The Philosophical Bases of Feminist Literary Criticisms

Messer-Davidow, Ellen

doi:10.2307/469302

Cited by 14 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…That readings differ as much as actual readers do became a premise rather than a situation to be deplored. Feminist criticism and theory (Moi 1985;Gallop 1988;Butler 2005) made declarations of a scholar's subject position and personal responses an acceptable academic stance, in some circles preferable to a pretended objectivity (Messer- Davidow 1987;Miller 1991). This change enabled the expression of emotional responses to narratives on the part of some feminist critics, while others disavowed emotionality as an imposition of patriarchy bent on confining women to second-class status.…”

Section: Narrative and Emotion In Literary Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction: Narrative and the Emotions

Keen¹

2011

Poetics Today

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A Look behind Us Seventy-five years ago, a scholar seeking a starting point on narrative and the emotions, the joint subject of this two-part special issue, might have consulted colleagues in psychology and literature departments for a reading list. Quite likely the scholar would have been reminded by those colleagues of the canonical works representing several decades' worth of fruitful collaboration between their disciplines: literary theorist I. A. Richards's Principles of Literary Criticism (1926a) and psychologist John Dewey's Art as Experience (2005 [1934]). Not yet discouraged by the prohibitions of W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley's Sewanee Review essay, "The Affective Fallacy," which disparaged work on the elicitation of emotion as "affective relativism" (1954 [1946]: 27); not yet converted to the emergent New Critical canon, which put narrative (especially those lengthy engines of sentimental response, novels) in the shade; not yet fully adopting modern theories of form in preference to older Romantic theories of the imagination (Dissanayake 1992: 142-47); not yet interpellated as either a scientist or a literary intellectual, incapable of communicating across the divide severing the "Two Cultures" (Snow 1956, 1959): our scholar would have every reason to believe that a science of the emotions, including the study of physiological responses, could contribute to an understanding of aesthetic experience. The notion that analysis of the feelings provoked and invited

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Section: Narrative and Emotion In Literary Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction: Narrative and the Emotions

Keen¹

2011

Poetics Today

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“…(1978;rpt. New York, 1978-1987; and Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" (New York and London, 1993) One of the most egregious comments to emerge from the recent US engagement in Iraq appeared in the press shortly after troops entered Baghdad. An Iraqi civilian woman was accidentally killed by a US soldier as he was preparing to kill someone else.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Subjectivity, Theory and Early Modern Drama

2004

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“…As the title suggests, Messer‐Davidow explores the nature of a feminist epistemology, one distinguished by allusions to “lived experiences.” The essay seeks “a rehumanized epistemology” of literature that conjoins “our female selves” with “a critical self” through the corrective methodology of “self‐reflexivity” in scholarly work. Messer‐Davidow implies that knowledge qualifies as “feminist” if it is informed by “perspectivity”—a fancy term for what otherwise passes as “self‐awareness”—in which literary critics are “knowers” defined “by their experiences, self‐reflection, and contingent standpoints” (Messer‐Davidow 1989, 88). This “perspectivity” bears some resemblance to Foucault's notion of “effective history,” which recognizes “knowledge as perspective.” Yet the two perspectives diverge.…”

Section: The Personal Is the Political Is The Theoretical: Occasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Confessing Feminist Theory: What's “I” Got to Do with It?

Bernstein¹

1992

Hypatia

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Confessional modes of self-representation have become crucial in feminist epistemologies that broaden and contextualize the location and production of knowledge. In some versions of confessional feminism, the insertion of "I" is reflective, the poduct of an uncomplicated notion of experience that shuttles into academic discourse apersonal truth. Incontrast to reflective intrusions ofthe firstperson, reflexive confessing is plimarily a questioning mode that Emposes self-vigilance on the process of self positioning.

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The Philosophical Bases of Feminist Literary Criticisms

Cited by 14 publications

References 30 publications

Introduction: Narrative and the Emotions

Introduction: Narrative and the Emotions

Subjectivity, Theory and Early Modern Drama

Confessing Feminist Theory: What's “I” Got to Do with It?

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