Euroconférence: Women, Violence and Reconciliation

• Research unit: EU RFP
• Project number: 00.0098

Key words (English)

Women; violence; reconciliation

Alternative project number (English)

EU project number: FMMACT980357

Research programs (English)

EU-programme: 4. Frame Research Programme - 10.1 Stimulation of training and mobility

Short description (English)

See abstract

Abstract (English)

In this talk, I propose to examine the way black women, in British society, respond to the violence of the representation of whiteness as the norm in the dominant discourse. I will look at how these women negotiate with this dominant discourse - which stigmatises them as different, and as not belonging to British society - through a reading of two texts: the autobiographical Let it Be Told by Jackie Kay and the short-story Perfect Secretarial College by Meiling Jin. . As it will be made apparent by the reading of those two texts, the responses of the women confronted by the white norm - and the representations it conveys which exclude them - often go through stages of abjection, due to the internalisation of that norm. The destructive answer this represents, and from which death, either spiritual or bodily can ensue, is deconstructed and overcome, it seems, only if a sense of community and solidarity with other women in the same situation is created. Thus, I will conclude by looking at some possible srategies through which these women, by creating positive representations of their bodies and by negotiating networks of belonging, reconcile themselves with their own images and create new identities.

References in databases (English)

Swiss Database: Euro-DB of the
State Secretariat for Education and Research
Hallwylstrasse 4
CH-3003 Berne, Switzerland
Tel. [phone]
Swiss Project-Number: 00.0098