the shared experience of corporeal vulnerability. By thus imaginatively unspooling the affective links between the neoliberal female subject and her Neanderthal cousin, the novel calls upon us both to rescale our conceptions of creaturely life and rethink our narratives of human origins.

Violância Familiar em Gêneros Literários e não Literários

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 286
Author(s):  
Jaime André Klein ◽  
Angela De Fátima Langa ◽  
Patrícia Luísa Klein Santos
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Violence ◽  
Family Violence ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Analysis Method ◽  
Flash Fiction ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Brazilian Society ◽  
Keywords Domestic Violence

Este artigo analisa a temática da violência familiar. Busca-se investigar, por meio da linha americana de comparatismo como método de análise e também utilizando noções de intertextualidade, de que forma a violência familiar é abordada em dois gêneros literários, um miniconto e umromance, e em dois gêneros não literários, duas charges. Pretende-se averiguar a intencionalidade desses objetos para com o leitor: chocar,fazer refletir, criticar ou sensibilizar. Tem-se como objetos de estudo um miniconto, de Flora Medeiros, o romance “Becos da Memória”,de Conceição Evaristo, e duas charges, uma de Janilton Nunes e outra de Arionauro da Silva Santos. Por meio do estudo realizado pode-se perceber que os agressores, geralmente, são os pais, cuja função seria garantir a segurança e a afetividade dos seus filhos. Ademais, destaca-se que a temática da violência está presente no cotidiano e na constituição da sociedade brasileira. Palavras-chave: Violência Familiar. Literatura. Gêneros Literários. Gêneros não-Literários. Intertextualidade. AbstractThis article examines the topic of family violence. The aim is to investigate, through the Comparatism American line as an analysis method and also using notions of Intertextuality, how the domestic violence is approached in two literary genres, a Flash fiction and a novel, and in two genres, non-literary, two chargers. The aim is to ascertain the intention of those objects to the reader: to shock, to make them reflect, criticize or raise awareness. It has as study objects a Flash fiction, byFlora Medeiros, the novel “Becos da Memória”, , by Conceição Evaristo, and two charges, one by Nandi and Janilton Nunes and the other by Arionauro da Silva Santos . Through the study carried out it is possible to realize that the attackers are usually the parents, whose function would be to ensure their children’s safety and the affection. Furthermore, the topic of violence is present in daily life and in the constitution of the brazilian society. Keywords: Domestic Violence. Literature. Literary Genres. Non Literary Genres. Intertextuality.

scholarly journals EMANSIPASI GENDER DALAM MIDDLESEX KARYA JEFFREY EUGENIDES (Gender Emancipation in Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides)

ALAYASASTRA ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chrisna Natalia
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
First Person ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Mixed Order ◽  
Three Stages ◽  
Gender Spectrum

ABSTRAK Tulisan ini membahas emansipasi gender dalam novel Middlesex karya Jeffrey Eugenides.Adapun tujuannya ialah untuk: (1) mengetahui struktur cerita novel, (2) mengetahui bagaimana spektrum gender berkembang dalam novel ini, (3) mengetahui bagaimana dan mengapa emansipasi gender direpresentasikan dalam novel ini. Penelitian ini dilakukan dengan merujuk kepada teori queer, yang muncul dari feminisme, yang digagas oleh Judith Butler. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa novel ini ditulis menggunakan sudut pandang orang pertama, plot episodikal beralur maju mundur, latar simbolik terintegrasi, dan tone depresi yang berubah menjadi riang. Penelitian ini juga menunjukkan bahwa spektrum gender berkembang melalui tiga tahapan, yaitu belum berkembang, berkembang, dan matang. Selain itu, novel ini juga menunjukkan bahwa untuk mengurangi diskriminasi, gender harus dipisahkan dari jenis kelamin. Hal itu karena gender tidak muncul secara alamiah seperti jenis kelamin. Gender adalah generalisasi dari performa individu. Kata kunci: gender biner; diskriminasi; genderqueer; kebebasan. ABSTRACT This study is about gender emancipation in a novel entitled Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. The objectives of the study are, (1) to find out how the element of the novel is developed, (2) to find out how the spectrum of gender in this novel is developed, (3) to find out how gender emancipation presented in this novel. The analysis is done based on queer theory, which is derived from feminism from Judith Butler. The result shows that Middlesex is written by using the first person point of view named Call Stephanides, episodical plot with mixed order, simbolic integrated settings, and varieties of tones such as depressions and joy. The result shows that gender spectrum development is divided into three stages, which are being undeveloped, developed, and advanced. This novel also suggests that in order to decrease discrimination, gender must be separated from sex. Gender does not come naturally as sex but it is developed from perfomance. Keywords: binarism, discrimination, genderqueer, freedom

scholarly journals Fiktion som restriktion? Eller som indirekte meddelelse?: En diskussion med Dorothy Hale om en etisk vending i nyere litteraturteori

2009 ◽  
Vol 36 (106) ◽  
pp. 34-55
Author(s):  
Jacob Bøggild
Keyword(s):  
Henry James ◽  
Recent Article ◽  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
The Self ◽  
Common Denominator ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Indirect Communication ◽  
Ethical Theories ◽  
Wayne Booth

