Matter the matters: Towards an embodied world literature

Abstract

How do contemporary women writers figure the female embodiment? How do they represent the world? To answer these questions, this thesis applies a transnational feminist framework to world literature to read the isomorphism between body and world. This research reflects a current need for further gender analysis in world literature as, at the same time this discourse has appeared as a viable approach and way of reading the production and reception of texts in the twenty-first century, critical theory has flourished in key areas such as new materialisms and transnational feminisms. Yet little work in the field of world literature brings these concepts to bear on questions of representation, transnational women's writing and embodiment. By bringing these theoretical frameworks together, a new approach to reading corporeality in transnational women's writing is possible. I position the materiality of the female body as an important site of close reading in this framework, as is evident in my analysis of texts by three authors, Caroline Bergvall, Yoko Tawada and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. Importantly, even though there are variations between the production of these authors texts, each text shares representational strategies in the figuration of the female body that relate to the global processes of production and translation in world literary space. Other considerations that inform this research on the body in women's writing include intersectionality, genre and writing identity politics. The recent shift from the nation to the transnational in literary criticism and the increase in multilingual writing and translation practice suggests a change in the shape of social space and also new challenges for the category of literature. As identity politics become increasingly porous, we are experiencing a moment where concepts such as exophonic writing and born-translated literature necessitates the analysis of new language games and alternative forms of writing that complicate traditional modes of literary analysis. Therefore I situate the short form as a genre with increasing circulation and new relevance in our digital age and as a form that raises particular questions for gender analysis in world literature. Consequently, the intersection of gender and genre offers a point of intervention in the field of world literature studies that highlights a need for this research on embodiment and the representation of women's bodies in short texts by contemporary women writers.