Women who kill men: Gender, agency and subversion in Swedish crime novels

Mäntymäki, Tiina

doi:10.1177/1350506813496395

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Helena Bassil -Morozow (2012: 23, 48), in her analysis of trickster films, focuses on the trickster figure's central role in mapping women's individuation processes and defining their places in society, and how these films engage in the exploration of the territory and borders of the personal and the social through the trickster figure. A similar kind of negotiation of position is visible in contemporary crime fiction in which the violent woman's representation constantly fluctuates between personal motives and acts and their social consequences (see Mäntymäki, 2013). In Lisbeth Salander's tricking, the dialectic of the private versus the public is expressed in silence and hiddenness of the private in relation to the flamboyance of her parodic and ironic public masquerade in which her motives are distorted either by a mask of conformity or extravagance.…”

Section: Tricking As Carnivalesquementioning

confidence: 84%

Deviant Women

Mäntymäki¹,

Rodi–Risberg²,

Foka³

2015

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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.

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Section: Tricking As Carnivalesquementioning

confidence: 84%

Deviant Women

Mäntymäki¹,

Rodi–Risberg²,

Foka³

2015

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“…14 As Tiina Mäntymäki points out, a move away from female detective agency to that of “morally and socially deviant women is particularly revealing regarding the construction of gender and power [b]ecause deviance always makes visible the norm” (2012: 199). Challenging stereotypical notions of both femininity and masculinity, women murderers “do” gender against the grain (Mäntymäki, 2013: 444). Jassy Mackenzie’s white, middle-class serial protagonist Jade de Jong is both a private investigator and a killer with close ties to the criminal world.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For Butler, gendered identities are performatively produced (doing gender), and this performance has the potential to subvert the existing order (1990, 1993). Women who kill engage in a subversive gender performance; they do gender “against the grain” (Mäntymäki, 2013: 444). Taking recourse to Judith Halberstam (1998), their resistant practice can be read as a form of “female masculinity”.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Female killers and gender politics in contemporary South African crime fiction: Conversations with crime writers Jassy Mackenzie, Angela Makholwa, and Mike Nicol

Binder

2015

The Journal of Commonwealth Literature

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Social analysis is part and parcel of South African crime fiction, 1 a genre which has been flourishing since the end of apartheid. Interrogating the country's high levels of gender-based violence, various South African crime writers explore gender issues in their fiction. 2 Critically-acclaimed crime writers Jassy Mackenzie, Angela Makholwa, and Mike Nicol stand out in this field through their creations of instantly memorable female serial killers as protagonists. In the interviews that follow, the three writers discuss the rationales behind their choice of a traditionally masculine role for their female protagonists, how they navigated through ensuing ethical problems and their characters' potential for uncomfortable reader identification, but also virulent issues of gender in contemporary South African society. They argue that since assertions of power have so long been connected to assertions of masculinity, performing the male role of the killer is a way for their female figures to move to a place of power. Thus, their protagonists' perpetrating agency enables them to be the equals -if not superiors -of the men they interact with. 3 Moreover, it empowers them to act as renegades who contest the dominant power and who are generally in control in an environment which is rife with inequality and where women more often than not are the victims of crime. In this way, besides being a means to explore female perpetrating agency, the figure of the female killer also has the potential to transform the way readers of crime fiction view women. 4

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