Bodies and signs

Inscriptions of femininity in John Coetzee and Wilma Stockenström

Bibliographic Data

ID20156212
AuthorsMichael Du Plessis (University of the Witwatersrand, corresponding author)
Year1988
Volume4
Issue1
Pages118-128
Publication date1988-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Literary Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0256-4718 • E-ISSN: 1753-5387
PublisherUnisa Press (PUBLISHER • ZA)
DOI10.1080/02564718808529856
OpenAlexW2057156791
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited10

What is the relation between sign and body in French feminism, as proposed by, for example, Helene Cixous and Julia Kristeva? Even in ostensibly feminist discourses, the body has been read as the fixed reference of any utterance, but French feminism forces us to consider the body ‐ and specifically the female body ‐ itself as always and already a sign: source of all metaphors in Cixous, a stubborn residue after signification in Kristeva. It is possible then, to read inscriptions of femininity in avant‐garde texts, regardless of the actual gender of their authors. John Coetzee's In the Heart of the Country and Wilma Stockenström's The Expedition to the Baobab Tree are exemplary explorations of a textual femininity that is inscribed in silences, gaps, or pure sounds, elements that are marginal to any authoritative, transparent discourse. The feminine is another language within the language of representation and symbolisation: both In the Heart of the Country and The Expedition to the Baobab Tree foreground the otherness of language, and the problem of translation. What is finally at stake is a strategy of reading which refuses to assign any meaning to “woman”

Art · Epistemology · Femininity · Feminism · Inscribed figure · Linguistics · Literature · Politics · Sociology · Utterance · Computer Science · French Literature and Critical Theory · Gender Studies · Historical Linguistics and Language Studies · Law · Linguistics and Discourse Analysis · Mathematics · Philosophy

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