Postmodern Goddesses in Contemporary Chicana Feminist Novel: Peel My Love like a Onion, Caramelo, or, Puro Cuento: A Novel, and Face of an Angel
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Date
2008
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Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü
Abstract
This dissertation analyses the role of goddess-like postmodern characters and their connection to issues of the border and cultural identity in three contemporary Chicana feminist novels: Ana Castillo?s Peel My Love like an Onion (1999), Sandra Cisneros?s Caramelo, or, Puro Cuento: a Novel (2002) and Denise Chávez?s Face of an Angel (1995). These three works are seen as representative of the contemporary Chicana feminist novel?s importance within the context of Chicana feminist activism. The goddess-like fictional characters, drawing on representations of ancient goddesses like Coatlicue and Tonantzin as well as hybrid personages like the Virgin of Guadalupe, are read as empowering symbols, the result of a process of reworking and syncretizing dominant mythologies.Roland Barthes provides a theoretical model for understanding the ways in which such mythologies are ideologically constructed to fortify the Western binarisms of gender, race and class. U.S. third world feminist theory has deployed elements of poststructuralism to provide an understanding of the resistance and reworking of dominant ideologies within textual practices. In particular Chela Sandoval offers a methodology that she calls ?meta-ideologizing? for this process. Gloria Anzaldúa?s concept of the ?borderland? develops a new understanding of the Chicana experience stigmatized by a dualistic conception of split identities and a positive model of cultural production that resists dualisms which are the products of androcentric and anglocentric consciousness.
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Tanrıçalar, Amerikan Misyonerliği