Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1998. [Vol. 5.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 25)

Studies - András Tarnóc: Voices From the Wild Zone: Three Versions of the Feminist Aesthetic in American Culture

I believe in the established canon of English and American literature and in the validity of the concept of privileged texts. I think it is more important to read Spenser, Shakespeare, or Milton than to read Borges in translation, or even, to say the truth, to read Virginia Woolf (qtd. in Gilbert 38) Following Virginia Woolf s prescription for great art, the female aesthetic emphasizes androgyny. While Du Plessis claims the existence of a female psyche, a feminist version of negritude (143), there are crucial differences, as the former favors racial exclusivity. The concept of negritude emphasizes the existence of a Negro value system and presents black people as warm, expressive, and community-oriented human beings. The American version of this school of thought is based on the dichotomy of mind and soul, the former representing the rational Eurocentric thinking, the latter the human and intellectual warmth of the black community. Thus negritude is separatist and exclusive, the notion of the female psyche is integrationist and culturally inclusive. The female and black aesthetics emphasize their connection to "the rhythms of the earth," their "sensuality, intuition and subjectivity" (Du Plessis 150). Several female aestheticians consider the woman's body as a colony, viewing feminism as a decolonizing movement. Christiane Rochefort asserts that women's literature represents the artistic and creative production of the colonized (Showalter 259). By putting women's culture and women's literature on the periphery, a definition for the former is needed. Showalter argues that female culture has two principal characteristics: egalitarianism and community orientedness (261). Gerda Lerner reflects on the liminality of women's culture. She rejects the notion of a subculture, as women's social functions place them in the "general culture" and when confronted by "patriarchal restraint," they convert the latter into complementarity, a greater appreciation of the woman's function (Showalter 261). Consequently, Lerner sees women as integral elements of the mainstream, or primary core, and assigns them to the secondary core simultaneously. Virágos argues that any culturally stable society is capable of maintaining a balance between two kinds of constituent elements: a 103