Violence, Silence and Storytelling
The Dilemma of Matricide in Women’s Memoirs
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20501997 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mary J Harrison (York University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 306-316 |
| Publication date | 2013-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Changing English (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1358-684X • E-ISSN: 1469-3585 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/1358684x.2013.816533 |
| OpenAlex | W2083237497 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 8 |
In this paper I explore how women’s thinking subjectivity is structured by a need to negotiate between identifying with and repudiating our mothers. Oriented by Melanie Klein’s theory of matricide which posits that an infant’s capacity to think for herself originates in her need to separate from her mother, I consider the implications of this structure for women’s gendered experiences of intellectualism. To examine how this dilemma of matricide animates women’s thinking lives I read Helen M. Buss’s criticism of Carolyn Kay Steedman’s memoir Landscape for a Good Woman. I argue that Buss’s criticism of Steedman is symptomatic of her ambivalent relation to the problem of identification and repudiation that drives her own intellectual labour. I then turn to a scene in Buss’s memoir, Memoirs from Away, to examine how the matricidal dilemma resonates through her work of reading other women’s memoirs and of writing her own
Aesthetics · Ambivalence · Art · Criticism · Dilemma · Epistemology · Intellectualism · Literature · Memoir · Narrative · Psychoanalysis · Silence · Sociology · Storytelling · Subjectivity · Autobiographical and Biographical Writing · Gender Studies · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Philosophy · Psychology · Rhetoric and Communication Studies
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,08 |
| Citation span | 2013 - 2013 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |