Naslov
Women in the Zone of Sexual Politics of Detective Fiction

Autori
Pandžić, Maja

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, sažetak, znanstveni

Skup
Re-Thinking Humanities and Social Sciences „The Zone and Zones – Radical Spatiality in our Times“

Mjesto i datum
Zadar, Hrvatska, 01-04.09.2011

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
private-eye fiction ; femininity ; deconstructing identity ; sexual politics

Sažetak
The center of my presentation is women’s detective fiction with a female private eye as the main character. These women not only solve cases but depict the background of sexual politics within a traditionally male sphere. I intend to chart the process of overtaking this exclusively male spatial zone by female detectives through analysis of novels by Sue Grafton (“A” is for Alibi) and Sara Paretsky (Indemnity Only) who were the pioneers of women’s “private eye” fiction. In my interpretation I rely on various feminist theories with emphasis on spatiality, such as Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. The interpretation will show that the female private eye’s gradual entrance into the male domain coincides with the overtake of the “hard boiled” private eye fiction written exclusively by men in the 1920s and 30s in which women were very often either femme fatale killers or useless objects. In other words, the detective novel became another warzone of sexual political struggle, rising with the second wave feminism. Therefore, I will show how female detectives deconstruct the notion that women “could desire no greater destiny than to glory in their own femininity” (Friedan, 15) by aspiring to achieve goals that were usually assigned to male public sphere and by refusing to comply to traditionally female static domestic sphere of unjust social relations in which women are always subjected. While their home is being violently ransacked due to their involvement in the job, which indicates a male attempt to penetrate into a traditional female sanctuary as a form of enforcing patriarchal norms, their offices are either miniature or dilapidated emphasizing the struggle of women to find a back door into the male profession of detecting. At the end they manage to conquer all of the male planted obstacles and reconstruct their homes and offices on their own terms. Ergo, this presentation will show how women primarily deconstruct identity assigned to them by patriarchy through spatial division, and also how they establish new identities of/on their own by infiltrating a male dominated zone.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Filologija, Književnost, Rodni studiji

POVEZANOST RADA