Fiction as Restriction? Or as Indirect Communication? A Discussion with Dorothy Hale about an Ethical Turn in Recent Literary Theory:This article is a discussion with a recent article by Dorothy Hale: »Fiction as Restriction: Self-Binding in New Ethical Theories of the Novel«. Here, Hale claims that different new ethicists among contemporary literary scholars all end up sounding very much like the Wayne Booth of The Rhetoric of Fiction. In this connection, she points out that the reader’s willing surrender to the fictitious universe of a novel and making room for the characters he or she encounters there – the »self-binding« of her title – is a common ideal of these new ethicists, since it is an exercise in appreciating and making room for otherness as such. The argument of this article, however, is that three of the ethicists Hale discusses, Lynne Huffer, Judith Butler and J. Hillis Miller, do in fact not sound that much like Booth, since Booth does not acknowledge the problems of difference, irony and translation that they, in different ways, address. Instead, it is argued that Kierkegaard’s idea and practice of »indirect communication« seems to be a more convincing, even if somewhat subterranean, common denominator for these critics. Henry James and Walter Benjamin, too, are invited to take part in the discussion.

scholarly journals Nan King’s Orientation in Sarah Waters’s Tipping the Velvet: A Journey of Gender and Sexual Self-Discovery Following “The Slantwise Direction of Queer Desire”

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-74
Author(s):  
Elsa Adán Hernández
Keyword(s):  
Judith Butler ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Gender Performativity ◽  
Straight Line ◽  
Self Discovery ◽  
Cross Dressing ◽  
Line P

Abstract In Tipping the Velvet (1998), Sarah Waters explores the notion of “gender performativity” as studied by Judith Butler (1990, 1993). Its protagonist, Nancy Astley, becomes aware of her sexuality and comes up with doubts about her gender as responding to the stable label society has put on her. This naïve girl moves from performing gender on stage to cross-dressing off-stage amid the crowds of London, not following, as Sarah Ahmed (2006) puts it, “the straight line” (p. 70). The aim of this paper is to explain how this straightness – both in terms of direction and heterosexuality – is the term Nancy, later on renamed Nan King, does not feel comfortable with. Throughout the novel, Nan’s discovery of a whole world of sexual and identity possibilities leads her to look for her own orientation, as her position in relation to the rest of “objects” around her is a queer one.

scholarly journals Traumatic Speech Acts in Toni Morrison’s Beloved

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 414
Author(s):  
Tamsila Naeem ◽  
Zafar Iqbal Bhatti ◽  
M. Asad Habib
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Theoretical Model ◽  
Toni Morrison ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Life Time ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
Verbal Abuse ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Traumatic Memories ◽  
Famous Book

This qualitative study aims to scrutinize the traumatic effects of rhetorical and political excitable speech acts in Toni Morrison’s most commended novel Beloved, which presents haunting situations of slavery in USA. The novel demonstrates that the white masters attempt to interpellate the minds of the black slaves in order to make them recognize that they are sub-human creatures. These interpellative forces consequence in life time enslavement of the victims, since they never come out of the traumatic effects of the verbal abuse, they were victimized with. The data are collected from Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, which presents haunting situations in which the black slaves after their freedom, evoke in their mind traumatic memories of their slavery. In order to examine the traumatic speech acts, relevant excerpts were taken through purposive sampling under the method of content analysis. The applied theoretical model is based on Judith Butler’s postulates about burning speech acts presented in her famous book, Excitable Speech. The analysis of the selected traumatic speech acts shows that the pricking state of the victims’ self and ego traumatize them even after they get freedom. They repeat the injurious speech acts and atrocities of the white masters to further aggravate the situations through traumatic speech acts.

MIND YOUR P(EDERAST)S AND Q(UEER)S: THE SCHOOL AS PHALLIC PARENT IN MARK BEHR’S EMBRACE

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-96
Author(s):  
Anne M. Reef
Keyword(s):  
Gender Studies ◽  
Jacques Lacan ◽  
White Male ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Antonio Gramsci ◽  
Louis Althusser ◽  
School Story ◽  
Heterosexual Hegemony

This study examines the role of the school in Mark Behr’s Embrace , and situates the institution’s location at the nexus of gender studies, children’s literature scholarship and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. The article argues that in the novel, the school is a phallic parent in loco  and an agent of the apartheid state, eager to enforce white male and heterosexual hegemony in psychologically and physically violent ways. Behr focuses on the vicious abuse of queer boys particularly. The article applies contemporary scholarship in children’s literature to what is unquestionably a novel for and by an adult, precisely so because of the book’s bold grappling with the questions of what is a child, what constitutes sex, who or what is the phallus, and what constitutes violence; it also situates Behr’s thinly veiled autobiography in a (queer) school story tradition. Specific thinkers on whose work the article draws include Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault; gender theorists Judith Butler and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick; psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan; and children’s literature scholars Karen Coats, Kenneth Kidd and others.

scholarly journals Highsmith's The Price of Salt: A Harbinger of Homosexual's Happiness

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-47
Author(s):  
Bhawana Pokharel
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Adrienne Rich ◽  
Heterosexual Relationship ◽  
Traditional Mode ◽  
Homosexual Relationship

Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt embodies homosexual relationship between its female characters namely Therese and Carole. In doing so, it presents a resistance to the contemporary heterosexual society which accepts only heterosexuality as its sexual norm. The article argues that the character’s rejection of the traditional mode  of heterosexual relationship is in order to search for their lesbian self though that is taken as a deviation in the society; and so it faces various challenges. However, the characters together overcome the obstacles laid down by the society and move forward to finding freedom as well as establishing a new path which is taken as an unconventional practice in the then society; in turn, it proves to be the harbinger of hope and happiness for their kind. To substantiate this claim, the article draws from Lillian Faderman, Adrienne Rich, Judith Butler and Helen Boyd for the different aspects of lesbianism and queer theory they present. Similarly, the article is a descriptive, interpretive and analytical reading of the novel on the basis of the ideas based on the above mentioned scholars.

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