File spoon-archives/french-feminism.archive/french-feminism_1997/97-02-05.141, message 69


Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 08:53:30 -0500 (EST)
From: "Mary L. Keller" <mlkeller-AT-mailbox.syr.edu>
Subject: Re: FFconference in Texas (fwd)


I am looking for dissertation writing advice.  I am working on my second
chapter and being overwhelmed.  The project is a comparative study of
possessed women, focusing specifically on a question of the agency of a
woman whose will is the will of the Other. I am writing from a religious
studies perspective.  Grosz's _Volatile Bodies_ and
de Lauretis's _Eccentric subjectivities_ both inform the second chapter
whose focus is "phenomenology and the possessed women".  I want to study
two different events of possession, the first being the Nuns of Loudun
(1630's)and
the second being turn of the 20th century African women (spirit
mediums) who participated
in liberation struggles.  I want to look at the work being done in both
events and ask how these specific examples can broaden our sense of bodies
and agency:  though they did incredible work, "they" didn't do it and the
will of ancesotrs and devils is designated as the agent.  
The data I work with is incredible, inspiring, and it is voluminous.  I
feel very strongly that I have a good argument to make that possessed
women provide  important and historically specific resources for
thinking about agency which can shift the discussion beyond our
contemporary epistemological assumptions about what "autonomy,"
"freedom" or "liberation" might mean.  Gayatri Spivak's question "Can the
Subaltern Speak" takes on a specific twist if the woman is a two-thirds
world woman spoken through by ancestor deities of patriarchal religions in
confrontation with colonial powers (as is the case with Nehanda, a spirit
medium from Zimbabwe who was executed for her part in leading the 1896-97
struggle for liberation). 
But I am unable to select and order the resources from which I draw.  I am
insecure about how much I need to use authorized voices to make my points.
I am a creative writer by instinct but I have used _The Craft of Research_
and _Becoming an Academic Writer_ to try to understand argument,
structure, cohesion, coherence.  
I'm writing to this list because I think the nature of critical theory is
such that issues of reflexive methodology and theory are intertwined and
complex issues to write through.  Have any of you found strategies for
locating where to start?  How to proceed?  How to keep French feminists in
line in your work?  They compel, impel and move about while I'm thinking
and I can't engage with them very satisfactorialy.  I think I'm scared of
them, scared of using them well.    

Mary Keller, Ph.D. Candidate
Syracuse University




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