Feminist Criticism and Hamlet

I am a woman writer attempting non-gendered acrobatics with concrete language that ignores genre boundaries. I did not know this early in my writing practice although Feminist Criticism texts lined library bookshelves. My first undergrad experience was at FIT. I was a fashion designer for nearly twenty years before coming to writing. My first mentors introduced me early on in my writing practice to experimental, metafiction texts and theory, which I embraced. I feasted and continue to feast on theory to inform my writing. Knowledge expands my perception and delimits my experience. My writing was corseted until I went back to school to complete my BFA in Goddard’s low residency program and began my MFA at City. Liberation from fiction’s conventional constraints particularly plot, and literary genre boundaries came from my feminist professors and feminist critical texts. My writing has been heavily influenced by the French focus on language, and the American focus on representation.

I write this after reading “Feminist Criticism and Hamlet” in our course reading guide. Ross C. Murfin brilliant concision of the various and sometimes competing forms of American, French, and British Feminist Critical theory puts all the dangling rhetoric into a comprehensive perspective. I suggest it is a must read. 

I hope Mira doesn’t mind my adding her comment to Vincent’s post that explains the next stage, I think, crucial phase in Feminist Criticism in equally concise terms. 

Mira said…

 I think you raise an interesting an important question here, Vincent. Feminism, by nature of it’s nomenclature, seems to be an exclusively “feminine” endeavor run by females. But I think the word “feminist” might be a misnomer.

I took a class in undergrad once that was called “Philosophy of Feminism.” I think when we examine feminism through a philosophical, rather than socio-cultural lens, the entire concept of gender and sexuality is called into question. I read Judith Butler for the first time in that class, and even though she identifies herself as a “feminist,” she argues that gender and sex are not just constructions, but performances. Anyone who adheres to a specific sexual identity is essentially “in drag.” A provocative statement! Anyway, my point is that it is the responsibility of feminists to call into question not just causes that affect women; the subjugation of women is only the tip of the ice burg. Rather it is conceptions and constructions of sex and gender that are really the at the heart of the problem.

October 15, 2010 2:51 PM

 

Posted by Deborah at 9:35 AM 0 comments

 

 

 

Restless with not enough occupation I peck around for kernels to engage my focus. Headless. After a weekend of Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy (the horrible substitute class) and reading James Shapiro’s “Shakespeare and the Jews,” I try to return to my novel. 

Always haunted by language’s layers as I try to explain to my friend after reading his brilliant analysis of sex in Titus Andronicus coupled with my own search for a word to link two thoughts in a sentence sends me in search of Lyn Hejinian’s essay “Strangeness.” Needless to say I get distracted while looking for the page in contents by another essay “Who is Speaking,” that relates in my mind to my comment on friend’s presentation paper:

A brilliant paper marred by contemporary culturally sexual perspectives proposed by the use of “bawdy” and “tawdry” that impose claustrophobic sexual values onto Shakespeare and by association Woolf’s androgynous openness. Will anyone else notice? I am just very picky about language. I refer to the dictionary constantly in my own writing. Lydia Davis does the same. Besides bawdy and tawdry are not worthy of you.

 Hejinian writes:

“To improve the world, one must be situated in it, attentive and active; one must be worldly. Indeed, worldiness  is an essential feature of ethics. And, since the term poetics names not just a theory of techniques but also attentiveness to the political and ethical dimensions of language, worldiness is essential to poetics” (The Language of Inquiry 31).

Attentiveness to language is crucial to my writing. Writing has the luxury of revision, returning to the page over and over to contemplate meaning, speech is reactive, no matter the level of awareness things culturally rooted in the mind slip off the tongue. If the page allows more thought what is the responsibility of the writer?  

 

I went to Brooklyn today to my dear friend’s new home he and his partner moved into a few months ago. Brooklyn is not a place I know well—although I have counted up my visits past ten fingers the borough remains “Other,” not Manhattan but neither is Manhattan, Manhattan anymore. In fact my Manhattan has moved to Brooklyn. Apartment buildings just three, maybe four stories tall, stairs to climb up, small dingy hallways holding decades of cooking, breathing, sleeping, eating, flushes, sighs, moans, all supported by the smell of aging timber. 

From their second floor windows, a corner building, essential to the apartment’s charm, two bay windows in the living room and bedroom set at right angles, the view onto sidewalk thoroughfares of strollers feels so communal.

The home’s perfection relies on agreed images—distinct but not individual of conventions—however I find those conventions soothing to look upon. The lamp set just right on an African tapestry—a congregation of Buddhas—spoils of tourism—trappings of privilege—signs of empathy?

I don’t know. I do know today has caused me to reevaluate embraced in the arms of nostalgia.

I am pushed off center—can I rely on my perceptive tainted by Shakespeare’s literary sewage. You have no idea what I am talking about—every volume—page—word—critique—study—film—costume that represents Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy must be buried and guarded like nuclear material.

Convention for convention I prefer the neutrals of styled photo shots to pies baked with Goth perverts fed to their mother. You still have no idea what I am talking about. I registered, this semester, for Modernisms and Its Margins—I am taking Shakespeare and Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy. I could be taking Magical Realism but I got sucked up again.