Naslov
The Detective Genre as a Form of Women's Feminist Creativity

Autori
Pandžić, Maja

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, neobjavljeni rad, znanstveni

Skup
8th European Feminist Research Conference „The Politics of Location Revisited – Gender @ 2012“

Mjesto i datum
Budimpešta, Mađarska, 17-20.05.2012

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
detective genre, woman detective, feminism, subverting, sexual politics

Sažetak
In this paper I concentrate on the detective genre as a form in which women are able to express their creative energies of writing. I intend to chart the process of overtaking this exclusively male zone of detective genre and profession by female detectives and American authors through the analysis of the novels by Amanda Cross, Marcia Muller, Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky. These works constitute the beginning of the women’s detective fiction in which an emancipated woman is the main character. She not only solves the case but in the process of the investigation reveals the discriminative social background which she has to confront on her way towards a self-defined identity in domain both of the detective profession and fiction. In various ways she subverts general female stereotypes and biological essentialism through which the heternormative patriarchal society defined women. She is aspiring to achieve goals that were usually assigned to male public sphere and refuses to comply to traditionally female roles in static domestic sphere. Moreover, she forms a new identity by infiltrating the traditionally male dominated zone of detective profession in the same way that her author infiltrates the genre of hard-boiled detective novel which was traditionally also a “male domain”. Since the novels I will be dealing with range from the 60’s to the 80’s, it will be shown that the authors and their heroines approach the issue of women’s submissiveness more frequently and more decidedly with an intention to deconstruct such notions as that “women could desire no greater destiny than to glory in their own femininity” (Friedan). In other words, the detective genre became another area of sexual political struggle, rising with the second wave feminism.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Filologija, Književnost, Rodni studiji

POVEZANOST RADA