The politicization of women's narratives: Solidarity and resistance across histories and cultures
Abstract
This project offers new approaches to examine political and social phenomena by offering an innovative methodological technique to political inquiry and by challenging traditional constructions of oppression, resistance, solidarity, and power. This project examines five autobiographical narratives across different histories, cultures, writings and locations. The selected authors are: Domitila Barrios de Chungara, Marya Hornbacher, Susanna Kaysen, Emma Mashinini, and Rigoberta Menchú. I use my own personal narrative and self-reflective writings as the sixth selection, treated as the lens to examine each of the other narratives. The life stories span from the 1940s through the 1990s across four different continents. The economic and political situations, lifestyles, and experiences of the narratives are diverse. Despite this diversity, the selected authors share common experiences that transcend temporal and spatial boundaries. The authors have struggled, resisted, and joined in solidarity against imperialist regimes and daunting institutions. Autobiographical narratives situate personal stories in the context of social and political processes and institutions, helping us to analyze theoretical issues of power and oppression through lived experience. Narratives also provide examples of formats which challenge the untenable bifurcation of theory and practice, an issue with which feminist scholars often are concerned. Analysis of the narratives suggests that oppression experienced by women from different backgrounds and time periods is similar, regardless of the oppressing force. Resistance strategies and notions of solidarity also cut across time and place. Through this form of truth-telling, a more accurate description of the oppressive context is provided and made public from the vantage point of the marginalized. Linking these texts provides the possibility of transcending spatial and temporal boundaries despite individual localities, perhaps one of the most powerful forms of solidarity possible.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Carroll, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Womens studies|Political science|Latin American literature|African literature|American literature
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