Is There Such a Thing as “Woman Writing”? Julia Kristeva, Judith Butler and Writing as Gendered Experience

Gambaudo, Sylvie

doi:10.1080/0969725x.2017.1285605

Is There Such a Thing as “Woman Writing”? Julia Kristeva, Judith Butler and Writing as Gendered Experience

Gambaudo, Sylvie

Authors

Sylvie Gambaudo

Abstract

The article revisits the idea that writing may be gendered and asks whether we can define what a “woman writing” practice might be. We do this through a comparative study of the work of Julia Kristeva and Judith Butler. Both have expressed reservations about, even objected to, the essentializing of gender and therefore of writing as a woman. They have, however, provided us with useful tools to define what a non-essentialist understanding of “woman” might entail. The article proposes to do three things: first, to look at the way each author presents “woman” and what I term “woman writing” in their work; second, to find, beyond epistemic differences, the common grounds shared by the two authors; and third, to clarify the places where the two disagree. In a concluding part, we will highlight how that disagreement is reconciled in revisiting Kristeva’s and Butler’s use of loss in their apprehension of “woman,” allowing us to formulate a non-essentialist definition of “woman writing.”

Citation

Gambaudo, S. (2017). Is There Such a Thing as “Woman Writing”? Julia Kristeva, Judith Butler and Writing as Gendered Experience. Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities, 22(1), 23-33. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725x.2017.1285605

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Jan 8, 2017
Online Publication Date	Mar 17, 2017
Publication Date	Mar 17, 2017
Deposit Date	Jan 18, 2017
Publicly Available Date	Sep 17, 2018
Journal	Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities
Print ISSN	0969-725X
Electronic ISSN	1469-2899
Publisher	Taylor and Francis Group
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	22
Issue	1
Pages	23-33
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725x.2017.1285605

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Copyright Statement
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Angelaki on 17/03/2017, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/0969725X.2017.1285605.