Research Article

From Difference to Differences: Reviewing Theories of Women’s Autobiography and Contextualizing the Concept of Métissage

Number: 1 February 21, 2022
  • Shirin Akter Popy

From Difference to Differences: Reviewing Theories of Women’s Autobiography and Contextualizing the Concept of Métissage

Abstract

As a self–referential genre, autobiography explores the relationship between the “self” of the narrator and the “self” in the world. Based on this explication of “self,” theorists of autobiography differ. Autobiography flourished in the West from the Westerner’s belief in the concept of the Renaissance individual that takes its inception in the Cartesian philosophy, which correlates “self” with “the thinking subject,” capable of producing meaning, knowledge, and truth. From this humanist look, while the male critics like George Gusdorf, James Olney read autobiography as a journey towards a self-understanding of the subject as individual and unique, women critics find the “self” split and textually produced. The present paper focuses on how women started voicing the difference of female subjectivity in terms of gender experience and how considering the context of race, gender, class, sexuality, location, and many other hallmarks, postmodern critics advanced towards articulating the “poetics of differences”. Moreover, reading Francois Lionnet’s concept of métissage in relation to other postmodern theories of women’s autobiography, the paper argues métissage as the culmination of theorizing differences regarding subjectivity and representation strategy

Keywords

References

  1. Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson. Austin: U of Texas P, 1981.
  2. Blackburn, Regina. “In Search of the Black Female Self: African American Women’s Autobiographies and Ethnicity.” in Women’s Autobiography: Essays in Criticism. Ed. Estelle C. Jelinek. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1980. 133-148.
  3. Braxton, Joanne M. Black Women Writing Autobiography: A Tradition within a Tradition. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1989.
  4. Carby, Hazel V. Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1987.
  5. Chodorow, Nancy. The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender. Berkeley: U of California P, 1978.
  6. Corngold, Stanley. The Fate of the Self: German Writers in French Theory. New York: Colombia UP, 1986.
  7. DuPlessis, Rachel Blau. Writing beyond the Ending: Narrative Strategies of Twentieth Century Women Writers. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1985.
  8. Foster, Francis Smith. Witnessing Slavery: The Development of the Ante-bellum Slave Narratives. Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1979.

Details

Primary Language

English

Subjects

British and Irish Language, Literature and Culture, Literary Studies, Literary Theory

Journal Section

Research Article

Authors

Shirin Akter Popy This is me
Bangladesh

Publication Date

February 21, 2022

Submission Date

September 10, 2021

Acceptance Date

-

Published in Issue

Year 2022 Number: 1

APA
Akter Popy, S. (2022). From Difference to Differences: Reviewing Theories of Women’s Autobiography and Contextualizing the Concept of Métissage. Overtones Ege Journal of English Studies, 1, 35-46. https://izlik.org/JA68WB46LJ
AMA
1.Akter Popy S. From Difference to Differences: Reviewing Theories of Women’s Autobiography and Contextualizing the Concept of Métissage. Overtones. 2022;(1):35-46. https://izlik.org/JA68WB46LJ
Chicago
Akter Popy, Shirin. 2022. “From Difference to Differences: Reviewing Theories of Women’s Autobiography and Contextualizing the Concept of Métissage”. Overtones Ege Journal of English Studies, no. 1: 35-46. https://izlik.org/JA68WB46LJ.
EndNote
Akter Popy S (February 1, 2022) From Difference to Differences: Reviewing Theories of Women’s Autobiography and Contextualizing the Concept of Métissage. Overtones Ege Journal of English Studies 1 35–46.
IEEE
[1]S. Akter Popy, “From Difference to Differences: Reviewing Theories of Women’s Autobiography and Contextualizing the Concept of Métissage”, Overtones, no. 1, pp. 35–46, Feb. 2022, [Online]. Available: https://izlik.org/JA68WB46LJ
ISNAD
Akter Popy, Shirin. “From Difference to Differences: Reviewing Theories of Women’s Autobiography and Contextualizing the Concept of Métissage”. Overtones Ege Journal of English Studies. 1 (February 1, 2022): 35-46. https://izlik.org/JA68WB46LJ.
JAMA
1.Akter Popy S. From Difference to Differences: Reviewing Theories of Women’s Autobiography and Contextualizing the Concept of Métissage. Overtones. 2022;:35–46.
MLA
Akter Popy, Shirin. “From Difference to Differences: Reviewing Theories of Women’s Autobiography and Contextualizing the Concept of Métissage”. Overtones Ege Journal of English Studies, no. 1, Feb. 2022, pp. 35-46, https://izlik.org/JA68WB46LJ.
Vancouver
1.Shirin Akter Popy. From Difference to Differences: Reviewing Theories of Women’s Autobiography and Contextualizing the Concept of Métissage. Overtones [Internet]. 2022 Feb. 1;(1):35-46. Available from: https://izlik.org/JA68WB46LJ