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Through the Looking Glass of Madame Butterfly: Narrative Gender Transition in the Writings of Angela Carter.
- Source :
- Contemporary Women's Writing; Jul2022, Vol. 16 Issue 2, p243-262, 20p
- Publication Year :
- 2022
-
Abstract
- This article situates Angela Carter's Japanese writings in the context of multiple interconnected discourses in the 1960s and 1970s: on the one hand, anti-imperialism, postcolonialism, and feminism among European intellectuals and, on the other hand, "self-orientalism," anti-Western nationalism, and global capitalism in postwar Japan. As a white woman in Japan, Carter was not only, as previously argued by scholars, doubly objectified as woman and foreigner, but "subjectified" in a patriarchal/colonialist discourse and made aware of her complicity in objectifying, emasculating, and exploiting the native. Carter's Japanese and post-Japan writings reflect a newly acquired awareness of gender in a colonial context, demonstrated by her conscious use of male pronouns and gender transitions, effectively problematizing the othering tendency of European orientalists and the Japanese self-orientalist exploitation of it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- GENDER transition
JAPANESE literature
SUBJECTIVITY
COMPARATIVE literature
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 17541476
- Volume :
- 16
- Issue :
- 2
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- Contemporary Women's Writing
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 164082739
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1093/cww/vpac020