Inscribing identities: Chilean women writers of the post-coup generation

Sheridan, Julie (2001) Inscribing identities: Chilean women writers of the post-coup generation. MPhil(R) thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

The focus of this research is the literary output of the women writers of the Chilean 'post-coup generation'; that is, authors whose main body of work has been produced in the period following the military coup of 1973. Specifically, I examine the work of the novelists Isabel Allende, Diamela Eltit, Lucia Guerra and finally Pia Barros. My main point of interest is exploring the deleterious consequences of dictatorship, censorship and exile on women's writing, and in establishing the narrative strategies adopted in response to such conditions. The twenty or so years following the coup in Chile were a period of intense socio-political transition, with decisive practical, theoretical and ideological implications. This thesis considers the literary representations of the struggle of the female subject to delineate a subjective identity in the face of the crises of language, semiotics and the very nature of the social contract. The tenets of authoritarianism can be considered a heightened form of the principles of patriarchy, and it is in the light of these hierarchies of power that I examine the female subject's quest for autonomy and the techniques employed in confronting the resultant simulacrum of identity. By carrying out a thematic analysis of the nine novels, I work towards an epistemology of late twentieth-century Chilean feminism, and consider the social, political, cultural and historical imperatives which have defined it. The social negotiations of power, whether these be contextualised within the micro-structure of a family, in the contrived conception of gender or in the inflections of the authoritarian discourse, are evaluated in terms of their contribution to the ontology of the Chilean female subject - an ontology all the more precarious within a nation struggling to assert a cogent identity of its own.

• Item Type: Thesis (MPhil(R))
• Qualification Level: Masters
• Additional Information: Adviser: Mike Gonzalez
• Keywords: Latin American literature, women's studies.
• Colleges/Schools: College of Arts & Humanities
• Supervisor's Name: Supervisor, not known
• Date of Award: 2001
• Depositing User: Enlighten Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:2001-73399
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 14 Jun 2019 08:56
• Last Modified: 12 Nov 2021 10:31
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/73399