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Shifting the "vantage point" to women: re-conceptualizing magical realism and trauma
Magical realist literature and trauma are often understood in terms of nationalist and historical paradigms in ways that expose a phallocentric bias. With the convergence of magical realist scholarship and trauma studies—in response to the centrality of trauma to magical realist fiction—this phallocentric bias has in many cases been consolidated. This article attends to magical realist trauma narratives by women, undertaking case studies of the UK writer Ali Smith’s Hotel World and the Filipino-Australian writer Merlinda Bobis’s Fish-Hair Woman. Following the groundbreaking work of the feminist historian Joan Kelly, who demonstrated that adopting a woman’s “vantage point” revolutionizes our understanding of history, this article argues that investigating magical realism and trauma from the “vantage point” of women writers leads to a reconceptualization of what constitutes trauma and a redefinition of magical realist fiction.
History
Journal
Critique: studies in contemporary fictionVolume
58Issue
1Pagination
41 - 52Publisher
Taylor & FrancisLocation
Philadelphia, Pa.Publisher DOI
ISSN
0011-1619eISSN
1939-9138Language
engPublication classification
C Journal article; C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journalCopyright notice
2016, Taylor & FrancisUsage metrics
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