Risking Difference: Identification, Race, and Community in Contemporary Fiction and Feminism (Feminist Criticism Theory) - Softcover

Wyatt, Jean

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0791461289 ISBN 13: 9780791461280

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 2004

Synopsis

Looks at the dynamics of identification, envy, and idealization in fictional narratives by Margaret Atwood, Angela Carter, Sandra Cisneros, Toni Morrison, and others, as well as in nonfictional accounts of cross-race relations by white feminists and feminists of color.

Risking Difference revisions the dynamics of multicultural feminist community by exploring the ways that identification creates misrecognitions and misunderstandings between individuals and within communities. Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis, Jean Wyatt argues not only that individual psychic processes of identification influence social dynamics, but also that social discourses of race, class, and culture shape individual identifications. In addition to examining fictional narratives by Margaret Atwood, Angela Carter, Sandra Cisneros, Toni Morrison, and others, Wyatt also looks at nonfictional accounts of cross-race relations by white feminists and feminists of color.

About this title

About the Author

Jean Wyatt is Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies at Occidental College and the author of Reconstructing Desire: The Role of the Unconscious in Women’s Reading and Writing.

Review

"Simultaneously bold and delicate, Jean Wyatt's Risking Difference fuses psychoanalytic theory, feminism, narrative theory, anti-racist discourse, and concerns within multicultural politics to propose an original praxis for feminist intersubjectivity ... This is a vigorous, careful, lucid, and thoroughly readable contribution to feminist ethics and politics."

Edition details

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0791461289
• ISBN 13: 9780791461280
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 294