Literary Theory- Feminism. Help please.

[suwoo]

Right, you educated lot. I am in my first year of an english lit degree and this semester we are doing literary and cultural theory, namely Marxism, Post Colonial Theory, Psychoanalysis, Queer Theory and Feminism. We haven't had the lecture yet but I want to get ahead of the game. Plus, I have to do an informal presentation to my seminar group on this subject and I would like to be well informed with 'insider' knowledge as it were. Anyone point me in a useful direction?
Thanks.

flamingobingo I am feeling unintelligent too and it's my thread .

I have enjoyed reading all your debate just now, and I think you would be surprised at the level of feminist understanding that the male lecturers have exhibited already. For example, when we studied Frances Burneys 'Evelina', the lecture was centered around satire and how the text was thought to be 'just' a simple little tale about womens lives in the 18th century, but the sarire made it a possible to see it from a whole other perspective and Burney was indeed a feminist forerunner.

On the narrrative, fiction & the novel module, we studied, Burney, Austen, Eliot & Janette Winterson as well as the male authors.

this is who will be lecturing us on the feminism theory. She is a guest lecturer.

suwoo - me too! I don't know any of the names dittany's mentioning, except Terry Eagleton.

I'm jealous you've got such good lecturers - I think mine were a bit lazy tba. I mostly try my hardest not to be like them!

Mine aren't lazy at all! They seem so passionate. Maybe at Salford they have to prove themselves against the big guns. this is who lectured us on 'self and other' and 'defamiliarisation' and 'marxism'. He was ace

Where are you LRD? North or South?

Oooh, I've heard of Andrew Cooper - he sounds awesome!

I think where I went the teachers (with some lovely exceptions) were really not very interested in teaching and saw students as a boring distraction. Exactly like Pratchett's Unseen University without the funny, in fact. I find it so odd now, because I feel so lucky to be teaching and really enjoy getting to talk to my students about things.

I'm based at a Northern university now - it's nice.

I don't understand it, but I think it is fascinating. Does anyone think that a special thread explaining all of these things might be good? Maybe one narrow topic could be looked at by all of the experts like dittany, LittleRedDragon etc. Something like what are the main points of Judith Butler's, Terry Eagleton's, Pat Califia's etc. thoughts and what are the criticisms of this thought e.g. Martha Nussbaum etc. But maybe it will be too complicated to explain.

Um, I'm not remotely an expert on theory. I'm just a Lit PhD who occasionally comes across dilute versions of theory in the secondary criticism and very occasionally writes things other people call feminist criticism.

I wouldn't know about the roots of the theories I'm drawing on.

After all the information that we have shared on this thread, I am still none the wiser what the feminism aspect of cultural and literary theory actually is. Is it in very simple terms?... looking at a text and thinking whether the author/females within it are portrayed as minority/unworthy/second class citizens etc. Like I said, that definition is in laymans terms and extremely simplistic.

Just found this on the dreaded wikipedia........

Lisa Tuttle has defined feminist theory as asking "new questions of old texts." She cites the goals of feminist criticism as: (1) To develop and uncover a female tradition of writing, (2) to interpret symbolism of women's writing so that it will not be lost or ignored by the male point of view, (3) to rediscover old texts, (4) to analyze women writers and their writings from a female perspective, (5) to resist sexism in literature, and (6) to increase awareness of the sexual politics of language and style.

My thoughts were correct then, thank goodnes.

Thanks Dittany. This is such new ground to me, as I have never even really been sure what 'feminism' is.

LRD - really interesting stuff. I'm now reflecting on my own teaching. I make sure I'm getting the feminism in there, but I wonder now whether I'm hiding the misogyny.

Alice, can you tell I'm feeling the zeal of the very junior teacher?!

I think the misogyny is something that's more excluded from undergraduate medievalism than some later periods; I guess that's why I notice it.

LRD totally me too. It's why we're the best teachers we'll still full of enthusiasm.

I'll try to remember that when I get my evaluations back - haven't had any yet, eek!

I loved my first evaluations. One lovely comment had me smiling for days

" I'm just a Lit PhD who occasionally comes across dilute versions of theory in the secondary criticism and very occasionally writes things other people call feminist criticism. "

Oh hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! What do you mean 'just a Lit PhD...'???? I feel like responding with 'yeah, I know what you mean, I'm not intelligent either - I'm just an astrophysicist professor - nothing special'

Can't you all have a discussion about something I know a lot about so I can look very clever too!?

Back to the OP, I'm not quite sure whether you want recommendations on Post-Colonial Theory (but I'm going to give them anyway! The other posters seem to have covered Feminism and Structuralism pretty damn well).

I'd recommend reading (the introduction of) Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities - it's absolutely vital and informed a lot of later work.

For general overviews David Punters Postcolonial Imaginings is excellent. Elleke Boehmer's Colonial and Postcolonial Literature is also good as a general introduction, although her definition of the postcolonial is very narrow and excludes a lot.

Spivak's famous essay Can the subaltern speak? crosses over nicely into both Marxist and Feminist literary theory, and it might be worth dipping into both Edward Said's Culture and Imperialism and Franz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth - no need to read the whole texts, just reading the introductions will give you the main concepts.

Re: Structuralism, I just finished reading the OUP Very Short Introduction to Barthes, by Jonathan Culler, which was pretty informative.

Enjoy!

I didn't mean that flaming!

I love what I'm doing and do feel very lucky to be doing it. But it is quite different from being a theorist and I am pretty ignorant about the big names mentioned on this thread. I think it's a bit like the difference between an engineer who knows all the science/mechanics that explains how structures work, and the bricklayer who puts them together.

Anyways, what would you like us to have a clever discussion about then?

Oops.

I'm dyslexic, sorry flamingo.

That's fab! It's not the first time I've been abbreviated to Flaming, LRD, don't worry about it. But I think I almost prefer FlamingO'Bingo...shall I namechange, just for you!?

PS. I don't have a PhD but I do know a lot about things that seem to piss people off, because they mostly relate to parenting, and when people disagree about parenting, it causes humungous rows because of the need to feel like you're doing the right thing by your children. Prob best not to have a debate about them on here!

Will find something non-parenting related to do a PhD on and then come here and stun you all

I do like the sound of Flaming O'Bingo. I imagine you charging into bunfights with it. Or we could develop an alter-ego version of scottishmummy and have her squaring up to people on threads 'd'ye want a flaming o'bingo wean or will I punch ye one?'

Ahem.

As you were ...