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BLOCK 1. GLOSSARY OF TERMS
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BLOCK 1. GLOSSARY OF TERMS
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BLOQUE 1GLOSARIO DE TÉRMINOS
ANGEL IN THE HOUSE: Término u+lizado para denominar la figura femenina más idealizada y extendida durante el
siglo XVIII. Virginia Woolf la describe en “Professions for Women” 1931) como “She was intensely sympathe+c. She
was immensely charming. She was uKerly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself
daily […], in short she was so cons+tuted that she never had a mind or a wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize
always with the minds and wishes of others. Above all — I need not say — she was pure.” Las mujeres estaban
des+nadas a desarrollar un rol pasivo en sus hogares, asignándolas la tarea de ser las guardianas de los valores
familiares y permanecer atadas a sus hogares.
CANON: It is the body of wri+ngs generally recognized as “great” by some “authority.” A body of approved works,
comprising either wri+ngs genuinely considered to be those of a given author, or wri+ngs considered to represent the
best standards of a given literary tradi+on. The establishment of a literary canon based upon Victorian ideals of male
intellectual rigor and superiority of certain genres saw women's wri+ng characterized as less meaningful and less
valuable.It came to dominate school and university teaching in the first part of the twen+eth century. The
contemporary formula+on of the literary canon is built on a set of principles first explicated by nineteenth-century
poet MaKhew Arnold, whose premise was that literary worth was located in a text's ability to communicate truths,
and that the consump+on of "great" literature should illuminate moral certain+es.
ESSENTIALISM: The assump+on that all women share the same quali+es or experiences and that those quali+es or
experiences are necessarily different from men’s. Literary cri+cal feminism had to deal with the issue of how to really
avoid essen+alism.
FIRST FEMINIST WAVE: Focused on the worldwide suffrage movement that campaigned for women’s right to vote in
democra+c elec+ons, from the 1880s to the 1930s and 1940s. Some first-wave writers are Virginia Woolf, Very BriKain,
Rebeca West, Storm Jameson, and Simone de Beauvoir.
SECOND FEMINIST WAVE: Originated in the women’s libera+on movement in the US, linked to the civil rights
movement of the 1960s, which sought equality for black Americans. It extended through the 1970s and 1980s. Some
second-wave writers are BeKy Friedan, Kate Miller, Germaine Greer, Elaine Showalter, Sandra Gilber and Susan Gubar.
THIRD FEMINIST WAVE: Linked both to the rise of queer theory as well as to a period of ‘backlash’ agains second-wave
feminism, through the 1990s and into the early 2000s.
FOURTH FEMINIST WAVE: Characterized by the use of digital media to revive feminist ac+vism and reconnect feminist
poli+cs with daily life. In academia, it is also associated with a challenge to ‘evolu+onary’ temporali+es on feminism
and a reconnec+on with many second-wave debates.
GENDER IN THE AGENDA*: The process of reading with a concern for gender issues that affects the wri+ng or reading
of texts. It means paying aKen+on to factors such as women’s rela+ve lack of access to higher educa+on, women lower
economic status, women’s domes+c responsibili+es, and the conflict between nurturing roles such as motherhood and
domes+c work. It involves the reader in an ac+ve process of imagina+on and interpreta+on.
GYNOCRITICISM: Term coined by Elaine Showalter to name a branch of feminist cri+cism which is synonymous with
the second wave. Gynocri+cism was dis+nguished by its mission to celebrate and/or recuperate wri+ng specifically by
women and by a desire to prove that women writer differently from men.
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MADWOMAN: La mujer que deseaba expresarse a través de la palabra, oral o escrita, y que encontraba dificultades y
recelos. Esta figura de la ‘madwoman’ explora el conflicto entre la prisión domés+ca y la fuerza crea+va; representan la
angus+a de la mujer que no encuentra el modo de conciliar sus deseos sexuales y arss+cos con las imposiciones del
género norma+vo, y que debía reprimir, o incluso suprimir, su subje+vidad en favor de un constructo ideal.
PERFORMANCE*: Butler ar+cula el concepto “performa+vo“ de género enfa+zando en las maneras que nosotros
creamos nuestra iden+dad de género a través del discurso y la acción. Los cuerpos de las mujeres en el mundo
occidental con+núan siendo controlados y examinados en la cultura literaria y popular, como parte de la insistencia
genérica de que las mujeres “perform” (representan, desempeñan) su feminidad. Lo que se espera es que la mujer
“performa+ce” su cuerpo femenino y lo acomode a la imagen idealizada de lo que es ser mujer y mostrarlo. A lo largo
de la historia del feminismo hemos visto movimientos contestatarios referentes a esta performa+vidad de género,
desde el pelo corto que defendía CharloKe Perkins Gilman en uno de sus alegatos ac+vistas, pasando por la quema de
lencería femenina en los años 60 y 70 hasta llegar a la reciente campaña en contra de los tacones altos emprendida
por actrices norteamericanas y europeas.
PHALLOGOCENTRISM: Term coined by Lacan which refers to the privilege of the masculine ‘word of truth’ in the
construc+on o meaning.
POST-FEMINISM: Term that characterized the third wave, according to Susan Faludi and Naomi Wolf. The ‘change’
implicit in the prefix ‘-post’ is complex and means different things to different people. For some, it is seen as a new era
that nevertheless build on the former (the ‘post’ indica+ve of con$nuity) while, for others, it has been interpreted as
an admission that the moment of feminist is ‘over’ or ‘in the past’.
RESISTING READER: En “The Resis$ng Reader” (1978), un estudio del canon novelesco estadounidense, Judith
FeKerley sos+ene que las grandes obras literarias de su país cons+tuyen un diseño sobre la conciencia de las lectoras.
Este diseño, impalpable, está sustentado sobre todo por la errónea idea de que la literatura es universal y apolí+ca. La
literatura norteamericana es fundamentalmente masculina, e insiste en su universalidad definiéndose también en
términos masculinos, dado que solo proporciona y legi+ma una realidad, un punto de vista de la existencia. Para poder
iden+ficarse con la experiencia o la iden+dad contenida en esa lectura, la mujer debe someterse a
una”immascula+on” y pérdida del poder. En consecuencia, FeKerley aboga por un(a) “resis+ng reader” que rechace el
asen+miento y exorcice “the male mind that has been implanted on us”.
RE-VISION: Según Rich, consiste en mirar atrás, “seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new cri+cal
direc+on — is for women more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival. Un+l we can understand the
assump+ons in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves”. Por tanto, este término le proporciona una
herramienta para revisited textos que habían quedado anclados en su +empo y en el contexto que los había generado.
SUBJECTIVITY*: Subjec+vity: (Simone de Beauvoir: “He is the Subject, he is the Absolute—she is the Other”):
summarized the problem for feminists that subjec+vity is meant to address: that through most of human history,
philosophy and history have seen the world through male eyes, seeing other men as part of the subject of history, and
seeing women as Other, non-subjects, secondary, even aberra+ons.
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