Literary Theory IV: gender and sexuality (copy)

"sex"

Sex: biological markers - the male/female body, e.g. chromosomes, organs, stature, ...

Gender

socio-cultural construction of femininity/masculinity

gender" is related to but not the result of "sex"

Historicising gender

Constructions of gender have changed over time: "Macaroni" and "New Woman"

examples, "boy"/"girl" colours → gender is historically contingent

Foucault's approach to sexuality

Sexuality is a discourse that has changed a lot and is closely connected to questions of power and control - e.g. invention and pathologizing of "homosexuality" as a concept in the 19th c., sexuality as a key feature of a person's identity

Key idea of Woolf's A Room of One's Own

Women must have financial independence and individual freedom to realise their artistic potential; problem of female authorship; cf. "Judith Shakespeare" example

Key idea of de Beauvoir's The Second Sex?

"One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman"

→ society shapes gender, reproduction of established ideas of masculinity and femininity

Key idea of Mulvey's "Male Gaze"

Films often cater to the viewing habits of men, female characters satisfy the "male gaze" - active males, passive females that "connote to-be-looked-at-ness"

"Classic" feminist literary criticism of the 1960s/70s

Initially focused on male-authored texts to expose patriarchy, then on female-authored texts, the female tradition of writing and a reform of the male-dominated canon (1980s)

Showalter's "gynocriticism"

A specific form of female literary studies, distinguishes between "androtexts" and "gynotexts", rediscovery of forgotten texts by women - effect on canon

Cixous's "phallologocentrism"

Suggests that language itself, i.e. the tool with which we access reality, is patriarchal and biased towards the male → male language cannot express the female experience properly

→ Écriture féminine:

female style of writing that operates beyond phallologocentrism and may liberate women and the female body

Gender studies

Since the 1990s: focus beyond masculinity/femininity; connects gender with aspects of class race and sexual orientation

Heteronormativity

Privileging of heterosexuality as the norm, relegating non-heterosexuality to the status of an aberration - "queer studies" investigate and expose heteronormativity

Butler's idea of "performative" gender

Gender exists only in how individuals enact gender, as performances that reproduce existing gender roles, gender is performative and not expressive of an inner identity or core

→ "performativity":

an exaggerated performance of gender that exposes gender as a constructed performance, e.g. drag