Into history through the back door: The ‘past historic’ in Nights at the Circus and Affinity

This article centres around three ways in which ‘new materialism’ or ‘neomaterialism’—terms coined by DeLanda and Braidotti in the second half of the 1990s—can be called ‘transversal’. New materialism is a cultural theory that does not privilege culture, but focuses on what Haraway would call ‘naturecultures’. It explores a monist perspective of the human being, disposed of the dualisms that have dominated the humanities until today, by giving special attention to matter, as it has been so much neglected by dualist thought. New materialism, a cultural theory inspired by the thoughts of Deleuze, that spurs a renewed interest in philosophers such as Spinoza and Leibniz, shows how cultured humans are always already in nature, and how nature is necessarily cultured, how the mind is always already material, and how matter is necessarily something of the mind. New materialism opposes the transcendental and humanist (dualist) traditions that are haunting a cultural theory that is standing on the brink of both the modern and the post-postmodern era. The transcendental and humanist traditions, which are manifold yet consistently predicated on dualist structures, continue to stir debates that have a stifling effect on the field (think of the feminist polemic concerning the failed materialism in the work of Butler, and of the Saussurian/Lacanian linguistic heritage in media and cultural studies). New materialism allows for the conceptualisation of the travelling of the fluxes of matter and mind, body and soul, nature and culture, and opens up active theory formation. The three transversalities concern disciplinarity, paradigms and the spatiotemporality of theory.     

论《水浒传》女英雄形象的时代价值

中国古典文学中的女性形象大多才貌双全、温柔顺从,缺乏独立的人格和意识。而施耐庵在《水浒传》中却塑造了顾大嫂、孙二娘、扈三娘三位迥异于传统的女性形象。通过对她们与中国古代文学中传统的女性形象外在相貌和内在精神意识方面的比较分析可知,她们改变了中国古典文学中女性角色意识附属于男权文化和缺乏女性主体意识的狭隘格局。从这三位女英雄身上看到中国古典文学中女性角色意识的初步觉醒。     

Haunted by the Lady Novelist: Metafictional Anxieties about Women's Writing from Northanger Abbey to The Carrie Diaries

This paper argues that the development of the identity of the professional woman writer as a ‘lady novelist’ in the mid-eighteenth century has had a lasting and detrimental impact on the status of women's writing that lingers through to the present, particularly in the critical discourse surrounding chick lit. The first part of this paper discusses the figure of the lady novelist and traces her centrality to criticisms of women's writing from the eighteenth century through to the twenty-first. The second part of this paper then examines the haunting presence of the lady novelist in the metafictional works of seven representative women writers: Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey (1818), Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh (1856), Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (1868), L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables (1908), Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943), Fay Weldon's The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (1983), and Candace Bushnell's The Carrie Diaries (2010). By drawing a through-line that connects these texts, I argue for a renewed understanding of the ways in which Western women writers from the eighteenth century to the present are unified by a pervasive anxiety about being a ‘lady novelist’.     

PRECOCIOUS ROLE ENTRY AS A MEDIATING FACTOR IN WOMEN'S METHAMPHETAMINE USE: IMPLICATIONS FOR LIFE‐COURSE AND PATHWAYS RESEARCH*

Precocious adoption of adult roles and responsibilities at an early age often has been linked to substance abuse and criminal behavior. Yet, much of the existing research suggests that early offending behaviors induce precocious movement into adulthood; less attention has focused on the way in which early adoption of adult roles and responsibilities might itself contribute to the onset of offending. In the following article, we examine the cumulative impact of early transitions into adult roles and responsibilities on the onset of methamphetamine (MA) use. Through inductive analyses of interviews with women methamphetamine users, we identified a range of adult roles and responsibilities that women described as facilitating their initiation into MA use, including family caretaking, motherhood, independent living, and peer and romantic associations with adults. Such findings have theoretical implications for both life‐course perspectives and feminist pathways research. They highlight the importance of attending to the timing and sequencing of experiences as well as highlight the gendered nature of these processes.     

女性主义文学批评的走向——谈性别诗学的建构前提

对于女性主义文学批评的理论未来而言,性别诗学的建构具有十分重要的意义。本文围绕女性主义文学批评逐步走向理性与成熟、逐步实现诗学的转换、强化个性的文学写作方式与批评理念、逐渐改善女性的生存状况与文学现状、跨学科研究等方面,阐述了建构开放多元的性别诗学体系的必要前提,从而对女性主义文学批评的发展走向进行一些前瞻性思考。     

Anna Kavan’s Ice and Alan Burns’ Europe After the Rain: Repetition with a Difference

Abstract

While Anna Kavan’s work has been largely ignored by critics, the responses of those who have noticed her have been dominated by two assertions. First, many of those wishing to assert her importance and power have seen her work as sui generis, the result of her isolation from the surrounding literary culture. Second, numerous feminist critics have seen her work as reproducing the worst effects of patriarchal domination. This article, through a reading of Kavan’s final novel, Ice (1967), challenges both of these assessments of Kavan. It suggests that, if we notice and try to account for the similarities between Ice and a novel published two years earlier, Alan Burns’ Europe After the Rain (1965), Kavan’s novel can be read as challenging patriarchal domination through a bold and innovative reworking of the reader’s ‘suspension of disbelief’.     

女性主义研究方法及其在女性学专业课程中的运用与探索

女性主义研究方法既把女性作为研究对象，又把女性作为知识的生产者，向传统人文社会科学的方法论提出了质疑，挑战了传统人文社会科学的研究视角。2012年湖南女子学院女性学专业获批，开设了20多门与性别研究相关的专业课程。在这些课程的教学中贯彻女性主义研究方法，既是女性学课程体系特色教学的体现，也是我国女性学专业建设的重要环节。     

The Long Road to Abortion Rights in Argentina (1983–2020)

This article traces the process towards the legalisation of abortion in Argentina, which led to a radical shift in body rights after a century. This change was possible due to the strategies of extended feminist grassroots mobilisations to build support among actors outside and inside institutions. In particular they found allied legislators who created the institutional conditions for change, including the president's support. During the 1990s an embryonic reproductive rights movement emerged under the influence of transnational activism while conditions for success were provided by grassroots mobilisation in the new millennium. Feminist landmarks like Ni Una Menos and Marea Verde provide evidence of the centrality of social mobilisation for institutional reforms.     

美国女权主义法学平等与差异观研究

女权主义者由于受到后现代思潮的影响,否定统一、抽象的平等标准,不赞同把两性是否存在差异作为讨论平等问题的基点,但实际上后现代女权主义法学更加关注差异问题,并且拓展了差异的含义和范围。通过对平等与差异观的研究我们可以看出各女权主义法学流派之间并不是简单的批判和否定,从激烈纷繁的辩争中我们可以发现各流派关于平等和差异的讨论是一种辩证的否定之否定的关系。     

Shocking Thoughts: A Reply to Anne Bottomley

This is a response to an article published in an earlier issue of this journal (Bottomley, A., Feminist Legal Studies 12/1 (2004), 29–65) in which an article by this author was cited as a prime example of a dangerous emerging 'orthodoxy' in feminist legal theory and subjected to a sustained and critical analysis. The purpose of this response is to reflect briefly on the rhetorical style and the theoretical orientation of that article, and to consider their worrying implications for the practice of feminist legal theory as a whole. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.