Matrixial reading is a new methodology for literary criticism that emphasizes the ethical relevance of literature. Adhering to an interdisciplinary approach, I adopt feminist artist and psychoanalyst Bracha Ettinger's paradigm of subjectivity-as-encounter, based on the maternal/late pre-natal infant relation, to refigure reading relations. Analyzing selected texts, I show how readers are invited to form an ethical covenant based on matrixial, as opposed to phallic, relations. I discuss exile and the foreign in Dany Laferrière's novels; Marguerite Duras' work provokes an epistemological reflection on ignorance; with Nancy Huston I demonstrate the role of reading in healing trauma.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:dissertations-2469 |
| Date | 01 January 2005 |
| Creators | Shread, Carolyn P. T |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest |
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