Abstract
While the last chapter examined the space of patriarchy within nation and concluded by the female subject’s experience within it, this chapter further explores the feminist underpinnings of Allende’s demand for a radical transformation of national belonging through the incorporation of the “feminine.” In light of the opening quotation, this chapter explores the questions that Allende raises in her discussion of gender and feminism: How are we to understand Allende’s feminism in light of her insistence on this “feminine” space of belonging? What exactly is this more “feminine” type of nation? How do we read Allende’s view of national belonging in light of what she calls her “matriarchal tribe?” What is the relationship of Allende’s feminism to patriarchal understandings of national belonging? How does Allende’s depiction of the act of mothering contribute to alternative paradigms of belonging?
We need to value the feminine. Women are half the population. They constitute the largest untapped natural renewable resource in the world. They are the only hope for healing our desecrated planet, [achieving] peace and [finding] solutions for the current crisis of civilization. We have to end the patriarchy. Women and men have to share the management of the world in equal numbers. There’s a need for parity and balance of the feminine and the masculine in the society and every human being. We have to start by educating people and creating awareness. We have the resources.
—Isabel Allende, The Salt Lake Tribune 1
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Notes
Ben Fulton, “Allende: Chilean-American Author Stresses ‘Value the Feminine,’” The Salt Lake Tribune, November 28, 2009, http://www.sltrib.com/features/ci_13868608 (Accessed October 24, 2011).
Isabel Allende, “What I Know about Men…” The Guardian. May11, 2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/may/11/familyandrelationships.isabelallende (Accessed September 17, 2011).
When asked if she considers herself a feminist writer, Allende responded, “Yes, I consider myself a feminist and I think that any intelligent woman has to be one.” A 1989 interview with Isabel Allende by Marie-Lise Gazarian Gautier, “If I Didn’t Write, I Would Die,” in Conversations with Isabel Allende, trans. from Spanish Virginia Invernizzi, ed. John Rodden (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999), 138.
Astrid Henry, Not My Mother’s Sister: Generational Conflict and Third-Wave Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 3.
Toril Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory, 2nd ed. (London, UK: Routledge, 1985), 12.
Breny Mendoza, “Introduction: Unthinking State-Centric Feminisms,” in Rethinking Feminisms in the Americas, ed. Debra Castillo, Mary Jo Dudley, and Breny Mendoza (Ithaca, NY: Latin American Studies Program, 2000), 9.
Julia Kristeva, Revolt, She Said, trans. Brian O’Keeffe, ed. Sylvère Lotringer (New York: Semiotext(e), 2002), 75.
Janice McLaughlin, Feminist Social and Political Theory: Contemporary Debates and Dialogues (New York: Palgrave, 2003), 104.
Julia Kristeva, Revolt, She Said, trans. Brian O’Keeffe, ed. Sylvère Lotringer (New York: Semiotext(e), 2002), 75.
Julia Kristeva, Hannah Arendt (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), xiii.
Megan Becker-Leckrone, Julia Kristeva and Literary Theory (New York: Palgrave, 2005), 26.
See Kelly Ives, Julia Kristeva: Art, Love, Melancholy, Philosophy, Semiotics, and Psychoanalysis (Worcestershire, UK: Crescent Moon Publishing, 2010), 63.
Catherine Clément and Julia Kristeva, The Feminine and the Sacred, trans. Jane Marie Todd (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 57.
See Michel Foucault, “Truth and Power,” in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Penguin, 1984), 72–75.
John Storey, Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction, 5th ed. (Harlow, UK: Pearson Education Limited, 2009), 130.
Allende in an interview with Katy Butler, “A Face in the Crowd,” in Conversations with Isabel Allende, Revised Edition, ed. John Rodden (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004), 270.
Rosi Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 8.
Alison Stone, Luce Irigaray and the Philosophy of Sexual Difference (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 6.
See Luce Irigaray, Sharing the World (London, UK: Continuum, 2008), 102–7.
Hélène Cixous, “The Laugh of the Medusa,” in Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism, ed. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price-Herndl (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991), 339.
Luce Irigaray, “The Bodily Encounter with the Mother,” The Irigaray Reader, ed. Margaret Whitford, trans. David Macey (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 1991), 43, 34–46.
Kari Weil, “French Feminism’s écriture feminine,” in The Cambridge Companion to Feminist Literary Theory, ed. Ellen Rooney (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 169.
