Nicole Brossard

This book examines the relations among nostalgia, gender, and foundational philosophies through a critique of the lost mother as a ground for thinking about sexual difference. More specifically, the author critiques the nostalgic tendencies of feminist theory, arguing that an emancipatory system of thought must move beyond a maternally oriented structure.

Maintaining that women's storytelling is a "telling activity, Karen McPherson "reads for guilt" in novels by five twentieth-century writers--Simone de Beauvoir ("L'Invitee), Marguerite Duras ("Le ravissement de Lol V. Stein), Anne Hebert ("Kamouraska), Virginia Woolf ("Mrs. Dalloway), and Nicole Brossard ("Le desert mauve). She finds in the vocabulary and atmosphere of these novels a linking of female protagonists to crime and culpability. The guilt, however, is not clearly imputed or assumed; it tends to trouble the conscience of the entire narrative. Through critical close readings and an inquiry into the interrelations among narration, transgression, and gender, McPherson explores how the women in the stories come under suspicion and how they attempt to reverse or rewrite the guilty sentence.

The author examines the complex process and language of incrimination, reflecting on its literary, philosophical, social, and political manifestations in the texts and contexts of the five novels. She looks for signs of possible subversion of the incriminating process within the texts: Can female protagonists (and women writers) escape the v

The premise of Confessional Politics is that in this confessional age, "telling all is in." From a unique variety of perspectives and angles, the essays in this collection explore the association of confession with femininity; they examine its function as a gender-specific discourse as they probe its many feminized genres and subgenres. Confessional Politics investigates the creative and strategic ways in which women shape the telling of their sexual stories in order to resist and negotiate the confessional practices designed to position them in conventional sexual frameworks.

Investigating the confessional politics of traditional forms of social life writing (including erotic diaries, journals, letters, and confessional fiction), this book significantly expands its focus beyond conventional forms to include practices affecting mass readerships and audiences. The collection addresses provocative general topics: talk shows, sexual harassment, sexual abuse, sexuality, self-help books, and cross-dressing, as,well as expressive works such as contemporary Canadian women's poetry, lesbian fiction, performance art, Anne Franks recently released complete diary, and memoirs.

Gender in Translation is the first full-length study of the feminist issues surrounding translation studies. Simon takes a close look at specific issues which include: * the history of feminist theories of language and translation studies * linguistic issues, including a critical examination of the work of Luce Irigaray * a look at women translators through history, from the Renaissance to the twentieth century * feminist translations of the Bible.