Izvorni znanstveni članak
https://doi.org/10.31192/np.15.2.1
The concept of ontological body in first half of the 20th century literature by female Croatian writers
Kornelija Kuvač-Levačić
orcid.org/0000-0001-7250-6383
Ana Vulelija
orcid.org/0000-0002-2837-2311
Sažetak
Whole history of Western thought has the experience of corporeal, in association with woman and femininity, related with images of subordination or supernatural sublimity, based on dualistic concept of body/soul, which however had no real connection with experience of being inside a woman’s body. So, we aren’t amazed by the fact of different feminist movements in second half of the 1900s concentrating on the question of woman’s corporeal experience in specific social communities, but without attempts to prove the possibility of physical transcendentalism, thereby turning towards the paradox of deepening dualism. By the first half of the 20th century female Croatian writers have already recognized the subject of body and corporeality as a potential in building their own engaged literature. The issues that this work is primarily addressing to are framed by the display of the circumstances in which Croatian female writers created, in correlation with opposing concepts of mind/body, male/female, in which the presentation of a man correlates with the mind and a woman with the body by Elisabeth Grosz’s corporeal feminism theory (Grosz 1994), and they refer to representations of the body and corporeality in the literary works of those female authors who have placed this subject in the centre of their literary interest. We’ll also show that these female authors (Zofka Kveder, Mara Ivančan, Mara Švel-Gamiršek) are trying to reinterpret the female body in such way that it elevates above mentioned, culturally accepted binary oppositions. We will question the possibility of reading the transcendent, ontological, i.e., philosophical body in their texts. Philosophical body is one of the most important problems of contemporary philosophy, according to philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy’s theory, which dealt specifically with breaking the binary opposition spirit/body and gave new meaning to the body. The corpus of texts processed in this work will consist of: collection of fragments "The Mystery of a Woman" by Croatian-Slovenian-Czech writer Zofka Kveder, followed by novel or long story "A Wondrous Story" by Mara Ivančan and finally, collection of short stories by Mara Švel-Gamiršek "The Portraits of Unknown Women". This work will answer the question whether the above mentioned authors offered a different image of the body then the one attributed to them as subordinated members of society (the woman’s body, which as such cannot be related to the categories of the mind/spiritual because it is guided solely by impulses) and to the one offered by the second wave feminist theory several decades later (where the body is predominantly conceived as a material experience and which, as such, does not open the possibility to enter transcendence).
Ključne riječi
ontological body; touch; female Croatian writers; personal vision of the body; espacement
Hrčak ID:
184975
URI
Datum izdavanja:
20.7.2017.
Posjeta: 1.935 *