The work of Maya Deren, Marguerite Duras and Margarethe von Trotta, three
filmmakers who are also authors, inhabits a space between patriarchy and polemic
feminism. The result, a refocusing and re-arrangement of traditional literary and
cinematic discourse, may be termed a feminine authorship.
The principles of this authorship mainly derive from Laura Mulvey’s
controversial but influential application of psychoanalytical theory to feminine
cinema in “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (Screen, 1975), an investigation
of the “male gaze” in film. Her propositions have been further developed by critics
such as Teresa de Lauretis (1980), Mary Anne Doane (1987) and Judith Mayne
(1990) as well as Mulvey herself (1981). Mulvey’s approach shares with classical
psychoanalysis an emphasis on the unconscious and its visual manifestations in
dream and memory. Deren, Duras and von Trotta encode the latter in spatial
imagery expressive of both women’s repression and their hidden resourcefulness,
most frequently drawing on the gothic novel and the exotic tale. In order to
accomplish their vision, the three filmmakers variously offer original interpretations
of well-established modes and genres such as surrealism (Deren), the nouveau
roman (Duras), and the documentary (von Trotta), but none could have done so
without conceding to a number of compromises with patriarchal discourse, partly for
economic, partly for ideological reasons. This thesis asserts (in contrast to Hélène
Cixous, Luce Irigaray and Peggy Kamuf) that these compromises need not be read
as a flaw, but contribute to a discourse in its own right.
By analyzing authors from diverse cultural, social and linguistic backgrounds
who, moreover, cannot be clearly categorized within the alleged dichotomy of
patriarchy and feminism, this study seeks to expand the definition of feminism
across national and ideological boundaries. In so doing, it may contribute to the
study of other women authors and filmmakers whose views and methods have been
similarly unorthodox. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/7159 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Plessis, Judith Maria |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Format | 4870893 bytes, application/pdf |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
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