In recent years, the international
music scene is seeing a lot of powerful young female singer-song writers. One
that would immediately come to mind is Taylor Swift. Nonetheless, women who
sing and write their own songs are not particular to this era. In the late
1960s to early 1970s some awesome female singer-song writers ruled the music scene
in their own right—Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon were some of the
few. What is interesting is that there has always been this certain sense of
respect and empowerment when a woman not only sings but has the ability to write,
and with her songs, top the charts.
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| The Cafe, Tsuguharu Foujita (1949) |
This may not come as a
surprise as the music industry, like most other industries, has been dominated
by male figures—although time has changed a lot since the ‘60s. Women in the music industry have certainly
come a long way, but one thing which has not changed much, particularly in the
Western pop industry, is that the lyrics that women write are viewed as representing
a different social experience. She is telling ‘her’ story; expressing her view
of the world she is living in, reflecting her existence. She is empowered and empowers when female listeners relate to these lyrics—they are inspired,
enlightened, and empowered. This is one example of how female authorship can
influence a generation.
If we apply this case to women’s
authorship in a broader sense, what would this imply? It would be a very
interesting question to answer indeed, if we attempt to draw a similar case
with women’s authorship in literature. This is particularly interesting because
the masters of literary criticism have marked the death of the author (a phrase
used by Barthes in 1967 meaning the dismissal of authorial identity) as early
as the ‘60s’—just when feminism was giving birth to what would later develop as
‘feminist literary criticism’, where authorship and women’s authorship matter.
Kate Milletts’ Sexual Politics (1969) is often regarded
as the prototype of the feminist literary criticism. Second wave feminism had shown
how patriarchy operates through literature. How literary canons (such as those
written by Norman Mailer and D.H. Lawrence) exhibit sexism and sexual
oppression. Feminist literary criticism examines the author’s history, how
gender stereotypes are presented by the author through female and male
characters and their relations, how sexism is found throughout the narratives
and in the usage of language.
In literary analyses it is
common that women’s literary work is treated as a genre of its own, reflecting
women’s subjective experience as a marginalized group. Thus, while the works of
women could rebel against existing norms, they could also conform to conventional
norms about gender.
So, from the perspectives above,
the author matters, who is speaking matters.
Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (1929) is always referred to as representing feminist
text of her time. She is considered to be the first female author to raise the
issue of women’s own literary style. They were, however, prominent
women authors before Woolf. In fact, what is considered to be the first
feminist book was written during the medieval era—The City of Ladies (1405) by Christine de Pizan, where she argued
against the male dominant view of her period which saw women as inferior beings.
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|
Christine
de Pizan's City of Ladies (1405)
|
What’s also interesting is,
that while Woolf emphasized the importance of women’s economic independence in
order to write, Pizan was making a living by writing; both are educated women
but living under different circumstances. Nonetheless, one might argue that their
works reflect at best only the partial knowledge of European women of the
educated class in a particular period. But however localized, these works are
used over and over again as examples of social criticism, resistance to
cultural tyranny, and a vision for universal social change.
It is this ultimate goal of
universal emancipation that has had feminism suspected of essentializing women’s
oppression. Early works of feminism have been criticized for marginalizing the
subjective experience of non-Western elite women. Subsequent development in
feminist theory that understood knowledge as partial, local, and influenced by
class, race, gender, and sexual orientation gave acknowledgement to the diversity among
women. This perspective has taken the marginalized voices of disadvantaged women
to the center of the text and contributed to the deconstruction of established
knowledge.
So when Michel Foucault in 1969
raised the question, “What does it matter who is speaking?” (a question
originally put forth by Beckket), it had serious
implications for feminist literary criticism and feminist theory. By imposing
this question, the author is decentered, shifted from her/his center position
in the production of text. This question rejects the view that the author and
reader are separate. Instead, the author as the creator of the text is outside
the text. The author is killed as the reader is born. There is no point of examining
the author’s intention as the text will experience multiple interpretations.
