Is There Such a Thing as “Woman Writing”? Julia Kristeva, Judith Butler and Writing as Gendered Experience

Gambaudo, Sylvie

Abstract

The article revisits the idea that writing may be gendered and asks whether we can define what a “woman writing” practice might be. We do this through a comparative study of the work of Julia Kristeva and Judith Butler. Both have expressed reservations about, even objected to, the essentializing of gender and therefore of writing as a woman. They have, however, provided us with useful tools to define what a non-essentialist understanding of “woman” might entail. The article proposes to do three things: first, to look at the way each author presents “woman” and what I term “woman writing” in their work; second, to find, beyond epistemic differences, the common grounds shared by the two authors; and third, to clarify the places where the two disagree. In a concluding part, we will highlight how that disagreement is reconciled in revisiting Kristeva’s and Butler’s use of loss in their apprehension of “woman,” allowing us to formulate a non-essentialist definition of “woman writing.”

Citation

Gambaudo, S. (2017). Is There Such a Thing as “Woman Writing”? Julia Kristeva, Judith Butler and Writing as Gendered Experience. Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities, 22(1), 23-33. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725x.2017.1285605

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 8, 2017
• Online Publication Date: Mar 17, 2017
• Publication Date: Mar 17, 2017
• Deposit Date: Jan 18, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 17, 2018
• Journal: Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities
• Print ISSN: 0969-725X
• Electronic ISSN: 1469-2899
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis Group
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 22
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 23-33
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725x.2017.1285605
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1396385