Monography profile

• feminism • gender • queer • feminist theories • gender theories • feminist literary studies • Christa Wolf • Mary Wollstonecraft • Virginia Woolf • Hana Gregorová • feminist journal Aspekt

The monograph outlines various aspects of the use of the analytical
category of gender in literary studies, in the wider context of feminist theories and movements. It critically approaches diverse forms of feminist literary studies as a radical shift in literary research
while describing also the situation in Slovakia and the Czech Republic
after 1989. The possibilities of interdisciplinary application of gender in literary historiography are explored via particular analyses.
The monograph contains three chapters united by questions related
to conceptualisation of gender in thinking about literature:
The first part “Some Theoretical Foundations and Concepts of Feminist
and Gender Research” introduces plurality of feminisms while primarily focusing on the second wave of feminism, the fundamental concepts of early feminist theories based on the primary distinction between gender and sex, as well as other discussions
about gender as an analytical category, the formation of feminist discourse in Slovakia and the Czech Republic – characterised by manifold discontinuities and mostly by the absence of the second wave of feminism when in the 1990s we entered into a medley of contradictory, complementary and polemic theories.
The second part “Feminist Literary Studies” focuses on the beginnings
of feminist reflection on literature, the gender turn in literary studies highlighting deconstruction and its concrete application in other theoretical frameworks, and concentrates on the use of the category of gender in literary historiography, specifically in publications from German speaking countries on history of literature written by women.
The third part “Gender Probes: Trouble with the Encyclopaedia of the
World Writers” takes place in the space that thanks to the perspective
of feminist literary theory opened on one page of one encyclopaedia
from the 1970s. Three entries about three writers – Christa Wolf, Mary Wollstonecraft and Virginia Woolf – contain omissions and ruptures, the branching of which can be traced farther and deeper: to other writers (Karoline Günderrode, Heinrich Kleist,
Mary Shelley, Hana Gregorová) and to contexts crossing the borders
of national literatures. Finally I return to the need of women’s literary tradition for women’s writing. I highlight the parallels between the internationally well-known reflection on this topic in
the essay by Virginia Woolf A Room of One’s Own from the year 1929
and the socio-cultural publication of Slovak author and feminist Hana
Gregorová Slovenka pri krbe a knihe (The Slovak Woman at the Fireplace and with the Book) published in the same year.
In the monograph I try to present my own experience with feminist literary studies also through the confrontation of feminist knowledge and practice with my educational socialisation of
socialist Czechoslovakia. In the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary
context I sketch out one of the possible stories of feminist literary studies. This story has no unified outline – it is made up of shortcuts, digressions, omissions, micro-stories. Through this approach
I try to do justice to broad and manifold forms of knowledge the extent and diversity of which contrasts with a thus far prevailing monolithic, descriptive and linear understanding of feminist literary studies in Slovakia, as well as to my long-term personal involvement
in this field as a co-founder of the first feminist organisation in Slovakia ASPEKT.