The Problem of Women's Sociality in Contemporary North American Feminist Memoir

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2367201
AutoresJudith Taylor (0000-0001-8024-271X, University of Toronto, autor de correspondencia)
Año2008
Volumen22
Número6
Páginas705-727
Fecha de publicación2008-12-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaGender & Society (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0891-2432 • E-ISSN: 1552-3977
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0891243208324598
OpenAlexW2027749855
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas10
Referencias citadas31

Systematic analysis of 25 contemporary North American feminist memoirs reveals the significance of this kind of cultural production in the life of the women's movement. In memoir, feminists contest dominant movement narratives, recast and reclaim conventional gender stereotypes, and use their experiences to refine movement ideas and goals. Combining sociological aggregation and pattern identification and interpretivist understandings of memoir's empirical significance, this research indicates that feminists have spent considerable energy focused on transforming not just relations between women and men but among women themselves. To this end, they assert that feminists must acknowledge two difficult 'truths'-women are emotionally damaged, and women are not as socially capable as convention would suggest. By analyzing such arguments, this article indicates feminist memoir is a vehicle through which actors do not simply uphold but also contest movement narratives, refining or abandoning movement frames that wear thin as lived experience contradicts them

Aesthetics · Art · CONTEST · Convention · Literature · Memoir · Narrative · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Autobiographical and Biographical Writing · Gender Studies · Law · Oral History, Memory, Narrative Analysis · Rhetoric and Communication Studies