Local feminisms: a comparative analysis of feminist literary theory and practice in the 1970s in Britain, America, and Turkey

Download

index.pdf

Date

2016

Author

Akdoğan, Şule

Metadata

Show full item record

Item Usage Stats

576
views

182
downloads

Feminism in literary theory and practice has a long and complicated history and the 1970s were critical to that history because it was in that period that feminist criticism showed itself as an influential force, particularly in Western literary works. The decade observed not only enthusiastic feminist protests against a socio-political background but also a ramification of feminism into different branches such as liberalism, Marxism, and psychoanalysis which, in a way, shaped today’s understanding and discussion of feminism. When the dominating feminist agenda following this decade is analysed, it is recognized that many resources refer to 1970s’ feminist literary theory and practice as a single, unified notion, ignoring local differences. While there is no doubting the commonality of the main issues underlying feminism, and in that respect it is a truly international movement, the focus of feminist concern and action changes with its socio-political contexts, and this is also reflected in differences between the discourse and practice of what we might call local or, perhaps, national feminisms. The aim of this dissertation is to explore the feminist literary theories and practices of different localities, namely those of Britain, America and Turkey, in the 1970s and to lay bare where they coincide and where they show individual features; perhaps even where they contradict each other. Within this frame, Angela Carter’s The Passion of New Eve, Fay Weldon’s Praxis, Joanna Russ’ The Female Man, Marilyn French’s The Women’s Room, Adalet Ağaoğlu’s Lying Down to Die and Leylâ Erbil’s A Strange Woman, and the key feminist literary theories and discussions produced in each culture will be studied in this dissertation.

Subject Keywords

Feminism., Feminism in literature., Women, Women, Women

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12619986/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/25645

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Reconstruction of female subjectivity in Turkey: neoconservatism and imam-hatip schools Ataç, Alara; Ayata, Ayşe; Department of Gender and Women's Studies (2019) From feminist perspective, this thesis attempts to analyze how female subjectivity has been reconstructed through education of Imam-Hatip schools under the impacts of neoconservative ideology since 2002. It is critical to understand rising power of neoconservatism and its impacts on Turkish women, especially after the AKP came into power. The party has developed neoconservatism as new political ideology as counter to secular-Republican ideology, and launched the Islamization project. In this case, the party...
WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT THROUGH CO-OPERATIVES: THE CASE OF WOMEN’S CO-OPERATIVES IN IZMIR Cazgır, Kardelen Dilara; Ergun Özbolat, Ayça; Department of Gender and Women's Studies (2022-6) In last the few decades, the current multi-layered crises and their gender dimension have been widely criticized by many activists, social movements, and scholars. Starting from the criticisms, the possibility of the imaginary economic and social organizing has been researched and investigated through various methods and principles. In this thesis, the feminist post-development has been discussed, following the pathways of the social solidarity economy (SSE) framework, as envisioned and tangible cases, as o...
A feminist standpoint analysis of women’s shelters: a case in Turkey Korkmaz, Miray; Ecevit, Mehmet Cihan; Department of Gender and Women's Studies (2012) The aim of this thesis is to analyze women’s shelters in the context of the Feminist Standpoint Theory by focusing on a case in Turkey. The majority of the previous studies has not regarded the women’s entire subjective experiences of domestic violence and shelter stay. Rather they present a reductionist picture. In this study, women’s experiences of violence and shelter stay are analyzed and discussed in relation to; their specificities, the shelter structure, and the system shelters are connected in Turke...
Working class feminism: solidarity and experience in a factory strike in Turkey Saka, Burcu; Ecevit, Mehmet Cihan; Department of Sociology (2018) This thesis, which focuses on working-class feminism, claims that the industrial actions of women workers in their workplace are also promising in terms of transforming the sex based division of labor. This, on the one hand, is related to the re-organization of work on the axis of deepening sexual division of labor as the condition of exploitation, and on the other hand, women workers’ efforts to make their burdens of reproduction and sexist practices in the workplace a subject of industrial actions. In exp...
Gender, domesticity and house in Turkey: Context and state of research Sarı, Begüm; Balamir, Aydan; Özgenel, Lale; Department of Architecture (2022-12) The relationship between space and gender has been commonly elaborated in feminist and architectural discourse and history, particularly starting from the late 1960s and early 1970s. This relationship is a topic that has been extensively studied with increasing awareness of the otherness issue and inequalities in relation to such themes as public-private and gendered contradictions of everyday life with the discussions on the formation and organization of public and domestic space according to gender stereo...

Citation Formats

Ş. Akdoğan, “Local feminisms: a comparative analysis of feminist literary theory and practice in the 1970s in Britain, America, and Turkey,” Ph.D. - Doctoral Program, Middle East Technical University, 2016.