När andra skriver: skrivande som motstånd, ansvar och tid

Abstract

How would a writer describe responsibility in writing, and in what ways could writing be conceived as resistance? One of the fundamental convictions in The writing of Others: writing conceived as resistance, responsibility and time, is that words do things, and that the definition of the performative qualities of literary and poetic language can not be confined to the mere act, but to an act that is also an event with the force to transform our relation the other. This dissertation is committed to doing theory, poetically, by engaging in the empirical experience of writing, and emphasizing the significance of bodily and sensory knowledge. The French literary tradition of écriture feminine with precursors Hélène Cixous and Julia Kristeva constitutes a crucial reference as this tradition stresses the importance of poetic language in knowledge production. But writing écriture feminine for the third millenium entails further thinking within this very tradition, as Other times are now prevailing. Others and times are precisely the keys to this elaboration of the tradition of écriture feminine, inscribing postcolonial thinking into the writing experience and focusing on the question of temporality. The writers Trinh T Minh-ha and Gloria Anzaldúa are both of vital importance for the articulation of a feminist point of view combined with postcolonial criticism that is steadily anchored in literary and linguistic grounds. Regarding the focus on temporality this study aims at two things: on the one hand displacing and analyzing “old” theoretical concepts as for instance das Unheimliche and mimicry, and on the other hand creating and coining new temporal figurations. These new figurations – the last hour, the tearing moment, the shared Schmertzpunkt and the arrested time – provide embodied theoretical concepts and point towards the intersection of resistance, responsibility and time. The question of responsibility is explored throughout this study – the question if and how the writing of Others might be a specific way of being responsible in writing.