Feminism and postmodernism: Reading women writing in Canada.

摘要

This study is an exploration of the intersections of recent feminist theory and cultural practice with postmodern literary production and theoretical discourse. After outlining those points where the discourses of feminism and postmodernism coincide, particularly in regard to subjectivity, epistemology, and theories of difference, it turns to the question of postmodern literature. Drawing in part on the literature of England, France, the United States and Latin America, it pays particular attention to Canada and Quebec's postmodern and experimental feminist novels, and concentrates principally on the impact of the address to the reader as a way of delineating their similarities and differences. The different reading institutions within which both feminist and postmodernist novels are read are discussed with a view to highlighting the ideological and literary problem; involved in bringing these two literary productions together. The postmodern novel is first situated in terms of its early "canonical" formulation--i.e. a body of works authored almost entirely by men. This allows the issues involved in adding experimental works by women to this list to be highlighted. In this way, the author deals both with the question of gender in writing--the postmodern novel as masculine form--and the question of "supplementing" "male" canons with works by women. An argument is made for the acknowledgement of the specificity of feminist hermeneutic institutions, both academic and alternative, and for the ways in which experimental feminist writing is embedded within those reading sites. Particular attention is paid to women's writing and cultural institutions in Canada. It is further argued, that while some theories of the postmodern can allow for an opening of the question of difference to considerations of race, ethnicity, class and sexual preference, the postmodern must remain responsible for self-scrutiny in its relation to these political discourses. In the final chapter, three works by Canadian women--Daphne Marlatt's Anahistoric, Helen Weinzweig's Basic Black with Pearls, and France Theoret's Nous parlerons comme on ecrit--are read with these problematics of difference in mind.