Andrea O’Reilly, “Introduction,” in Feminist Mothering, ed. Andrea O’Reilly (Albany: State University of New York Press Albany, 2008), 4.
Shelley Saguaro, “Introduction,” in Psychoanalysis and Woman: A Reader (Basing-stoke, UK: Macmillan Press, 2000), 1. Isabel Allende is aware of the work of Carl Jung as shown by her reference to his work and “una Conferencia de Analistas Junguianos en San Francisco” in El cuaderno de Maya (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Sudamericana, 2011), 392.
C. G. Jung, The Collected Works of C. G. Jung: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, vol. 9, part 1, trans. R. F. C. Hull, ed. Sir Herbert Read, Michael Fordham, and Gerhard Adler (London, UK: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1959), 3–4.
Steve McIntosh, Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution: How the Integral Worldview Is Transforming Politics, Culture, and Spirituality (St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2007), 19.
Sara Ruddick, Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace (London, UK: The Women’s Press, 1989), 23.
See Michael A. Messner, Politics of Masculinities: Men in Movements (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997), xiv.
See Cindy Griffin and Kirsten J. Broadfoot, “Outlaw Mothers Raising Gentle Men: Choosing to Disrupt Hegemonic Tensions between Masculinity and Feminism,” in Contemplating Maternity in an Era of Choice: Explorations into Discourses of Reproduction, ed. Sara Hayden and D. Lynn O’Brien Hallstein (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010), 317.
Chris Klassen, “Feminist Spirituality and Third-Wave Feminism,” in Feminist Spirituality: The Next Generation, ed. Chris Klassen (New York: Lexington Books, 2009), 4.
Carol P. Christ, Rebirth of the Goddess: Finding Meaning in Feminist Spirituality (New York: Routledge, 1997), 107.
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, trans. David McLintock (London, UK: Penguin, 1948), 10.
C.J. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, rec. and ed. by Aniela Jaffé, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Pantheon Books, A Division of Random House, 1963), 293.
Isabel Allende in an interview with Amy Goodman, “Chilean Writer Isabel Allende on her Memoir, Her Family, Michelle Bachelet, Torture and Immigration,” Democracy Now, April 7, 2008, http://www.democracynow.org/2008/4/7/chilean_writer_isabel_alllende_on_her (Accessed September 2, 2011).
See Eva Marie Garroutte, Real Indians (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 15.
See Eric D. Lemont, “Introduction,” in American Indian Constitutional Reform and the Rebuilding of Native Nations, ed. Eric D. Lemont (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006), 1–8.
Peggy Reeves Sanday, Women at the Center: Life in a Modern Matriarchy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002), xii.
Chinweizu, Anatomy of Female Power: A Masculinist Dissection of Matriarchy (Lagos, Nigeria: Pero Press, 1990), 1.
Susan Douglas, as quoted in Susan Owen, Leah R. Vande Berg, Sarah R. Stein, Bad Girls: Cultural Politics and Media Representations of Transgressive Women (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), 117.
See Charles E. Hansen and Anne Evans, “Bisexuality Reconsidered: An Idea in Pursuit of a Definition,” in Bisexualities: Theory and Research, ed. Fritz Klein and Timothy J. Wolf (New York: The Haworth Press, 1985), 1–6.
Magdalena García Pinto, “Chile’s Troubadour,” in Conversations with Isabel Allende, Revised Edition, ed. John Rodden (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004), 62.
Isabel Allende in an interview with Marianne Schnall, “Renowned Women Speak Out on Palin and the Election,” September 23, 2008, The Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marianne-schnall/renowned-women-speak-out_b_128024.html (Accessed July 1, 2011).
See Charlotte Hooper, Manly States: Masculinities, International Relations, and Gender Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 1.
Virginia Held, Feminist Morality: Transforming Culture, Society, and Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 204.
Selma Sevenhuijsen, Citizenship and the Ethics of Care: Feminist Considerations on Justice, Morality, and Politics, trans. Liz Savage (London, UK: Routledge, 2001), 15.
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© 2013 Bonnie M. Craig
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Craig, B.M. (2013). Feminist, “Feminine,” and “Matriarchal” Nations?. In: Rewriting American Identity in the Fiction and Memoirs of Isabel Allende. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137337580_5
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