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Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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‘
Every Woman Adores a Fascist’: Feminist Literary Intervention in Elegiac Writing 2019 single work criticism
— Appears in: TEXT : The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs , April vol. 23 no. 1 2019;'This article is a fictocritical intervention in the patriarchal form of the elegy and a reflection on the expression of grief, anger and subjectivity by women writers. It uses Adrienne Rich’s writing on women’s self-destruction as a feminist methodological framework to explore two specific ideas. First, how we speak of the dead, which concerns the agency, subjectivity and anger with which we express our remembrance and our grief, and second, literary style and feminist interventions in the elegiac form. Taking a fictocritical approach, the article combines the objective style of the academic mode with a subjective treatment, resulting in a cut-up text that combines analysis and my own reflections. In this, the article is informed by work by Anna Gibbs (1998; 2005) and Ross Watkins (2014). This multivocal approach aims to answer the question: how does the approach to the elegy form employed by Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath enable a nuanced representation of grief, mourning and agency, and how can other women writers build on this approach to write to and through each other in the context of a patriarchal literary tradition?' (Publication abstract)
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Theorising the Madwoman : Fictocritical Incursions - A Performance
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: TEXT : The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs , October vol. 14 no. 2 2010; '‘Theorising the madwoman : fictocritical incursions - a performance’ is an intervention into the politics of naming and writing about women’s madness in literature. Using fictocritical tactics, this article stages a dialogue between the madwoman and the critic to make visible ‘the fiction of the disembodied scholar’ deployed in textual criticism. Sometimes speaking as the madwoman, sometimes as the feminist critic, I aim to destabilise the voice of the objective scholar, while continuing to lay some claim to it. Polyvocal in arrangement, discordant and offbeat in its strategies, and fictocritical in its tactics and stylistics, this article is an incursion into, rather than an interpretation of, women’s madness. Using a hybrid of fictional strategies, feminist scholarship, and personal experience, I allow the madwoman to interrupt, challenge and resist the interpretive project, by careening into it. Provisional, disorderly and subversive, fictocriticism offers a way of thinking through, rather than thinking about women’s madness. It seems particularly suited to an investigation of the madwoman in literature, as it dramatises the very disorder and instability the madwoman is said to embody.' (Author's abstract) -
A Spiral Bridge
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: TEXT : The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs , October vol. 14 no. 2 2010; 'Commencing tertiary students in writing and communications programs often struggle to absorb literary and cultural theory as it is presented in existing texts. Finding alternate strategies for presenting such material might prove productive. One possible alternate strategy evolved from the preparation of the theoretical component of my PhD thesis, during which I realised that I was telling a story not only about the object of analysis (the creative artefact), but also about the very selection and synthesis of theory for my epistemological apparatus. Forming the view that the discursive and experiential composition of a writing subject is central not only to literary practice but also to critical and theoretical practice, I recognised this as one of the defining attributes of a fictocritical approach, which validates exploration, construction and application of literary theory by using the textual strategies, traditions and conventions of literature itself, so that theory might ‘don the clothing’ of literature and ‘walk about in it’, much as an actor does to understand and interpret a character for an audience. Thus writing literary and cultural theory into a narrative might prove useful for commencing tertiary students, who are likely to be familiar with literary strategies and conventions.' (Author's abstract)
-
A Spiral Bridge
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: TEXT : The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs , October vol. 14 no. 2 2010; 'Commencing tertiary students in writing and communications programs often struggle to absorb literary and cultural theory as it is presented in existing texts. Finding alternate strategies for presenting such material might prove productive. One possible alternate strategy evolved from the preparation of the theoretical component of my PhD thesis, during which I realised that I was telling a story not only about the object of analysis (the creative artefact), but also about the very selection and synthesis of theory for my epistemological apparatus. Forming the view that the discursive and experiential composition of a writing subject is central not only to literary practice but also to critical and theoretical practice, I recognised this as one of the defining attributes of a fictocritical approach, which validates exploration, construction and application of literary theory by using the textual strategies, traditions and conventions of literature itself, so that theory might ‘don the clothing’ of literature and ‘walk about in it’, much as an actor does to understand and interpret a character for an audience. Thus writing literary and cultural theory into a narrative might prove useful for commencing tertiary students, who are likely to be familiar with literary strategies and conventions.' (Author's abstract) -
Theorising the Madwoman : Fictocritical Incursions - A Performance
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: TEXT : The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs , October vol. 14 no. 2 2010; '‘Theorising the madwoman : fictocritical incursions - a performance’ is an intervention into the politics of naming and writing about women’s madness in literature. Using fictocritical tactics, this article stages a dialogue between the madwoman and the critic to make visible ‘the fiction of the disembodied scholar’ deployed in textual criticism. Sometimes speaking as the madwoman, sometimes as the feminist critic, I aim to destabilise the voice of the objective scholar, while continuing to lay some claim to it. Polyvocal in arrangement, discordant and offbeat in its strategies, and fictocritical in its tactics and stylistics, this article is an incursion into, rather than an interpretation of, women’s madness. Using a hybrid of fictional strategies, feminist scholarship, and personal experience, I allow the madwoman to interrupt, challenge and resist the interpretive project, by careening into it. Provisional, disorderly and subversive, fictocriticism offers a way of thinking through, rather than thinking about women’s madness. It seems particularly suited to an investigation of the madwoman in literature, as it dramatises the very disorder and instability the madwoman is said to embody.' (Author's abstract) -
‘
Every Woman Adores a Fascist’: Feminist Literary Intervention in Elegiac Writing 2019 single work criticism
— Appears in: TEXT : The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs , April vol. 23 no. 1 2019;'This article is a fictocritical intervention in the patriarchal form of the elegy and a reflection on the expression of grief, anger and subjectivity by women writers. It uses Adrienne Rich’s writing on women’s self-destruction as a feminist methodological framework to explore two specific ideas. First, how we speak of the dead, which concerns the agency, subjectivity and anger with which we express our remembrance and our grief, and second, literary style and feminist interventions in the elegiac form. Taking a fictocritical approach, the article combines the objective style of the academic mode with a subjective treatment, resulting in a cut-up text that combines analysis and my own reflections. In this, the article is informed by work by Anna Gibbs (1998; 2005) and Ross Watkins (2014). This multivocal approach aims to answer the question: how does the approach to the elegy form employed by Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath enable a nuanced representation of grief, mourning and agency, and how can other women writers build on this approach to write to and through each other in the context of a patriarchal literary tradition?' (Publication abstract)
TEXT : The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs
