http://hdl.handle.net/2440/33585 2013-06-19T11:05:42Z http://hdl.handle.net/2440/78224 Title: Feminist manifesto or hardcore porn? Virginie Despente's transgression Author: Edwards, Natalie Jean Abstract: This article begins with a short overview of the recent phenomenon of erotic writing by French women authors, showing that transgression is becoming one of the hallmarks of women writers' and filmmakers' work. The article then concentrates on Virginie Despentes's essay King Kong Théorie (2006) and her most recent novel, Apocalypse Bébé (2011). I argue that King Kong Théorie is a provocative, self-reflexive and narcissistic text but that it ultimately opens French feminist theory to an anti-essentialist, anti-elitist readership. The article then analyses Despentes's most recent novel Apocalypse Bébé, which includes a series of female characters that each subvert stereotypes of female representation and broaden the text to a plurivocal expression of female subjectivity. Taken together, I show that these two texts - one theoretical and autobiographical, the other fictional - probe cultural and sexual taboos, question the boundaries of feminism, subvert a male point of view of sex and sexuality, and explore female erotic experience with shocking candour. Despentes's work, I argue, is part of a new French feminism that builds on the first- and second-wave feminist movements by confronting the reality of women's lived experience with the limits of representation of female experience. 2011-12-31T13:30:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2440/77776 Title: Return to Zenda Author: Lloyd, Rosemary Helen 2011-12-31T13:30:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2440/77766 Title: A tale of resilience: the history of modern European languages at the University of Adelaide Author: Fornasiero, Frances Jean; West-Sooby, John Norton 2011-12-31T13:30:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2440/77248 Title: The perversity of whiteness: Paule Constant's white spirit as a gendered rewriting of Joseph Conrad's heart of darkness Author: Edwards, Natalie Jean Abstract: This article examines the intertextual references between Paule Constant's White Spirit and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. I argue that Constant's novel rewrites the European male colonialist's journey from a gendered perspective. The techniques used to achieve this include infusing Conrad's tale with heavily symbolic female characters, with male characters that belie the colonialists' sexual perversion, with animals that take on human characteristics, and with a colonial structure that emphasizes the sexually sordid aspect of empire. The article shows that Constant writes empire as an inherently sexual structure that impacts negatively upon all the characters' psyches, but most significantly upon women; while men suffer psychologically from the sexually perverse colonial society, the quest for whiteness to which the novel's title refers transforms, denigrates and denaturalizes both European and African women. 2007-12-31T13:30:00Z