Feminist Resistance

For many years literary theorists considered that women writers of the Beat Generation were not worth mentioning. Being present and absent at the same time, these women remained invisible in popular as well as academic reviews in the Beat Generation literature until the nineties. Today, however, it is crystal clear that the literature of the Beats, even with its distinct misogynistic features, had strong influence on several generations of women writers and artists who have written and performed within the feminist frame. Here we will discuss the women of the Beat Generation who in the early sixties, as insiders within a seemingly male group, started expressing themselves within feminist discourses, through which they sought to free women from the socially imposed roles. The main weapon of the Beat Generation’s fight against globalization, conformism, and class inequalities was the freedom of mind, and this particular mind of beatniks was used by women Beat writers in order to question...

Izbor iz djela Enrica Casassesa (Barcelona, 1951.) kakav ovdje slijedi tek je jedna od mogućnosti. Uzmemo li u obzir da je riječ o autoru koji je objavio mnoštvo zbirki i nešto manje diskova s audio-zapisima svoje poezije, dvadesetak mahom kratkih pjesama ne čini se bogznašto. Tako bi bilo kada bi se poezija prodavala na vagu, kao riba na zadarskoj peškariji. Nasreću, ovdje se radi o riječima, riječima koje u primatelja izazivaju različite utiske i koje prenose brige i boli autora ili nekoga tko mu je jako sličan.U tom smislu, nužan bi bio izbor iz „9072 neepska stiha“ „brze pjesme“ Uh (1997.), čega ovdje nema. S druge strane, može dostajati tek jedan sonet iz zbirke Tots a casa al carrer (1992.), kao što je ovdje zastupljen tragični epilog. Dovoljna je čak i pjesma u prozi od dva reda iz zbirke A la panxa del poema en prosa que no hi neva ni hi plou (2013.), kadra uhvatiti trenutak tišine između sunca i mjeseca, vjetra i utihnulih ptica. Tišine tek napuknute ili prije svega napuknute ...

Women writers use the feminist dystopian genre as a way to resist gender-based oppression in complex ways. To do so, women writers must first construct bleak worlds that subjugate their female characters before they can craft ways for these characters to resist. This article specifically examines Octavia Butler’s novel, Dawn, because the central female character finds ways to resist through working within the system in order to work against it. Even though she cannot overthrow the government or escape, she exercises substantial resistance through her body, voice, and intelligence. Butler ultimately demonstrates that women are able to resist from the margins in complex ways, which prompts real-world women readers to fight and resist gender-based oppression in their own societies. Keywords: feminism, Octavia Butler, science fiction, feminist dystopia, genderWomen writers have woven feminist resistance into the fabric of their novels for centuries to protest the misogynistic treatment and...

Mrtvi osvjetljavaju put živima. Zato čitamo: da upalimo baklju. Uz njezino svjetlo pišemo. To vam govorim uvjerenošću voditelja radionice kreativnog pisanja, četrdesetogodišnjaka, s obiteljskim problemima, čovjeka koji je više star nego mlad (to ne vrijedi za sve četrdesetogodišnjake, ali u mom je slučaju istina), koji stoji ispred grupe muškaraca koji izgledaju kao glumačka postava poznatog filma o velikoj pobjedi grupe nespretnjakovića. Ovima, dečkima s radionice, nedostaje cijeli niz prijeko potrebnih stvari: ruka, osobna higijena, samopouzdanje, minerali, elektroliti. Nemojte kriviti pisanje. Na kraju krajeva, svima nama koji pišemo u određenoj mjeri, svakog jutra, nedostaje jedna ruka.Aura, moja žena, prestala mi je odgovarati na poruke sat vremena prije početka radionica. A poruke koje su stigle prije nego što je nastupila tišina bile su pune grubog prijezira. Nešto sam napravio; nešto, ponavljam kako bih izbjegao mučno razmišljanje. Uzrok nezadovoljstva može biti konkretan ili a...

This article deals with the concept/identity of the monster kys in Tatyana Tolstaya’s novel of the same title (Kys, 2000). By drawing on the theory of feminist literary critics Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, this work interprets kys as the articulation of the author’s resistance to patriarchal politics in Russian literature. In creating the post-apocalyptic society, Tolstaya depicts traditional gender roles, chooses a male protagonist and inserts numerous citations from literary works written exclusively by male authors. Nevertheless, even though in such a manner she appears to be imitating the dominant (male) literary tradition and depriving female characters of their voice, other elements lead to a different conclusion. For instance, the images of patriarchal society are primarily carnivalesque, while the classical notion of “the angel in the house” undergoes demythologization. Kys itself is gradually taking over the protagonist’s mind transforming him into her own embodiment – a mo...

The paper reads the novel Dessa Rose (1986) by African American author Sherley Anne Williams, and focuses on the duality of motherhood as compounding and healing trauma at the same time. After placing the novel is its socio-cultural and literary context, I argue, relying on Black feminist and Afro-pessimistic theory, that the subversive potential of Williams’s novel lies in its claim that enslaved Black women are capable of healing through (re-)appropriating what is meant to dehumanize them: their stories, their bodies, their children, and their communities.Keywords: contemporary African American literature, Black women’s literature, slavery, motherhood studiesThe novel Dessa Rose (1986) by African American author Sherley Anne Williams interrogates the consequences of the extreme humiliation and almost total annihilation and torture of the Black female body. The eponymous protagonist, an enslaved woman, is denied agency and narrative authority, and is dehumanized by several people in h...