UBC Theses and Dissertations

UBC Theses Logo

UBC Theses and Dissertations

"Can you leave the light on? I'm afraid of the dark." : feminist criticism and the life writing of Virginia Woolf and Gloria Anzaldúa Coulson, Marcella Meghan

Abstract

This project works with Virginia Woolf’s Moments of Being and Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands: La Frontera to suggest that the problem of representing material feminisms in relational women’s life writing is located in white feminists’ desire to remain at home in their criticism. Bringing feminist theories on materiality, politics of belonging and affect together, I reflect on the ways my white privilege permits my criticism to haunt the very subjects whom it suggests I am writing for. In doing so, I demonstrate the ways feminism can be used by white feminists to protect the authority of white feminist criticism, and thus reinforce the white feminist’s privileged position as the subject of feminism. In this way, marking whiteness works to maintain white women’s privilege in feminism, rather than disturb their constructions of identity as feminists. I work with Gloria Anzaldúa’s borderland theory to work through this problem by reflecting on my experiences of being in other women’s criticism. This enables me to work through affective, yet material boundaries between the white feminist self and other feminists. I argue that silence about the affective experiences of the contradictions that characterize white privilege for feminists permits white feminists to lean on the comforts of their knowledge of feminism, and to refuse to acknowledge other women’s writings as criticism.

Item Media

Item Citations and Data

Rights

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada