Deviant Women

Abstract

All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.This publication has been peer reviewed.www.peterlang.com Narrative as a Conceptual Starting Point/PerspectiveNarrative is one of the important conceptual tools in this volume. When analysing the narrative of the deviant woman, it is important to understand the cultural role of narrative. Through narrative, we organise reality. Therefore, narratives play important roles in the structuring of reality as well as the construction of identities and representations (see Currie, 1998). Gender can be seen as a narrative that aims at coherence; thus, it is, following French cultural critic Jean -François Lyotard (2004Lyotard ( /1979, one of the Grand Narratives, which realises the narrative of gender difference as defined by the hegemonic ideology. Lyotard also emphasises fragmentation as one of the characteristics of postmodern society, which, in regard to gender, means the emergence of different, constantly renewing mini -narratives about gender and desire, as described, for example, by Judith Butler in Gender Trouble (1990) and Bodies that Matter (1993).Ideology plays an important role in the formation of these narratives. According to Louis Althusser (1971), literature (and representation in general) is a central ideological apparatus which repeats and rewrites cultural narratives, promoting the present hegemonic ideology and inviting -or 'interpellating' -individuals to adapt to the subject positions offered to them within the constraints of this ideology. In this way, literature repeats and rewrites the narrative of gender through representation. This mechanism is not only typical of literature but of all textual representation: all narratives of deviant women are part of the cultural narrative of femininity and gender in general.