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 --- from list french-feminism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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