Since I am discussion leader this week it is my responsibility to relate the term ecriture feminine to the reading on Gates. Like I did last week I will just state in a summary what the term ecriture feminine means. The term can be summed up as literature that is complied or derived from purely a woman’s perspective.
From what I read on Gates work of writing it seem to me it focused mostly on literature’s connection to race dating all the way back to earlier centuries. He mentioned that Race, as a meaningful criterion within the biological sciences has long been recognized to be fiction. That when we speak of race we speak in biological misnomers and, more generally in metaphors. This statement in my opinion confronts its readers to realize that maybe we have been trained to put an insignificant amount of importance upon certain labels or categories.
Gates also mentioned that “race pretends to be an objective term of classification, when in fact it is a dangerous trope”. In Gates work he wrote about how black female had written a piece of poetry and in order for her to gain the credit she deserved for her work it had to go through an inspection by elitist white males. Another aspect of black history that was bought up in this reading was that Africans had no history as result of not having any literary skills in the past. When this can make no sense because there is a history it may have started off with pictures, or songs, but eventually Africans were involved with literature.
I feel it is easy to link the term ecriture feminine with this issue because women too were constrained and restricted from the art of writing. So this is why there are certain categories of writing because there are different stories to be told that would not have the authenticity or justification from let’s say a white male’s viewpoint. Helps Burkes argument that culture has its own filter, and so does gender. In relation to the text I believe whether it is race or gender the bigger issue is the understanding of these particular categories and how we as society have defined them.
2 comments:
It's really interesting to think that that the terms we use to categorize stereotypes can be seen as fiction. It only makes sense because it's not fair to label it non fiction since a lot of times stereotypes have been proven false. For example to call someone African American doesn't mean that they Are black. South Africa was ruled by the Dutch for a long perios of time there are many people who have a white complexion and they label themself as African American. The same thing goes for women. Just because someone is a female doesn't mean that like to do what society has labeled "female things" like dolls, cooking, cleaning, emotional talks etc.
I guess what it comes down to is what the person identifys themselves as. Because if one was to call themselves "girls or masculine" that shouldn't have any negative or positive connotation because it's what the individual has decided to describe oneself
* sorry it wouldn't let me continue writing on the other post
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