"Is There Such a Thing as "Woman Writing

Julia Kristeva, Judith Butler and Writing as Gendered Experience

Bibliographic Data

ID3774652
AuthorsSylvie Gambaudo (Durham University, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume22
Issue1
Pages23-33
Publication date2017-01-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAngelaki (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0969-725X • E-ISSN: 1469-2899
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/0969725x.2017.1285605
OpenAlexW2596700330
LanguageEN
References cited14

The article revisits the idea that writing may be gendered and asks whether we can define what a “woman writing” practice might be. We do this through a comparative study of the work of Julia Kristeva and Judith Butler. Both have expressed reservations about, even objected to, the essentializing of gender and therefore of writing as a woman. They have, however, provided us with useful tools to define what a non-essentialist understanding of “woman” might entail. The article proposes to do three things: first, to look at the way each author presents “woman” and what I term “woman writing” in their work; second, to find, beyond epistemic differences, the common grounds shared by the two authors; and third, to clarify the places where the two disagree. In a concluding part, we will highlight how that disagreement is reconciled in revisiting Kristeva’s and Butler’s use of loss in their apprehension of “woman,” allowing us to formulate a non-essentialist definition of “woman writing

Apprehension · Epistemology · Essentialism · Sociology · Contemporary Cultural and Social Studies · Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Studies · Gender Studies · Philosophy · Thomas Hardy Literature Studies

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