It is not surprising that
this postmodernist position was met with a lot of criticism by feminists. They
feel that it will further contribute to the lack of acknowledgement of women’s
authorship; to the decentering of women in the text which will mask gender
oppression; to the exclusion of the voices of the marginalized; and to the practices
of ideological oppression.
The rejection of the authority
of the author poses problems for the emancipatory project of feminism. Related
to this is postmodernism’s bigger view of social change which many feminists
find lacks empowerment and transformation, and even dangerous to the struggles
for emancipation. Although it can be argued that postmodernism is very much emancipatory
because of its emphasis on diversity and refusal to treat concepts such as
justice and equality as something fixed. But how change is thought to be achieved
through local and small-scale resistance, through disruptions to institutions,
with no overarching agenda, does make it sound a bit more status quo friendly
and like merely the game of male intellectuals. Taken to extremes—as many
feminists have argued—instead of liberating, this view can work against the
marginalized and conversely, repress their voice.
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| Guglielmo Zocchi (1874-1957) |
Helene Cixous, often
referred to as the mother of poststructuralist feminism, views patriarchy as a
cultural and historical context. What she calls the feminine mode of
writing—one which does not follow masculine-structured linguistic forms and
phallogocentrism (masculine view in the construction of meaning)—will release
the author from cultural, sexual, and linguistic oppression. Thus, women are
encouraged to explore their sexuality and express themselves through writing by
breaking linguistic and cultural conventions.
When women as authors
express their desires and their ‘otherness’ through a mode of writing that
breaks the rules of the phallocentric system, she is in rebellion against the
‘Father’ (the Patriarch). Pizan’s story about a city built by women in The City of Ladies—which is written in
response to misogyny in medieval works—presents how women can construct reality
(build a city) with their own interpretation by transforming the master's tools
(writing).
The transformative mode of
writing, sometimes referred to as the feminine mode of writing, is not one which
exclusively belongs to women; it is the tool of the oppressed. Because history is
written by the victors, marginalized groups must write to dismantle the
master’s house. Thus, writing becomes a tool for revolt.
Having said that, however, I
am not suggesting that we should do away with the notion of the plurality of the text, multiple
interpretations, or multiple readings—but that this should not be at the cost
of the author. This may sound as a bit of an anticlimax, but I do think that postmodernism
has enlightened feminism in many ways, one is by raising the relationship of
the text and the reader. Pop music is a simplified example. While the lyrics
written by the pop star are attached to the persona of the star, however, as
many pop stars themselves have said, people have developed interpretations of
their songs far beyond what was intended.
So, as we started the post
with something about music, let’s end it with something about music. I shall
end it with a quote from David Bowie (the man who mainstreamed
the concept of androgyny into the pop industry) who, in 1974 released the album Diamond Dogs, inspired by his
interpretation of George Orwell’s book, 1984:
All art is unstable. The significance of
the work is not necessarily the one the author intended. There is no
authoritative voice. There are only multiple readings (Bowie, 1995).
Love
this quote, but I would ditch “only”.
Updated April 2021
Sources
Alexander, Laura (n.d.) Hélène Cixous and the Rhetoric Of Feminine Desire: Re-Writing The
Medusa. Mode
[online]
<http://english.arts.cornell.edu/publications/mode/documents/alexander.html>
[5 May 2016].
Arora, Arun (n.d) L’Ecriture Feminine et Masculine (Female and Male Writing). JELLH
[online]
<http://ijellh.com/papers/2014/October/04-39-43-october-2014.pdf> [14 May
2016].
Dunn, Susan E. (1998) The Place That Writes: Locating Hélène Cixous in Feminist Theory.
Stanford Presidential Lectures and Symposia in the Humanities and Arts
[online]
<https://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/cixous/dunn.html> [6 May 2016].
Foucault,
Michel (1969) What Is an Author? [online]
<http://www.movementresearch.org/classesworkshops/melt/Foucault_WhatIsAnAuthor.pdf>
[5 May 2016].
Wilson,
Sarah (n.d.) Situated Authorship:
Feminist Critical Engagement with Roland Barthes’s “The Death of the Author”
[online]
<https://ojs.library.dal.ca/verso/article/viewFile/513/511>
[13 May 2016].
