Feminism and Territoriality

Susanne Hagemann

Feminism and Territoriality. A Bifocal Case Study of Literary Irelands

ISBN 978-3-88476-629-3, ISBN 3-88476-629-5, 356 S., kt., € 32,50 (2005)

(Schriftenreihe Literaturwissenschaft, Bd. 67)

Feminism and Territoriality introduces a new method of reading, referred to as bifocality. The method's starting point is the structural parallelism between the discursive construction women and minority groups – the masculinization of the 'centre' and feminization of the 'periphery' which have been frequently commented on both in literary and cultural studies and in gender studies. The parallelism, however, is not analysed as such, but used as the basis for poststructuralist defamilarizing interpretation of territorial identities by means of feminist theories. The book's main aim is to develop and test biofocality, and thus lay the groundwork for what may be called a cross-categorical grammar of representation. Ireland serves as a territorial example: feminist theories are applied to the gendering of different regions within Ireland, as well as to the gendering of Ireland in contact with other nations.